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The German constituency, which was held by Angela Merkel for the last 30 years, has become a 27-year-old politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
In the constituency of Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I, the outgoing Chancellor had continuously won a direct mandate since his founding after reunification in 1990.
Her successor, however, will not come from her party, but from her historical rival: Anna Kassautzki of the SPD secured the seat on the Baltic coast with 24.3% of the first votes, thereby improving her party’s performance by 12.7 percentage points.
Merkel’s designated successor in the circle, the 33-year-old tax auditor Georg Günther, took second place with 20.4% of the first votes.
“I feel incredibly honored,” said Kassautzki. “We delivered a team effort.”
The politician, born in Heidelberg in 1993, is the district chairman of the Young Socialists and works at the University of Greifswald, where she heads a service team for family support.
Kassautzki says she is inspired by social injustice and describes herself as a committed feminist and European in her Twitter biography. “If we want to move our country forward, we have to ask the top 10% to pay more instead of courting them,” she wrote on her campaign website.
The 27-year-old’s triumph is representative of a broader change of power in northeast Germany, in which the SPD has succeeded in turning every single constituency in the federal states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and, in parallel state elections, in the latter and in Berlin.
