Re-entry into the Bundestag: money blessing for AfD-affiliated foundation


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Status: 13.10.2021 6:00 a.m.

The party-affiliated foundation of the AfD had so far made a secret of its finances. Now she is entitled to double-digit million amounts annually from the state. WDR and NDR internal documents from the management circle are available.

By Sebastian Pittelkow, NDR, and Katja Riedel, WDR

It is an extensive database from the inside of a black box, which for the first time sheds some light on an association that could be decisive for the further development of right-wing populists. It’s about the AfD’s party-affiliated foundation: the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (DES), which has been recognized by the AfD as party-affiliated since 2018.

As an association, the foundation has not yet been obliged to publish its finances or work. And DES keeps keeping a great secret about its members of the board of trustees. The insights come at a time when DES is about to benefit from the sumptuous cake that the party-affiliated foundations of the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Greens and Left Party have so far fed on.

No legal basis yet

But how the AfD-affiliated foundation will get these millions is still unclear. DES chairwoman Erika Steinbach announced on request that she had already written to the budget committee and the representatives of the other party-affiliated foundations about a distribution of the funds. An answer is still pending.

The chairwoman of the foundation, Steinbach, has already asked the budget committee about the funds.

Image: dpa

There is currently no foundation financing law, the Greens have been calling for one for a long time. According to the previous procedure, which was based on the election results, the party-affiliated foundation of the AfD would have been entitled to up to 70 million euros annually in the last legislature. It was not always clear, however, that the AfD-affiliated foundation would claim its share at all. Because parts of the AfD have repeatedly railed against the nature of state-funded, party-affiliated foundations. They denounced opaque government funding and instead campaigned for private funding that should be more oriented towards US think tanks.

AfD lawsuit against funding rejection

Freshly named as a party affiliated foundation, DES 2018/19 also submitted an application for funding under the leadership of the ex-CDU member of the Bundestag Steinbach – initially unsuccessful. DES complained to the Federal Constitutional Court that, as a newcomer to the Bundestag and as the largest opposition party, it initially received nothing, but lost again. Funds from the state are usually only available to party-affiliated foundations from the second legislative period onwards. With the return to parliament, the time has come for the AfD.

Perhaps one also wants to raise the government millions because otherwise the ambitious plans of DES would not have a chance of being implemented. That could WDR and NDR read in the internal documents. In the documents there are many efforts to get private donations, donations from wealthy private individuals and fundraising in business: But at least until the end of 2019, the DES apparently had little success.

Donors have been holding back so far

This emerges, for example, from a presentation by the treasurer, which he presented at an association meeting in Frankfurt am Main in autumn 2019: donations of around 122,000 euros have been received there for 2018, which was all he was able to present to the board members who had traveled at the time. Given the plans for an educational academy to hold large-scale seminars, award grants, and publish publications, this would be an extremely tight budget.

According to the documents, DES has received a donation at least once: half of an aging garage in Wittenberg, which a supporter transferred to the foundation association in 2018 and which should bring DES rental income of around 11,000 euros per year. Erika Steinbach confirmed the donation. Millions of dollars or donations of this magnitude were not found in the documents, at least until the beginning of 2020.

Apparently offers for the economy

The seminar program that has already started, but also some personal commitments, shows how DES has endeavored to network with the business world and with potential supporters. According to the internal DES protocol, two senior employees of the armaments company Rheinmetall are said to have agreed to be speakers for a security policy conference at the beginning of 2020 in the Schorfheide.

A Rheinmetall spokesman ruled out that the company had sent speakers to the DES seminar. The group supports neither the DES nor the AfD. But they have no information about private activities of employees. On request, Steinbach said that all speakers at the conference were employed as private individuals.

Unclear role of a lobbyist

In the documents, the name of a well-known Berlin lobbyist appears again and again: Matthias Lefarth, who was a brief Berlin state spokesman when the AfD was founded in 2013, but left the party again after a short time. According to his own statements, he is now involved in FDP committees. For several years he headed the Berlin branch of the influential lobby association “Stiftung Familienunternehmen”.

For a long time there have been indications that the well-networked Lefarth is close to DES. A publicly available picture on Facebook showed him in January 2020 alongside Erika Steinbach during a DES visit by the then Austrian FPÖ Interior Minister Kickl. Kickl wrote that Steinbach and Lefarth from DES showed him Berlin. In the documents at hand, Lefarth appears in the mailing lists of the leadership circle around Erika Steinbach, elsewhere his name and address are also listed under the heading “Assistant group” of the board.

Lefarth said on request that he had never held an office at DES and that he was not aiming for one, and that he had never raised funds for it. He is not a member of the AfD and free of right-wing beliefs. On request, Erika Steinbach wrote: “If necessary and at our request, Mr. Lefarth volunteered at Berlin DES events.”

From DES to “Union of Values”

Chairman of the meanwhile according to information from WDR and NDR The about 30-strong DES board of trustees was long the entrepreneur Max Otte. He is now head of the splinter group “Union of Values”, which is not recognized by the CDU. In the dispute, he left DES and the chairmanship of the board of trustees at the beginning of last year. According to an email, however, he is said to have donated 10,000 euros to DES at least once beforehand. Erika Steinbach confirmed the donation.

In 2018, Otte wrote an email to a DES board member at the time and refused to give a keynote speech at an AfD parliamentary group celebration in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament for DES. Among other things, with the following reason: He has “rejected all AfD appearances that went outward so far and oriented me inward. This has nothing to do with a lack of courage – I just don’t want to give the media any more reason to ignore myself. I feel like a sniper who has five bullets left in the magazine against the deployment of an enemy army and who has to aim very well. “

When asked, Otte said that he had never been operationally active in the foundation and was involved in decisions. It was not possible to work scientifically and conceptually as he wanted to. However, all of this is “yesterday’s news”.

In the future, DES will be entitled to many millions of euros for anchoring its ideas in society.

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