The Phantom Far-Right Menace in Germany's East

When my wife and I were about to buy a house on the edge of the Thuringian Forest a couple of years ago, some friends from Hanover expressed concerns. Their objection was not to the home itself. The traditional half-timbered house lying on a three-quarter-acre lot with immediate access to trails, selling for less than $250,000, was, in many ways, a dream. Their skepticism, instead, stemmed from its setting. They asked if we really wanted to live in an “AfD Dorf,” or AfD village — a hamlet full of people who support Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. 

Their perception is based on statistics and phantom data visualizations that represent eastern Germany — the areas of Brandenburg, eastern Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia that from 1949 to 1990 made up the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany — as an almost solid mass of far-right sentiment. Outside major cities like Berlin and Leipzig, they see the entire east as one big AfD Dorf. 

They are not alone. In the aftermath of Germany’s March 2 federal election, which the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won with 28.5% of the vote, there has been yet another round of commentary and analysis about eastern Germans opting en masse for the AfD. Color-coded maps, and their associated explanations, frame eastern Germany as almost solely responsible for the far-right party’s popularity and ascent to become the second-largest party in Germany’s parliament since its founding 12 years ago.

This is only partly true. In the area around Eisenach, the western Thuringian town my wife and I ended up finding the apartment we live in, 4 out of 10 voters chose the AfD. Those numbers need to be taken seriously. Yet the idea that the AfD’s rise is due entirely to voters in the east, and the maps used to sell that view, are demonstrably flawed.

According to statistics from the Bundeswahlleiterin, the officer responsible for overseeing elections at the federal level, 70.7% of the 10.3 million votes cast for the AfD last week came from western Germany, while only 29.3% came from the east of the country. The AfD did win the vast majority of eastern constituencies, but the party also took the lead in two western constituencies — Gelsenkirchen and Kaiserslautern — for the first time. 

While the ex-socialist states of the former GDR appear to be a sea of blue — the AfD’s color — on electoral maps, support for the party actually rose all across the country. As the AfD improved by 14 and 15 percentage points in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Thuringia, respectively, it also saw increases of near, or more than, 10 percentage points in several western states (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia), including jumps of 11 percentage points in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The far-right party pulled support from across the political spectrum, with the center-right CDU/CSU conceding the most, losing 1 million voters to the AfD. 

In other words, the AfD did not become the second-largest party solely because of its voters in eastern Germany. That claim not only misrepresents the reasons for the AfD’s popularity but also plays into a decades-long narrative of “east-bashing” in popular discourse. Having lived here for nearly six years, this attitude feels lazy and elitist; it also misdiagnoses the real reasons for the AfD’s menacing rise. 

How they do it in Deutschland: Signposts for Interreligious Dialogue in Germany

The Christmas market attacks in Magdeburg — and the heated political atmosphere that followed — have stressed a range of issues ahead of Germany’s snap elections on February 23.  

Voters across Europe’s largest economy are concerned about domestic security, immigration, upholding the rule of law and strengthening democracy against perceived enemies within and without.  

An important aspect of this equation is how followers of Germany’s various religious communities might work to address these concerns together.  

With a total population of nearly 85 million, there are an estimated 23 million Catholics (27 percent), 21 million Protestants (25 percent) and nearly 5 million Muslims (5.7 percent). There are also smaller populations of evangelicals (2 percent) and Orthodox Christians (1.9 percent), as well as Jews, Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Yezidis, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pagans and Sikhs. Notably, 44 percent of Germans (or 37 million) claim no religious affiliation, but may practice some form of spirituality or hold some kind of enchanted worldview.  

In my latest for Interfaith America, I explore how members of these various groups work together — or against one another — is of great importance for the future of plural, open societies like Germany. 

Your own personal tour through LutherCountry

In 2018, when I had the opportunity to go on a personal tour through LutherCountry, I decided to travel with my dad. 

That decision was inspired. 

The bratwursts on the market square in Weimar, the early morning mist settling around the base of the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, the reverberating sound of the church bells from the Castle Church in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg — all of it was richer watching my father enjoy the tastes, sights, and sounds of LutherCountry for the first time. 

At the end our journey, saying our goodbyes at Berlin’s Tegel airport, we tearfully said to one another, “we may never get the chance to do something like this together again.” 

Little did we know that two years later, we would be feeling the weight of those words all the more. Since that trip, we’d been planning for both my parents to come in May 2020. The hotels were booked, the itinerary set, and the flights confirmed. You could almost smell the bratwurst that we were going to be chowing down on together. 

Then, COVID-19 happened. 

Your Personal Tour Through LutherCountry

In lieu of detailed itineraries, the plan for this trip is pretty straightforward:

September 10, 2020

1:00 PM EST // 10:00 AM PST

Register in advance for the meeting HERE. 

The webinar will be held via Zoom. Participants need a working internet connection, the volumed turned on, and a comfortable chair to sit back in and experience LutherCountry virtually.

All-in-all the webinar will last around one hour, depending on the Q&A session.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Having planned for months to welcome my parents to our new home in Germany, we were devastated when we had to cancel everything. And I know, we are far from alone. 

Many of you also canceled, postponed, or gave up on long-hoped-for trips to dream destinations. Many of you told me that you were planning to come to Germany this summer or were hoping to come to the Christmas markets this year. 

COVID-19 upended those plans. 

Feeling our pain, the two German states that make-up “LutherCountry” — Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt — are coming to the rescue and bringing LutherCountry to our homes with, “Your personal tour through LutherCountry” on Thursday, September 10th.

The “Your personal tour through LutherCountry” webinar will be hosted by LutherCountry expert Mike Adams, CEO of TourComm Germany, who will guide participants to stops along the way, including Wittenberg, Eisleben, Erfurt, and the Wartburg. 

Each city played a special role in Martin Luther’s life and the story of the Reformation. 

That story will come alive with the help of tour guides such as Katerina von Bora in Wittenberg, my friend, and Texan-turned-German, Rev. Dr. Robert G. Moore, Rev. Scott Moore at the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt, and special guests from the Wartburg and Eisleben.

My dad appreciating the historical significance in Martin Luther’s room at the Wartburg, Eisenach. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

For those who have lost loved ones, whose livelihoods have been threatened, or whose lives are at risk on the frontlines, travel can be pretty far down on the priority list in the midst of the pandemic. In the end, traveling is a privilege. 

And yet, people are starting to travel again — camping, taking road trips, or small weekend getaways with loved ones — and planning for dream-trips in the future when restrictions are lifted and life returns to a bit of normalcy. 

“For many of us, travel is a vibrant part of life. It is part of what makes life worth ‘living.’”

As we all slowly come to the realization that the virus will be with us for quite some time and that we will have to adjust our lives accordingly, he role that travel plays in our lives will have to change too. 

Planned trips may be delayed awhile. When we are finally able to travel again, those trips might look very different than before the pandemic. 

With that in mind, LutherCountry is not only going to take you on a “personal tour,” but invite you to share your own questions and concerns. At the end of the webinar, participants will be invited by Mike Adams to ask anything they like about Luther and his homeland and how they might be able to plan their next trip to LutherCountry, whenever that may be. 

The famous Martin Luther statue in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

Maybe it will be to see the Oberammergau Passion Play, scheduled for May 2020 only to be postponed until May 2022, the same year as the 500th anniversary of Luther’s translation of the Bible. Or, perhaps it will be to celebrate the 500th wedding anniversary of Katherina von Bora and Martin Luther in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg in 2025. 

Whatever your dreams, the “personal tour through LutherCountry” webinar might be the perfect place to start your planning. 

Come, let us wear face masks in worship: Lockdown measures eased, but Christians struggle with coronavirus restrictions

Franziska König always enjoys getting a note from her pastor. Even so, she never expected to get one like she did last week.

“The message started out normally, asking me how I am doing,” König said, “how I am fairing in these terrible times and so on.”

Then, her pastor told her that their small evangelical church in Berlin was going to reopen after being closed for weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was good news.

“But it was weird when he said I would have to make ‘reservations’ for my family to have a spot on Sunday,” said König. “That’s certainly never happened before.”

König and her congregation are not alone in navigating a “new normal” for worship gatherings as lockdown limits ease across Germany.

While Germany’s federal government makes plans for tracing infection chains and reopening public facilities, churches across Germany are developing their own plans for how to restart worship with new regulations such as compulsory face masks, the prohibition of physical contact, and restrictions on congregational singing.

Questions about singing, more than anything else, have caused consternation among evangelicals in Germany. Perhaps this comes as no surprise. It was the German reformer Martin Luther, after all, who said that “next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.”

However, Lothar Wieler, the head of Germany’s top health research organization—the Robert Koch Institute (RKI)—strongly advised against communal singing of any kind while there are still fears about the spread of the coronavirus. Wieler explained in the official biweekly COVID-19 press conference that “evidence shows that during singing, the virus drops appear to fly particularly far.”

Some even say that singing is a “super-spreader.”

Would Martin Luther vote for a "neo-Nazi" party?

“Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders.” // “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”

Inspired by his original defiant declaration at the Diet of Worms in 1521, the apocryphal saying of the 16th-century rebel monk and reformer Martin Luther has come to be a proud proverb of Protestantism and symbolic of virtuous subversion. 

However, in the run-up to state elections in the eastern German state of Thuringia on October 27th, the National Democratic Party (NDP) is playing off the famous phrase on some of their election posters. 

Instead of “Here I stand,” Martin Luther is made to say, “I would vote NPD, I cannot do otherwise” alongside the NPD’s slogan “defend the homeland.”

How to navigate German Christmas markets like a pro

Usually I write about religion. Every once and a while, I like to dabble in travel.

After my trip to Germany with #TestingLutherCountry in October I was inspired to write a piece about the German Christmas markets popping up all over Deutschland.

As November ends, Weihnachtsmärkte—Christmas markets—pop up all over Germany. The Advent tradition stretches back to the late Middle Ages, when folks stocked up on goods as winter approached. Eventually, the festive shopping experiences spread further throughout the German-speaking world. Today, you can even find German-style Christmas markets around the rest of Europe and in places as far-reaching as New York or Montreal. As beautiful as they are, though, the German Christmas market experience can be a bit overwhelming for newcomers.

First-timers can make their way through the stalls, snacks, and slang of Germany’s magical holiday markets with ease, thanks to these 10 essential tips and tricks.