Merkel urges Germans to 'fight for democracy' as far-right AfD surges in polls

Angela Merkel stood before a Berlin audience on Saturday night and spoke of something she said Germans had not needed to do for many decades: fight for their democracy. The former chancellor's words carried weight not because they were new, but because they came as the far-right Alternative for Germany party—the AfD—was leading polls ahead of next weekend's state election in Saxony-Anhalt, raising urgent questions about what kind of government might form and what it would mean for the country's political future.

Merkel's central concern was not merely that the AfD was winning votes. It was that the party had managed to dominate the entire conversation about politics in the eastern state, morning to night, so thoroughly that voters no longer knew what other parties actually stood for. "I believe that now, once again," she said, "we must really fight for this democracy, simply stand up for it, be a little brave, stand by our word and say that this is a wonderful way to live." She reminded listeners that despite the AfD's strength in polls, the majority of Germans were not AfD voters—a fact that seemed to matter less than it should, given how much oxygen the party consumed in public discourse.

What troubled Merkel most was the geography of the threat. The AfD had long polled strongest in the former East Germany, and she herself came from that region. But she was clear that this was no longer an eastern problem. "It has become a pan-German phenomenon," she said. The party's rise was not confined to particular states or regions anymore; it had metastasized into a national force reshaping how Germans talked about politics itself.

The timing of her intervention underscored the stakes. Saxony-Anhalt would vote in days. The supervisory board of Volkswagen was scheduled to meet on September 4 to discuss a turnaround plan that might eliminate up to 100,000 jobs and close several German factories—a crisis that could reshape the country's industrial landscape and the lives of tens of thousands of workers and their families. Meanwhile, the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz was preparing to hold Russia officially responsible for a drone incident at Leipzig airport in early August, when explosives-laden aircraft were discovered near Ukrainian cargo planes at a hub for military aid shipments. Sanctions were expected to be announced within days, though their scope remained unclear.

Other currents moved through German life that weekend. A fire had broken out early Saturday morning on the fourth floor of a six-story refugee shelter in Berlin-Spandau, spreading smoke to the fifth and sixth floors. Several hundred residents were evacuated; four people were treated for smoke inhalation, and three were hospitalized. Between 50 and 60 people were moved to temporary accommodation. The cause remained under investigation.

In another development that highlighted the government's complicated relationship with international actors, the Taliban had sent a three-person delegation to Germany, arriving Wednesday and staying at the Afghan embassy in Berlin. Their stated purpose was to help facilitate the deportation of Afghan nationals whose asylum claims had been rejected. The delegation was scheduled to visit Bonn and Munich as well, where Afghanistan maintains consulates general. Chancellor Merz described the contacts as a purely technical necessity to return people with no legal right to remain in Germany. Critics saw it differently, arguing that the government was legitimizing the Taliban in order to raise deportation numbers. Germany had suspended deportations to Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power in 2021 but resumed them three years later, initially for convicted criminals. As of late June, 15,343 Afghan nationals in Germany were required to leave the country, including more than 1,500 children.

Within the AfD itself, fractures were appearing. The party's youth wing, Generation Deutschland, broke ranks with party leadership on the question of the euro. While the AfD's 2025 election manifesto called for Germany to leave the single currency, the youth organization's head said they opposed that course. "We do not want Germany to leave the euro, but to address the existing structural flaws in the euro system," he told the newspaper Bild. The youth wing had been established only the previous year, after the party dissolved its previous youth organization, which had been labeled right-wing extremist by German intelligence officials. The generational split suggested that even within the far-right movement, consensus was not automatic.

Merkel's call to fight for democracy was thus not abstract. It came as the country faced multiple pressures—political, economic, diplomatic—and as the AfD's influence over the terms of political debate seemed to grow regardless of whether voters actually supported the party. The election in Saxony-Anhalt would be a test of whether her appeal to democratic values could mobilize voters, or whether the party's grip on the conversation had already shifted something fundamental in how Germans understood their own political moment.