I have watched the photographs coming out of Germany: people standing in public squares with handmade signs, crowds outside the Brandenburg Gate, families marching against the far right. Protest is easy to recognise. A banner tells us immediately that somebody is resisting something.

A quieter form of resistance is harder to photograph.

In Saxony-Anhalt, lawyers and civil-society organisations have started preparing for disputes that could emerge when political promises reach government offices. They are studying administrative law. They are examining the rights of refugees and migrants. They are asking what happens when funding disappears or a teacher comes under political pressure.

The project is called Recht Solidarisch. It may tell us something important about the next phase of Germany’s confrontation with the far right.

The struggle is moving beyond demonstrations. It is entering the machinery of law.

An election changed the calculation

The immediate political context is difficult to ignore.

In Saxony-Anhalt’s state election on 6 September 2026, the Alternative für Deutschland won 43.8 percent of the second vote. The CDU received 17.2 percent, according to the state’s official preliminary results.

The result gave the AfD 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament, leaving it short of an absolute majority. Government formation remained unresolved in the weeks after the election. A large vote, however, does not erase Germany’s legal architecture.

State governments possess substantial authority. Education is particularly important at Länder level, and state administrations exercise considerable power over public institutions. Yet governments operate within federal constitutional law. European Union law can impose additional constraints.

Political power therefore encounters another form of power: law.

The Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein announced the platform on 15 September, nine days after the Saxony-Anhalt election. The project involves RAV, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and Equal Rights Beyond Borders, together with the Left Party parliamentary-group chairs’ conference.

Its political provenance should be stated plainly. Recht Solidarisch is not a politically detached government information service. Its organisers explicitly describe the project as preparation for possible authoritarian government action.

At the same time, dismissing it merely because of that political background would miss what makes the project interesting.

Its lawyers are asking testable legal questions.

What can a government actually do?

Election campaigns deal in promises.

Government deals in statutes, administrative decisions and budgets. Courts enter the picture when somebody argues that government has crossed a legal boundary.

Recht Solidarisch has assembled more than 250 pages of legal analysis, case studies and practical information. Its lawyers examine scenarios involving migration and education. They also look at civil society, culture and public funding.

The distinction is crucial.

The project does not prove that every policy associated with the AfD would be unlawful. Nor do its legal opinions automatically become the position of German courts. Recht Solidarisch itself states that its material provides initial legal orientation rather than individual legal advice.

Courts and public authorities may interpret individual questions differently.

Still, the scenarios reveal how political programmes can encounter legal limits.

Consider where refugees are allowed to live.

One Recht Solidarisch analysis examines a hypothetical attempt to impose broad restrictions preventing recognised refugees from moving into particular municipalities. The project argues that existing German residence law does not permit a general municipal ban based simply on pressures involving housing, schools or other local capacity.

Its analysis also invokes European law.

The point is larger than one hypothetical residence order. An elected government cannot necessarily transform a campaign slogan directly into an administrative instruction. Officials require legal authority. Their decisions can be challenged, and courts can review them.

For immigrants living in Germany, that difference is anything but theoretical.

Schools could become another battleground

Education provides an even clearer example because Germany’s federal states exercise extensive authority over schools.

Recht Solidarisch examines what could happen if refugee children were placed permanently in separate classes without a route into ordinary schooling.

Its lawyers argue that state control over education remains constrained by German constitutional requirements and European law. They point in particular to EU rules governing access to education for minors seeking protection.

Again, the important word is constrained, not prohibited in every circumstance.

German states retain room to design education policy. Temporary language preparation and integration measures can be lawful. Permanent exclusion from ordinary education raises different legal questions.

Teachers face another dispute.

Right-wing political campaigns in Germany have sometimes accused educators of violating a supposed duty of political neutrality. Recht Solidarisch argues that teachers do not operate under a blanket rule requiring silence on political questions.

Saxony-Anhalt made the principles of the Beutelsbach Consensus binding for teachers through a state education ministry circular dated 30 January 2026, according to the project’s legal analysis.

Those principles prohibit teachers from overwhelming pupils with their own views. Controversial political issues should be presented as controversial, while students should be equipped to form their own positions.

Political restraint, in other words, is not the same thing as refusing to discuss democracy.

I find that distinction important because arguments about “neutrality” can sound administrative while carrying substantial political consequences.

For migrants, the issue reaches everyday life

Political discussions about the AfD often occur at a national level: migration numbers, coalition arithmetic or the future direction of Germany.

Daily life operates much closer to the ground.

A residence permit is processed by an office. A child attends a local school. A migrant association may depend on public funding. Someone attacked on a street needs a lawyer or counselling centre, not another television debate.

Recht Solidarisch devotes a substantial part of its platform to people seeking protection and those with migration backgrounds.

The wider environment helps explain why.

Miteinander e.V., a Saxony-Anhalt organisation that monitors right-wing violence, documented 281 right-wing, racist, antisemitic and queer-hostile attacks involving 414 directly affected people in 2024. That represented an 18 percent increase over 2023, according to its annual assessment.

Those figures come from an independent counselling and monitoring organisation rather than Germany’s complete official crime statistics, so they should be understood within that methodology.

They still describe something political polling cannot measure: the experience of people who become targets.

Legal preparation begins to look different from that perspective.

Knowing where to obtain advice after an attack matters. So does preserving evidence. Understanding the deadline for challenging an administrative decision can determine whether someone gets a hearing at all.

Law becomes practical very quickly when a government office sends a letter.

Germany’s institutions are about to be tested differently

For years, Germany’s response to the AfD centred partly on political containment.

Mainstream parties largely refused formal cooperation. Protesters mobilised when far-right influence appeared to expand. Germany’s domestic intelligence system also scrutinised extremist activity, while courts dealt with specific disputes.

Saxony-Anhalt has introduced another question.

What happens when a party with a radical programme wins 43.8 percent of the vote and seeks executive power?

The answer will not be decided by demonstrations alone.

A state government controls ministries and influences administration. It can change priorities. Funding decisions matter. Education policy can shift.

But Germany is not institutionally blank after an election.

The Basic Law remains. Federal statutes remain. EU law continues to apply where it has competence. Administrative courts can review government decisions.

Recht Solidarisch is effectively preparing civil society to operate inside those institutional channels.

Its inspiration is revealing.

The project’s organisers say they studied the American Civil Liberties Union’s preparation for Donald Trump’s second presidency. The ACLU had examined possible measures before Trump returned to office so that lawyers could react quickly when policies appeared.

Recht Solidarisch is trying to build a comparable capacity in Germany.

The analogy has limits. American constitutional litigation operates differently from German administrative and constitutional law. Germany also divides political authority between the federation and 16 Länder in ways that create their own legal pathways.

The strategic principle travels more easily than the legal model.

Do the legal homework before the government acts.

The courts cannot settle Germany’s political argument

There is a danger in viewing legal preparedness as a substitute for politics.

It is not.

Courts can determine whether an administrative order has adequate statutory authority. Judges can examine whether government action violates constitutional rights or applicable European law.

They cannot decide why 576,037 Saxony-Anhalt voters cast their second vote for the AfD.

Nor can litigation resolve the dissatisfaction that produced such an extraordinary electoral shift. The AfD increased its second-vote share by 23 percentage points compared with the previous state election, according to the official preliminary result.

Any serious examination of Germany’s political direction must confront those voters and the conditions behind the result.

Legal resistance therefore addresses only one side of the problem.

But it is an important side.

Democracy does not consist only of elections. Elections determine who receives political authority. Constitutional systems determine how that authority may be exercised.

The distinction becomes most visible when the two begin to collide.

Germany’s next political struggle may look surprisingly ordinary

I keep returning to those protest photographs.

Crowds make history visible. Lawyers usually do not.

A future confrontation over Germany’s democratic order may instead begin with an administrative letter arriving at someone’s home in Magdeburg. A migrant organisation could challenge a funding decision. A teacher might dispute disciplinary action. A refugee family could ask a court to review a residence restriction.

None would look dramatic at first.

Yet institutions are often tested through ordinary procedures before anyone recognises the historical significance of the test.

Recht Solidarisch does not tell us how German courts would decide every future dispute. Its legal analyses cannot guarantee outcomes, and its political orientation should remain visible to readers.

What the project does show is that part of German civil society has changed its assumptions.

The question is no longer simply whether the far right can win elections.

In Saxony-Anhalt, it already has.

The emerging question is harder: when electoral power enters government, where exactly does German law tell it to stop?

Germany may spend the coming years finding out.