A hundred prominent politicians of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have called for the party to distance itself from its leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, according to an open letter published Wednesday.

Höcke has gathered momentum around his radical wing, which some AfD officials have argued undermines the party's attempt to distance itself from extremist political groups.

"The AfD is not and will not be a Björn Höcke party," the letter said. The AfD's members reject "the heavily displayed cult of personality around Björn Höcke."

While AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland said he could see why party politicians supported the appeal, he admitted that he did not sign it "because I consider it similarly inappropriate during election campaigning."

Fellow AfD co-chair Jörg Meuthen also did not sign the open letter. Yet he too responded to questions from German news agency dpa, saying that Höcke should concentrate on upcoming local elections and that the "cult of personality" around him did not suit the AfD.

Read more: Does the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have any alternatives for the country?

Radical turn

The AfD is polling in leading positions for three state elections slated for autumn, according to surveys. The elections will be held in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, where Höcke co-leads the party.

Last week, Höcke triggered an outcry from the party's center-leaning members when he told hundreds of supporters that immigrants had never been economically beneficial to Germany.

"What is also clear is that the policy of open borders practiced for decades, ever since 1955, this irrational migration policy for which the old parties are responsible, has bled us financially, as if we had lost another war," Höcke said.

Höcke narrowly kept hold of his party membership last year after comments made in 2017, when he lamented that Germany's "stupid" efforts to remember and learn from its Nazi past had "crippled" the country.

Read more: Germany's conservatives divided on how to cope with far-right AfD

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



Further right

Once a euroskeptic party, the AfD made political inroads when it started to criticize German and European migration policy, most notably Chancellor Angela Merkel's reaction to 2015's mass migration from the Middle East and Africa.

However, the party has been hit by several scandals since entering the Bundestag — Germany's lower house of parliament — for the first time in 2017, including controversial remarks from politicians and illegal campaign financing.

Read more: 'The New Germans': Far-right AfD forms immigrant supporters' group

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ls/msh (AFP, Reuters, dpa)