The successor to Angela Merkel in the leadership of Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) urged the removal from the party of the country’s former spy chief for expressing far-right views. But she later appeared to retract her comments. Hans-Georg Maassen led Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) from August 2012 until his removal last September.
His BfV career was abruptly
terminated
following the so-called Chemnitz protests, a series of anti-immigrant
rallies, pogroms and riots that shook the eastern German city of
Chemnitz in August of last year. Maassen gave an interview at the time
in which he seemed to question the authenticity of videos that surfaced
on social media, which showed protesters throwing Nazi salutes and
singing Nazi-era songs. The BfV director said that the videos may have
been faked as part of a disinformation campaign aimed at stirring racial
tensions in Germany. He was promptly dismissed from his post.
Following his dismissal from the BfV,
Maassen joined the Werteunion (Values Union), an ultra-conservative
group within the CDU, which campaigns for strict anti-immigration laws.
Its leader, CDU politician Alexander Mitsch, argues that the CDU should
not rule out a governing alliance with the far-right Alternative for
Germany (AfD). The AfD is a coalition of Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant and
neo-Nazi groups that has gained prominence since its establishment in
2013 and currently polls at around 12 percent nationwide. Mitsch’s view
goes against the CDU’s recent decision at its annual conference to rule
out any collaboration with the AfD and Die Linke, Germany’s main
far-left party. Maassen has also given media interviews in which he has
criticized the CDU for “moving far to the left” under the leadership of
Angela Merkel.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who succeeded
Angela Merkel to the leadership of the CDU, and is tipped to become
Germany’s next chancellor, gave an interview
on Saturday, in which she dismissed Maassen’s views as nonsense.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is currently serving as minister of defense, told
the Funke Medien media agency she was pleased that Maassen had been
dismissed from the directorship of the BfV. She added that she could not
see anything in Maassen’s political views that connected him to the
CDU. Kramp-Karrenbauer went on to say that she would not allow the CDU
to be “radicalized from the inside” like the United States Republican
Party had been radicalized by the Tea Party. This was widely interpreted
as a call for Maassen and other Werteunion supporters to either resign
or be expelled from the party.
On Sunday, however, Kramp-Karrenbauer spoke to the media again,
this time to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) news agency, saying that
“neither during the [Funke Medien] interview nor elsewhere did I call
for a party expulsion procedure” of Maassen and other Werteunion
members. She continued by saying that “the CDU is a party with more than
400,000 members. The fact that each one has different opinions is what
makes us interesting”. Meanwhile, Maassen told DPA, “it is a mystery to
me who advised her to conjure up such thoughts”, referring to
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s Saturday interview.
In September and October the CDU will be
facing the AfD and several other parties in regional elections that will
be taking place in three eastern German states, where the AfD is
particularly strong. Many fear that Kramp-Karrenbauer’s party will see
its electoral power shrink with many of its voters flocking to the
anti-immigration AfD.
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