Political party
CDU leadership: Complaint against Maaßen remaining in the party
Hans-Georg Maaßen is head of the Union of Values, which is considered to be particularly conservative. photo
© Martin Schutt/dpa
Long-time CDU member Hans-Georg Maaßen has come under heavy criticism for several controversial statements. The CDU would like to expel him from the party again.
The CDU leadership has complained about the whereabouts of the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution Hans-Georg Maaßen joined the party. The exclusion of Maaßen was “politically imperative and legally permissible and necessary,” it said in a 67-page letter of complaint that was available to the German Press Agency.
Milder means are legally and politically inadequate. The letter is dated November 9th. “Spiegel” had previously reported.
Rejected exclusion was “colossal misjudgment”
CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann announced at the beginning of November that he would lodge a complaint against the decision of a district party court in Thuringia. The district party court responsible in the first instance rejected Maaßen’s exclusion from the party in July and advocated that he regain his membership rights. The court issued a “reprimand” against Maaßen.
In the federal CDU’s letter of complaint, this is described as a “colossal misjudgment”. Maaßen showed this himself through his further behavior. “Since the oral hearing and debate, he has continued to violate the rules and principles of the CDU.”
For example, Maaßen is committed to working with the AfD. He has become “politically and ideologically radicalized” and lives “in a world of thought that is typical of the AfD, not (any longer) that of the CDU.”
Maaßen wrote to the German Press Agency upon request that the party court in Erfurt had “rejected in clear words” the request to throw him out of the party. “Obviously the party leadership still hasn’t understood its lesson and continues to try to persecute me with defamatory, malicious and stupid allegations and thus suppress necessary debates,” wrote Maaßen. She has so far rejected every offer to talk.
Who is Maassen?
The long-time CDU member Maaßen is head of the Values Union, which is considered to be particularly conservative, but is not an organization of the party. In the 2021 federal election he ran in a southern Thuringian constituency, but failed.
Maaßen was also heavily criticized within his own party for several controversial statements – for example because of the claim that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”.