In front of the pretty brick house there is a well-tended flower bed with colourful flowers and decorative ornaments. At the back stands the steeple of a church under construction. Few people remember it, but it was in this bucolic setting that the East German Social Democratic Party briefly existed, a few days before the fall of the Wall.
On October 7, 1989, during a secret meeting to counter Stasi informers, the “East German SPD” was founded, on the initiative of a handful of dissidents, in the rectory of the small town of Schwante, an hour north of Berlin, in Brandenburg. The short-lived party was quickly absorbed by its larger West German brother. And the house was transformed into rental apartments, for lack of an available pastor. But on the side, a discreet plaque commemorates the event.
Is this a coincidence? Since reunification, Brandenburg is the only German state that has remained continuously in the hands of the SPD, which has historical roots in Berlin. It is also one of the only ones in which the party was represented by figures from East Germany, when so many others were entrusted to personalities from the West.
Dietmar Woidke, a 62-year-old agronomist from Brandenburg who has been in charge of the state bordering Berlin since 2013, enjoys a popularity rating that would make SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz green with envy. “He is one of us.”sums up Karl-Dietmar Plenz, the baker from Schwante, whose family has its headquarters here “since 1877”remember the poster.
Disputes within Scholz’s coalition
However, as in Thuringia or Saxony, polls predict a record high for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the regional elections on Sunday 22 September: close to 30%, although the gap with the SPD has narrowed in recent days. Even in Schwante, an iconic location, the AfD is quietly making progress in each election. In the European elections in June, the party obtained a score twice as high as that of the SPD.
In this rural village, blue posters of the far-right group are pasted every 50 metres with simple slogans that local children innocently repeat. “It’s time”one of them suggests. “Germany, but normal”promises another. “The car is gaining speed”Thomas Kay, a former employee of a Bundesbank branch in Berlin who became an AfD activist, sums up with satisfaction.
The stakes of these regional elections go beyond Brandenburg: a victory for the far right in this Social Democratic stronghold on Sunday would be a slap in the face for Olaf Scholz, already considerably weakened by the disputes within his coalition. Even if it is almost impossible for the AfD to succeed in forming a government at local level.
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