Alexander Gauland is chosen as co-leader of anti-immigration party in move that strengthens nationalist wing

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The nationalist wing of the German anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland has been strengthened and moderate forces sidelined at a party conference marked by protests this weekend.

Several people were reportedly hurt in clashes between protesters and police in the city of Hanover on Saturday as the AfD congress chose Alexander Gauland to return to the co-leader post he had held until 2015. Gauland opposes the expulsion of Björn Höcke, an AfD member who said history should be rewritten to focus on German victims of the second world war.

Gauland replaces Frauke Petry, who quit to become an independent member of parliament.

Her sudden departure two days after the AfD became the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag since the 1950s exposed rifts over whether the party should ditch rhetoric such as statements saying Islam was not compatible with the German constitution.

Outside the conference centre, thousands of anti-AfD protesters marched carrying placards reading “Hanover against Nazis” and “Stand up to racism”.

Earlier, riot police fired water cannon at dozens of people who blocked a road leading to the event, underlining the divisive impact the party has had since it entered the Bundestag for the first time following elections in September.

Ten protesters were temporarily detained; several police officers and one protester were injured.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexander Gauland previously led the party until 2015. Photograph: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

The party’s incumbent leader, Jörg Meuthen – a representative of the economically liberal wing of the movement who nonetheless also opposes Höcke’s expulsion from the party – won enough votes to keep his post.

But in a vote that dragged into the evening, he was joined as co-leader by Gauland, who ran for the post at the last minute after another candidate seen as a moderate, Georg Pazderski, failed to win enough votes.

The sidelining of Pazderski, a former ally of Petry, weakens the influence of those AfD members who are keen to manoeuvre the rightwing party into a position where it could enter a coalition government.

Before the leadership vote, Meuthen praised the party, which is often beset by internal strife, for showing unity after two senior members quit in September in protest against what they saw as an unstoppable populist streak.

“There are people in this country who don’t only say: ‘We can do this,’ but who actually manage to do something,” Meuthen told delegates, putting a new twist on the “wir schaffen das” (we can do it) message by the chancellor, Angela Merkel, to those who doubted Germany could deal with a record influx of migrants in 2015.

Founded in 2013 as a vehicle to oppose eurozone bailouts, the AfD was polling at around 3% nationally two years ago on the eve of the refugee crisis.

It has since morphed into an anti-immigrant party that now has seats in 14 of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments.

Polls suggest it will win seats in next year’s regional elections in the southern state of Bavaria and the western region of Hesse, which would give it a foothold in all of Germany’s state parliaments.