In the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Doreen Mohaupt has experienced the downsides and the upsides of German reunification.

Born in the coal-rich Lusatia Lake District close to the Polish border, the 43-year-old was raised in an area that was once the pride of the socialist East German economy, employing about 80,000 workers.

When the old economic order collapsed, so did the local coal industry. Her father, a construction manager, was one of the 90% of the workforce who found themselves without a job.

For Mohaupt, however, the structural upheaval that followed the cold war was a challenge she came to relish. An urban planner employed by the city of Cottbus, she now leads a team of 37 civil servants focused on regenerating the area.

“Of course, everyone’s natural instinct is that they don’t like change,” she said. “But I think the attitudes of my generation of East Germans are different, especially among women. I sometimes feel we are like these amoeba that can always adjust to their surroundings.”

Many women like Mohaupt have managed to adapt to a changing economy, so much so that women in Cottbus buck the national trend and earn 17% more than men.

But it is the voting intentions of many of the men left behind by the collapse of the coal industry that is likely to dominate Sunday’s regional elections, which could result in the rightwing populists Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) becoming the area’s largest party. Deindustrialisation has left a generation of men feeling emasculated, angry and open to the policy messages of the far right.

With Germany moving toward phasing out coal power by 2038, the Cottbus area is facing the loss of a further 20,000 to 22,000 jobs directly and indirectly linked to the mining sector.

In Brandenburg and Saxony, the AfD has realistic hopes of toppling the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) and centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the strongest force.

It has been forecast to triple its vote since 2014 in Cottbus, largely because the party has recalibrated its anti-immigration message toward railing against the government’s green agenda.

“Coal is Lusatia’s last anchor,” said Marianne Spring-Räumschüssel, the AfD’s candidate for the region. “We need industry, because without industry there won’t be jobs in administration either.” Her party opposes the phase-out altogether, and she said she mistrusted the government’s promise to cushion job losses with €40bn in structural funds for hard-hit regions.

“People in East Germany can read between the lines,” said Spring-Räumschüssel, whose party’s campaign slogan, Vollende die Wende – “complete the peaceful revolution” - controversially co-opts the language of the 1989 dissident movement. “We knew back then that those on the top weren’t being truthful with us, and now I’ve got a feeling that they aren’t being truthful with us either”.

But Spring-Räumschüssel’s own story shows how some workers in declining industries have been able to adapt and thrive. Once a sales manager in the area’s other major industry, textiles, she benefited from several local grassroots initiatives aimed at building infrastructure for women to retrain and find a political voice. One such initiative set up was East Germany’s first all-female list of independent candidates, which kickstarted her career in politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Open-pit coal mining Janschwalde near Cottbus in Germany. Photograph: VPC Travel Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Although the AfD has the lowest proportion of female MPs among any party in the Bundestag and adheres to what she calls a “traditional image of the family”, Spring-Räumschüssel said her party still honoured women’s issues, largely through its stance on immigration.

The 2015 refugee crisis, she said, had brought an influx of people into Germany who came from countries with “lower levels of education” and more traditional views of the role of women. “I am a woman’s libber through and through, you can see that. I don’t want to see my granddaughter become a housewife again.” When it comes to women’s rights, Spring-Räumschüssel said she did not “want us to be dragged back to the middle ages” by refugees.

Other people who were also involved in projects intended to help women retrain following the collapse of the textile industry disagree with that negative portrayal of refugees. On Thiemstrasse, south of Cottbus’ central station, Hanka Lindner runs the “purple villa”, a women’s centre founded 30 years ago to offer support and retraining for former textile workers.

“The centre has always been driven by the idea that we must not wallow in our misery,” said the 59-year-old. “When you are down in the dumps, you have to find a way out again.”

There were increasing calls for a similar centre for the men left behind by the coal phase-out, said Lindner. “There is clearly an interest, but men can be their own worst enemy. They find it harder to support each other, and they only tend to seek professional help at the eleventh hour.”

Cottbus’ purple villa has changed its focus in recent years to offer support networks for women among the roughly 4,000 refugees who have moved to the city since 2015. “In my experience, the conflicts between men and women you find in Syrian families are not that different to the ones we have in German families,” Lindner said.

It was initially Syrian men who attended language courses offered in the city, but women were increasingly seeking advice, she said. “Many of them come to us because they want to work. The number of divorces has gone up. And Syrian women are a lot keener on seeking a conversation with German women than men are.”

Lindner said she was unsure what the rise of the AfD would mean for her centre. “In the last few weeks I have started to wonder myself what will happen to us,. I have never had to think twice about the political consequences of what I say. That’s a new experience for me.”