Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.
“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland made particularly stunning gains on Sunday among young voters. For the first time in a national poll, 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their ballots – a reform that had been strongly backed by left-leaning parties.
After overwhelmingly supporting the Greens five years ago, Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote – an 11-point rise – helping place the party second behind the opposition CDU-CSU conservatives and well ahead of the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
The AfD tapped deep wells of support in the former communist east, winning in every state including Brandenburg, where it claimed 27.5% of the vote.
With a budding wisp of a moustache and an oversized hoodie, Friedrich looks like many of his peers heading home from school in Brandenburg, the riverside city that gives the state surrounding Berlin its name.
And his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.
“A lot of things are moving in the wrong direction with the current government,” Friedrich said, referring to Scholz’s increasingly loveless centre-left-led alliance. “I want to change things with my vote – I want the AfD to shape that.”
That would include, for many of the party’s young supporters, explicit backing of “remigration” of Germans with immigrant roots who “fail to integrate”. News in January that top AfD officials had discussed such a proposal prompted widespread outrage and sent tens of thousands of Germans on to the streets in protest.
However, among many AfD voters, the notion has become an unabashed talking point. “Not everyone should have to go but at least the criminals, like in Mannheim – this can’t go on,” said Konstantin, 17, referring to the killing of a police officer in the western city just days before the election, allegedly by an Afghan asylum seeker with a jihadist motive.
Brushing aside party scandals and attempts to whitewash the Nazi past, Konstantin and his friend Leonard, 18, also voted AfD. “When I go out I get insulted and even spat on by, let’s just say, non-Germans – those aren’t German values,” Leonard said. “If refugees come here and work and behave and leave me alone that’s fine, but if not, they should go home.”
Lea, a 22-year-old office clerk, declined to reveal how she voted but said the AfD and the new economically leftwing but socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which garnered 14% in Brandenburg, were the “only ones” addressing local security.
“I don’t have anything against foreigners but the problem with crime has got out of hand. You see people drawing knives every weekend,” she said.
Violent crime in Brandenburg an der Havel has surged in recent years, with a 9% rise in assaults between 2021 and 2023. Of the city’s 74,000 people, about 6,000 were born abroad.
Noura Abu Agwa, a 24-year-old refugee from Damascus, said she and her mother also felt increasingly unsafe in town, but blamed the strong presence of the far right.
“When I arrived I was wearing the hijab but I got harassed so I took it off,” she said. “I feel bad for my mom because she’s still wearing it, and once she was walking in the street and a man stopped her to shout at her. She was so confused because she only speaks Arabic.”
Anna Leisten, the head of the AfD’s state youth wing, said its outreach had targeted the lasting impact of the anti-pandemic measures. “Forced testing, home schooling, bans on going out – an entire generation had their youth taken away.”
Leisten, who said she had experienced “exclusion, propaganda and intimidation” as a teenager in Brandenburg, praised the party’s mastery of platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to reach the young, “while Olaf Scholz posts boring videos about his briefcase”.
All the young Germans approached by the Guardian in Brandenburg talked about their anxiety about the war in Ukraine, with many criticising the governing parties for weapons shipments and expressing angst that they or their peers could one day be called on to fight. Germany suspended conscription 13 years ago, but is debating strategies to boost recruitment.
“Ukraine never interested us before – this is a thing between Ukraine and Russia,” Friedrich said of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour. “Why should we help Nato expand its territory using our arms?”
Others said the government’s support for Ukraine had driven them to splinter parties, which taken together clinched 28% of the under-25 electorate, by far the largest share. Such fears and economic concerns have supplanted the climate crisis at the front of young voters’ minds, a recent study found.
“I voted for Volt, mainly because I’m concerned about the future of Europe and really care about the cause of peace,” said a legal system trainee, Mathias Sarömba, 22, referring to the small pro-European party that called for rejecting extremists with slogans such as “Don’t Be an Asshole”.
He said he had managed to persuade his mother in “tearful discussions” not to vote AfD, explaining how its stance on “queer rights” made him feel personally threatened. “It was only then that she got it.”
Henriette Vogel, a 21-year-old laboratory assistant, also called the AfD’s surge “scary”, citing its “misogynist” positions on reproductive rights and workplace equality.
She cast her ballot for the tiny Animal Protection party. “First of all because I wanted to oppose the AfD but also because I’m not happy with the major parties. But I didn’t want to abstain, because every vote counts.”
Kilian Hampel, a co-author of the study Youth in Germany, which in April predicted a jump in support for the far right, said that with three eastern states voting in September and a general election expected next year, the trend toward fragmentation was likely to magnify.
“If faith in the bigger parties continues to decline, the smaller parties will probably be the big winners,” he said.
