‘Crime is out of hand’: how young people turned to far right in east German city

Brandenburg an der Havel is about an hour by train from central Berlin. The far-right AfD party took 27.5% of the vote in the wider state of Brandenburg in the European parliamentary elections. Photograph: Peter Schickert/Alamy

Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.

“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.