I have to admit I am getting a bit tired of Germansplaining AfD, and I sometimes wonder if you’re just as fed up reading about “the rise of the far right” as well – even after Herbert Kickl’s victory in Austria.
There are reasonable voices criticising the media for what feels like an obsession with far right (and far left) politicians, thus giving a ton of free publicity to the Extremism Inc. brand. This said, what happened in Thuringia’s state parliament deserves a closer look.
For some context: Thuringia is famous for Martin Luther, who translated the New Testament at Wartburg Castle, threw an inkpot at the devil and nailed his 95 theses to Wittenberg’s church door (actually he didn’t, but let’s not get distracted by facts). It’s also where Goethe and Schiller got wrapped up in Sturm, Drang and Weimar classicism. Oh, and Thuringia has the best bratwurst (although Nürnberg might have something to say about that).
Thuringia has a rich cultural history, tops the charts in education rankings, and is doing better economically than other parts of east Germany.
But as of last month, its claim to fame is that AfD, with its notorious local chairman Björn Höcke, came out strongest in the state election, with 32.8%. This is miles ahead of the CDU (23.6%), the anti-war, social-nationalist BSW (15.8%), the far left Linkspartei (13.1%) and SPD, the chancellor’s social democrats, at a measly 6.1%.
A week ago, parliament held its inaugural session. Usually it’s a pretty formal affair, no drama, no surprises. And yet in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, what should have been standard protocol turned into a farce, engineered by AfD.
Enter 73-year-old engineer Jürgen Treutler, the oldest member of Thuringia’s parliament, whom the AfD allegedly picked as a candidate for that very reason. The oldest MP gets the special ceremonial title of alterspräsident (father of the house), which means Methuselah gets to open the first plenary session and run the show until a proper präsident of the Landtag is elected.
Now, the largest faction usually gets to nominate the landtagspräsident. And AfD intended to put forward 38-year-old Wiebke Muhsal.
The problem? She’s a convicted fraudster. She was found guilty of backdating the start of an employee’s contract in her MP’s office by two months to milk extra cash for office gear and a mobile phone.
No doubt even with a clean criminal record, the other factions were never going to vote for an AfD president. Instead, they agreed on a CDU MP, but to officially nominate him for the first round of voting required an amendment of the parliament’s rules of procedure. Here’s where Herr Treutler comes in, on his first day in parliament.
The thing about parliament is, by nature, it is its own boss. Treutler, by party affiliation, wasn’t having that.
Rather than doing the ceremonial bit and moving the house agenda along he went rogue, gave a lengthy political speech and accused the media of having “open contempt for the people”. It’s safe to assume the speech was written by Herr Höcke.
Once it was over, Treutler refused to allow any motions or votes from the floor, and banged on with AfD’s course of action.
Hours of ignominious seesaw ensued. Treutler paused the session six times, huddled with his AfD mates, issued calls to order to other MPs (again, not his job as ceremonial alterspräsident) and obstructed parliamentary progress. A CDU MP even accused him of machtergreifung (power grab), a term historically linked to Hitler’s rise to power.
After hours of wrangling, the CDU called in Thuringia’s constitutional court in Weimar. Which of course made all the difference.
In a crystal-clear ruling, Treutler was ordered to follow procedure. A temporary injunction forced him to allow MPs to vote according to their wishes, not his. And in the next session, he begrudgingly complied.
The judges also threw some shade on the whole alterspräsident-thing, noting that the “connection to age was based “on the outdated historical expectation that age and the dignity attributed to it are guarantees for the authority necessary to hold office”. Outdated, indeed.
AfD, as usual, has resorted to the victim card, crying about “the system” and biased judges. Speaking of judges: in Thuringia and Brandenburg, AfD gains mean that they can veto new constitutional judges.
So last week was just a taste of future mayhem for democracy. And unfortunately for us, we cannot just chase it away with an inkwell like Luther did.
