The leader of Germany’s powerful state of Bavaria has said he will not dismiss his deputy despite a row over an antisemitic leaflet which he admitted having carried in his school satchel as a teenager.
Markus Söder said it would not be proportionate to sack Hubert Aiwanger, a move that would have upended the ruling coalition in the southern state six weeks before a regional election.
Aiwanger, the leader of the populist Free Voters, who are the junior coalition partner to Söder’s conservative CSU, has faced days of controversy over Nazi pamphlets found in his schoolbag in the late 1980s.
Söder said at a press conference on Sunday that he had not taken the decision lightly.
He said he had followed a “deliberate process” that was fair and orderly.
Aiwanger had made serious mistakes in his youth, but he had credibly distanced himself from them and apologised, Söder said. Nor was there any proof that Aiwanger had created or distributed the leaflet, he said.
Aiwanger’s brother has since claimed to be the author.
The document proposed a satirical quiz on “the biggest fatherland traitor” and offered a prize of “a free trip through the chimney in Auschwitz”.
Söder stopped short of giving Aiwanger a free pass. He criticised him for not apologising sooner and said he needed to show remorse.
He also said Aiwanger’s written responses to a list of 25 questions put to him by the government were not all satisfactory.
“Hence my serious and well-intentioned advice: Even if all this is a long time ago, it is important to show remorse and humility,” he said.
Aiwanger said he had been the victim of a smear campaign that had failed.
The leaflet came to light after an investigation by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Aiwanger’s older brother stepped in to say he had been the author of the flyer shortly after its publication.
Aiwanger was under pressure from the national government to make a swift decision and draw a line under the affair.
Saskia Esken, the co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), which is in the opposition in Bavaria, said on Monday that the regional government should not fall into disrepute.
The decision not to dismiss Aiwanger allows Söder to keep his 2018 coalition government intact before the 8 October regional election, for which postal voting has already begun.
Latest opinion polls put support for Söder at 39%, giving him a comfortable lead, with the Free Voters on around 12% in a tight race against the far-right AfD.
“We will be able to continue the civil coalition in Bavaria,” said Söder. “There will definitely be no black and green in Bavaria,” he added, referring to speculation he might switch partners and team up with the Green party.
The German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, accused Söder of putting political tactics first.
“Mr Aiwanger has neither apologised convincingly nor been able to dispel the accusations convincingly,” she told the RND newspaper group. Instead, she said, he has styled himself as a victim “and doesn’t think for a second of those who still suffer massively from antisemitism”.
“That Mr Söder allows this damages the reputation of our country,” she added.
