{"id":40415,"date":"2026-07-05T04:26:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T02:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=40415"},"modified":"2026-07-05T14:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T12:10:11","slug":"erfurt-hundert-jahre-danach-der-zirkus-in-einer-verlorenen-zeit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/erfurt-hundert-jahre-danach-der-zirkus-in-einer-verlorenen-zeit\/","title":{"rendered":"Erfurt, One Hundred Years Later - The Circus in a Lost Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some places carry their memory like a scar, and anyone who chooses them also chooses what they remember. The AfD selected Erfurt for its federal party conference on the first weekend of July, the very city where the NSDAP gathered exactly one hundred years ago. People may argue about how much intention can be hidden in a date on the calendar, but Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald Memorial, left no room for doubt on the sidelines of the protests. He said it was certainly no coincidence, and that he found it repulsive. Nothing needs to be added to that statement. A party that has been officially classified in part as confirmed right wing extremist has chosen to gather on ground where German history once began to slide into catastrophe, while insisting at the same time that it is nothing more than a party like any other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The opening unfolded as a carefully staged display of self discipline. At exactly ten o'clock the party conference began, and that punctuality was not an organizational detail but the first message. Tino Chrupalla, the party's co chairman, immediately turned it into a victory over his opponents. Antifa, he mocked, had overslept its own attempt to disrupt the event. The early bird catches the worm. What sounded like a harmless proverb was, in reality, the central idea of the entire weekend. A party whose conventions had for years dissolved into internal conflict now wanted to project the exact opposite. Order. Reliability. The calm face of a mainstream party. We are more united than ever before, Chrupalla declared, and that sentence was less a description than a carefully chosen costume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Yet beneath that costume, the old face remained clearly visible. The leadership duo of Chrupalla and Alice Weidel was confirmed, but the numbers revealed more than the leadership would have liked. Weidel received eighty one percent, surpassing even her result from two years ago. Chrupalla, by contrast, fell to seventy percent, roughly ten points below the result he achieved at the party conference in Essen. He accepted it with the strained optimism of someone trying to turn a bruise into a medal, declaring that they had won two to one rather than two to zero. The crack, however, remains, a quiet warning delivered by his own delegates right in the middle of the carefully choreographed display of unity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That day, Weidel demonstrated how to wrap harshness in soft cotton. We will carry out rigorous deportations, she said, because Germany deserves better. That single sentence contains the entire strategy of the new AfD. The severity remains untouched, but it dresses itself in the language of concern for the country, as though this were about care rather than exclusion. Weidel called 2026 a super election year and prepared the delegates for victories and their first milestones. More remarkable, however, was what was missing. Migration, for years the beating heart of every AfD speech, stepped into the background. In its place came the word energy, a term that sounds far less threatening and fits comfortably into more living rooms. That, too, is a disguise. The party now chooses its issues according to how broadly they appeal, no longer according to how provocative they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

It is therefore no surprise that the real winner of the conference was not the loudest voice but the smoothest one. Ulrich Siegmund, thirty five years old and the party's lead candidate in Saxony Anhalt, represents a highly troubling new generation that remains uncompromising in substance while becoming polished in appearance. After the state election in September, he could become the first AfD politician to enter government. Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke, meanwhile, the far right leader of the party in Thuringia, has officially accepted the brown political sideline, yet now operates as the leader in the shadows, a role that not only suits him but describes him perfectly. His close ally Stefan M\u00f6ller, co leader of the state organization and a member of the Bundestag, was elected one of the deputy federal chairmen with just over seventy six percent of the vote. H\u00f6cke's influence therefore continues to grow while he himself remains in the half light, and that is precisely what makes it more difficult to grasp. Anyone who no longer needs to stand at the front in order to shape events has reached the more dangerous form of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u00f6ller made every effort to present himself as the moderate voice, yet in doing so delivered a sentence that revealed more than he intended. He said he had been with H\u00f6cke for twelve years and married for twelve years, just not to each other, and insisted that he certainly was no puppet. At the same time, he described what he claimed was the transformation of his party. Between 2015 and 2017, he said, demonstrators had still chanted that all migrants had to leave. Today, however, they understood that their own voters were not demanding that at all. It is the language of redemption, yet it describes no genuine change, only a calculation. The ideology has not changed. Only its packaging has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How fragile that packaging really is became clear whenever the script fell apart. Kay Gottschalk, the outgoing deputy chairman who refused to step aside quietly, seriously blamed the defeats of Germany's national soccer team on open borders. Before the borders were opened, he claimed, the old squad would have swept Ecuador and Paraguay aside. The statement is so absurd that it almost invites laughter, until it becomes clear that it exposes the mindset still beating beneath the polished exterior. Gottschalk lost the contested vote to Sven Tritschler, who argued for moderation, modernization, and organizational structures worthy of a mainstream party. Throughout the day, a quiet struggle unfolded between those who wanted to manage radicalism and those who still preferred to display it openly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

If one party incites the people against outsiders while the government simultaneously strips the public of its ability to hold that party accountable, two paths meet at the same point. The AfD promises purity and delivers enemies. Germany's governing coalition promises order while dismantling the transparency that makes any order accountable in the first place. Anyone who turns off the public light never does so by accident. In confronting Trump's America, we learned how that story ends, where taking a photograph can land someone in detention and a sentence posted online can bring federal agents to the front door. Darkness never begins with the prohibition of seeing. It begins with becoming accustomed to no longer wanting to see.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read also our article: An American, an Artist, a Friend - and Suddenly Gone<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most revealing, however, was what the leadership prevented from happening in the first place. At the very beginning, a motion concerning the so called incompatibility list quietly disappeared from the agenda. That list identifies organizations whose former members are barred from joining the party, whether they come from the far left or the far right. Some delegates, including H\u00f6cke, wanted to weaken those rules and had signed a proposal that would significantly loosen the restrictions. An open debate would have handed the party another public image of its own extremism just before important elections, so the issue was postponed. Weidel recommended that the newly elected executive board revise the list within one year, while at the same time criticizing the fact that this should have happened long ago. Radicalization, therefore, is not being prevented. It is merely being scheduled, delayed until after the elections, when public attention has already moved elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

While the party inside carefully polished its image of order and unity, the real story of the weekend unfolded outside. At its peak, police counted as many as thirty one thousand people protesting against the party conference through demonstrations, rallies, and church services. Luisa Neubauer and Christoph Bautz of Campact described the protests as a festival of resilient democracy. According to Neubauer, they had prevented the conference from passing quietly, proving that resistance to the AfD remains deeply rooted in civil society. DGB Chair Yasmin Fahimi appeared, as did former state premier Bodo Ramelow, who declared that Erfurt stands for freedom, diversity, and a shared colorful life. Above the city, a small airplane towed a banner simply stating that Nazis are annoying, while demonstrators unfurled a large rainbow flag outside the convention center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n