65 years after the Berlin Wall was built, Germany’s east-west scars help feed a rising far-right party

It’s been 65 years since the Berlin Wall divided a city and country overnight.

On Aug. 13, 1961, more than 10,000 police and army personnel began constructing the wall. It cut through Berlin, splitting East and West Germany, severing streets and neighbourhoods, families and friendships, democracy and communism.

Before it fell 28 years later, at least 140 people lost their lives because of the wall, including people attempting to escape, bystanders and border guards.

"Nobody could imagine that it would be up 28 years," said Hartmut Richter, whose family was trapped in the East that Sunday morning.

Richter eventually escaped to West Berlin in 1966 by swimming across a freezing river, later returning to smuggle 33 people out of East Germany in the trunk of his car.

Now, more than six decades later, Richter says his fight for freedom has become more than a memory: he sees it as a warning.

That freedom could face a stark test in upcoming state elections, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is poised for a historic breakthrough.

Analysts say the AfD has successfully weaponized long-standing resentments between the former East and West Germany, framing itself as the champion of east German identity while pursuing radical policies that test the boundaries of Germany’s post-war democratic order.

Recent studies, including one by economic research institute DIW Berlin , also link the rise of the AfD to economic disadvantages, demographic shifts and collective grievances in the country's eastern states.

"I think it's an irony that we talk so much about reunification in Germany and becoming one people again, and now we have a party that really splits German society," said Justus Bender, a Frankfurt-based journalist and political analyst who specializes in the AfD.

Polls suggest the AfD is likely to win a majority in the state election on Sept. 6 in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany.

If it succeeds, it will be the first time since the Second World War that a far-right party holds that position.

"This is a party that is right-wing extremist, it's xenophobic, it's a party that has been seen to be and declared by courts to be hostile to the German constitution," said Germany’s former ambassador to Canada, Sabine Sparwasser. "So it's deeply concerning that a party like this is having such an appeal, in particular in Germany."

The AfD is polling nationally at 28 per cent, making it the leading party, seven points ahead of the governing coalition parties the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).