Election campaign in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Bounce against the blue bar

Shortly after midnight, the burgundy-colored, somewhat outdated Mercedes Sprinter rocks up and down so violently, as if it were about to take off. The large van is parked on a meadow below Klempenow Castle on a festival site.

The view through the wide-open sliding door falls on a handful of dancing people, bouncing across six square meters in the bright light of the disco spotlights: there is the precise dancer, whose jerky arm movements seem rehearsed, opposite her are two movement artists who are pirouetting through the air from the floor of the car.

Some jump out of the van laughing, others push in, past turntables on which DJ Charly is now merging fast beats with choral chants. A man just climbed onto the loudspeaker behind the driver's cab; he must have looked too deeply into the glass. He's about to fall. But first everyone who can still do it jumps to the beat of the music.

The mobile disco in the Mercedes Sprinter is called “Fette Elke”, it is probably the smallest mobile dance hall in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania or the entire world. The inventor of the dance floor on four wheels, which also rolls along the streets of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a demo car, is called Sebastian Schubert. This July weekend he will be appearing with the “Fetten Elke” at the Transit Festival, a colorful, family summer festival that takes place in the sparsely populated Western Pomerania in the Mecklenburg Lake District, between Neubrandenburg, the “City of Four Gates,” and the Hanseatic city of Greifswald.

Above the festival site, the blue sky shines so brightly and with such contrast that you suspect: it can't be far from the Baltic Sea. It seems idyllic here. Wouldn't there be a stiff breeze coming from the right.

There will be elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next weekend. After its success in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD could also become the strongest force here. According to the latest survey, it stands at 35 percent, while Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig's SPD, which governs with the Left, has started to catch up (32 percent). In what is now the tenth year of her term in office, Prime Minister Schwesig is trying to capitalize on her bonus in office with a campaign that is strongly tailored to her needs.

She promises a “reliable government” against “autocracy by the AfD”. If the Left can maintain its recently stable approval ratings (11 percent) and the Greens (5 percent) clear the five percent hurdle, a red-red-green alliance in Schwerin Castle would even be possible. But if the CDU, which is currently at 8 percent, gave up the firewall with the AfD, a coalition between the CDU and AfD would not be ruled out.

Then what would happen at the state political level is what has long been taking place in district councils and city councils when voting on entries or budget questions submitted jointly with the AfD. The right-wing populists exert considerable influence on local political debates and committee work.

The party's driving forces and figureheads in the state election campaign are state chairman Leif-Erik Holm, a former radio presenter, and co-state leader Enrico Schult, who leads the state list in first place. Ideologically, the regional association, which has recently attracted attention again and again through haggling over positions and influence, is more likely to be assigned to the ethnic-nationalist spectrum.

Even if Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is currently more stable than Saxony-Anhalt, the political climate is changing here too. How does left-wing civil society react? What are the democracy-promoting actors doing during the race for the Schwerin state parliament?

Sebastian Schubert, the inventor of the mobile dance floor, is more of a long-distance runner than a sprinter. He had the idea for “Fetten Elke” ten years ago. It was named after the doctors' “Elke” song, which is now long out of date. At that time, Schubert had just separated from his partner and wanted to become politically active. Back then, in 2016, elections were held in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It is the year in which the AfD made a clear appearance for the first time in northeast Germany and ultimately achieved 20.8 percent of the vote.

The punk band Feine Sahne Fischfilet is countering this with their “Not Completely Screwed Yet” pre-election campaign tour with concerts, readings and exhibitions in small towns and villages. That inspires Schubert. He wants to bring urban nightlife and good mood to the rural wasteland. After a small conversion of the van into a dance floor with sound and lighting technology and a test run, Schubert is thrilled: “The rocking of the bus was immediately infectious,” he remembers. His goal: to strengthen the democratic makers who oppose the right-wing scene in the country.

Monchi, frontman of Feine Sahne Fischfilet, is also enthusiastic about Schubert's idea. He invites him to the tour finale in Jarmen in 2016, where Feine Sahne Fischfilet will from now on organize an annual festival. Buoyed by so much tailwind, it starts: from now on, the “Fette Elke” will host 30 events per year as a demo vehicle and dance hall until Corona largely paralyzes public life in 2020.

Starting out as a one-man show, today a team of five to six volunteers takes care of the passion project on a voluntary basis. Costs for insurance, maintenance or even new doors are paid for through donations and grants. Three years ago, the “Lute Luise” was added, a trailer with a mobile sound system that accompanies “Fette Elke” on demonstrations.

The two will also be performing as a duo in Greifswald on May 1st. In Schönwalde I, a renovated prefabricated housing district, the Greifswalder Linksjugend student association called for a “revolutionary May 1st demonstration”. At the end of the 1960s, the settlement was built for the workers of the now closed Lubmin nuclear power plant on the Greifswalder Bodden; now Schönwalde I is primarily home to people with lower incomes.

A group of demonstrators gathered in front of the “Kiste” student club. Many wear black T-shirts and shorts, some wear keffiyeh. Around 100 protesters will march towards the city center with red flags and banners, and a GDR flag can also be seen. The train is accompanied by a handful of visibly relaxed police officers in two emergency vehicles.

Sebastian Schubert stretched a huge banner with the inscription “Bass instead of hate” over the tailgate of the van. Boxes hang on the opened doors. Schubert, who is wearing work pants and sneakers and has a petite build, is checking a cable on one of the speakers. Final preparations before the train sets off.

Loud beats boom from the “Fetten Elke”. Schubert runs next to him and makes sure the young driver behind the wheel gets the van safely across the road. On the bike path, a few meters further, an older woman - fashionable short haircut, well-groomed appearance - jumps off her bike and looks at the demonstrators passing by.

“Send them to work,” she hisses and quickly cycles away. Schubert seems deeply relaxed: “I provide the infrastructure and the young people do the rest,” says the 45-year-old, describing his actions at the demo and grinning. He says about his commitment that it is “meaningful”.

Schubert grew up in a village between Neubrandenburg and Neustrelitz in the post-reunification period; encounters with the right-wing scene were part of his everyday life as a teenager. He is the third child of a politically unconventional family. Father and mother, biologist, were involved in the New Forum civil rights movement during the time of reunification.

In the 1990s, Schubert became village punk, “really with a leather jacket and mohawk”. In the so-called baseball bat years, “there was often something on the nose,” he says, “back then we in Neubrandenburg were 10 percent leftists, i.e. skaters, hip-hoppers, punks – and 90 percent fascists.”

After graduating from school, he trained as a farmer and later studied vehicle technology in Berlin. Those were “difficult apprenticeship years,” he says. With a leather jacket and mohawk, he doesn't fit in the cowshed. Looking back, the experience also had something positive, because Schubert developed a feeling for the country and its people.

At the demo in Greifswald, “Fette Elke” now has to turn the corner, it’s getting tight. The driver starts to sweat. Schubert guides him on the right track. The North German native is not surprised that so many people in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have recently left the democratic path: “Right-wing conservative thinking was always there,” he says. It just manifested itself differently in terms of party politics.

Schubert alludes to the NPD's temporary entry into the Schwerin state parliament in the mid-noughties. Right-wing ideology is also much more open today. The many imperial flags that he counts as he drives through the country would not have been seen before.

“There is this cross-generational resignation,” says Schubert. In his opinion, the structurally weak region is by no means the main problem. In fact, many people have the impression that they are left alone with their problems.

A few years ago, when he was temporarily working as a fleet manager at the Greifswald University Hospital, he spoke a lot with the cleaning and kitchen staff - with workers who now make up a large part of the AfD electorate in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “Things are decided in Berlin that don’t affect us,” it was said there. Schubert knows that they are not wrong.

He mentions political promises that have still not been kept, such as the long-announced expansion of the Berlin-Pasewalk-Rügen rail connection or the expansion of public e-charging stations in the countryside. Schubert is certain: Many people from the working class who felt left behind voted for the AfD in protest. Of course there would be “right-wing weirdos in the country”, but the majority of people want to “really hit the shit” with their AfD vote in the state elections and shake up the political scene.

Meanwhile, the May 1st demonstration train has reached the brick-red mill gate. Sophie Tieding is venting her displeasure on the square next door. Tieding is a member of the Greifswald parliament for the Die Linke party and is running as a youth candidate in the state election campaign. The 25-year-old rails against the billions in profits made by financial corporations, against state cuts in youth welfare and speaks out in favor of supporting people with disabilities.

Tieding is a law student, she was the first family member to study and has just passed her first state examination. She is involved in local door-to-door election campaigns. She describes her feelings about the political climate in the country with the words: “between hope and the terror of the blue bar”. There are currently many active people who are committed to a democratic Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. At the same time, she and her colleagues also observed a growing mobilization of right-wing groups during the CSD season that is now beginning.

Tieding also accepts risks for her political commitment. The native of Schwerin decided to make her personal situation an election campaign topic for the first time. Tieding lives with a walking impairment due to congenital cerebral palsy. “With my physical disability, I am a direct enemy of the AfD,” she says. “As a politically active woman, I face double discrimination.”

The left-wing politician is alluding to the right-wing populists' declaration that when they take over government, they will reduce inclusion in the country's schools and teach more children with disabilities at special schools. In its state election program adopted in Grimmen at the end of May, the AfD described the state government's inclusion policy as a failure.

Other political demands include a return to nuclear energy and the restriction of wind power expansion as well as a return to a “German-influenced” social model as an alternative to migration and “multiculturalism”.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

At 10.7 percent, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania recently had the lowest proportion of people with a migrant background of all federal states. In addition, without the doctors from Syria or Ukraine and the service staff and harvest helpers who recently came from Bulgaria, Romania and even Kyrgyzstan, the tourist-oriented country would be facing some pretty big challenges.

Video call with Alicja Orlow, deputy managing director of the Regional Office for Education, Integration and Democracy (RAA) Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. At the beginning of June, Orlow - born in Poland, grew up on Usedom, studied and worked in Potsdam and Bremen, later Benin and Krakow - has her hands full bringing her ideas for an open and diverse society to the country. She gets around a lot and has been able to gain deep insights into the lives of her fellow citizens thanks to her engaging manner.

During the conversation, Orlov sits at the desk in her Greifswald office, keeping an eye on the time. Orlov also believes that many citizens in the country are voting for the AfD in protest. “Racism is not what drives people,” says the 38-year-old. The main thing for people is to “be involved in something bigger again and feel seen.” There is a widespread perception that politics has not yet adequately addressed the upcoming changes – both in the global and local context. The big idea is missing.

A gap that the AfD fills with its approachable and emotionally communicated “everything used to be better” narrative, which interprets social change as a story of loss. The fact that many voters, who often do not even know the election program of the right-wing populists in detail, would accept a nationalistic and racist party with their vote is “unfortunately a very human strategy,” says Orlow. “Stepping down is probably the easiest way to improve your position.”

It is the lever that people themselves can use most quickly, and “the top one percent of society” is not at all within reach. Orlov means that people devalue others because of their level of education, their origins or their living conditions in order to enhance themselves in the social structure.

There were also personal reasons why Orlow, as a person of color with a German-Polish background and an international career, returned to Western Pomerania in 2020 despite the confines of her homeland, but the decisive factor was the realization that she could achieve more with her work for democracy in the provinces than in the big city.

When asked about the local civil society foundation, Orlow says there are too few designers in the country. Many people “who make a big difference on a small scale” would hardly see themselves as social actors. The lack of networking among each other is also a problem.

And then, as she travels through the country, she makes the same observation again and again: “We simply have a stark lack of diversity,” says Orlow, “our world here is incredibly small.” Many citizens lack encounters, impressions and perspectives from outside. That's precisely why it's important to bring people into the state. “We have to bring the big wide world to MV,” she says, “and at the same time get the local people moving.”

Back at the Transit Festival in Klempenow, beginning of July. On Friday afternoon, Ina Gross-Bajohr came from her adopted home of Demmin to the village, which has around 60 inhabitants. Gross-Bajohr is press spokesperson for the non-partisan alliance “Moving Together”, in which civil society associations, initiatives and committed people have come together “for a solidarity and fair Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania”.

Started in autumn 2025 with 150 members and increasing concerns about the shift to the right in the country, the alliance now has around 1,000 actively networked people from Ludwigslust to Stralsund. Cycling tours, writing workshops, exhibitions, clean-up campaigns and the successful “Klönschnack” format, i.e. chatting over coffee and cake in the open air, are held regularly.

Gross-Bajohr, who wears a blonde bob and a black and white polka dot summer dress, sits on the stone steps of a former manor house and talks about the many conversations with citizens that she and her colleagues had in market squares, at harbors and at lakes. Some guests, many of them pensioners, who come to her mobile living room - typically in northern Germany - don't want to talk at first, she says.

And then, once the ice was broken, they usually didn't stop at all. Often it's about how difficult it is to get to the doctor across the villages or that school is canceled so often. The citizens' fears and worries are documented on large paper tablecloths and will soon be exhibited in front of Schwerin Castle. A catalog of demands should also be handed over to the state parliament.

Gross-Bajohr himself was surprised that the Alliance for a Solidaristic Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has quickly become one of the most important democratic actors in northeast Germany. The most formative experience for her was the well-attended “Klönschnack” opening event in the Kulturkirche St. Jakobi in Stralsund last February. Actually, the “Moving Together” team only wanted to meet there briefly after the end of the event to evaluate the meeting.

A few visitors stood there. One man said he was deeply moved and that the event reminded him very much of the democracy movement in the GDR. Others would have welcomed the fact that we were finally able to talk to each other again and listen to each other. According to Gross-Bajohr, it seemed as if a sense of community that had lain anchor for perhaps 30 years was gaining momentum again in Stralsund, which represents the northeast of the Federal Republic.

The first festival visitors are now arriving on the castle grounds. As the license plates of the parked cars reveal, many of them have come from the surrounding area. Others made their way from Potsdam, Lübeck and Hamburg. Today the rainbow flag flutters in the wind on the tower. Diagonally below, a disco ball glitters on the toilet bay window, the former castle toilet, in the golden light of the summer afternoon.

Undine Spillner is now in a good mood running around the castle grounds and watching the colorful festival activity. The 45-year-old has the phone to her ear and her sunglasses casually pushed into her long hair. She is a qualified cultural worker and mother of three growing sons. She founded the Transit Festival 13 years ago with her partner Christian Herfurth.

For the two of them, the cultural event with the selected band line-up, creative workshops, theater, yoga sessions and discussion groups is “a utopian summer dream for everyone between the castle and the river”. A transit place in the best sense, where people of all backgrounds and ages come together, connected by the shared experience of culture.

Spillner, a native of Berlin, came to the Tollensetal near Neubrandenburg with her parents, an artist couple, in the early 1980s. In search of open spaces in the increasingly cramped GDR, they felt magically drawn to the medieval Klempenow Castle - both became founding members of today's cultural center. The castle and its adjacent domain, which was still inhabited until the 1990s, were completely dilapidated and full of rubbish.

Then what Spillner calls “the power of the 1990s” began. With a lot of effort and money, the castle ruins were resurrected into a spectacular cultural venue with exhibition areas, canoe rentals, a café and a shop in the historic gatekeeper's house. Today, around 15 active members and friends of Kultur-Transit-96 e.V. at Burg Klempenow take care of around 45 events a year, such as the “Appelmarkt”, the jazz concerts and the “Neue Heimat” film festival for international short films and documentaries, which Spillner and Herfurth have been organizing for 15 years.

“Where is the trigger warning?” asks Spillner, now back on the phone. She stands in front of the wide slatted door of the long building block, which was once a cowshed and is now an event room. The Peace Library Anti-War Museum of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg is currently showing the exhibition “The Dream of a Different Germany”. You can see some disturbing black and white photographs of the war and its victims in the Third Reich - too violent for children under twelve.

In order to develop rural areas in such a sophisticated way, committed people and funding are needed, says Spillner. “We provide basic cultural care here.” This is largely done on a voluntary basis. An increasingly difficult task: ongoing austerity measures in the municipalities and the entry of AfD representatives into the local parliaments are making life difficult for them.

It wasn't until the end of June that a decision by the district council in the Mecklenburg Lake District made headlines across the country. Similar to what happened in the Ilm district in Thuringia at the end of May, the district council spoke out with the votes of the AfD and numerous abstentions from the CDU and BSW against the continuation of the federal program “Living Democracy!”, which is funded annually with 140,000 euros! out of.

As a result, various democracy projects such as youth work, extremism prevention and political education are on the brink of extinction. A development that is also favored at the federal political level. In spring 2026, Family Minister Karin Prien (CDU) reorganized the “Living Democracy!” program. announced: moving away from broad project-based support for civil society towards democracy building in state-supported regulatory structures and expanded extremism prevention.

As a result, around 200 projects nationwide will expire at the end of the year. The current draft budget of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs also envisages further cuts in funding for democracy work in the double-digit million range.

There was also a gap of 13,000 euros in Spillner's festival budget. A sum that gave the creators sleepless nights and sent Spillner on a feverish search for funding. Successfully. Just two days before the festival began, a foundation that promotes civil society democracy projects raised the missing funds.

“The change in society is now having a direct impact in rural areas,” says the festival organizer. Your answer to the anti-democratic climate: hold your ground, strengthen cultural workers and forge new alliances.

A discussion group in the former cowshed should provide the appropriate sounding board for this. And so on Saturday morning, a climate activist from Munich, a publicist from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and Sophie Tieding, the Left Party's youth candidate from Greifswald, invited as spokesperson for the “School strike against conscription” initiative, sat in the former cowshed in front of around 100 interested people.

Right at the beginning, the group wants to give the listeners a few positive impulses to act in view of “the world-weariness out there”. The speakers report on successful actions by left-wing groups - most recently at the AfD state party conference in Erfurt - and on the new politicization among students who are protesting against compulsory military service with school strikes.

There is concentrated tension in the audience. Some guests, most of them probably in their mid-forties and a few old leftists, take up the ball hesitantly, calling for more exchange of experiences between generations or reporting that they were recently on the streets against the cuts in funding for democracy.

Later on the meadow, “Fette Elke” is still intoxicated from the previous night, the sliding door of the dance hall is closed. Sophie Tieding seems hopeful because the Left Party's poll numbers have recently stabilized.

The regional association in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has many new members; around 1,300 people have joined the party since January 2025. Her doorstep election campaign in Greifswald is also going well. The fact that she made her physical disability a campaign issue earned her a lot of respect. With a view to the outcome of the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Tieding says: “We are open to red-red-green.”

But the actual task follows: “And then we have to get the blue bar down again.”