The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party announced Thursday that a high-profile regional leader will resign from his post at the end of March.

Andre Poggenburg is the head of the party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. He prompted an outcry in mid-February after describing people of Turkish origin in Germany as "camel drivers" and "caraway seed traders" in a speech to AfD supporters.

Read more: German far-right AfD politicians travel to Syria in effort to send back refugees

What happened:

The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt said Poggenburg told them last week that he would resign as both the head of the regional party and the head of the AfD parliamentary party in the regional parliament.

The 42-year-old said he was resigning to ease "pressure" on the AfD.

Poggenburg had reportedly lost support from many party quarters in the wake of his controversial speech.

Read more: AfD censures firebrand Andre Poggenburg over anti-Turkish remarks

Notoriety: In his speech, Poggenburg was responding to Turkish-German community leaders who had objected to government plans to include the word "Heimat" in the official name of the Interior Ministry. Poggenburg dismissed media criticism against him as a "smear campaign."

Electoral winner: Poggenburg led the Saxony-Anhalt AfD to a landmark victory in regional elections in 2016. The party entered the regional parliament for the first time after receiving just over 24 percent of the vote. Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU) was the only party that did better, winning just under 30 percent of the vote.

Internal turmoil: The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt has been plagued by internal disagreements and power struggles in the past year. Three lawmakers left the AfD in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament in 2017 in response to what they said was a "swing to the right" within the regional party.

Read more: AfD warns state leader Poggenburg over WhatsApp chat leak

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alice Weidel Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Frauke Petry German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Björn Höcke The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year - leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Beatrix von Storch Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts - but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Marcus Pretzell Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Wendt The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Poggenburg Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland - again ... During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks ... and again Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andreas Kalbitz The Brandenburg state AfD chief admitted in 2019 to attending a 2007 rally in Greece by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party at which a swastika flag was raised. "Der Spiegel" had published a leaked report by the German embassy in Athens naming him as one of "14 neo-Nazis" who arrived from Germany for the far-right rally. Kalbitz released a statement saying he took part out of "curiosity." Author: Dagmar Breitenbach



amp/rt (AFP, dpa)

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