Already before the ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015, the eastern regions of Germany had seen a rise in far-right protests, with PEGIDA as the most prominent example. It has only sometimes been noted that many leading far-right activists in eastern Germany were actually born and raised in western Germany, moving to the 'neue Bundesländer' in the 1990s or 2000s, where they established their careers as political activists. This paper focuses on a neglected research area in the study of social movements, which is the study of leadership and individual biographies of social movement activists. In doing so, the paper makes use of classical concepts from social movement studies that help to illuminate activists’ careers: What political opportunities did the eastern regions provide to activists? On which pre-existing organizations and other resources could these activists rely on? How was their move from the west to the west reflected in their framing of political issues? In doing so, the paper shows how ‘emigration’ facilitated far-right activism, whose main protagonists found a breeding ground in an area that struggled with the ‘transformation’ from state socialism to a market economy.
