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The German city of Nordhausen is best known as the location of the former Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora.
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3 min
On Sunday, a mayoral election again put the focus on the municipality of 42,000 people over fears that a far-right candidate would win the vote — a prospect the town ultimately seems to have avoided.
Preliminary results Sunday night showed Joerg Prophet, a candidate from the populist far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, losing the race to incumbent mayor Kai Buchmann, who is not affiliated with a political party.
After an initially close race while votes were counted, Buchmann had 54.9% of the vote, compared with 45.1% for Prophet, according to the news agency dpa.
The results were a surprise after Prophet entered the race as the frontrunner: Earlier this month, he won 42.1% of the vote in the first round of the election, far ahead of Buchmann and other candidates.
Despite Prophet’s apparent loss, Sunday’s election underscored recent gains nationally for the AfD and the increasing influence it has on the political discussion in Germany.
It also raised concerns about the normalization of far-right rhetoric in places like Nordhausen, drawing criticism from Holocaust survivors and those who work to combat discrimination.
“The significance of the election in Nordhausen extends far beyond (its) borders,” Felix Klein, the German government’s antisemitism commissioner, told the Funke Media Group.
The AfD was founded as a euroskeptic party in 2013 and first entered the German Bundestag in 2017. Polling now puts it in second place nationally with around 21%, far above the 10.3% it won during the last federal election in 2021.
The party has seen its support grow for a number of reasons. Its politicians have seized on frustration with the German government’s climate and energy policies, such as the plan to…
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