Tobias Rausch of the far-right Alternative for Germany party was elected president of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament on Tuesday. He became the first far-right politician to hold such a post in Germany since the Second World War.
Rausch secured 48 of the 82 votes cast in a secret ballot. That total outstripped the 44 combined votes from his own party and supporting members of the left-wing BSW.
The additional four votes remain anonymous because the ballot was secret. The gap immediately raised questions over whether Germany's informal political firewall, designed to isolate the AfD, is starting to collapse.
Mainstream parties have long refused cooperation with the AfD because domestic intelligence classifications label parts of the party as extremist. The AfD disputes these findings.
The state intelligence service classifies the Saxony-Anhalt AfD branch as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation. The state parliament president oversees crucial institutional debates and legislative proceedings.
BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht argued that isolating the AfD had failed. She said nearly 44 per cent of the electorate's votes in Saxony-Anhalt could not be ignored.
Rausch's election follows the AfD winning nearly 44 per cent of the vote in the regional election weeks prior. That result made it the largest party in the state parliament and weakened Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right CDU.