The Land of Lederhosen, Beer, and Political Chaos

The Free State of Bavaria has always thought of itself as different, before Germany became one in 1871 and before it became one (again) in 1990. The stiff upper lip of the Protestant north is not for the Bavarians; instead, they indulge themselves proudly in folkloric dress, exuberant beer drinking, and a defiant traditionalism.

And yet, as Germany’s largest state (by area) goes to the polls on Oct. 8, it presents a political picture that is both distinctive from the rest of the country and also similar. Bavarians are wrestling with the rise of the radical right and fretting about the same issues that the rest of Europe is grappling with—migration, climate, economic malaise, and wider issues of identity.

Throw into the mix a recent controversy over the state’s deputy premier and the discovery of his musings about Nazi concentration camps when he was a teenager, and you have a combustible mix.

Scroll back a few decades. The Christian Social Union (CSU) was founded, along with the other three people’s parties, shortly after Germany’s surrender to the Allies. The CSU exists only in this one state, the junior partner to the bigger Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has run Germany for much of the postwar era. The Americans, who occupied and ran the southern sector of the country in the immediate Cold War years, accepted Bavarians’ desire for a more a more socially conservative party, but one they insisted would adhere strictly to the new democratic norms.

Since then, Bavarian politics has been dominated by the CSU, and much of that time by one man: Franz Josef Strauss. A major player across German politics, in 1956, Strauss declared: “No legitimate political party can be to the right of the CSU.” This had a double meaning: Germany cannot countenance extremism, and the CSU (and the CDU) must do whatever it takes to absorb those who might contemplate voting for the fringes.

Now, in Bavaria and all over Germany, this has been shattered. A number of groups to the right of the established parties (and one on the left) are threatening the consensus on which the Federal Republic was built. The danger is most acute in the former communist East Germany, where the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is running rampant. Elections scheduled in three of the eastern Länder (regions) in a year’s time could see the AfD emerge as the largest party there. This wider trend is likely to be amplified across the continent before that  during the June 2024 elections to the European Parliament, which are expected to see a surge in extremist parties.

The first elections in this cycle are in Bavaria (and also in the western region of Hessen). With a population of 13 million, Bavaria would rank as a not-insignificant European state. In terms of gross domestic product, it would have around the sixth- or seventh-strongest economy in the EU. It is a remarkable success story, a once rural and relatively poor region transformed by the postwar economic miracle and the headquarters to some of the world’s most important industrial and automotive companies.

And yet the mood is sour. When leading figures from Berlin visited Bavaria in recent weeks to campaign for their respective parties, they received a reception more hostile than the usual cut-and-thrust of electioneering. The Greens, meanwhile, have been portrayed some of their political opponents as the enemy within—not language that German politics is used to.

The Greens are struggling to recover their standing nationally after a row during the summer over a parliamentary bill to replace oil and gas heaters with models that run on at least 65 percent renewable energy. A watered-down version of the proposal was eventually passed, but the issue, which on one level might sound technical, has become totemic. “Why don’t you deal with migration rather than my boiler room?” is a frequent refrain of protesters.

Bavaria’s incumbent premier, Markus Söder, has used the dispute to put distance between the CSU and the three-party “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats.

The Greens’ unpopularity marks a big change from the last elections in 2018, when some commentators were talking of them as part of the next Bavarian government. (They currently are the senior party in the neighboring state, the equally prosperous Baden-Württemberg, which they run with the CDU.)

Last time around in Bavaria, the Greens recorded a respectable 18 percent of the vote. The CSU dropped to 37 percent, low by the party’s standards, and were required to form a coalition. Instead of opting for the Greens, Söder chose to partner with the Freie Wähler (FW), or Free Voters, a motley right-wing group that found its niche in Bavaria, nearby Saxony, and other parts of the former East Germany. In so doing, Söder was breaking Strauss’s long-held taboo: The FW are not quite AfD, which all the parties refuse to deal with, but it is AfD-lite.

Fast forward to now, and the situation has sharpened further. Latest opinion polls have the CSU dipping yet further to as low as 36 percent, a record low, with the FW forging ahead of the Greens into second place and the Social Democrats languishing behind.

There is still much to play for, and in the German voting system even a small variation between poll predictions and actual results can make a big difference in the final makeup of governing coalitions. Yet whatever the final outcome, this campaign will be remembered as synonymous with one politician, a man few people outside Bavaria had previously heard of, and the scandal that was—and wasn’t.

At the end of August, one of Germany’s biggest newspapers, the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, published a dramatic investigation entitled “The Auschwitz Pamphlet.” It alleged that a typewritten note found in a school satchel more than thirty years ago declared a competition to find “traitors to the fatherland,” with the winner receiving a shot in the neck or a “free flight through the chimneys of Auschwitz.”

The 17-year-old pupil said to have written the pamphlet was none other than Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria’s deputy premier and economy minister, and the leader of the FW.

Aiwanger tried initially to brush off the accusations, with his brother coming to his aid and saying that he had been the culprit. When that didn’t wash, Aiwanger himself admitted to it, while dismissing the incident as youthful indiscretion. Then, taking a leaf out of the playbook of former U.S. President Donald Trump, he played up the controversy, presenting himself as the target of an organized media campaign by the “liberal elite.”

He is by no means the first German politician to be found out with a dubious past. What is new in this affair is Aiwanger’s defiance, his refusal to show contrition, and the public’s response. Just as Trump’s ratings seem to rise every time he is indicted by the U.S. courts, Aiwanger and his party have only seen their popularity grow.

This posed an acute dilemma for Söder. For the CSU and CDU, this could not have come at a worse time. The CDU may be the highest performing party nationally, but given the problems facing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his coalition, it should be faring considerably better.

With thoughts starting to turn to the next general election, expected to be held in October 2025 at the latest, the CDU is beginning to wonder if it has the right person at the helm. Friedrich Merz, a longtime sharp operator, finally achieved his goal when he succeeded at taking the helm of the party following Angela Merkel’s retirement in 2021. He is respected rather than liked and has a tendency to shoot from the hip, but he will be hard to dislodge.

If the CDU does make a change and moves back more toward the center, it could opt for the younger and—at the national level—relatively untried Hendrick Wüst, the premier of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The other big beast in the mix is Söder himself, who is not one to hold back if he sniffs a chance.

These forthcoming elections in Bavaria will be a midterm test for him, for his party, and for the resilience of the politics of the mainstream, which is facing one of its sternest tests since the advent of the Federal Republic.