The fear that a fascist, far-right movement would rise to power again in Germany has been with me since my youth. On 6 September, the far-right, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt, becoming the biggest party in the state parliament, with a shocking 44% of the vote, on a record turnout. If it finds a way to power it will be the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era.

The night before the vote, I sent a message to a friend, who, like myself, has an East German background. Was she as worried, scared even, about the vote as I was, I asked. I’d fallen into a loop for days, scrolling videos, reels, reports, interviews done on the ground. And I knew these AfD voters. They could have been relatives, friends of my parents, old teachers, former schoolmates. Why were they saying such incoherent stuff?

I did not grow up in Saxony-Anhalt, but in Saxony – a sibling eastern German state, not entirely the same but similar in many core aspects. When I went to high school in Leipzig in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the presence of rightwing extremists was part of my coming-of-age experience. Every Friday night, you felt the fear that neo-Nazis would be waiting outside the clubs, the bars, the tram stops, fists clenched or baseball bats in hand. Every 1 May was a flashpoint when neo-Nazis were allowed to march through the city-centre. And still, Saxony’s first prime minister after reunification, Kurt Biedenkopf – a West German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician and a close ally of Helmut Kohl – promised, stoically, throughout his 12 years in office: “Saxony is immune to rightwing extremism.”

By 2004, a year before I graduated, the far-right National Democratic party (NPD) had entered the Saxon state parliament for the first time, with 9.2% of the vote. In 2005, I left Saxony and moved to Berlin. One reason was the unbearable, dangerous presence of neo-Nazis and rightwing extremists. Many peers did the same, because it was clear that the blooming landscapes that Kohl, the German chancellor in charge of reunification, had confidently promised in 1990 weren’t going to materialise.

Instead, rightwing extremism has grown steadily in eastern Germany ever since. Only the names have changed – from NPD, to Pegida (the anti-migrant protest........

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