Politicians in a region of central Germany that was the first to elect a mayor from the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland party on Sunday have expressed outrage at a video of a man wearing neo-Nazi symbols and handing out leftover balloons from the party’s campaign to a local kindergarten.
The footage shows a man wearing a T-shirt with the image of a soldier from the Nazi era, as well as shorts in the black, white and red colours of the disbanded German Reich, or empire. Although the Reich collapsed in 1918, revisionist groups who reject the modern German state claim it still exists.
Sonntag wurde in #Sonneberg ein #AfD’ler zum Landrat gewählt. Montag verteilte ein #Neonazi in Kindergarten der Region übrig gebliebene Luftballons der AfD. Auf seinem Auto „Ehrenamtlicher Abschiebehelfer“. Auf seinem T-Shirt Aufdruck „Wehrmacht wieder mit“.
— Katharina König-Preuss 🍓 (@KatharinaKoenig) June 27, 2023
Es ist nur krass. pic.twitter.com/hvQA0qcQDb
Police said they would investigate the man on charges of public nuisance, but said there was no evidence to suggest he had committed a crime.
His T-shirt bore a slogan appearing to glorify the Nazi era, Wehrmacht wieder mit? written in the Fraktur typeface commonly associated with Nazi Germany, along with the head of a helmeted Wehrmacht soldier. It is a wordplay on Wer macht wieder mit?, which translates as: who wants to participate next time?’, strongly implying a desire to revive the Nazi era.
The man, identified only as a 46-year-old father of one of the children at the kindergarten, also had a large sticker on the back windscreen of his car reading “voluntary deportation helper”, a reference to Germany’s refugees.
The video was posted on Twitter by Katharina König-Preuss, a member of the local far-left Linke party. She wrote: “On Sunday a (member of the) AfD was elected on to the local council. On Monday, a neo-Nazi distributes leftover AfD balloons at a kindergarten in the region. … It is just gross.”
The video appeared to have been shot a day after Robert Sesselmann, the AfD’s candidate, made history by becoming the first member of the party, founded 10 years ago on an anti-euro ticket and which later morphed into an anti-immigration party, to win a governing seat in Germany. Sesselmann secured 52.8% of the vote in the district of Sonneberg in Thuringia, central Germany, ousting his Christian Democrat competitor, Jürgen Köpper, who won 47.2%. The result has sent shockwaves across the country.
The kindergarten is in Föritztal, in the region where the election took place. The man is said to have gone to the kindergarten to pick up his child and delivered the blue balloons at the same time, to the apparent delight of a group of children who eagerly took them from him. In the video, their faces, like those of their carers, have been pixellated.
Föritztal’s mayor, Andreas Meusel, who contacted the police after the video was brought to his attention, condemned the incident as “abuse”, adding that he regarded it as a particular affront to the kindergarten and its staff, to have been “pushed into a certain (far-right) corner by appearing on the film”, adding: “Kindergarten is not the place for propagating political opinions..”
Helmut Holter, the education minister in the state of Thuringia, , responded on Twitter, writing, “that a neo-Nazi obviously without being invited, focuses on our smallest people and targets kindergarten children, is a serious infringement”.
The police said they could see no initial evidence of a crime having been committed, but said “it could however, be the case that several public nuisance offences exist”.
The AfD has distanced itself from the man and said he was not a member of the party. However, Stefan Möller, the spokesperson for the AfD in Thuringia, said he had attended its post-election party on Sunday.
According to local reports, the man responded to the accusations on Facebook, writing: “It’s no longer a laughing matter what’s going off everywhere! Yes, I had the wrong clothes on, but I only meant to do something nice for the children.” He offered an apology for his choice of clothing.
