The AfD could win in Saxony-Anhalt and redefine German cultural policy

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will win the elections being held this Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt, according to all polls and, depending on how many parties overcome the 5% barrier, it could even reach an absolute majority. For the first time since the Second World War, the extreme right would have a real chance of governing a German federal state.

Traditional parties are looking for formulas to prevent this and the polls can force alliances that were hitherto unthinkable. But, whether it reaches the Government or not, the AfD has long made its mark in this territory of the former GDR. Also in the way we discuss culture, art, history and even what it means to be German.

One of the scenarios where this dispute has its roots is in the Saaleck valley, in the south of the Land, near the border with Thuringia. An apparently idyllic landscape in which, over just 10 kilometers, some of the deepest - and also darkest - layers of German history are condensed.

Among vineyards, castles and small stone towns appears the medieval cathedral of Naumburg, with the famous Uta, one of the great female figures of medieval German sculpture. Very close is Schulpforta, the humanist school that Nietzsche, Fichte and Klopstock went through and that the Nazis incorporated in 1935 into their network of Naples, centers where the future elites of the regime were trained. Today it has returned to its origins as an elite boarding school for especially gifted students. There is also Saaleck Castle, where the murderers of Walther Rathenau (former Reich Foreign Ministers) sought refuge. And, just a few kilometers away, Saalecker Werkstätten, the home and workshop of architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg.

Those who passed through Saaleck

It is in Saaleck where the history of the valley enters fully into the battle of ideas. In 1928, Schultze-Naumburg published Kunst und Rasse (Art and Race), a book in which he compared works by Picasso, Kandinsky and Kirchner with photographs of people with disabilities to present them as expressions of the same biological "degeneration." But Saaleck was not only the place from which he wrote. Hitler passed by his house and Richard Walther Darré, future Reich Minister and one of the great ideologists of "blood and soil", a theory captured in the book New Nobility of Blood and Soil, ended up there. In the title itself he thanked Schultze-Naumburg for the hospitality that had allowed him to conclude it.

Also, from there Schultze-Naumburg waged his war against modernity. A member of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) and party deputy, he played a decisive role in the closure of the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1932. Almost a century later, it is precisely the Bauhaus that has once again placed culture at the center of the political battle in Saxony-Anhalt.

"The Bauhaus represents uprooting," says Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, cultural policy spokesperson for the AfD in the regional parliament. His party wants to replace the current Land motto, "think modern", with another: "think German". "Our paradigm is different," explains Tillschneider. "We want to think German, in relation to our identity, our culture and our history."

The choice of words is not minor. Tillschneider has also described the Bauhaus as a "misplacement of modernity", an expression that directly refers to Schultze-Naumburg and his fight against modern architecture. The AfD leader rejects any ideological proximity to National Socialism. The historical echo, however, is difficult to ignore.

The battle has long since left Parliament. More than 60 museums, theaters, foundations, memorials and associations in the Land have mobilized against the cultural turn announced by the AfD. They warn that "the freedom of art, the openness of cultural institutions and the democratic culture of memory" are at stake. A manifesto in defense of the Bauhaus has also brought together more than 2,500 organizations and people.

Annegret Laabs, director of the Kunstmuseum in Magdeburg, summarizes the clash in another way: "If you say that art is what arises on German soil and is not political, there is nothing left of the art of our country."

In the former Werkstätten in Schultze-Naumburg, work is now taking place in the opposite direction. When Arne Cornelius Wasmuth arrived in Saaleck in 2017, he found the house from which the architect had developed many of those ideas practically dormant in time. A specialist in the rehabilitation of historic buildings and heritage protection, he understood that it was not just about saving some buildings. You had to decide what to do with your story.

His first call was to Egidio Marzona. The Italian-German collector and patron, who died this year in Berlin, had assembled one of the great European collections of conceptual and avant-garde art. "When I told him about my discovery of the Saalecker Werkstätten, he was immediately interested and wanted to come with me to see them," Wasmuth recalls.

A few weeks later they were together in Saaleck. Marzona saw the possibility of creating there "a unique cultural space" that would consciously confront that legacy and draw from it "the motivation for a contemporary and bold cultural transformation."

The Marzona Foundation acquired the Werkstätten in 2018 and began its rehabilitation. While the works progress, the dieDAS Design Akademie Saaleck already functions as an international design academy that brings together architects, designers, artists and thinkers. Harvard joined the project; Then came the ETH in Zurich, the Royal College of Art in London and the TU Delft. Where Schultze-Naumburg fought the avant-garde, an international network has been established to discuss them, study them and produce new ideas.

It is not an island foreign to the valley. During the GDR, the Werkstätten was a nursing home and for many residents that, and not Hitler or Schultze-Naumburg, is the closest memory of the place. "In collective memory it is much more associated with that stage than with the dark chapter before 1945," explains Wasmuth. Hence the open days, concerts, barbecues and meetings with local residents. The challenge, he says, is to build a bridge between international research and design and "the population of the region and our direct neighbors."

The future of the castle

Outside of Saaleck, the AfD once again disputes the narrative of the past. His electoral program maintains that Saxony-Anhalt has a "superabundance of great German history" and lists Henry I, Otto I, Luther, Bismarck and Nietzsche, the one he studied a few kilometers further up, in Schulpforta. The AfD wants to bring that history to schools, create new concepts of "patriotic tourism", recover the Friedrich Nietzsche prize and turn Saxony-Anhalt, in Tillschneider's words, into "a place of longing for all German patriots."

The ambition goes beyond the Land. The AfD promises to make Saxony-Anhalt a "model state of cultural policy" from which to then drive change in the rest of Germany. Tillschneider speaks openly of a "180-degree turn" in cultural policy.

The tension has also reached the street. In Allstedt, portraits of residents that were part of an art installation appeared covered in swastikas and far-right slogans and several sculptures were destroyed. Other neighbors organized to protect the works.

But where the AfD project acquires more concrete consequences is in the distribution of public money. In June, the AfD proposed in the regional parliament that cultural institutions receiving subsidies must declare their commitment to "the state, democracy and German culture." Tillschneider announced that there would be no public money for what he calls "anti-German art." "If there is no more German art, there is no Germany either."

Saaleck depends precisely on that public money. Around 22 million euros are available for the rehabilitation of the Werkstätten: seven million from the federal government and 15 million from the Land of Saxony-Anhalt. The Land also finances the work of the Marzona Foundation through annual subsidies.

That is why a victory for the AfD would not be an abstract matter for Wasmuth. "It would certainly be a big challenge for us in Saaleck," he admits. The aid "could be subject to conditions that we would not be willing to accept."

And make it clear where the limit is. The Marzona Foundation claims that it consciously decided to make Saaleck "a center for an open, inclusive and decolonial society", among other reasons because the region "was and remains a stronghold of far-right forces".

When the Werkstätten fully reopen in 2028 they will house the dieDAS Design Akademie Saaleck, a documentation center and the Saaleck Study Center, in collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The project will thus have converted the house from which Schultze-Naumburg fought modernity into a place dedicated to discussing it.