The AfD in the state parliament is facing chaotic times, on Sunday it was announced that parliamentary group leader Cristian Klingen and Markus Bayerbach had left the party. They will also report their departure from the parliamentary group to the state parliament presidency in the coming days, because the AfD statutes require this. Klingen was only elected in October 2021 alongside Ulrich Singer as the new chairman of the state parliamentary group, which had split into two camps since it was founded.
At that time, the new leadership followed Katrin Ebner-Steiner and Ingo Hahn, whose camp was at least mostly attributed to the now formally dissolved nationalist “wing”. According to their own statements, Klingen and Singer wanted to pursue a more moderate course. Your group, which supports the parliamentary group board, is now without a majority.
It will be the fifth and sixth departure from the parliamentary group since it was founded. Of the 22 AfD MPs in 2018, 16 remain. Markus Plenk and Raimund Swoboda became non-affiliated early on, they reprimanded “right-wing radical” tendencies in the parliamentary group; At the end of 2020, with Ralph Müller, there were more personal differences, primarily concerning the AfD state association. Most recently, Josef Seidel left the group, who died a few months later. His successor Oskar Atzinger is also non-affiliated for the time being, but should be included soon.
It is currently eight to eight between the two camps. The leadership cannot be voted out, as this would require a two-thirds majority. In fact, however, one is “barely capable of acting and governing,” says a person familiar with the situation, and with stalemate one can do practically nothing in everyday life. If Atzinger were to join, he would probably expand the Ebner-Steiner camp to nine people.
Markus Bayerbach was once the only committee chairman of the AfD. Now he is leaving the party and parliamentary group.
(Photo: Christoph Trost/dpa)
The exact reasons for Klingen and Bayerbach initially remained unclear. Klingen spoke to the dpa of “certain tendencies” that he no longer wanted to support. Nonetheless, for a long time he was regarded as an exponent of the “wings”. Bayerbach, who is always very liberal for AfD conditions, told the SZ that he was “not one for dirty laundry in public”. But it was “not a spontaneous reaction”. Something like this builds up “until a point is reached”.