An AfD State Executive Wants to Put Götz Kubitschek on Ice Only Until “Normal Conditions” Return

A farewell with a return ticket is an agreement to meet again.

On August 25, 2025, at 7:01 p.m., Hans Neuhoff, a professor of music sociology and a member of the AfD's North Rhine-Westphalia state executive board, sends an email to the party's Düsseldorf district chapter. It concerns Götz Kubitschek, one of the most prominent figures on Germany's far right. Formal cooperation with him should be suspended, Neuhoff writes, “until normal conditions return in Germany.” He adds a remark in parentheses. “(So I assume that will happen.)”

We have now fully analyzed and preserved the email correspondence, which appears further down in this article. The dispute concerns a right-wing extremist. Hardly a word is said about his ideology, while the right time to make public appearances together receives considerably more attention.

Kubitschek, born in 1970, lives in Schnellroda in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. In 2000, he co-founded the Institute for State Policy there, and over the years the village became a pilgrimage site for the far right. Lectures and political writings spread from there. The Antaios publishing house established its own distribution channel for books that define the nation and its people in ethnic terms and attack liberal democracy. In April 2023, Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the institute as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization. In 2024, the organization running it dissolved, but the surrounding network remained. The domestic intelligence agency also classifies the Antaios publishing house as confirmed right-wing extremist. Its publications include books by Martin Sellner, the leading figure of the Identitarian Movement, as well as a book by Maximilian Krah, then an AfD member of the European Parliament. Kubitschek has a long history with Björn Höcke. Schnellroda supplied ideas to the so-called Wing faction surrounding Höcke, and Kubitschek drafted the 2015 Erfurt Resolution directed against the party leadership under Bernd Lucke.

Those ties go back a long way. What's new is how openly the party discusses maintaining them behind closed doors.

The dispute begins in Dortmund in late March 2025. Elmar Salinger, chairman of the Düsseldorf district chapter, attends a lecture by Kubitschek. Shortly afterward, speakers from his own party begin canceling their Düsseldorf appearances. Events scheduled for April 15 and May 26 have to be reorganized. Peter Boehringer, a deputy federal party chairman, had reportedly told them when asked that he had heard of a “speaking ban” affecting the district chapter, the Düsseldorf officials write. In writing, he had expressed regret over the “squabbles” and explicitly identified the state executive board as being involved. According to the minutes, Kris Schnappertz, then a member of the Düsseldorf district executive board and also press spokesman for the state party organization, had confirmed this at an executive board meeting.

As early as April 11, according to the district executive board, Salinger had informed state chairman Martin Vincentz in writing about threats, including talk of a “fatwa,” and about “rumblings” coming from Schnappertz, who has since changed his name to Kris von Gierke. No written response ever arrived. Instead, on April 12, the state party's press spokesman reportedly called and once again announced Boehringer's cancellation. Boehringer subsequently did cancel in writing. Carsten Groß had already canceled his appearance. Personal conversations with the state chairman likewise failed to produce any agreement to end these “overreaching practices.” The Düsseldorf officials speak of “hostilities.”

The dispute escalates throughout May and June. A petition by party members forces an extraordinary party convention on June 28, 2025, where Schnappertz and 2 allies are voted out. In July, according to the district executive board, he attracts attention through “highly questionable activities” directed against state lawmaker Sven Tritschler.

There is more behind this than a local party dispute. Schnappertz had spoken for both the parliamentary group and the state party organization for years and is considered a close confidant of Vincentz. Tritschler, the deputy state party chairman, accused him of an “intrigue” in a 7-page document circulated on a Sunday in July to fellow parliamentary group members and to Weidel and Chrupalla. Schnappertz had allegedly tried to obtain compromising material about him and pressured an assistant to spy on him. He had been marked “an enemy” by the state chairman's office, while Vincentz was waging a “jihad” against parts of the party. Schnappertz denies all allegations, and whether they are true remains unresolved. On July 25, the parliamentary group suspended him from his duties and demanded the return of his work equipment. At the same time, it offered to discuss a mutually agreed termination of his employment. Party members filed a motion to expel him, but the party arbitration tribunal rejected it. Vincentz remained silent.

A fatwa in April, a jihad in July. For its internal wars, a party that warns against Islam borrows its vocabulary.

Schnappertz nevertheless remained spokesman for the state executive board, including in August. He now goes by Kris von Gierke and, according to our research, remains active in the AfD's North Rhine-Westphalia circles.

Then comes the event at the center of everything. For September 15, 2025, immediately after the local elections, the district chapter invites Kubitschek to the Bürgerhaus Bilk community center. The lecture is titled “The First 100 Days - A Vision.” Kubitschek will offer important ideas for the future of Germany and the AfD, the district chapter promises. A man whose institute the domestic intelligence agency classifies as confirmed right-wing extremist is therefore supposed to explain what should happen during the first 100 days of a new political order. Apparently, nobody in Düsseldorf bothered to ask what kind of order that might be.

On August 24, a spokesman for the state executive board spoke publicly to a news website. “Mr. Kubitschek is not an AfD member and does not represent the AfD's values.” Another event in Bonn had reportedly been unknown to the executive board until then. The party's Düsseldorf colleagues would be urged to cancel their event.

The spokesman remained unnamed. The district executive board suspects Schnappertz, who was still spokesman for the state executive board that day, 30 days after the parliamentary group had shown him the door. Whether he personally formulated those statements cannot be established from the documents. Something else is documented. The Düsseldorf officials explicitly asked whether the state executive board had adopted a resolution and, if so, on what grounds. No answer appears anywhere in the correspondence. Neither does a resolution.

The only public rejection of Kubitschek by the North Rhine-Westphalia AfD was therefore unsupported by any executive board resolution documented in the correspondence, and no spokesman put his name behind it. The man who spoke may well have been someone whose own position was already crumbling. Vincentz, whose close confidant Schnappertz is considered to be, said nothing. What an elected member of the state executive board actually thought appeared in an email the following day.

The next day, at 2:57 p.m., the district chapter responded. Subject: “URGENT - Clarification Regarding Kubitschek and the Düsseldorf Speaking Bans.” The salutation offers a small group portrait of the party. “Dear members of the AfD North Rhine-Westphalia State Executive Board, dear Alice Weidel, dear Tino Chrupalla.” Both federal party chairpersons appear in the email recipients under their own addresses, while the letterhead bears the notation “For the attention of the AfD federal party chairpersons.”

The district chapter is in the middle of the local election campaign, the letter begins, focused on “substantive political work” and mobilizing “the broadest possible sections of the electorate.” All the more reason, the district executive board says, for it to view another interference in its operations “with great and growing irritation,” another case of “destructive internal party agitation” carried out through the press instead of through direct discussion. “Overreaching activities must cease immediately.” The state executive board's spokesman, “presumably Schnappertz,” is being paid from the membership dues of all party members to make “statute-violating and overreaching statements.” No letter from the state executive board has arrived. “Was this decided by the state executive board? What is the justification?”

Then the Düsseldorf officials play their strongest card. Neuhoff himself had already been a guest of Kubitschek, “as had other leading politicians in the party, such as Ms. Weidel or Mr. Krah.” Kubitschek had also attended the party convention in Riesa. The logic is simple and hard to refute: What is tolerated in Schnellroda and Riesa can hardly be forbidden in Bilk. The district chapter defends itself by invoking the party's own leadership. It cites the federal chairwoman as evidence that keeping company with Kubitschek has long been common practice within the AfD.

The district executive board fundamentally rejects “speaking bans,” coercion and acts of sabotage. Its members work on a voluntary basis and have even had to go to court to secure the use of public venues for AfD events in Düsseldorf. Its guiding principles, it says, are “thematic relevance, outspoken free debate and public political value,” and it is committed to “dialogue across political camps” and establishing the AfD as a people's party. The federal party chairpersons are asked to intervene with the state executive board to ensure that “speaking bans” do not become a means of disciplining party officials.

The final sentence before the signature reads: “In the hope of greater moderation in the future, I remain yours sincerely.” It is signed by Salinger, the man who sat in the audience in Dortmund.

The appeal for moderation comes, of all places, from the district chapter determined to put a right-wing extremist behind a lectern.

4 hours later, Neuhoff replies to Salinger and the state executive board. To “put things in perspective,” he first lays out his own record. He gave his first lecture at the Institute for State Policy in September 2022 and his second in March 2023. Since its classification in April 2023, he has not appeared there again, “also to protect the party.” Immediately afterward comes the qualification, written in capital letters: That does “NOT” mean he considers the institute's classification “factually justified.”

The rest is statecraft in a waiting room. It is wiser, he writes, to harbor no illusions about “the realities and the existing power structures.” The party's welfare must take precedence over “personal wishes.” The AfD's continued existence is “by no means as secure as one might believe when looking at our poll numbers.” From there comes the sentence with the parenthetical remark. Kubitschek, whom he still appreciates “in many respects,” complete with an exclamation mark, should accept that it would be “objectively better for the AfD if we went our separate ways for a while.” The party would lose nothing, and Kubitschek would gain nothing substantial from 2 or 3 lectures at district chapters anyway. Then, almost as an afterthought: “You can still order and read books from the Antaios publishing house.”

The ideology stays on the bookshelf. Only the publisher has to go outside, and even then, only until further notice.

The day before, an unnamed spokesman had declared on behalf of the state executive board that Kubitschek did not share the AfD's values. Now an elected member of that same board considers the classification of Kubitschek's institute unjustified, openly expresses his appreciation for the man and recommends continuing to read his publisher's books. Nobody has withdrawn the public distancing. Apparently, it carried little weight anyway. One word is missing from this email: objection. Not a single sentence challenges Kubitschek's ideology. The separation is justified entirely by the party's circumstances. Neuhoff does not explain which conditions he considers “normal.” Conditions in which the domestic intelligence agency reaches a different conclusion? Or conditions in which nobody cares about its conclusions anymore? All that is certain is his conviction that those conditions will return.

The parentheses reveal more than the sentence preceding them. A prediction needs no parentheses. A hope does. Neuhoff writes it down like a weather forecast for the republic, without a date but with an unshakable belief that the weather will change. Until then, the present is treated as a state of exception to be waited out. Normal, by that reasoning, would be a time when a man like Kubitschek could be invited again without anyone asking why.

In the same email, without any transition, comes a paragraph about a word. “One more word about remigration.” As a supplementary term alongside deportation and repatriation, which involve state coercion, the expression is “indeed suitable.” Remigration could describe returning to one's country of origin “by personal choice,” for example “because the incentives to remain here in Germany or in Europe have become too weak.” That would reflect the meaning of the word, the reversal of migration, which had likewise occurred by personal choice. As an “UMBRELLA TERM” for all forms of return, however, it is unsuitable. The decision Neuhoff describes is therefore made where someone has already removed the reasons for staying. He does not say which incentives are supposed to disappear. Voluntariness under conditions imposed by others has a name in plain English: pressure. Sellner's book on remigration was published by Antaios, the same publisher whose books, according to Neuhoff, “you can still order and read.”

One word stands out as it circulates through the party that summer. Neuhoff stopped visiting Schnellroda “to protect the party.” On May 8, 2025, the federal executive board had circulated guidance to the civil servants within its ranks, instructing members to use language consistent with the constitution, explicitly for the “protection of the entire AfD.” In both cases, what is being protected is the party from the consequences of its associations. The associations themselves are never called into question.

At the end of the email comes a note on his own decision. He had “removed the federal party chairpersons from the reply recipients,” because he knew that neither wanted to be “bothered with such internal NRW matters” and that they had more important things to do. Weidel and Chrupalla had received the complaint. The reply containing the sentence about normal conditions was initially not sent to them.

Salinger refuses to let the matter rest and copies both of them back in, with Neuhoff's email and its parenthetical remark included below in the thread. Neuhoff's reply, he says, fails to explain why the state executive board is communicating with the district chapter through a news website instead of using established internal channels. Since people have repeatedly been “interfering” with the chapter's invitations and the behavior appears systematic, he is involving the federal leadership again. Such conduct must “under no circumstances become standard practice.”

Then he broadens his argument. The “political-media ‘battle zone’” has supposedly expanded so far that even local election candidates are being disqualified for writing reviews of Tolkien or discussing films about the Nibelungs. In the case of Neuhoff's fellow executive board member Uwe Detert, merely being accused of spreading “conspiracy theories” is supposedly enough to have him excluded. In July 2025, Salinger says, he personally witnessed the state electoral committee in NRW exclude the candidate of a small party in Leverkusen, partly because of criticism of mosque construction, even though the man had previously been approved many times as a candidate for mayor.

He “gratefully acknowledges” Neuhoff's remarks about Kubitschek, his appearances in Schnellroda and his assessment of the domestic intelligence agency. But in view of the “increasingly ridiculous public situation,” he sees no reason to “artificially bend over backward and indulge in accusations of guilt by association.” Tolkien and the Nibelungs thus become his star witnesses to a campaign of persecution, with a publisher from Schnellroda at its center.

Here are 2 AfD politicians facing each other, and they agree about Kubitschek. One wants to keep him at arm's length until conditions become more favorable. The other wants to put him on public display immediately because he considers the current conditions ridiculous. Salinger calls it guilt by association, what elsewhere would simply be called keeping company, and refuses to deny it. Neuhoff does not even deny it. He postpones it. Neither engages with Kubitschek's ideas anywhere in the entire correspondence. The thread contains no reply from Weidel or Chrupalla.

On September 15, 2025, Götz Kubitschek arrived at the Bürgerhaus Bilk community center. More than 500 people protested outside the building, demonstrators temporarily blocked the access road, and police secured the location. Kubitschek made it inside and delivered his lecture. Inside, AfD supporters listened to what a right-wing extremist envisioned for the first 100 days. Outside stood part of the city, inside stood the party, and between them was a line of police officers. There was little sign that evening of the dialogue across political camps the district executive board had so proudly invoked. Meanwhile, the event was listed on the AfD North Rhine-Westphalia website as a “Citizens' Dialogue.” The same state party organization whose spokesman had declared that Kubitschek did not represent the party's values was advertising his appearance on its own events calendar. The no went to the press. The yes went into the party's own calendar.

Read also our article: Investigative Report: The AfD Begged Trump for Favors and Teaches Its Civil Servants How to Sound Constitutionally Compliant

Distance for public display, closeness for practical use. A party that now adjusts its ties to right-wing extremism according to the political weather, while otherwise deliberately cultivating and tolerating those ties, provides its own justification for why proceedings to ban the party are more than warranted.

Neuhoff had advised waiting until normal conditions returned. The Düsseldorf district chapter did not wait. For them, apparently, those conditions were already here.

To be continued ...