MARTIN ADAM „EKSPERYMENT"

What we can learn from Poland’s struggle against right-wing populism. Poland was quicker off the mark. In 2005 and 2015, the country elected a right-wing populist government led by the PiS party, at a time when Germany’s AfD was still in its infancy. Poland has experienced how rapidly and, above all, radically the foundations of democracy can be attacked and reshaped if a political force acts ruthlessly enough. Since then, it has become clear just how difficult it is to return to functioning institutions, balanced media coverage, and simply a constructive democratic culture. In “Eksperyment,” Martin Adam uses a mix of personal stories, accounts of encounters with people in Poland, and political observation and analysis to describe how things could have come to this, why Poland first chose PiS and then turned against it, and why it is so complicated to find a way back despite the new government. And it becomes clear: wanting to try out right-wing populism for a few years is a very dangerous experiment.

Martin Adam (*1986) has been engaged with Poland for 20 years. He studied in Erfurt, Berlin, and Wrocław, works as a freelance journalist primarily for rbb, and has hosted the German-Polish TV magazine “Kowalski & Schmidt.” Until September 2025, he was an ARD correspondent in Warsaw and host of the podcast “In Polen.”

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