Key facts
- Tobias Rausch, an AfD candidate, was elected speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt regional parliament.
- Rausch won 48 of 82 votes cast, with support from five BSW MPs and four others.
- Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, from the AfD's more extreme wing, was elected deputy speaker.
- The AfD is classified as 'rightwing extremist' by Saxony-Anhalt's intelligence agency.
- The AfD won nearly 44% of votes in regional elections last month.
Tobias Rausch, a candidate from Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, was elected speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt regional parliament on Tuesday. This marks a significant political shift, as it is the first time since World War Two that a far-right party has secured such a position. Rausch, 35, won the vote with 48 out of 82 votes cast, including support from five MPs from the BSW party and four others beyond his own parliamentary group. The AfD holds 39 seats in the 83-seat legislature. Later in the day, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, from the AfD’s more extreme wing, was elected deputy speaker with 44 votes. Tillschneider, an Islamic studies scholar, has made controversial statements about immigrants and Islam. The AfD, which is classified as 'rightwing extremist' by the state's intelligence agency, won nearly 44% of votes in elections last month, a result that has put pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht had declared it was time to do away with 'firewall idiocy', and her deputy Christian Leye stated that the 'firewall is not working' and the votes of nearly 44% of electors could not be ignored. The willingness of politicians to break the 'firewall' – a moral agreement among other parties to shun the AfD – gives the party a chance of being able to form a government in the state. Opposition MPs, including Green MP Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, raised alarm over the breaching of the firewall, warning that "Whoever has invested a representative of extremist and anti-constitutional party with this office will bear responsibility for the consequences." In his acceptance speech, Rausch promised to represent all voices and "take different opinions seriously and to try to take decisions in a transparent way." Protesters gathered outside the parliament in Magdeburg.