Ralph Müller (formerly AfD, now non-attached) always makes a name for himself. Whether present or not. At the beginning of 2019, as soon as he entered the state parliament, he called Angela Merkel a “Stasi and snooping chancellor”. For which he received a reprimand from the President of the Landtag Ilse Aigner (CSU), at that time the first in the House in decades. Then the deputy – trademark: handkerchief and severe parting – sat for a while during a minute’s silence for the politician Walter Lübcke, who was murdered by a neo-Nazi. Pure carelessness, he said, claiming he was the victim of a “morale-soaked witch hunt”.
He was also notorious among journalists as “the guy with the finger”. He likes to get up close and personal in conversation and accompanies his sentences with a jabbing index finger, as if he wanted to poke your nostril. After all: He is a dentist by profession, so everything is okay in terms of oral hygiene.
At the end of December 2020, Müller turned his back on the AfD and the parliamentary group. And was henceforth known as the “phantom of the state parliament”. While other AfD defectors are busy sitting in the plenary hall (and often next door selling sausages), Müller was never seen again for more than two years. Since then, there have only been a few written inquiries that can be verified as part of the work of the MPs. Müller himself named in the Nuremberg News sometimes health reasons for the absence. Despite deductions for missed meeting days, diets and flat-rate costs for the phantom have probably totaled more than 200,000 euros since the end of 2020, without any recognizable commitment, as some in the state parliament sniff.
But now Müller was suddenly sighted again in the Maximilianeum, in April and May. And: According to information from SZ, he has applied to be reinstated in the AfD parliamentary group. It is unclear whether this is a majority in the group. Müller left a request unanswered on Tuesday. Benevolent ex-colleagues say that he did not go into a dispute with the parliamentary group or because he had complained about a shift to the right, but because of a quarrel in his AfD district association. In an “attack of LMAA”, i.e. “kiss my ass”, Müller threw everything down at the time, but then “never went after the AfD”. Others think that anyone who leaves and “steals” the mandate they have acquired through the AfD has no right of return. In addition, there would be Müller’s “extravagances” – “that’s what we were missing”.