At their 2018 party conference, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) declared an official party line on collaborating with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), saying that any coalitions or similar forms of cooperation would be off limits.

While the acronym AfD is rarely uttered by CDU candidates on their campaign trails, Markus Söder, leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party CSU, went one step further, saying even "chatting over a coffee" was out of the question. Meanwhile, Merkel's successor as party leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, has threatened exclusion from the party for anyone flirting with the idea of cooperating with the far-right.

But in Germany's eastern states, where the far-right AfD has thrived in recent state elections, certain CDU politicians appear to be warming up to the idea of closer contact with the far-right populists — particularly among the CDU's more conservative wing. Known as the "Werteunion" (Values Union), the more CDU conservative faction is desperate to shift away from Germany's political middle ground, which was long Merkel's ideological territory.

Now, amid desperate efforts to form a coalition in the eastern state of Thuringia, a joint letter from 17 conservative CDU politicians there has called for a readiness for talks with "all democratically elected parties."

Read more: 'You are a racist,' Germans tell AfD politician

Watch video 01:45 Share Thuringia regional election Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3S2O0 Far-right AfD deals a blow to CDU in Thuringia election

Quest for 'stable' state government

The October elections in Thuringia were a huge blow to the CDU, which toppled from the state’s strongest party in 2014 to third position, behind the socialist Left party and the AfD. The far-right populists more than doubled their share of the vote, walking away with 22.5%.

Despite not mentioning the far-right AfD by name, the functionaries said they find it unthinkable that "almost a quarter of the voters" in Thuringia should "stay out of the talks."

The letter ruled out, however, the possibility of helping Björn Höcke, the firebrand leader of the AfD in Thuringia, or the current leftist state premier, Bodo Ramelow, to hold office.

"Coalitions with both [the leftist Linke and the far-right AfD] are therefore impossible. However, everything in between must be discussed among democrats in order to fathom whether and how a stable government can be formed in Thuringia," the group wrote.

Jewish council deems letter 'irresponsible'

Responding to the letter, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told German daily Der Tagesspiegel that the 17 politicians who signed the letter were "acting irresponsibly."

"They help to make the AfD more socially acceptable," Schuster said, underlining that already once in German history, civil politicians had acted as "stirrup holders" for a party operated by the far-right and had been "terribly mistaken."

"This should be a sufficient warning to all democrats today," he said.

Read more: Jewish leaders worried after far-right surge in Thuringia

Similarly, CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak described the demands for talks with the AfD as "mad."

"The opinion of the CDU has not changed. Period. End of the announcement," he said.

Meanwhile, Lars Klingbeil, general secretary of the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel's junior coalition partner, called on CDU party leader and German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to intervene.

"The firewall against the right is getting more and more cracks on the conservatives' side. It's about time this is stopped," Klingbeil wrote on Twitter.

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



Top-down ban at local level...

Despite the common party line of the CDU, the top-down "ban" on cooperating with the AfD hasn't always been implemented at lower levels in Germany's political system, which is broken down into federal, state and local.

In recent months, successes for the far-right populists in various local council elections have handed the AfD the chance to cooperate with other parties.

Headlines in in local German media have ensued, often suggesting a relaxation of the CDU's "ban."

On the German-Polish border in Görlitz, for example, town officials appointed AfD politician Norman Knauthe to lead the Environment and Ordinance Committee. Local media described Knauthe as a weapons fanatic and and supporter of the far-right "Identity" movement.

Meanwhile, on the local council of Frankenstein in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, CDU politician Monika Schirdewahn and her AfD husband Horst formed a faction of the two parties under the name "Progress Frankenstein."

Watch video 00:29 Höcke: 'A result that says yes to a new, vibrant democracy'

...but local politics another animal

Despite cases of cooperation between the CDU and AfD at the lowest levels of German politics, Matthias Dilling, professor in Comparative Politics at Oxford University, warned against extrapolating what we see at local council level and applying that to higher up.

"Local politics works very differently from even state level, let alone federal politics. Personal networks and knowing people is sometimes is more important than party affiliation," Dilling said.

The prospect of the CDU holding talks with the AfD in Thuringia, however, has raised more concerns than in other areas of Germany. Thuringian AfD chief Höcke also fronts the party's extreme nationalist wing, from which even some AfD politicians have tried to distance themselves. The actions of state-level politics can also be significantly more consequential for national politics.

Read more: Life is good, but 'people are scared' in far-right AfD stronghold

Conservative spectrum

As the CDU looks towards the 2021 federal elections, the conservatives for the largest part are keen to redefine their profile with a likely shift further rightward in the next election campaign.

Watch video 03:37 Share Angela Merkel - Europe's lame duck? Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3QX5H Angela Merkel - Europe's lame duck?

Dillinger, however, said that cooperation between the CDU and the AfD at state and federal levels remains unlikely. Even within the concept of conservatism, the parties hold substantial differences. While conservatism within the CDU follows a Christian tradition, for example, what some members of the AfD call conservatism, is much closer to national conservatism and positions of the radical right.

"Demarcating itself from the AfD, as opposed to cooperating with it, might actually help the CDU to sharpen its profile by clarifying: 'This is what we stand for; this is what is unacceptable for us,'" Dilling told DW. "Cooperating with the AfD may just reinforce the criticism of ideological vicissitude that the CDU has been criticized for in the past years. This may help take into account the concerns of disappointed voters without, in turn, alienating voters at the center."

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