The rifts in the politically divided values-union of particularly conservative members of the CDU and CSU are getting deeper. The conflict after the controversial election of the new federal chairman Max Otte intensified: The Bavarian Union of Values has left the federal association, in Baden-Württemberg the state executive announced its resignation in protest against Otte’s election.
And in the Rhineland-Palatinate Union of Values, the board of directors resigned from office in June with immediate effect. The previous chairman Peter Scholze justified the decision with reference to a “toxic” effect on the perception and acceptance of the Union of Values. “Our resignations from the Association of Values Union eV will follow soon,” announced Scholze.
The economist Otte was elected to succeed Alexander Mitsch (CDU) at the end of May after he had announced his retirement. Within the Union of Values, which is not an official party division, but sees itself as a representative of the conservative current of the Union, Otte’s narrow election sparked a great dispute. The fund manager had been chairman of the board of trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation until January 2021. At the beginning of June Otte had declared that four years ago he could not vote for Angela Merkel – that is why he announced at the time that he would personally vote for the AfD. But that was four years ago and Merkel was no longer running. The topic is closed.
Bunker mentality and radicalization
After Otte’s election, a further increasing “bunker mentality” and radicalization were to be feared, the previous board of the values union in Rhineland-Palatinate had warned. “A target-oriented political work in the sense of our founding concept has become impossible from our point of view under these circumstances”, it says in the declaration of Scholzes, his two deputies and three assessors.
The Baden-Württemberg deputy head of state, Oliver Kämpf, said that the value union founded by Alexander Mitsch practically no longer exists. “The Union of Values is like a dead horse that you have to dismount from,” he said. In a letter to the federal executive committee, it is said that an “rapprochement with ethnic and nationalistic issues” can be observed. According to Kämpf, the union of values is slowly dissolving, especially in southern Germany there have been numerous withdrawals and resignations. According to him, the organization still has about 3700 members. The CDU has a total of around 400,000 members, the CSU has around 140,000.
In Bavaria “conservative awakening” instead of a union of values
The Bavarian Values Union left the federal association on Saturday, as the newly elected state chairman Juliane Ried said at a general meeting in Pöttmes. In Bavaria, the group is now calling itself – as it was when it was founded in 2014 – “Conservative departure for values and freedom”. In 2019 the association merged with the values union. “We want to concentrate on the CSU again,” said Ried of the dpa on the grounds for leaving. The separation is hoped for greater political clout in order to counter an allegedly “more than dangerous left turn in the CSU”