AfD – Rügen: blue like the sea

Live where others go on vacation. » With this and similar sayings, real estate companies have been promoting objects to be sold on the Baltic Sea for decades. I am also remembered by the island of Rügen, which I left there as a local one almost 20 years ago, the posters with the corresponding inscriptions. A radiant broker in front of a spacious apartment – clearly visible in the photo: The sea.

Today the question arises quite differently: Daeton you go on vacation where every second cross will benefit on the AfD ballot? Or even: live there? How does it live in a stronghold of the democracy. In Bergen on Rügen, the city in which I grew up, 48.6 percent of the votes cast went to the right-wing party. In the Bundestag election 2021 there were about half as many. That, I suspect, must have an impact, must be noticeable in a region, even in public and private life.

If I speak to people on site or with friends and relatives who, like me, left the island almost years ago, sits deeply – but I do not come across someone who would really be surprised by these election results. Why not? Probably because the imbalances were noticeable long before, before they could be reflected in such a vote.

You wanted to be idyll, not a problem region.

What that does with you to go outside and know that every second person you meet must have chosen the AfD – I want to learn that from a rüganer. And also whether you know it from many. But that waves off. You can already see it to people. And in fact it is not every second one. With a turnout of less than 50 percent – also a sign of the crisis of democracy – it is significantly less. But if everyone would really choose, it is certain that the election result would be even more terrifying. Fatalism – or gallows humor as the last resort?

However, the tourism industry, undoubtedly the economic foundation of the island, is largely uncovered. Even as children, we joked and imitated the width of the travelers. The typical Rügen tourist comes back summer for summer-for decades. Most who spend their vacation here come from East Germany, many also from Berlin. A (post-) migrant or even international audience that would have to find themselves in fear does not draw here anyway. So you don’t have to do without what you never had. Supposed cancellation waves with which hoteliers would have to deal with were headlines, but they were more afraid of a realistic scenario.

A few days after the election, I accidentally see my former teacher Karsten Schneider, who has been Mayor of Binz for 14 years, a tourist magnetic seaside resort of 16 kilometers from Bergen. If he had the television audience, he has received a letter in which he is asked whether it is still possible to travel to Binz together with foreign guests. Schneider is certain: “Of course it still works.” But also: «There may be also those who come here because it is blue here. In this respect, all of this will compensate for. »

From Schneider’s words, pragmatism speaks that has long been converted into cynicism. It is a tone that is well familiar to me and it may be characteristic of this area and dealing with the social upheavals there. Problems are not simply ignored, they are so small that you can confidently consider them checked off. The reactions that Schneider creates online are clear: the digital mob celebrates it for its statements and is happy about a “foreigner -free” holiday region.

It is not the first time that Rügen has to do with right -wing extremism. In the 90s and 2000s, when my schooling falls there and who liked to be a bit lurid than the “baseball bats years”, there was a serious problem with neo -Nazis. At the time you knew which places were to be avoided. Experiences did not always fail to materialize. The NPD diligently distributed its “schoolyard CDs”. The protection of the constitution had to deal with right -wing radical associations. In the port small town of Sassnitz, the mood was made with the memory of an alleged “bombing wood” that is said to have taken place there.

In the same place there was a relevant scene. The NPD celebrated success in the nearby Stralsund and sometimes also aligned street parties for children. From there, the nationwide “Störtebeker network” was operated, which soon acted under the name “Altermedia” and was finally banned as one of the central neo-Nazi internet platforms. And even then, due to extremely right -wing activities, warned as a holiday destination. A real examination of this oppressive situation has avoided politics and the population. You wanted to be idyll, not a problem region.

The neo-Nazis from yesterday, with bald and jumping boots, are of course not congruent with the wide mass of the AfD voters on site today. But the lack of outcry in one case as in the other case is a remarkable parallel. And does not have to exist for both phenomena socio -political causes that can also be named?

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The AfD has gained voices everywhere and the cross -party mood of mood in the election campaign, which partially detached itself from the actual situation in the country, has made an impression everywhere. In a way, Rügen is only in the nationwide trend. But that the extreme right party can now combine almost half of the votes cast, it seems to be an expression of another to a new quality. In the past, violent neo -fascists were part of the small cityscape – and yet Angela Merkel, whose Bundestag constituency was located here, was chosen eight times with a relative majority between 1990 and 2017. From 2001 to 2011, Rügen and Kerstin Kassner had a district administrator from the PDS or Left Party. Nowadays, Rügen has dressed up, no trace from afar as such recognizable neo -Nazis; Nevertheless, the AfD triumphs.

When I was born, Bergen had a good 18,000 inhabitants. In the meantime, the population has been decimated by a third. “Living where others go on vacation” also seems to be a macabre joke. It is a masturbated city. The decline in births and the move have left traces. The consequences of such developments are known: schools close, successors for medical practices are sought in vain, public locations of encounter gradually disappear.

The mass unemployment that started in the early 1990s may be over. The associated humiliations have nevertheless enrolled into people’s experience. The fear of new professional setbacks, of impending poverty – this is accompanied by the essence of fears – may not always be justified, but in doubt they are decisive.

I have remained a school day in a special memory, on which one had invited a dropout from the neo-Nazi scene to talk about his experiences. He told how he applauded and cheered the murder-lust fascist in the pogrom of Rostock-Lichtenhagen-which was geographically and in time. No teacher bothered to talk to us students before or after. To this day, this experience is alienated. Difficult to say what impressions left in my classmates.

Sacrifice of violence or even Holocaust survivors, as it was not unusual elsewhere, has not been invited to my school. At a few years of distance, the great perplexity can be identified, which has shaped the phase that is now somewhat technocratic as a “transformation period”.

The state-organized (and regulated) educational and leisure activities for children and adolescents in the GDR was buried together with the lost state. In the times of the turmoil, no one understood it as an urgent task to remedy the situation. Civil society structures, as they had grown in the old Federal Republic, could not be created overnight and not on their own. Perhaps the foundation of a political disorientation is here.

As is well known, looking into the past invites you to transfigurations. What does such a youth entail? Was it an imposition to grow up in such a area? It’s not that simple. As a teenager, I fell away from the province and into another life. But isn’t that typical of this age anyway, completely independent of the specific circumstances?

I remember how the right activities were outraged and also the indifference that you have met with. However, the resistance, however, also gave rise to a sense of community. However, it was a temporary resistance, as I knew. Tireless discussions, demonstrations, nightly missions to remove NPD posters, and counter offers at the Nazi children’s festivals have filled my free time. These were central political experiences, not only for me, but for many East Germans of my generation.

I didn’t really care how things would go here after looking for another place of life. However, this question did not take a central position in my considerations. Today she is pushing herself. What about those who had previously been combative, after moving away from the last birth -strong vintages? And what breaks with those who were already silent about fascist slogans?

A few months ago, I became aware that a former classmate of me, at that time a rather awkward-looking young man, politically unsuspecting, occasionally flashing left, although unsuspecting, is now a member of the AfD parliamentary group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A contribution to the “Nordmagazin” suggests that he can only adequately observe parliamentary customs due to his alcohol consumption. No question, such careers are repulsive, from the fraternity to party political work for social backlash. But where, I wonder, is this person turned wrong?

One of the escape points in my youth was the beach of Prora. The small town gained celebrity as a “KDF-Seebad”. The huge Nazi vacation system was later used as a NVA barracks. We attracted the place freed from misanthropic ideology and military drill. Suddenly a lot seemed possible here. The beach was not as crowded as other parts of the coast. Here there was nothing of the sophisticated Binz or the repulsive commerce associated with tourism. A Majakowski quote-“HERE with the beautiful life”-had been painted to the Kaimauer for the first time in the early 1990s. As often as you removed the inscription, it kept showing up. It was an expression of a rebellious attitude that moved out of the rebellion against Nazism and provincialism.

Sections of the gigantic building in Prora became – forgotten! – blown up and torn down. However, most of the majority was privatized and converted into speculation objects. The place has not served as a retreat for locals for a long time. Make luxury vacation, where forced laborers once raised the floors, the new slogan would have to be called. In such developments, the one reason that certainly does not exist to see for the strengthening of the AfD would certainly be wrong. But here something fits into an overall picture: only people disappear – and with them the freedom. In the end, the AfD triumphs in the remaining.