{"id":48267,"date":"2026-10-26T05:10:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T04:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=48267"},"modified":"2026-10-26T05:58:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T04:58:03","slug":"ein-afd-landesvorstand-will-goetz-kubitschek-nur-auf-eis-legen-bis-wieder-normale-verhaeltnisse-herrschen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/ein-afd-landesvorstand-will-goetz-kubitschek-nur-auf-eis-legen-bis-wieder-normale-verhaeltnisse-herrschen\/","title":{"rendered":"An AfD State Executive Wants to Put G\u00f6tz Kubitschek on Ice Only Until \u201cNormal Conditions\u201d Return"},"content":{"rendered":"

A farewell with a return ticket is an agreement to meet again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 D\u00fcsseldorf district chapter. It concerns G\u00f6tz Kubitschek, one of the most prominent figures on Germany's far right. Formal cooperation with him should be suspended, Neuhoff writes, \u201cuntil normal conditions return in Germany.\u201d He adds a remark in parentheses. \u201c(So I assume that will happen.)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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G\u00f6tz Kubitschek<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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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 Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke. Schnellroda supplied ideas to the so-called Wing faction surrounding H\u00f6cke, and Kubitschek drafted the 2015 Erfurt Resolution directed against the party leadership under Bernd Lucke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those ties go back a long way. What's new is how openly the party discusses maintaining them behind closed doors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dispute begins in Dortmund in late March 2025. Elmar Salinger, chairman of the D\u00fcsseldorf district chapter, attends a lecture by Kubitschek. Shortly afterward, speakers from his own party begin canceling their D\u00fcsseldorf 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 \u201cspeaking ban\u201d affecting the district chapter, the D\u00fcsseldorf officials write. In writing, he had expressed regret over the \u201csquabbles\u201d and explicitly identified the state executive board as being involved. According to the minutes, Kris Schnappertz, then a member of the D\u00fcsseldorf district executive board and also press spokesman for the state party organization, had confirmed this at an executive board meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cfatwa,\u201d and about \u201crumblings\u201d 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 Gro\u00df had already canceled his appearance. Personal conversations with the state chairman likewise failed to produce any agreement to end these \u201coverreaching practices.\u201d The D\u00fcsseldorf officials speak of \u201chostilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201chighly questionable activities\u201d directed against state lawmaker Sven Tritschler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cintrigue\u201d 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 \u201can enemy\u201d by the state chairman's office, while Vincentz was waging a \u201cjihad\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kris Schnappertz, now known as Kris von Gierke<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A fatwa in April, a jihad in July. For its internal wars, a party that warns against Islam borrows its vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 B\u00fcrgerhaus Bilk community center. The lecture is titled \u201cThe First 100 Days - A Vision.\u201d 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 D\u00fcsseldorf bothered to ask what kind of order that might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 24, a spokesman for the state executive board spoke publicly to a news website. \u201cMr. Kubitschek is not an AfD member and does not represent the AfD's values.\u201d Another event in Bonn had reportedly been unknown to the executive board until then. The party's D\u00fcsseldorf colleagues would be urged to cancel their event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 D\u00fcsseldorf 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next day, at 2:57 p.m., the district chapter responded. Subject: \u201cURGENT - Clarification Regarding Kubitschek and the D\u00fcsseldorf Speaking Bans.\u201d The salutation offers a small group portrait of the party. \u201cDear members of the AfD North Rhine-Westphalia State Executive Board, dear Alice Weidel, dear Tino Chrupalla.\u201d Both federal party chairpersons appear in the email recipients under their own addresses, while the letterhead bears the notation \u201cFor the attention of the AfD federal party chairpersons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district chapter is in the middle of the local election campaign, the letter begins, focused on \u201csubstantive political work\u201d and mobilizing \u201cthe broadest possible sections of the electorate.\u201d All the more reason, the district executive board says, for it to view another interference in its operations \u201cwith great and growing irritation,\u201d another case of \u201cdestructive internal party agitation\u201d carried out through the press instead of through direct discussion. \u201cOverreaching activities must cease immediately.\u201d The state executive board's spokesman, \u201cpresumably Schnappertz,\u201d is being paid from the membership dues of all party members to make \u201cstatute-violating and overreaching statements.\u201d No letter from the state executive board has arrived. \u201cWas this decided by the state executive board? What is the justification?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the D\u00fcsseldorf officials play their strongest card. Neuhoff himself had already been a guest of Kubitschek, \u201cas had other leading politicians in the party, such as Ms. Weidel or Mr. Krah.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The district executive board fundamentally rejects \u201cspeaking bans,\u201d 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 D\u00fcsseldorf. Its guiding principles, it says, are \u201cthematic relevance, outspoken free debate and public political value,\u201d and it is committed to \u201cdialogue across political camps\u201d 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 \u201cspeaking bans\u201d do not become a means of disciplining party officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final sentence before the signature reads: \u201cIn the hope of greater moderation in the future, I remain yours sincerely.\u201d It is signed by Salinger, the man who sat in the audience in Dortmund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The appeal for moderation comes, of all places, from the district chapter determined to put a right-wing extremist behind a lectern.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 hours later, Neuhoff replies to Salinger and the state executive board. To \u201cput things in perspective,\u201d 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, \u201calso to protect the party.\u201d Immediately afterward comes the qualification, written in capital letters: That does \u201cNOT\u201d mean he considers the institute's classification \u201cfactually justified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest is statecraft in a waiting room. It is wiser, he writes, to harbor no illusions about \u201cthe realities and the existing power structures.\u201d The party's welfare must take precedence over \u201cpersonal wishes.\u201d The AfD's continued existence is \u201cby no means as secure as one might believe when looking at our poll numbers.\u201d From there comes the sentence with the parenthetical remark. Kubitschek, whom he still appreciates \u201cin many respects,\u201d complete with an exclamation mark, should accept that it would be \u201cobjectively better for the AfD if we went our separate ways for a while.\u201d 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: \u201cYou can still order and read books from the Antaios publishing house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideology stays on the bookshelf. Only the publisher has to go outside, and even then, only until further notice.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cnormal.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same email, without any transition, comes a paragraph about a word. \u201cOne more word about remigration.\u201d As a supplementary term alongside deportation and repatriation, which involve state coercion, the expression is \u201cindeed suitable.\u201d Remigration could describe returning to one's country of origin \u201cby personal choice,\u201d for example \u201cbecause the incentives to remain here in Germany or in Europe have become too weak.\u201d That would reflect the meaning of the word, the reversal of migration, which had likewise occurred by personal choice. As an \u201cUMBRELLA TERM\u201d 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, \u201cyou can still order and read.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One word stands out as it circulates through the party that summer. Neuhoff stopped visiting Schnellroda \u201cto protect the party.\u201d 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 \u201cprotection of the entire AfD.\u201d In both cases, what is being protected is the party from the consequences of its associations. The associations themselves are never called into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the email comes a note on his own decision. He had \u201cremoved the federal party chairpersons from the reply recipients,\u201d because he knew that neither wanted to be \u201cbothered with such internal NRW matters\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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