The Ethno-Nationalist Blueprint for German Culture

The cultural program adopted by the AfD in Sachsen-Anhalt constitutes a blueprint for the ethno-nationalist capture of the German arts. The manifesto explicitly seeks to subordinate artistic merit to identity-forming cultural heritage, a move that would effectively end the autonomy of state-funded institutions. Nearly thirty institutions, from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation to local stages, have issued a collective warning against this instrumentalization. This is the first time since the mid-20th century that a major political force in Germany has proposed the systematic purging of internationalist perspectives from the public sphere. The AfD is not proposing a debate on aesthetics; it is proposing the dissolution of the Staatsziel Kultur—the constitutional commitment to the freedom of art—in favor of a state-enforced monoculture.