Hey 20 Percent,
The dust has yet to settle after Sunday’s election in Saxony-Anhalt. It looks like the BSW, the small populist party founded by former left-winger Sahra Wagenknecht, could enable the first AfD-led state government. The mind boggles.
Forever-grinning AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, who spent the election campaign puttering around from village to village on his East German motorscooter, has achieved cult status in the state. Behind his perfume-salesman cheer are some seriously hard-right policies: Separate classrooms for refugee kids. Deportation-maxxing. A ban on rainbow flags at schools. Defunding institutions that promote “anti-German” art, whatever that is. Life for refugees, immigrants, queer people, artists and many others who don’t fit in with the the far-right idea of Germany could soon feel uncomfortable if not less safe in Saxony-Anhalt.
The fact that 44% voted for the AfD is alarming enough. Equally worrying is the bottomless well of anger this movement has tapped into. This is a moment when non-fascist German leaders need to engage in some soul-searching and ask themselves “What went wrong?” — and what can be done differently.
How much will of this anger is there nationwide? The next elections, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on September 20, will offer some indication.
🚨Thursday is Bundesweiter Warntag (warning day). Don’t worry if your phone starts buzzing and flashing at 11am — that’s just Germany testing its emergency alert systems.
News below.
Maurice
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Anti-AfD protest
Following the Saxony-Anhalt result on Sunday, thousands of Berliners congregated at the Brandenburg Gate to protest against the rise of the AfD. Organisers said about 15,000 showed up for the peaceful demo. The local lead candidates for the Greens and Die Linke spoke before the crowd. Meanwhile, CDU mayoral cadidate Stefan Evers rejected in an interview any collaboration with the AfD in Berlin. Evers said “Berlin stands for openness to the world, internationalism and solidarity across cultural boundaries. The AfD wants to destroy precisely that.”
Hackers publish Berlin data
Rhysida, the ransomware group allegedly behind the August cyberattack against Berlin’s administrative network, has published 1.2 million stolen files on the dark web after the city said it wouldn’t pay the 30-Bitcoin ransom. Chief Digital Officer Florian Hauer said the leaked data is classified as "VS-NfD" (confidential for internal use only), the lowest of four secrecy levels, and does not pose a threat to national security. Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Hauer also said officials were still in the early stages of analysis, as downloading and processing the files alone is expected to take a week due to the sheer amount of data. So how do they know what’s really in there? He also said Berliners should remain vigilant about identity theft (change your passwords, beware of phishing). Opposition politicians called the cyberattack a disaster for Berlin’s critical infrastructure.
More sabotage?
Police are investigating a fire in Moabit that began on a construction site but spread to a neigbouring electricity substation. The fire hasn’t been classified as sabotage but comes against the backdrop of five recent suspected acts of sabotage against the power grid across Germany. Police say a 48-year-old man from North-Rhine Westphalia known as Daniel V. has claimed responsibility for the attacks outside of Berlin but remains at large.
CSD memorial defaced
Both a memorial tree and a rainbow-coloured bench honouring the victims of the July 25th attack on the CSD event in Tiergarten were vandalised in separate incidents, taz reports. Unknown perpetrators uprooted the tree and damaged its protective fence. The rainbow bench was destroyed earlier this month. The Mitte administration quickly replanted the tree. District mayor Stefanie Remlinger (Greens) said the tree and bench will be restored repeatedly if necessary: “We will not be intimidated.”
Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin
🎨 Berlin Art Week 2026
Wed-Sun 09-13.09 · over 100 venues across the city
Five days, more than a hundred venues, and for once a clear centre of gravity. New this year is the Berlin Art Week Garden at the Kulturforum, tying the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Gemäldegalerie into one open ground with performances by Ersan Mondtag and talks with Nadim Samman. Around it, the usual rhythm: Gallery Night on Thursday with around 50 galleries open until 10 pm, Featured Night on Friday with roughly 30 independent projects, and the Positions fair at the Tempelhof hangars from Thursday to Sunday, 96 galleries with Turkey as country focus. We have a special guide for Berlin Art Week for those who follow the sound.
📷 Carrie Mae Weems. The Heart of the Matter [look]
Opening Friday 11.09 · 9 pm · C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 22-24 · free
Carrie Mae Weems' first full retrospective in Berlin, over a hundred photographs and videos across four decades of putting personal life against the historical record. Running alongside, Stelios Kallinikou and Susanne Kriemann on contaminated ground. Kíkẹ́lọmọ plays the opening.
🎤 Soft Power Festival
Friday 11.09 to Sunday 13.09 · Haus der Visionäre, Eichenstraße 4A · €25-35
Caique Tizzi threads through all three days: a tea ceremony to open Friday, Cakes and Politics with rustcakes on Saturday, and a communal meal to close on Sunday. Saturday is the day to catch Dimitri Hegemann, Norman Ohler, and Alice Hasters on nightlife as infrastructure, Fred P and Ghostpoet on the floor. It's part of Berlin Art Week.
🏭 Tag des offenen Denkmals 2026
Saturday 12.09 and Sunday 13.09 · over 300 monuments, around 700 events citywide · free
This year's motto is NetzWERKE: Denkmale & Infrastruktur. Skip the palaces. This is the working city: tracks, substations, waterworks, greenhouses, things built to function that turned out to be architecture.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
👨🦲 Merz says AfD result ‘changes all of Germany’
💩 Musk celebrates, Tusk despairs: How the world reacted to the AfD’s election win
📈 Is Germany’s economic slump finally over?
🤖 Autonomous OpenAI agents reportedly hijacked German wiki
🏛️ Russia shuts German consulate in St. Petersburg in tit-for-tat move after Leipzig drone incident
Factoid
As Germany, in some ways, begins to resemble the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, the fifth and final season of hit show Babylon Berlin starts streaming at ARD on September 10th. The series, Germany’s most expensive and internationally successful, has been sold to around 140 countries. English-language streamers are expected to release season 5 early next year.
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🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗
🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify
It would be worth mentioning how bad the implementation of the alarm system was. I was in the U-Bahn and it was a bizarre experience. First because I didn't know about it and it seemed that many people also did not. But second, people needed to tap on a button to make it stop. Of course there were many elders that couldn't do that, so their handys kept ringing in full cacophony.
Desperately waiting for season 5 of Babylon Berlin the U.S...