Germany's far right is set to challenge Angela Merkel's grip in upcoming elections

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels on July 2, 2019. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels on July 2, 2019. Photo: Bloomberg Photo By Geert Vanden Wijngaert. Photo: Bloomberg Photo By Geert Vanden Wijngaert. Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Germany's far right is set to challenge Angela Merkel's grip in upcoming elections 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

GROEDITZ, Germany - On a recent Monday morning in the eastern German town of Groeditz, Sebastian Fischer, the candidate running for the regional parliament with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, was trying to gain support with wooden spoons.

Zigzagging around the market square, Fischer handed out the spoons engraved with his website as a gift and conversation-starter. "You don't need a spoon? So, you don't cook?" Fischer asked a man he had identified as a potential voter but who was not receptive to the spoon or to the conversation.

The unusual campaign prop belied the urgency of Fischer's mission.

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For the first time since the end of communism almost 30 years ago, his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has had to confront the possibility of defeat. After an electoral surge in 2017, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party once considered fringe, could come in first or second during state elections Sunday in two large German states.

The widely expected result in Saxony and Brandenburg would upend both regional and national politics and could give Europe's far-right a fresh boost, after right-wing governing experiments fell apart in Austria and Italy this year.

For Merkel, the elections in eastern Germany could hasten her exit from power and serve as a barometer for how some of the European Union's liberal policies she backed are being received in more conservative parts of the bloc.

The eastern German elections are also being closely watched in the capital of Berlin, where the Social Democrats and the CDU form the national coalition government of the European Union's most populous nation and largest economy. If, as expected, both parties suffer substantial losses Sunday, an already fragile federal coalition government could move further toward collapse.

Shaking up Berlin was the expressed goal of the AfD, and many of its supporters already believe that its mission has been accomplished. Standing opposite the CDU candidate at a market square in this working-class town with an aging population, AfD volunteers and their local candidate quietly occupied a largely empty spot. Few people bothered to walk over - but that didn't seem to worry the AfD campaigners.

Despite the town being an AfD stronghold after placing, many voters appeared hesitant to publicly show their support for the far-right party that has espoused populist, anti-migrant and, according to its critics, anti-democratic sentiments.

Out of public view, however, Dirk Wartenberg, 57, a local AfD councilor in Groeditz, said "people show up at my private home" with questions and concerns.

With Germany's modern history so burdened by a legacy of ruinous wars, contemporary Germans have long valued political stability as a force for national cohesion.

However, with far-right political movements disrupting politics across Europe and liberal parties such as the Greens attracting conservative voters, Merkel is facing pressure to resign. She has said her current term will be her last, though she insists the decision was not entirely based on weak election results.

During European elections in May, 11 percent of Germans voted for the AfD, but in many parts of formerly communist east Germany, the AfD has established a formidable hold, ending decades of both CDU and Social Democratic dominance. In Saxony, the AfD has already demolished the CDU's historical standing as the state's unchallenged party, rising from about 10 percent in polling in 2014 to up to 26 percent today.

In the less populous neighboring state of Brandenburg, the Social Democrats could lose to the AfD and face defeat for the first time since reunification. A third eastern German state, Thuringia, will vote in October and has also seen a surge in AfD support.

In Saxony, the upcoming vote has become a de facto referendum on Merkel herself.

While she remains Germany's most popular politician, she has lost the support of many right-wingers her party had previously relied on to win elections - a trend especially pronounced in eastern Germany. Merkel was widely applauded by liberals worldwide for her welcoming stance on refugees in 2015, but there was widespread opposition to the policy in her party's right wing.

Merkel's decision "deeply impaired her reputation as a rational and pragmatic politician, who does not act ideologically," said Werner J. Patzelt, a political scientist who has provided analysis to both the AfD and CDU parties.

Fischer acknowledged that his party's national leadership had become an obstacle during the current campaign, but he declined to blame Merkel's legacy for his party's fading popularity in the region.

"People want to have easy answers," said Fischer, whose 10-year hold on his seat in the regional parliament now appears shaky. The AfD, he said, offers seemingly "easy answers to complicated questions."

The population of Groeditz has shrunk by more than 25 percent since German reunification, as young people moved to bigger cities in western Germany. More recently, rumors about looming layoffs at the local steel factory have made the rounds.

Groeditz, with its communist-era, concrete apartment blocks, reflects some of the broader anxieties that have gripped eastern Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism. Eastern Germany's economy - which partially collapsed after the end of the communist regime - still lags behind western German states in wages and GDP; however, economic struggles do not fully explain the rise of the far-right here.

Voters, politicians and researchers from across the political spectrum have pointed to a feeling among eastern Germans that they are neglected and looked down on by their western German counterparts, giving AfD's more populist message fertile ground in which to flourish. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, eastern Germans were stereotyped by some western Germans as lazy or easily manipulated - perceptions that persist today.

"Feelings of disadvantage" and the experience of "humiliation, denigration and downgrading" after reunification were core factors in Saxony's lurch toward populism, researchers found in an extensive study published last year.

The 2015 refugee influx added to Saxony's feeling of having no voice in national decisions, said Patzelt. Germany's embrace of renewable energy had a similar impact. The state's economy relies on coal energy far more than other regions.

The AfD has been able to capitalize on those concerns, as establishment parties in the east have struggled to challenge policies pursued by their national party colleagues.

At his campaign stand in Groeditz, AfD candidate Mario Beger breezily pivoted between denying that climate change was caused by humans and railing against migrants, saying "cityscapes are changing."

Meanwhile, his CDU opponent, Fischer, faced pushback nearby, as he tried to hand a wooden spoon to a local merchant who turned out to be more concerned about efforts to ban plastic spoons - a policy supported by the German federal government that CDU leads.

"It's a senseless hype," Fischer told the merchant, conceding that the push for a ban was misguided.

Similar conversations have challenged CDU and Social Democratic candidates across eastern Germany, highlighting a disconnect between them and their national leadership that has been hard to overcome.

That gulf may widen further on Sunday.

Even if the AfD wins the majority of votes in Saxony, it would likely have to form a coalition with the CDU to have enough seats in parliament to govern - an option supported by some conservatives, but one that has been rejected by key leaders, including Michael Kretschmer, Saxony's minister-president and CDU candidate

The AfD, Kretschmer told The Washington Post, is a "party that treats democracy and the rule of law with contempt." In turn, Kretschmer said, AfD views him as a "traitor of the people," a term that recalls Germany's Nazi-era. It was used by the Nazis against their domestic enemies, many of whom were executed or sent to concentration camps.

Kretschmer has traveled his state for months to stem the AfD's rise in popularity. His party appears to have clawed back some support over the summer, according to polls.

Standing outside a brewery in the town of Goerlitz after a campaign event, Kretschmer was surrounded by potential voters on a recent Sunday evening. The minister-president drank beer and patiently listened to constituents' concerns deep into the night, even as most supporters had long left.

Striking an optimistic tone, Kretschmer said he increasingly noticed a change among voters: They were refocusing their attention away from criticism of national policies and back to regional issues.

"I'm happy about that, because that's exactly the point: This has to become a Saxony election," he said. He added that achieving progress on core issues such as the development of rural areas could only happen with a "government capable of acting."