The former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, may remain a member of the CDU for the time being. In the past, Maassen had repeatedly caused outrage in his own party with right-wing and anti-Semitic statements. The federal executive of the CDU had therefore applied for party exclusion proceedings against him in February. Maassen had previously let an ultimatum from the party to resign himself expire and in a written statement rejected the accusation that his behavior was damaging to the CDU.
Maassen calls on Merz to “programmatic consequences”.
A CDU district party court in Thuringia discussed the matter at the end of June. The decision Maassen has now announced himself on Twitter. Accordingly, the committee rejected the exclusion from the CDU and canceled the order to withdraw Maassen’s membership rights. The district party court only issues a “reference” to Maaßen because it was in a guest article for the online magazine The World Week attacked the left wing of the CDU and accused it of being close to the “ideology of the so-called anti-Germans in the left-wing parties”. Maassen claims the decision was a success and sharply attacks CDU leader Friedrich Merz. This must now draw “personnel and programmatic consequences”.
Maassen, who is a member of the Thuringian state association, ran in the 2021 federal election in southern Thuringia as a direct candidate for the CDU, but was clearly defeated by the SPD candidate and did not enter the Bundestag. The leading representatives of the CDU in Thuringia and Berlin were therefore repeatedly criticized for having distanced themselves from Maassen too late and not energetically enough. At the beginning of the year, however, Merz emphasized that Maassen’s ideas had no place in the CDU.
The case of Gerhard Schröder already showed how difficult it is to be expelled from a party
CDU General Secretary Czaja had said that Maassen had “clearly distanced himself from the basic positions of the CDU, both in his choice of words and in his substantive issues”. “A fire wall” had been breached by Maassen; he had “no longer lost anything” in the CDU. The decision of the board of directors, which justifies the application for the party exclusion, says that Maassen uses a “language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues to ethnic expressions”.
The decision in Thuringia is only the first instance. Leading party representatives had already said when the proceedings were initiated in February that the proceedings were expected to be lengthy. The case of Gerhard Schröder recently showed how difficult it is to get rid of a member who, in the opinion of one’s own people, is behaving in a way that is harmful to the party. Several attempts have failed to expel the former chancellor from the SPD because of his closeness to the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin.