Although the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been surging in the polls for two years, it has been kept from power by other parties’ refusal to enter governing coalitions with it. But since this “firewall” relies on the AfD never winning outright majorities, it could be fatally undermined by the recent state election in Saxony-Anhalt.
True, even if the AfD can form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, it will not be able to do much about its current preferred topic: migration policies and refugee law. But Germany’s 16 federal states (Länder) do have wide-ranging authority over culture and education policy, and it is here that the AfD’s programme has been most revealing (and revolting).
Far-right populists always wage culture wars. Though they sometimes try to take advantage of cost-of-living crises or other economic challenges, peddling the idea that they alone represent what they call the “real people” is their core commitment. Because they insist that only citizens with the “right” characteristics qualify, they never miss an opportunity to push for the “remigration” not only of refugees but also of “unreal” or “fake” citizens, meaning those from the wrong ethnic background (or even those committed to the wrong political positions).
Given their fixation on questions of identity, far-right parties can keep changing their economic agenda—veering from neoliberalism to support for a strong welfare state—without ceasing to be far right. Only by changing their tune on refugees and migrants would they truly become a different political entity.
This brings us back to the AfD’s programme for Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD cleverly accuses what it calls the establishment parties (Altparteien) not of corruption or malice, but of a weakness of will that stems from “national masochism” and low “self-confidence.” These defects supposedly have “cultural” roots, namely a “tradition of destroying tradition” that has left the country defenseless against “rainbow ideologies.”
If things go its way, the AfD hopes to make Saxony-Anhalt a model of “patriotic cultural policies” for the other Länder. It advocates “thinking in a German way” (#deutschdenken), which means opposing the current regional government’s Bauhaus-inspired campaign for artistic freedom and modern ideas.
Founded in Weimar but eventually relocated to Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt, the Bauhaus school of art, design, and architecture is still remembered fondly for remarkable buildings like those designed by Walter Gropius in Dessau during the mid-1920s. But according to the AfD, Bauhaus represents “anti-German art,” meaning “German art that doesn’t want to be German.” If given power, it would require every new edifice built with state financial support to reflect what it considers a recognisably German tradition (a category that apparently does not include the state’s own most influential architectural school).
Attacks on modern architecture are not a peculiarity of the German far right. From former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to US President Donald Trump, who has issued multiple executive orders to make classicism the preferred style of new federal buildings, far-right leaders have long sought to transform the built environment to reflect what they regard as proper national traditions.
Their reasons are varied. For starters, architecture, from the huge mosques erected under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the prominent Hindu temples commissioned by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, provides tangible, widely visible clues as to who “the real people” are supposed to be. “Beauty”—one of Trump’s watchwords, but also one pushed by more sophisticated figures like the Dutch intellectual-cum-dandy far-right leader Thierry Baudet—is shorthand for advocacy of traditional hierarchies, from the household to the economy to politics. The AfD would require all new public buildings to be viewed by the majority as “beautiful” (which seems to suggest that every design must be subject to a popular referendum).
Plenty of self-consciously traditionalist organisations and online accounts support this vision, and unlike professional politicians, they are more likely to give the game away. Many explicitly pit classical architecture against “globalism”—a term that often serves as a slippery slope toward anti-Semitism—or reprise interwar (namely, Nazi) descriptions of modernism as “degenerate art.” For all the emphasis on particularity, anti-modernism is itself a depressingly homogeneous worldwide phenomenon.
The AfD’s description of Bauhaus as a symbol of “deracination” has already been answered with a new “Bauhaus Manifesto,” initiated by Germany’s federal cultural minister. But as laudable as this document is as a political statement, it ends up massively oversimplifying the history of 20th-century architecture. Contrary to the manifesto’s central claim, it is far from obvious that all the protagonists of the Bauhaus stood for an “open society.” In fact, some were quite ready to work with and for the Nazis (who officially banned the school). A Bauhaus-trained architect was among those who designed Auschwitz.
The point is not that everyone who likes traditional architecture must be a closet right-wing extremist. Rather, it is that the far right’s cultural agenda is intimately tied to its underlying exclusionary political agenda. And since the built environment always serves to make values visible, as the philosopher Susan Neiman once put it, it would be a mistake to dismiss the fight over modern architecture as a sideshow.
The writer is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. ©Project Syndicate
