Görlitz lies in the far east of Germany - and is well worth the trip. Just arriving in Görlitz gives you a preview of what awaits you in the city: overwhelmingly beautiful architecture. The first example is in the railway station entrance hall: a barrel-vaulted Art Nouveau ceiling spans the space. And the splendor continues...

The cityscape of Görlitz is characterised by striking towers such as the "Frauenturm". The tower at Marienplatz dates back to the 13th century and is called the Dicke because of its 5.34 meter thick walls. Almost all towers can be visited on the Görlitz Tower Tour.

Nowhere else in Germany is there such a concentration of well-preserved historic buildings from such diverse eras. The Untermarkt, or Lower Market, with its Renaissance buildings and town hall, is Görlitz's central square. The city escaped destruction In World War II, but decayed in the former East Germany. German reunification in 1990 brought rescue for more than 4000 historic buildings.

This photo shows the battered façade of Rosenstrasse 4, where Napoleon once slept. This how much of Görlitz looked before communism collapsed: decaying and grey. Now 80 percent of the historic buildings have been restored. Many millions in subsidies have flowed in, including from an anonymous donor who transferred a million Deutschmarks annually for 16 years and later 500,000 euros a year.

Among the greatest treasures in Görlitz's old town center are the Hall Houses. Most date from around 1500. Their main purpose was to serve as dwellings, business premises, exhibition venues and stockrooms for the town's wealthy cloth merchants. They are so exceptional that Görlitz is using them in its application for UNESCO world heritage status.

Görlitz has been nicknamed "Görliwood." The city has actually had the name trademarked. From 1950s movies produced by DEFA, the state-owned East German film company, to Hollywood productions in recent years - directors prize Görlitz as an ideal location. Here artificial snow covers the Lower Market during shooting for the film "Goethe."

Jewish businessman Louis Friedländer modeled his Art Nouveau department store "Zum Strauss" on the Berlin department store Wertheim. It's the only one of its era still in existence. Many people would recognize its splendid interior even though they haven't ever been there. Hollywood director Wes Anderson transformed it into a hotel with the charm of the 1920s in his film “Grand Budapest Hotel.”

The Baroque building at Neissstraße 30: not only are art and culture from the 16th to 19th centuries presented here; it also houses a historical library (pictured), a cabinet of physics and a mineral collection. All these institutions are united in the Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences, which has been located in this building since 1807.

Before World War II, Görlitz was one city on both sides of the river Neisse. Only after the war was it divided, retaining the name Görlitz in Germany and becoming Zgorzelec in Poland. Many bridges were blown up, and the Neisse became an impregnable border. In 2004, when Poland entered the EU, a new chapter began. The border installations were dismantled, and Europe began growing together here.

A view from Uferstrasse over the border river Neisse to the Polish city of Zgorzelec: since 2004 the reconstructed Altstadtbrücke (Old Town Bridge) has linked Görlitz and Zgorzelec. The bridge is a landmark and a symbol of how the cities are growing together. To the left and right of the Neisse, Brückenpark, a central area of shared parks, is being created to link them even more closely.

The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.

One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."

Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.

Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."

Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.

Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."

Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.