SPD parliamentary group: A moment with historical impact – and Boris Pistorius recognizes it

There are always these moments of clarity in politics. Moments when things sort themselves out. And in which you can see who has understood what the hour has come - and who hasn't.

Tuesday was such a moment. The first parliamentary speaker from a right-wing extremist party was elected in Magdeburg at midday. Tobias Rausch, the AfD man, not only received the votes of the AfD and BSW, but - as research by ZEIT suggests - probably also the votes of members of the CDU. Shortly before, parliamentary group leader Sven Schulze had announced that his group would abstain as a whole. In the end, however, there were only five abstentions in the state parliament with 14 CDU members present. And with 48 votes, Rausch received four more votes than the BSW and AfD MPs.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider was later elected as Vice President of Parliament. Tillschneider is the chief ideologist of the ethnic AfD. The BSW had announced that it would not elect him. Nevertheless, he received a majority of 44 votes; the supporters here too may have come from the Union. In any case, the AfD itself only has 39 seats. After this afternoon, there was much to suggest that those forces that describe themselves as bourgeois had once again helped the radical right to power in Germany.