BERLIN (AP) — Nicki Kämpf watched her daughter toddle across the sand at a Berlin playground and wondered whether she and her wife should move their 1 1/2-year-old daughter west after Alternative für Deutschland became the first far-right party to win a state election in post-World War II Germany.
Kämpf, 29, and her wife discussed an alternative plan as Sunday’s election results came in. They are concerned that a gay couple and their child will not be safe in the future if parties like Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, gain more power in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states.
Although they live in the liberal city of Berlin, Kämpf feared the spread of the far right. She is particularly concerned because the papers to formally adopt her daughter are still being processed — and that could take a year or more.
“I don’t think I could adopt her if they were in power,” Kämpf told The Associated Press on Monday. “I don’t want to raise her in a hostile environment.”
The couple have talked about a possible move west to Cologne — “people there are really open-minded” — but Kämpf is reluctant to take their daughter, far away from the toddler’s 91-year-old great-grandmother and other relatives in Thuringia and neighboring Saxony.
AfD won state elections in Thuringia on Sunday under one of the party’s hardest-right figures, Björn Höcke. In Saxony, the party finished just behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union, which leads the national opposition.
Deep discontent with a national government notorious for infighting, inflation and a weak economy, anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism over German military aid to Ukraine are among the factors that have helped fuel support for populist parties. A new party founded by a prominent leftist was the second big winner on Sunday — and will likely be needed to form state governments, since no one is willing to govern with the AfD.
AfD is strongest in the east, and the domestic intelligence service has officially monitored the party’s branches in both Saxony and Thuringia as “proven far-right” groups. Höcke was convicted of knowingly using a Nazi slogan at political events, but has appealed.
Höcke became angry on Sunday when an ARD interviewer mentioned the intelligence service’s assessment and replied: “Please stop stigmatizing me. We are the number 1 party in Thuringia. You don’t want to classify a third of the voters in Thuringia as far-right.”
Voters went to the polls on the 85th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II. Some far-left protesters demonstrated against the AfD in Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig.
Lukas Meister said his sons, ages 6 and 3, are too young to understand elections. But as the 3-year-old played with sand toys Monday, the 38-year-old father pondered how his eldest child would ever learn about them.
“We don’t talk much about politics so far. He’s more of a ‘Paw Patrol’ guy,” Meister said. “It’s hard to explain. How can people be so proud to vote for a party that’s so bad for everyone?”
Older Germans who lived through the Nazi terror are fearful. Many believed their country had become immune to nationalism and claims of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of the past with education and laws to prohibit persecution.
But Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, warned against labeling the AfD’s successes as an aberration.
“No one should now speak of ‘protest’ or look for other excuses,” Knobloch said in a statement. “The many voters made their decision consciously, many wanted to hold the extremists on the fringes responsible.”
Knobloch was 6 years old when she saw the synagogues of Munich burning and watched helplessly as two Nazi officers took away a beloved friend of her father’s on November 9, 1938, or Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — when Nazis terrorized Jews across Germany and Austria.
Gudrun Pfeifer and Ursula Klute, two retirees from the northwestern city of Osnabrück who are visiting Berlin this week, said Sunday’s mood also brought back gloomy memories of their early childhoods during and after World War II.
“I know where all this can lead,” Pfeifer, 83, said Monday, her voice breaking as she recalled how her family was separated during the final months of the war and afterward. She was trapped in Berlin for more than a year.
“The city was in ruins, we were all hungry. I was very sick — my sister thought I was going to die,” Pfeifer added.
Klute, 78, said she was shocked by AfD’s success among younger voters. In Thuringia, 38% of people aged 18 to 24 cast their votes for the far-right party — compared with 33% overall, according to public broadcaster ARD’s Tagesschau election analysis.
“People always forget the lessons of history,” she said.
