The third time was the charm for Germany’s beleaguered Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the third election in an eastern state this month (on Sept. 22 in the state of Brandenburg), the SPD, Germany’s oldest party and for decades the one with the most members, finally broke into double digits, winning 30.9% of the vote and coming in first. This was a marked improvement over the elections held earlier this month in Thuringia and Saxony (both on September 1) where the SPD received only 6.1% and 7.3% of the vote, respectively. It would be too much to see this as a turnaround, however. In Brandenburg, the SPD has a popular governor and made a point of distancing itself from anyone associated with the national party apparatus. 

The other parties in the ruling national “traffic light” coalition (between the “red” SPD, the “yellow” Free Democratic Party, and the Greens) were not so lucky. The Greens barely made it into parliament in Saxony, with 5.1% of the vote, and failed to reach the 5% threshold in Thuringia and Brandenburg, with 3.2% and 4.1%, respectively. The Free Democrats (FDP) did even worse. They failed to reach the 5% threshold in every state, winning only 1.1% in Thuringia, 0.9% in Saxony, and 0.8% in Brandenburg. In the bar charts displayed on TV news, the FDP did not even appear as a separate party, but only as part of the category “others”, together with such successful groupings as the Animal Rights Party and the Pirate Party. To call the national governing coalition unpopular would be a huge understatement. 

In all three states, the winners came from the populist fringes. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in first in Thuringia (32.8% of the vote) and a close second in Saxony (30.6%) and Brandenburg (29.2%). The biggest gains, however, went to Sahra Wagenknecht’s new left-wing populist party, the BSW. In its first elections in all three states, the BSW won 15.8% of the vote in Thuringia, 11.8% in Saxony, and 13.5% in Brandenburg (coming in third in all three states). Rarely has a newly founded party achieved such results so quickly. 

While the election results may have come close to a political earthquake, the reactions were entirely predictable. Even though Wagenknecht’s BSW has explicitly excluded any form of coalition with the far-right AfD, the rise in tandem of the two populist parties has been interpreted as a sort of resurrection of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In Germany, songwriter Wolf Biermann’s comments a couple of weeks prior to the elections in Saxony and Thuringia perfectly encapsulate this position. Biermann, a former East German dissident who was stripped of his citizenship while touring West Germany in 1976, described both parties as the “political bride and groom of the hour,” comparing them to “the heirs of Hitler’s National Socialism” and of “Stalin’s National Communism,” respectively. In this view, the common sin of both parties would be their shared skepticism about an escalation of the war in Ukraine. Biermann also echoed the well-worn complaint that some people may simply be too lazy for democracy which, unlike the comfortable life under a dictatorship, requires constant efforts from its citizenry. As expected, Biermann’s comments were popular with a certain audience of self-professed democrats who took the effort of sharing them on social media.

The perception of east Germans as ungrateful and slightly lazy clearly struck a chord. However, these complaints are not new. They have been around for almost 35 years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two German states. Back then, they were mostly invoked by the right, but like much else, they have since moved to the left.

After the fall of the GDR and reunification with West Germany, a significant portion of the east German electorate voted for a party that was, in fact, a direct successor to the GDR’s former state party. First named the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and then rebaptized the Left (Linke), it quickly gained a strong following among east Germans disappointed with the turn of events. For many west Germans, this was an enigma bordering on insult. They still remembered the GDR from traveling to West Berlin (for which you had to cross the country but were forbidden to mingle with its citizens lest they get the wrong ideas or try to make an escape) or from visiting relatives there (which required a different visa that allowed you to mingle with the locals but still not to give them any wrong ideas). It was obvious that you could not freely express your opinions. As was the case throughout the Eastern bloc, there were no free elections. And to keep its citizens in line, the government closely monitored everyone (with informants even spying on their spouses and family members). Most west Germans therefore had little doubt that things were much better after reunification. So how could these Ossis continue to vote for the old state party? 

Of course, such sentiments overlooked the economic and social side of the whole unification process. While political freedoms unquestionably increased dramatically, the east German economy basically came to a standstill. Many east German companies were unable to compete and eventually had to shut down. The number of jobs in manufacturing shrunk from 3.3 million to 1.7 million between 1989 and 1991. While this process has sometimes been presented as a Western plot, it is doubtful whether most east German businesses would have ever been able to survive in a Western market economy. What is clear, however, is the toll this took on the population. Whereas in the GDR there was both a right and a duty to work (including, not to be forgotten, forced labor for prisoners), now many had either no job at all or more precarious jobs with the very real prospect of being the next to be let go. People thus moved in record speed from Marx’s economy towards that of Jeff Bezos who famously wrote that he wanted his employees to wake up every morning terrified.

In addition to the specter of deindustrialization and job insecurity, other features of contemporary liberalism quickly made themselves felt. Crime soared, as did drug use. Society became not only less egalitarian but also more commercialized and atomized. After the fall of the Wall, both marriage and births plummeted to unprecedented levels. Westerners may cynically regard such things as simply “part and parcel” of life in today’s world, but they already had decades to adjust their expectations. East Germans, on the other hand, came late and completely unprepared to the party. They never had a chance to gradually adapt to the liberal belief system. When East Germans walked into West Berlin with its vibrant immigrant subcultures after the fall of the Wall, they came from a country with very little migration. (Migration existed, though – Wagenknecht’s own father was an Iranian student in Berlin, hence the spelling of her first name.) Subsequent waves of migration (especially the 2015 influx) have not further endeared them to the multicultural project. 

The post-communists to whom east Germans turned in significant numbers were accepted, after initial hesitation, into state coalition governments with other left-wing parties (the Social Democrats and the Greens). They first served as a minority partner and eventually – in the state of Thuringia – as the main governing party. The post-communists capitalized on east Germans’ nostalgia for the GDR, reinforcing the impression that they had been robbed by history and the West. Yet altering the economic system was beyond their reach, since most economic policies are set at the national level (and increasingly in Brussels) where the post-communists are not represented in governing bodies. Instead, they embraced a distinctly current form of leftism in other areas, including an unabashed progressivism on migration, multiculturalism, and various queer rights. By doubling down on such societal issues, the post-communists moved closer to Western progressives. There is, however, an obvious tension between the latest trends out of Washington, Ottawa and London, and a nostalgia for the old GDR which had never been the epitome of social progressivism, and which in a way combined a socialist economy with a certain social conservatism (albeit one devoid of – and actively hostile to – any elements of transcendence). This created an opening for the far-right AfD, which softened its original economic libertarianism while adopting decidedly right-wing positions on social and cultural issues, especially immigration. The AfD now has by far its largest voter base in the territory of the former GDR. 

It is this group of voters – economically left, culturally right – that Wagenknecht is playing to, whether they come from the post-communist Left, the center-left SPD, the center-right CDU or the far-right AfD (all while shunning the egregious dog whistles that have become the hallmark of increasing sections of the AfD). While Wagenknecht is undoubtedly a leftist and not opposed to progressive ideas, she has repeatedly made clear that she considers many of the issues that most occupy the left such as gay marriage to be in essence liberal ideas. As such, they should not replace the issue of economic justice at the center of the left project. This is the idea behind Wagenknecht’s most famous turn of phrase: her denunciation of “lifestyle leftism”. It is a somewhat surprising stance, given that liberals were once a central part of the left, as in pre-1848 France where liberalism exercised (in the words of the great historian of the French left Jacques Julliard) “intellectual hegemony”. Liberalism lost this role to socialism after 1848. Back when it was a vital part of the left, however, liberals were clearly more concerned with fighting Catholicism than with the material well-being of the poorest members of society. One could argue that leftism has simply come full circle from its liberal beginnings and has every right to prioritize societal questions. As a good Marxist, however, Wagenknecht has a different take. She is convinced that the left loses sight of bread-and-butter issues at its own peril. She has also suggested that some of the issues most cherished by the lifestyle left may actually run counter to the interests of the working class the left claims to represent. 

Yet there may also be another reason for east German voters’ disenchantment with the political system. Like inhabitants of other Western countries, many Germans have the feeling that their country has become less free in recent years, and east Germans are especially sensitive to this trend. As Western liberalism has taken a more muscular approach on a number of issues, most notably during the pandemic, but also in the fight against real or perceived extremists and disinformation, many east Germans can still recall a political regime that actively and unmistakably told its citizens what to think. While they may be nostalgic for certain aspects of the GDR, the state’s preoccupation with correcting the unenlightened opinions of its citizens is not one of them. During the pandemic, east Germans were notoriously difficult to persuade to vaccinate, much to the derision of their Western compatriots. (As the recent elections have shown, they are also more likely to vote than their Western counterparts, with voter turnout ranging from 72.9% in Brandenburg to 74.4% in Saxony.) By contrast, most west Germans cannot remember a political system that is not liberal and democratic. They do not see the liberal state as anything but benevolent and find it hard to imagine that the constant fight to defend democracy might in fact make the system less democratic (such as the fight against the rather malleable foe of disinformation). Thus, ironically, it may be a growing similarity between certain aspects of the current system and that of the defunct GDR that is leading east Germans to seek an alternative from the east.