On a Saturday morning last May, Tobias Jachmann realised how things had changed in his hometown of Forst, two hours southeast of Berlin.
Jachmann was standing at the supermarket checkout when a man approached and told him to “p*ss off”. Four months on, the 36-year-old seems less bothered by what was said than by how he didn’t realise until then how poisonous life had become in the town for him and his partner, Simon Klass.
Since 2021 the couple have served as Lutheran pastors in Forst in the eastern state of Brandenburg, right on the Polish border. Speaking out here against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), they know now, comes at a cost.
“You notice people don’t greet you any more, the atmosphere is more tense and threatening,” says Jachmann.
On Sunday, Brandenburg voters choose a new state parliament and final polls put AfD in first place with 28 per cent support.
But the foundations for its recent surge, including two other successful eastern state elections on September 1st, lie in small German towns such as Forst, population 21,000.
Looking back at recent years – of pandemic protests, pro-Russian and anti-migrant rhetoric – Jachmann says “the AfD has been clever in using protest to spin its web and build a network”.
The party took 38 per cent of the votes in local elections last June and, with 11 seats, is the biggest bloc in the town council.
Tensions ramped up between the pastors and the party after a local newspaper reported the church was boycotting Forst tradespeople with links to the AfD, of which there are quite a few.
Jachmann says the report was skewed, and that the church council had passed a motion giving it the right not to award contracts to anyone with extremist views.
Local AfD-supporting tradespeople pushed back, the story went viral and the pastor couple began receiving abusive phone calls and emails.
Given the AfD’s ethno-nationalist politics, Jachmann says he remains surprised that “anyone with such views would want business from the church”.
Rowing in, the regional Lutheran church issued a pre-election statement that “anyone who votes for the AfD is supporting a party that tramples on the Christian view of humanity, violates the commandment to love one’s neighbour ... and poisons community spirit with its inflammatory slogans”.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference warned that the AfD opposes “fundamental values of human coexistence and democracy”.
Opinion is divided, however, over how much clout these churches have in Brandenburg. Secularisation and four decades of socialism mean 12 per cent are members of the Lutheran church and just 3.5 per cent Catholic.
Rather than merely look on, however, Potsdam’s grand church of St Nicholas opened its doors on Monday for a pre-election debate. All mainstream parties attended, but not the AfD.
Local Lutheran bishop Christian Stäblein likened the evening to energetic 1980s debates in East German churches over democratic and civil rights – rights he says the AfD “wants to undermine in a contemptuous fashion”.
“It makes no sense talking to them, or offering them a stage,” he added.
Berlin’s BZ tabloid hit back two days later, calling the Lutheran church a “supreme moral agency” wielding a “politically correct cudgel”.
Lurking, unmentioned in the historical shadows: memories of how disagreements over fascism 90 years ago split the church down the middle.
As in neighbouring Thuringia and Saxony, the AfD in Brandenburg has focused its campaign on unease over irregular migration and asylum seekers, in particular after recent fatal knife attacks by men from Afghanistan and Syria.
Local AfD lead candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt has promised to make Brandenburg Germany’s “most migrant-unfriendly state”. In the next Potsdam parliament, he promises his AfD will “cut down to size” traditional party politics and push to end sanctions against Russia.
The party programme promises a “consequential remigration programme” to deport non-ethnic German citizens. Nine months ago AfD leaders dismissed media reports of such plans as “lies” and “manipulation”.
Victory on Sunday provides no obvious path to power for the AfD – it is shunned by all other parties – but it would be major blow for the local Social Democratic Party, which has ruled Brandenburg since 1990. Political tremors are likely, too, for Potsdam’s best-known resident: SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Living on the Polish border in Forst, Jachmann says he understands local insecurities over migration and security.
A decade on from the first refugee crisis, sirens still sound regularly at night as police cars race to intercept another group of migrants dumped here by people smugglers.
Failure of mainstream politics to address these fears, he says, has allowed the AfD flip Forst – after decades as a leftwing bastion – into a far-right stronghold.
“Sometimes I wish someone would come and snap their fingers and everything would be normal again, but that’s not going to happen,” says Jachmann. “Perhaps we were naive to speak out here against the AfD where others knew to keep their mouths shut and avoid trouble. But we refuse to stand by, say nothing and watch the creeping normalisation of the AfD, because the AfD is not a normal party.”
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