MERSEBURG, Germany — It’s here in this small, mostly rural eastern state of just two million people that Germany’s far right is laying the groundwork for an eventual bid for power in Berlin.
Within striking distance of what could become a historic victory for their party in Saxony-Anhalt — one that would give a far-right party governing power in the country for the first time since World War II — leaders of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party see an opportunity too rare and valuable to squander.
And so they’ve devised a detailed, if difficult-to-execute, strategy for using their party’s first real taste of power to dismantle the firewall that mainstream parties have erected to keep the AfD out of government in Berlin.
“Every single one of you is making history right now!” Ulrich Siegmund, the charismatic face of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt set to become state premier should the party win big in a vote on Sept. 6, told a cheering crowd of thousands of supporters at an AfD campaign event in the former industrial town of Merseburg. “Someday, in 20 or 30 years, you’ll look in the history books and say: ‘It began here. It began in 2026 in Saxony-Anhalt!’”
Should the AfD win an absolute parliamentary majority in the state — current polls show them a few seats away from that goal — the party’s strategy for governing strikes a delicate balance: pursuing radical change that distinguishes the party from the establishment — delivering the political revolution it has long promised — without going so far as to alienate ordinary Bürger, middle-of-the-road citizens who don’t want the boat rocked too hard.
The personification of that strategy is Siegmund, a former perfumes and fragrances salesman with a quick smile who across large swaths of eastern Germany receives adoring crowds posing for selfies with him. His celebrity-like appeal obscures the party’s extreme edge. Domestic intelligence authorities have designated the AfD Saxony-Anhalt branch as an extremist organization that includes former members of a banned group modeled on the Hitler Youth.
Ulrich Siegmund’s voters wearing campaign merch at an event in Querfurt on August 21, 2026. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICOTo strike the balance the party seeks, the AfD in the state, for instance, intends to set up a “deportation task force” made up of key state ministers and police while seeking to avoid the scenes of chaos and violence evident in the U.S. when the Trump administration imposed similar measures. The party wants to blend extreme proposals — like redoing school history classes to teach less about Nazi crimes and slash funding for art deemed “anti-German” —with mundane policies that few would protest: like increasing funding for fire departments with response areas that include highways.
“We have to legitimize AfD policies through a practical example. That is our task,” said Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, the brainchild of the AfD’s program for governing in Saxony-Anhalt, at a regional party conference in Magdeburg in July.
To pull it off, the party has identified up to 200 positions in the state’s civil service that are to be filled with a cadre of party loyalists, some of whom have been pre-selected throughout Germany or specifically trained by the party in Berlin — an unprecedented move in postwar Germany, where the civil service is meant to be apolitical —to speed the execution of the AfD’s agenda while keeping things running smoothly. They’ve also come prepared with concrete plans to thwart expected efforts by mainstream opposition parties to block their agenda in courts.
AfD leaders hope the approach — stable but swift change — will destigmatize the party and pave the way for its further advance nationally, and eventually make it impossible for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to maintain its refusal to govern in coalition with the far right.
“If we can achieve this in Saxony-Anhalt and make it work in Saxony-Anhalt, then citizens will naturally see that the world won’t come to an end, but that things might even get better,” said Götz Frömming, one of the leaders of the AfD’s election programming division in Berlin. “And that will likely persuade many citizens who currently still have reservations or who perhaps don’t yet dare to vote for the AfD to give us a chance.”
‘Restructuring’ the state
If it can take power in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD aims to show it can implement its agenda without major debacles.
The crowd listening to Siegmund’s speech in Merseburg on August 22, 2026. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICOSome of the policies in their 100-day program — slashing public money for state broadcasters, detaining asylum-seekers in large numbers — are certain to face legal challenges and resistance from opposition parties.
To avoid governing chaos, national party leaders established the “Black-Red-Gold Academy” last year — named for the colors of the German flag — to help fill administrative positions with AfD loyalists in the Saxony-Anhalt civil service and prevent expected internal resistance. As part of the effort, the party pre-selected qualified candidates from around Germany who would be willing to relocate to Magdeburg and trained others, with a particular focus on filling positions in the interior and finance ministries.
The AfD cannot fire existing civil servants, and there are legal limitations to its influence over the administration, but the intent is to push aside those who would attempt to block the party’s agenda or leak sensitive information.
It’s not uncommon for an incoming government to appoint new state secretaries and leaders of specific key administrative departments, but a remaking of the civil service on such a scale is unparalleled.
Andreas Lichert, an AfD lawmaker from the state of Hesse with knowledge of the party’s plans nationally, called it a “restructuring process.”
“If there are people whom we know we cannot work with, for example because of political statements they have made in the past, then we obviously cannot fire them,” Lichert said. “They remain career civil servants, but of course, by allocating resources appropriately, you can ensure they — to put it bluntly — can no longer cause any harm.”
Siegmund with voters at an campaign event in Querfurt on August 21, 2026. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICOThe AfD’s focus on “restructuring” the civil service stems at least in part from lessons imparted to the party from their Austrian sister-party — the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) — which, unlike their German counterparts, have governed nationally on-and-off since the 1980s, and currently govern in five regions.
Early this year, a group of AfD parliamentarians from Saxony-Anhalt, including Siegmund, traveled to Salzburg to get tips on how to run the state-level civil service once in power. And during a closed-door meeting in Berlin in April, AfD national leaders and top candidates from three states holding elections this September met with an FPÖ official, former state secretary in the finance ministry, Hubert Fuchs, to get practical governing tips — and also advice on how to persuade other parties to govern with the far right.
Merz’s conservatives in Saxony-Anhalt say they won’t govern in coalition with the AfD — and are pushing back against the AfD’s plans to “restructure” the civil service, depicting them as a danger to the very Bürger the far-right party wishes not to alienate.
Sven Schulze, the current premier of Saxony-Anhalt and the CDU’s lead candidate in the state, said the AfD’s plans were a dangerous “sham,” creating many new positions that will cost taxpayers and endanger dedicated civil servants.
“One thing is clear,” he said. “If they were to govern here, everyone — truly everyone — from the school principal to the teachers, to the division heads, all the way up to the department heads in ministries and subordinate agencies — everyone who doesn’t even come close to doing what the AfD dictates will have to fear for their job. Then you’ll be transferred, you’ll be harassed, you’ll be worn down until you give up on your own.”
Siegmund taking a selfie with a voter in Teicha at a campaign event on August 22, 2026. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICOSchulze also suggested the AfD didn’t genuinely care about the people of the state — and simply wants to use Saxony-Anhalt as launchpad for bigger ambitions, calling top AfD candidate Siegmund “a puppet” of national party leader Alice Weidel.
“Weidel is exploiting him and the state of Saxony-Anhalt to gain more power in Berlin,” he said last week.
Not like Trump
Nationally, far-right leaders have bigger plans for how to push back against potential attempts to block or hinder an AfD-led state government.
Leaders of mainstream parties in Berlin are, for example, considering ways to block an AfD interior minister from participating in national meetings of state and federal interior ministers during which sensitive intelligence information is discussed — particularly with regard to Russia out of fear that such information, given the AfD’s Moscow-friendly policies, would get back to the Kremlin.
National mainstream leaders have also weighed proposals to potentially cut off federal funding to Saxony-Anhalt that would be part of the so-called fiscal equalization system, which moves money to poorer states from wealthier ones. That funding, which for Saxony-Anhalt amounted to €2.8 billion in 2025, could theoretically be cut for rule-of-law concerns, although legal hurdles are high.
But the AfD says it is prepared to take action against such efforts.
The AfD’s national party leaders created a “Working Group on Government Participation” to begin drafting bills that could be passed in the state legislature and to weigh how the party, both federally and on state level, could work to block possible attempts to obstruct an AfD-led state government using the courts.
AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund giving a speech at a campaign event in Merseburg on August 22, 2026. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO“We have received significant support from the party leadership,” said Martin Reichardt, the leader of the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch. “We also have the legal department, which is, of course, active as well. And it has prepared for situations where our political opponents might, for example, try to obstruct our work in government,” he added. “We will defend ourselves against this through appropriate legal means.”
Despite such plans, Gordon Köhler, an AfD politician from Saxony-Anhalt who was present at the Salzburg meeting with FPÖ officials, said his party wanted to avoid the kind of fever-pitch polarization that followed President Donald Trump’s return to power for a second term in the U.S.
While the AfD wants a crackdown on asylum-seekers, he said, the party doesn’t want the kind of images of chaos and violence that have occurred with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations on American streets.
“I’d like to call this a tension — on the one hand, taking swift action, but on the other hand, of course, governing well and building bridges,” Köhler said. “We won’t reach everyone — you’ll never succeed in that — but the point is for things to be a bit less tense and not as highly emotional as they are right now.”
After all, he added, “a society must function somehow. And if everyone’s always on edge, that’s obviously not healthy for anyone.”
[Image text:] JAHR NSEO UR HESTIE