East Germany’s social fabric is torn after decades of neglect. Without repairing it, we can never hope to truly fend off fascism

Sunday was election day in my state of Brandenburg. The morning was sunny, unseasonably warm, yet already in autumnal gold. Normally I just cross the road to vote, but due to a lack of poll clerk volunteers, I had to drive 8km to one of the next villages. Following Google Maps, I ended up on a road so rocky that only tractors might brave it. The thin layer of recent asphalt had cracked over the GDR gravel. At the bottom of the potholes lay the Prussian cobble stones.

I was greeted by three poll clerks: a middle-aged woman, a grey-haired bulky man and an adolescent with a decidedly military haircut. Grabbing my voting slip, I couldn’t help being moved for a moment by the beauty of democracy. Here I was, about to make a cross they would probably deem degenerate or totalitarian, knowing full well that I deemed theirs fascist. Statistically, two of them would vote for the far-right AfD. Our parish has again come out with more than 50% for the far right, as it did back in May for the European elections. And yet, neither I or anyone else in the polling station ended up with a black eye. The clerks didn’t even hiss “we know where you live”.

Eva von Redecker is a German philosopher and nonfiction writer