The Alternative für Deutschland has become Germany’s first far-right party to secure the position of speaker of a regional parliament since the second world war. Tobias Rausch, a former estate agent, was elected in the first round of voting on Tuesday in Saxony-Anhalt. He won 48 out of the 82 votes cast.
Later in the day, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, part of the AfD’s more extreme wing, was elected as Rausch’s deputy. The AfD, which is classed as “rightwing extremist” by the eastern state’s intelligence agency, won nearly 44% of votes in elections last month, dealing a hammer blow to Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and his centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Rausch’s election to the role of president of the parliament – and its speaker – took place at the inaugural gathering of members in the state capital, Magdeburg.
Twenty-nine voted against Rausch and five abstained. The AfD parliamentary group holds 39 seats, narrowly short of an absolute majority. Five politicians from the BSW, a small leftwing party that echoes the AfD’s stances on Russia and immigration, had already said they would vote for Rausch.
Tuesday’s result means that four other MPs voted for the 35-year-old in the secret ballot. The willingness of politicians to break the “firewall” – a moral agreement among other parties to shun the AfD – gives the party a chance of being able to form a government in the state – a feat it had looked unlikely to pull off. This would be even more of a historical watershed in postwar Germany.
The BSW’s support for Rausch came after the party’s founder, Sahra Wagenknecht, declared it was time to do away with “firewall idiocy”. Her deputy, Christian Leye, said the “firewall is not working” and the votes of nearly 44% of electors could not be ignored. It was not immediately clear who was behind Tillschneider’s election because the BSW had said it would refuse to vote for him.
As the architect of the AfD’s “radical” manifesto, he is lined up to become culture and science minister in the state. He has referred to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as “a real man with a sound set of values” and accused immigrants of “streaming in here in masses … wanting to squander our money”. Tillschneider is a scholar of Islamic studies who has described Islam as a “fungus” growing on the “German oak”.
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