Organisers say about 150,000 people marched in some 20 German cities on Saturday to demand that the Alternative für Deutschland be banned. Campact, one of the campaign groups behind the demonstrations, estimated 25,000 in Hamburg and 12,000 in Munich. Police in Berlin counted several thousand. The signs read "Ban the AfD now" and "Democracy needs no alternatives."
"A broad cross-section of civil society is taking to the streets to prevent the enemies of the constitution, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, from gaining government power," said Christoph Bautz, Campact's director.
Six days earlier the AfD won 43.8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, its first victory in a German state election. "The people have made it absolutely clear that they finally want political change," said Ulrich Siegmund, its leader in the state.
The same weekend, Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, received death threats after calling for a ban.
How a ban actually happens
Under Article 21 of the Basic Law, only the Federal Constitutional Court can ban a party, and only on an application from the Bundestag, the Bundesrat or the federal government. Marchers cannot start the process; they can only press the institutions that can.
The court has banned two parties in the Federal Republic's history, both in the 1950s. Its most recent judgment went the other way. In 2017 it examined the neo-Nazi NPD and found that the party's aims were indeed unconstitutional — and declined to ban it anyway, because the NPD had no realistic prospect of achieving them. A party that cannot threaten democracy, the court reasoned, need not be removed from it.
Why size cuts both ways
That is the uncomfortable symmetry in Saturday's demand.
On the legal question, the AfD's success strengthens the case. Whatever else can be said about a party that wins 43.8 percent in a state, nobody can argue that it lacks the potential to act on its programme. The obstacle that saved the NPD does not exist.
On the political question, the same number points in the opposite direction. A ban on a party that the largest single share of a state's voters has just chosen does not only remove a party. It tells those voters that their choice has been set aside, and it does so through a court rather than an election. Friedrich Merz's reluctance to pursue a ban is usually described as caution. It is at least partly a recognition of that arithmetic.
The timetable does not fit
Even with an application filed tomorrow, a ban would not decide who governs Saxony-Anhalt. The court's second NPD case took about four years from application to judgment.
Magdeburg needs a government in weeks. As this desk reported after the election, the AfD and the four parties that have ruled it out finished with 39 seats each, with the balance held by the BSW's five. That is the question that decides the next four years in the state, and a ban cannot answer it in time.
What to watch
The two state elections on 20 September, which will show whether Saxony-Anhalt was a peak or a pattern. Then whether any of the three bodies entitled to apply to the court moves to do so. Saturday's crowds were large, but they were addressed to a Bundestag, a Bundesrat and a federal government that have so far chosen not to act — and the larger the AfD becomes, the easier the legal case, and the harder the decision to bring it.
The figure of about 150,000 demonstrators in around 20 cities on 12 September 2026 as given by organisers; the police count in Berlin; Campact's estimates of 25,000 in Hamburg and 12,000 in Munich; the slogans; the quotations from Christoph Bautz of Campact and AfD state leader Ulrich Siegmund; Chancellor Friedrich Merz's reluctance to pursue a ban; and the two state elections on 20 September are as reported by Al Jazeera, RTÉ and France 24 on 12 September. The death threats received by Charlotte Knobloch are as reported by The Times of Israel on 13 September. The Saxony-Anhalt results are as previously reported in this publication. The account of Article 21 of the Basic Law and of the Federal Constitutional Court's 2017 NPD judgment is general. The analysis is our own.
