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.
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. To 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.
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. Some 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.
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