The nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has been plunged into renewed controversy after it emerged that one of its members posed for photographs on a “pilgrimage” of sites associated with Adolf Hitler.

The politician in question, who has not been named under German privacy laws, posed holding a candle outside Hitler’s birthplace in the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn.

He also posed with a picture of the Fuhrer close to his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden in the Alps, and with a banner bearing a swastika and SS runes.

Details of the pictures, which were taken on a tour of Nazi sites the politician made with colleagues in 2015, emerged this week in a report in Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper.

The AfD admitted the existence of the photographs and said the politician concerned had resigned from the party.

Although he has not been publicly named, he is understood to be a senior figure in the party’s regional association in Thuringia, and an associate of Björn Höcke, one of the most controversial figures in the AfD.