AfD rides East German nostalgia to fuel surge in former communist states

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QUEDLINBURG, Germany — Germany’s far right is betting that an unabashed embrace of nostalgia for life behind the Iron Curtain will help propel their rise to power in the country’s East.

This is why on a recent Sunday in the picturesque eastern German city of Quedlinburg — a medieval town lined with timber-framed houses — Ulrich Siegmund, the charismatic face of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the region, mounted a blue Simson moped made in the former East Germany and zoomed off toward the rolling countryside followed by hundreds of riders on mopeds of the same brand, many decorated with German flags.

For Siegmund and his comrades in the AfD, this heavy dollop of Ostalgie — a term for the persistent nostalgia for the former East Germany — is a way of capitalizing on a strong regional identity that has remained notably intact since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s also part of a broader political message for an electorate that in great part perceives the country to be in economic and social decline: a promise that the party will bring the people back to a halcyon time when things were supposedly simpler and better, even if that means life in a former dictatorship.

“Not everything was wonderful, for heaven’s sake,” said Siegmund about the four decades of communist rule, yelling into a mic on stage before the departure of the moped convoy. “But this Simson culture stands for individual freedom of movement. It stands for a time when we stuck together in this country. And that is exactly the time I want back.”

Siegmund drove out in front of the convoy with the broad smile that belies the radical politics of the AfD’s state branch, which has risen in popularity despite the fact that the regional intelligence agency has classified it as an extremist organization aimed at undermining Germany’s “free democratic basic order.” Born in Saxony-Anhalt in 1990, one year after the fall of Berlin Wall, this moment of riding, Siegmund said, was all about “freedom.”

The gathering was organized by the AfD ahead of the Sept. 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, a small largely rural state of some two million people in which the party is leading in polls by a wide margin and may be on the verge of gaining real governing power for the first time since its founding in 2013 as an anti-euro party.

AfD leader Siegmund on his blue Schwalbe as he drives out in front of the convoy. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

For AfD leaders, a victory on that scale would be a major breakthrough, giving a party that has been ostracized by the political mainstream a governing foothold that would, or so they hope, destigmatize it and allow it to expand with victories across the country. In a subsequent election in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sept. 20, the AfD is also far ahead in polls .

Many of the riders in Quedlinburg shared the diffuse sense of yearning for the past that Siegmund had evoked.

“The people who used to ride these mopeds back in the East Germany days are meeting up here again,” said Martin Krause, a 61-year-old real estate agent wearing an AfD shirt with Siegmund’s face on it. “We want those times back,” he went on. “A bit of freedom, a bit of East Germany, so that we can live again according to the norms and values we knew back then.”

Krause said he inherited his Simson from his brother-in-law in the 1990s, and then it sat in his barn for decades. After the AfD began organizing Simson tours, however, he fixed it up and added some stickers, including one of AfD national leader Alice Weidel’s face superimposed over a German flag.

Asked what he misses about East Germany, Krause quickly turned to the migration that came after German reunification. A lot of migrant “troublemakers” were “refusing to conform,” he said. “Those people must be sent home through deportation.”

Instrumentalizing Ostalgie

The instrumentalization of Ostalgie was long a hallmark of the far left, said Stefan Wolle, a historian specializing in East Germany. In recent years, however, the far right has mimicked the playbook, albeit in somewhat contradictory fashion, according to Wolle.

Martin Krause with his moped. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

On the one hand, East Germany “serves as a negative foil” for the far right, said Wolle, with AfD leaders often comparing the current German government’s attempts to exclude the party by maintaining a political “firewall” around it to the tactics of the communist dictatorship.

At the same time, he added, the AfD “increasingly attempts to co-opt memories of East Germany for their own agenda and to stoke a certain hostility toward the West … And this certain eastern mentality or this new pride in being from the East is supposed to be translated into political votes.”

Surveys show a strong degree of regional identity persists even nearly 37 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In some ways, the identity may even be growing as eastern Germany increasingly follows its own political path as a hotbed of AfD support and relative sympathy for Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Forty-three percent of people in the former East Germany see more differences than similarities between eastern and western Germans, according to a YouGov poll conducted last year — up nine percentage points from 2019. Just 11% said the similarities outweigh the differences.

That identity is mixed with political resentment, a lingering feeling among many people in the former East Germany that their country was effectively taken over by a dominant West Germany following reunification in 1990, resulting in large-scale job losses, emigration and persistent wealth inequalities that continue to this day.

The demographic divide is similarly stark. While the population of western Germany grew by 10 percent between 1990 and 2024, the population in the East shrank by 16 percent. The East also has a higher proportion of people aged 65 and older, according to official data .

Simson drivers waiting to take off after Siegmund. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

This resentment presents opportunity for the AfD in the former East Germany, but according to Siegmund, the revolt against the establishment won’t stop there.

“We’re taking the first step,” he said of the former East Germany during an event in the eastern city of Magdeburg in July. “But the sun won’t just rise in the East — it will shine over all of Germany.”

History ‘rhymes’

The Simson company was founded in 1856 in eastern Germany by a German Jewish family. Their descendant, Minna Simson, later fled Nazi Germany in 1936, traveling to New York. The Nazis expropriated the factory, and later the East German state used it to make mopeds.

Simson mopeds weren’t always so politicized. They long attracted young riders because they can legally reach speeds of up to 60 kph — 15 kph faster than the usual limit for other mopeds, a regulatory exception dating back to East Germany. The moped’s initial success was largely due to their affordability and availability — especially compared to the cult-status Trabant car , which East Germans had to wait years to obtain.

But today, Minna Simson’s American grandson, Dennis Baum, is not happy with the way the AfD is appropriating the brand. Baum traveled to Germany to join protests against the AfD’s party conference in July in the eastern German state of Thuringia, a gathering that took place exactly 100 years after the Nazi party held a major party conference in the region.

“History is not repeating itself, but it rhymes,” Baum said at the protest, citing the American author Mark Twain. “It is the intolerance of the far right and the AfD that has forced me and my family to take a stand,” he went on. “And that is why I demand: Keep the name Simson out of politics.”

Michael Friedrich on his moped. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

At the rally in Quedlinburg, AfD leader Siegmund cast those comments as irrelevant foreign interference.

“Why should I care if someone who’s been living across the pond for decades — not even here in Europe, not even in Germany, and certainly not in Saxony-Anhalt — wants to pass judgment on how we have to live here, what problems we face here,” Siegmund said.

The crowd cheered as he added: “You’re the people who represent us here, not Americans who want to dictate how we should live!”

Others at the rally sympathized with that view.

Michael Friedrich, a 67-year-old roofer who attended the Quedlinburg rally on his red Simson motorcycle, said he was proud that East Germans rose up to end the communist dictatorship and “drive the leftists out.”

Asked whether the AfD was justified in instrumentalizing Simson mopeds, he showed understanding for the party’s tactics.

“Of course, this is used as a way to stir up a little Ostalgie and bring people together,” he said. “But that’s okay. When mobilizing, anything goes.”