Berlin, October 4th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier used the official ceremony for German Unity Day on Saturday to issue a sweeping warning. He called on Germans to defend what has been achieved and cautioned that extremist forces are gaining strength, partly through lies and manipulation on social media. He also referred to the extremist right-wing AfD’s recent electoral successes.
Steinmeier said the country is witnessing “an unbearable political demagoguery” by extremists who revel in destruction, mock other people and threaten them. “This endangers not only freedom and democracy”, he said. “It also endangers our inner unity. And we must not want that.”
Almost four decades after reunification, large parts of society were expressing distrust of the political order of the Federal Republic, the president noted. But precisely for that reason, “we cannot dodge the fact that a quarter and more of the voters show with their choice that they are turning away from important fundamental decisions of the republic”, Steinmeier said.
Radicalization of the Public
The discrediting of democratic procedures, the radicalization of the public and the defamation of compromise should serve as a warning, he said. On the question of whether today’s Germany will come to resemble the Weimar Republic, he said: “It will always be different, but whether the Berlin Republic comes to resemble the Weimar Republic more closely, that question has not been decided yet.” He added: “But we have it in our hands.”
Steinmeier also demanded that Germans uphold a democratic culture of debate. Referring to social media, he warned of absurd idiocies and shrill emotionalization, accompanied by confusion over whether a human being or a machine is writing.
He had believed that everyone had learned the lessons of history, the president said. Now he had to watch as supporters of right-wing extremism tried to erase the memory of the Holocaust victims. “I considered our democracy secure and have to learn that it is, in any case, being challenged anew”, Steinmeier said. “Yes, and therefore, in the future, it is about the self-assertion of democracy.”
Long Applause
Meanwhile, an Insa survey for the “Bild” tabloid shows the AfD at 30 percent nationwide for the first time. The party gained one percentage point compared to the previous week. The conservative CDU and CSU lost one point and are now at just 18 percent, which puts the AfD twelve points ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Union.
The emotional speech earned Steinmeier long applause. It may have been one of his last major addresses as Federal President, because a new head of state will be elected at the end of January, and his term ends in March.
Elisabeth Kaiser, the federal government’s commissioner for Eastern Germany, criticized the persistent inequality between East and West and called for an East German Federal President. “I think the time is ripe for an East German head of state”, she told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” daily. “Why shouldn’t the next Federal President be a smart woman from Eastern Germany?”
“Many Strengths, One Country”
Kaiser stated, October 3rd was a moving day for her, because it reminded people that living together in freedom and without borders was not a given. “For many East Germans, that was a time of great biographical upheaval and existential worries”, she said. “These experiences shape East Germans to this day.”
About 1,000 guests from politics, the judiciary and civil society attended the ceremony in Bremen, held under the motto “Many Strengths, One Country”. The celebration took place in the Hanseatic city because Germany’s smallest state currently holds the presidency of the Bundesrat. Among those present were Chancellor Merz, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, several ministers, nearly all of the state governments’ leaders and judges of the Federal Constitutional Court.
On October 3rd, 1990, the Unification Treaty between East and West Germany took effect, which restored the country’s national unity after more than 40 years of division. It is the only holiday established by federal law. Before that, West Germany had observed June 17th, in memory of the 1953 uprising in the GDR.
