Rants, hostility, threats: Many local politicians also report insults or even attacks. This is a problem for democracy – especially before the local elections in 2024.
When Götz Ulrich opens emails and letters in his district office, he is prepared for insults and threats. Just a few days ago, the CDU politician and his administration were again insulted and insulted with Stasi accusations. Ulrich has filed a criminal complaint. “I often receive letters like this,” says the district administrator of the Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt. Meanwhile, the abuse against him comes from all over Germany.
Ulrich became known nationwide in March when he resisted a planned AfD demonstration to his home in Bad Bibra. But many who hold local office share the experience of insults, hostility, threats and even attacks. According to the Association of Cities and Municipalities, there are around 22,000 mandates nationwide in district councils and city councils, and almost 170,000 in local councils. This spring, tens of thousands of these positions will be filled in local elections in nine federal states. But it’s not just bureaucracy and empty city coffers that spoil the desire for local politics. Hatred and incitement have reached such a level that many are asking themselves: Why should we do this to ourselves?
Volunteers are also hostile
According to new figures from the Körber Foundation, 40 percent of a good 1,500 volunteer mayors said that they or people around them had already been insulted, threatened or physically attacked because of their work. 28 percent of those affected had already thought about withdrawing from politics. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has been watching this with concern for years and has repeatedly invited local politicians to Bellevue Palace to support them, most recently last week. “Democracy begins locally,” said Steinmeier. “But democracy is also threatened locally. And we therefore have to defend it locally.”
The Association of Cities and Municipalities stated in a position paper at the beginning of 2024: “While some local politicians withstand the hostility and even carry on, others no longer dare to express their opinions freely, some are withdrawing from their offices, others don’t even compete anymore.” According to a survey for the municipal association, more than one in ten people affected by aggression and hatred considered resigning from office or not running again. “The already demanding positions are becoming increasingly unattractive,” says the paper.
District administrator doesn’t want to be slowed down
District Administrator Ulrich reacted in his own way to the AfD’s demo plans, which he clearly saw as an attempt at intimidation. He sought publicity and managed to change the route of the elevator – no longer past his home. The CDU politician doesn’t want to be slowed down. Commitment to others is his driving force, says the district administrator. Despite a “brutalization of the social climate,” he would encourage everyone to get involved in local politics.
A similarly fiery appeal recently came from Eastern Commissioner Carsten Schneider (SPD): “Can I advise people to go into politics? Absolutely!” Schneider told the German Press Agency a few weeks ago and advocated running for local parliaments. At the same time, he called for more protection for local politicians. “It cannot be the case that people give up political office because they are afraid,” said the SPD politician.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) picked up the thread a few days ago and announced: “We will change the reporting law so that the private addresses of local politicians are effectively protected.” It is unacceptable that local politicians have to experience threatening gestures and attempts at intimidation right up to their front door. In Brandenburg, an online reporting portal for officials and elected officials will be launched by the central office to combat hate crime in May. This means that those affected should be able to file criminal charges easily, says Justice Minister Susanne Hoffmann (CDU).
Greens ahead of AfD as number one hate target
According to the study for the Böll Foundation, the insults, threats and physical attacks affect women as well as men and people with and without a migration background to a similar extent, both in East and West German countries and across all party lines.
What is striking, however, is a trend that the federal government recently revealed in response to a small question from the AfD in the Bundestag – not specifically to local politicians, but to all political levels: While in 2019 representatives of the AfD were primarily the target of hostility, the hatred has increasingly shifted on the Greens. According to preliminary figures, 478 cases were recorded nationwide for the AfD in 2023 and 1,219 for the Greens. According to government information, 10,537 crimes were reported for all parties together from 2019 to 2023.
Office is important
Back to the local politicians, whose office is sometimes draining. The mayor of Frankfurt an der Oder, René Wilke, told “Markus Lanz” on ZDF in March: “As a public official, you have to expect that you will sometimes receive death threats.” He had already been threatened with a beating at a discussion event. But that’s not all: “There were people who sent me fantasies of cutting me up with an ax.”
In Thuringia, unknown people carried out an arson attack on the house of SPD local politician Michael Müller in February after he had organized a demonstration against right-wing extremism. No one was injured, but the shock was deep. Müller later described how the event affected him for days afterward. He had become more careful and prudent; he was “feared for myself and for my property,” he said. And it makes him sad that it now takes courage to get involved in politics.
The police cannot protect everyone
Thuringia’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, knows: “All those who are politically active at the local level and in rural areas suddenly become the target of hatred, agitation, insults, attacks and exclusion.” The police cannot protect everyone – as a society we have to think about how we can show solidarity.
Intimidation is a “well-known method in the area of right-wing extremism,” says Kramer. Through spaces of fear in society, right-wing extremists wanted to push people with attitude out of the active political spectrum. “Experience shows that we will have to deal with this intimidation on a massive scale in this super election year.” Local elections will take place on June 9th in Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Thuringia will vote on May 26th.
According to the Association of Cities and Municipalities, it is not recorded how many potential applicants are deterred by hostility or bad premonitions and how many places remain vacant on local electoral lists. When asked, the Left in Saxony took the trouble to compare the number of applicants for municipal offices: in 2019 there were 2,300, this year around 1,700. The party is not alone in this. “Hundreds of mayoral positions could soon remain unfilled in Germany,” speculates the Kommunal.de portal.
“We were called polluters”
One person who resigned from office after threats was Markus Nierth. He resigned as mayor of Tröglitz in Saxony-Anhalt in 2015 because he felt threatened by protests by the right-wing extremist NPD against a home for asylum seekers. “For us it was the NPD back then, the same Nazi methods are used today by the AfD when, for example, they parade past District Administrator Ulrich’s house and want to threaten a family in the same way,” says Nierth today. “The AfD’s mask has fallen.”
Nierth felt abandoned by local actors. “We were under police protection for nine months and were called polluters because we gave interviews,” he remembers. “But it was precisely this media publicity that ultimately protected us, not the residents.”