Haseloff calls AfD a West party, criticises German media for reinforcing its rise in the East

AfD as a West German phenomenon

Saxony-Anhalt's former Minister-President Reiner Haseloff (CDU) pushed back against the common framing of the AfD as a primarily Eastern party in an interview with the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa). He said he resists the tendency to point to the East when discussing the AfD, arguing instead that the party is rooted in the West German establishment. Haseloff, 72, said the AfD's leading figures are almost all West Germans and that the party also performs very strongly in the West compared with all other parties. He called for a discussion initiated from East Germany about what has gone wrong in West Germany over recent years and decades, and why many important topics were only marginally discussed by elites.

Media criticism and the 'West view' of the East German

Haseloff also held German media partly responsible for the AfD's rise. He said there is almost exclusively a West German perspective on the so-called 'Ossi', and that viewing the East German through a West German lens ultimately reinforces the AfD in the East. He criticised negative front-page headlines, saying they create an impression that everything is terrible.

You can only think: get out of here, everything is completely awful. That is a self-flagellation of this society.

He added that the AfD barely needs to do anything itself when everything is constantly portrayed as dreadful, giving the party easy game with its promise to turn the country upside down.

Rejecting the 'Brandmauer' concept

Haseloff said he never considered the term 'Brandmauer' (firewall) helpful. Instead, he argued that societally relevant groups should much more clearly explain the real consequences of AfD policies. He cited EU membership as a concrete example, saying that a third of Germany's prosperity exists because of membership in the European Union. He said people must be made aware that they would have to give up that third if they vote for a party that wants to leave the EU.

Political backdrop

Haseloff served as Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt from 2011 until 27 January 2026, when he resigned to give his successor Sven Schulze an incumbency bonus ahead of the state parliamentary election on 6 September. In current polls for that election, the AfD is clearly ahead of the CDU. The interview was conducted in Wittenberg and published in the early hours of 17 August 2026.