In the heart of Berlin, a journalist's quest to understand the political dangers of the present led her to an evening class dissecting the monsters of the past. The seminar, titled "Monsters of Fascism Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", took place at the left-leaning Berthold Brecht Literary Forum. Its central premise was stark: defining fascism is the crucial first step in building resilience against it.
A Novel's Chilling Prophecy
This educational journey was prompted by the English-language publication of Gabriele Tergit's monumental novel, The Effingers. Written between 1932 and 1945 but largely overlooked until its recent rediscovery as a German classic, the book chronicles three affluent Jewish families in Berlin from 1878 to 1942.
Tergit, a court reporter who had covered trials involving Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in the 1920s, understood the Nazi threat intimately. She narrowly escaped an SA raid in March 1933 and fled Germany. Reading her work in 2025 is an eerie experience; the Nazis' ascent unfolds on the periphery of her characters' lives, a distant menace they feel insulated from in their Tiergarten villas.
This literary atmosphere mirrors that of Cabaret, where the Nazis slowly emerge from a hedonistic Weimar backdrop. One character's dismissive line—"The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans"—resonates with a dangerous contemporary complacency.
Defining the Threat in Modern Germany
The Berlin seminar moved from theory to a grim political reality. Participants grappled with defining markers of fascism: attempts to create an ethnically "pure" nation, the use of paramilitary forces and excessive violence, anti-liberal and anti-democratic sentiments, and backing from economic elites.
The discussion inevitably turned to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The party, deemed a "rightwing extremist" group by Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, presents a complex case. While it lacks a formal paramilitary wing, it meets other concerning criteria. Its electoral strength is undeniable: it secured 20.8% of the vote in the February 2025 federal election, coming second nationally. Current polls show it leading at 26%, ahead of the CDU's 24%.
A dangerous historical delusion is resurfacing: the belief that established elites can control emerging far-right forces. Weeks before the 2025 election, CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz broke the long-standing "firewall"—the pact among democratic parties not to cooperate with the AfD—to pass a migration crackdown. Subsequent calls from within the CDU to end the firewall altogether have heightened anxieties.
Solidarity and the Spectre of History
In a powerful speech commemorating the November 1938 pogroms, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a thinly veiled warning about the AfD. He urged Merz's government to maintain the firewall and even consider legal avenues to ban anti-democratic parties, though such a ban is considered unlikely.
For those resisting right-wing extremism, showing solidarity with those under threat—primarily asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine—is a first priority. Public displays, like the millions-strong protests in January 2024 against a secret AfD-attended "remigration" conference, have yet to shift government policy substantially.
The bitter moral of Tergit's novel arrives in a final letter from an elder Effinger en route to a concentration camp: "I believed in the good in people – that was the gravest error of my misguided life." The lesson for 2025 is not to abandon belief in people, but to never underestimate the fascist menace and to oppose it on all fronts, before it's too late.
