Ulrich Siegmund: The Far-Right Face of Germany's East

Ulrich Siegmund, 35, is projected to win the Saxony-Anhalt state election with 44.5% of the vote, potentially giving the far-right AfD its first regional government in Germany since 1945. The result is a major defeat for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives. Siegmund, a former conservative party member who joined the AfD in 2014, campaigned on nostalgia for East Germany, promising stricter migration policies, closer ties with Russia, and a break from postwar Germany's culture of atonement for Nazism. He has over 500,000 Instagram followers and has been dubbed "Germany's most dangerous man" by Der Spiegel. Born weeks after reunification, Siegmund exploits "Ostalgie" among voters who feel disadvantaged versus western Germans and immigrants. He has pledged to deport irregular migrants, ban rainbow flags in schools, and revise history curricula. Some of his associates have ties to neo-Nazi circles, and he attended a 2023 Potsdam meeting discussing mass deportation plans.