Just How Extreme Are the AfD Candidates in Saxony-Anhalt?

**Just How Extreme Are the AfD Candidates in Saxony-Anhalt?**

*Links to the Stasi, drug problems, racist rituals in the Altmark—DER SPIEGEL has scrutinized the candidates with whom the AfD hopes to come to power in Saxony-Anhalt. Behind the campaign facade, dark abysses are revealed.*

The ritual begins as darkness falls over the village of 120 residents in the Altmark region. The silhouettes of people dressed in festive attire can be made out. They gather around a meter-high wooden pole adorned with wreaths. Men handle animal horns; mysterious incantations can be heard. It sounds as if someone is invoking the ancestors. By the light of burning torches, the small procession finally makes its way to a farmstead. A drum begins to beat in a steady rhythm, and a battle song of the Hitler Youth (HJ) rings out.

It is the evening of June 20, in Ipse, not far from Gardelegen north of Magdeburg, where guests are celebrating the summer solstice at the estate of an AfD city council member. Simon Lansmann, 43, runs an old farm with a watermill together with his partner. In September, the cattle rancher plans to run for the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. As an AfD candidate in this rural part of the Altmark region, he has the best chances of winning here.

**Illegal Meeting of a Banned Organization?**

The parallels between the ceremony in Ipse and the solstice rituals of the “Artgemeinschaft” are striking. That group also celebrated amid decorated wooden poles, with mead horns, toasts, and nationalist songs. Could it be that the banned organization held an illegal gathering in June? And on the very estate of an AfD member who, along with fellow party members, soon hopes to form the next governing faction in the Magdeburg state parliament?

AfD candidate Lansmann confirmed the celebration in response to a query from SPIEGEL, but denied that it was an illegal gathering. Through a lawyer, he stated that while it “cannot be ruled out” that the Hitler Youth song “Nur der Freiheit gehört unser Leben” was sung that evening, this was not part of an “organized program.” Lansmann distances himself from the ideology of the “Artgemeinschaft” and from “National Socialist songs.”

Elections will be held in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6. The AfD is polling at over 40 percent, far ahead of all other parties. Its lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, is striving to project a friendly image, cheerfully courting voters’ sympathy with rides on Simson mopeds—a brand from the GDR—as well as family celebrations and visits to local tradespeople. He calls his platform “Vision 2026.” At the party convention in early July, he jubilantly declared that the campaign had become “a movement full of energy, full of confidence, and full of positive drive.”

Siegmund’s perpetual smile easily masks what lies behind his “vision.” The “government platform” not only includes proposals that would be virtually unaffordable or nearly impossible to implement for legal reasons, but also comes across as extremely radical even by AfD standards. The party promises to stop immigration from “foreign cultures.” Art should be promoted, in particular, if it contributes to “the formation of German identity,” and universities should in the future conduct research on the “demise of our people.”

This is reflected in the candidates the party has nominated to represent it in the next state parliament. Lansmann, a cattle rancher from the Altmark region who celebrates the summer solstice, is not the only candidate whose profile hardly fits with Siegmund’s public self-promotion.

DER SPIEGEL took a look at the candidates fielded by the AfD in the electoral districts. Among them are a former Stasi captain and a convicted document forger, as well as men who have demonstrated alongside neo-Nazis and are said to have been active in the far-right “Kameradschaft” scene. Behind the friendly facade, abysses are opening up.