A candidate from the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been elected mayor of a town in the eastern state of Brandenburg for the first time.
In a repeat election in the town of Zehdenick, north of Berlin, René Stadtkewitz won 58.4% of the vote on Sunday.
Stadtkewitz is the first directly elected full-time AfD mayor in Brandenburg, a sparsely populated state that surrounds the German capital.
The state has previously had a full-time mayor affiliated with the party — Arne Raue in the town of Jüterbog — but he had run and won as an independent candidate in 2011 and 2019, only joining the AfD in 2024. He later entered the German parliament in 2025.
Stadtkewitz’s rivals trailed well behind. Stephan von Hundelshausen of the liberal Free Democrats came in second with 28.6%.
Stadtkewitz previously served as a lawmaker for the conservative Christian Democrats before breaking with the party in 2010.
The election followed the recall of Zehdenick’ mayor Alexander Kretzschmar.
Although Kretzschmar, an independent, had defeated Stadtkewitz in a run-off election in March last year, he went on sick leave just 11 days after taking office and never returned. The deputy mayor had been carrying out mayoral duties in the interim.
The result comes as the AfD continues to gain momentum nationwide.
The populist, anti-immigrant party is at an all-time high in opinion polls, surging ahead of its nearest rivals, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives. It is also seen as having a realistic chance of winning its first outright majority in a regional parliament in state elections later this year in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
