German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has expressed concern about the recent surge in polls for Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
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At the same time, he warned against protest voting, which is when people spoil their votes to express dissatisfaction with political trends.
"Every voter takes responsibility for what he or she does," Steinmeier said in a summer interview with broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.
This also applies, he said, if one "strengthens a party that contributes to the brutalisation of the debate."
The AfD has traditionally been on the fringes of German politics. Recently, however, an intense political debate has sprung up in Germany about the rise of the far-right.
"We must not encourage the business of fear-mongers in this society any further," warned the president.
"What we need is not a boom of fear-mongers, but a boom of problem-solvers. And it's not as if we don't have any of those."
The anti-immigration AfD is currently polling at around 20 per cent nationwide. These record-levels in popularity even surpass the popularity of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.
Particularly in eastern Germany, the far-right party is climbing in popularity. The AfD won its first election for district administrator in the state of Thuringia in June, when Robert Sesselmann was elected in Sonneberg. He was the first AfD candidate to win an election of this kind.
That was followed by a first-time victory in winning a full-time mayor's seat in a small town in the nearby state of Saxony-Anhalt.
In Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony, where new state parliaments will be elected in just over a year, the AfD is currently the strongest party in each of the current polls.
"Yes, the polls are worrying," Steinmeier said.
"But they must not lead us to automatically classify every critical question as populism and right-wing extremism."
If larger parts of the electorate turn away from the governing parties and the largest opposition party does not gain from this, this raises questions, he said.
Steinmeier added that governing parties must ask themselves if they are addressing the right issues adequately.
Australian Associated Press
