The Return of the Lead Chamber – A Visit to the Worldview of Lukas Courtial

There are places where time seems to stand still. Not in a poetic way, like a sunset over the Eifel, but in an oppressive, shabby way – like a musty local museum where someone has locked out the 21st century and instead preserved “kitchen, church, children” under glass. One of these places is apparently named Lukas Courtial. The man, who presents himself on X as the CEO of a company, is active in the AfD Bitburg, and proudly describes himself as an “FSSPX catechumen” – which likely means he sympathizes with the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X – posted a sentence that sounds as if it came from a schoolbook from 1933: “Women should not study if they want a first-class man and a happy family.” This is not a joke. This is the serious conviction of a man who apparently confuses the internet with a confessional booth.

Courtial’s sentence is not only misogynistic but also intellectually subterranean. In the world of this self-proclaimed guardian of values, education is apparently dangerous – at least when it is in female hands. A woman with a degree, he seems to believe, is about as capable of a relationship as a burning witch – a threat to home and hearth, a danger to the “first-class manhood” he apparently imagines like a tailored suit from the Adenauer era. That Courtial feels at home specifically in the AfD Bitburg is hardly surprising. The party, whose members regularly ask what was so wrong with “National Socialism,” offers exactly the ideological climate in which such regressions flourish like mold on warm butter. Bitburg thereby unintentionally becomes the backdrop for an ideological structure that sounds more like a caliphate than a democracy – just with a German flag and a retro filter.

You could laugh if it weren’t so bitter. Because behind the pose of the respectable family man lies a project – the deliberate re-traditionalization of public life. Women to the stove, children to prayer, men to power. What sounds like a Twitter gag is in fact a political strategy – disguised as freedom of expression, fueled by religious fundamentalism, and digitally disseminated by men who apparently never learned to deal with equality. And for those wondering what Courtial actually does for a living, the term “requirement engineer” in his profile may help – a person who defines requirements. Apparently, among his requirements are that women remain ignorant, men remain superior, and families remain happy – as long as no one disagrees. Lukas Courtial is not an isolated case. He is a symptom – a symptom of that toxic mix of Catholic dogma, right-wing paranoia, and male insecurity that is settling into the AfD like a new creed. One that doesn’t just dismantle democracy but aims to suffocate women’s right to think. And if we’re not careful, madness will become ideology – and ideology will become law.