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The parliamentary group Brandenburg AfD elected Hans-Christoph Berndt as successor to its former president Andreas Kalbitz, who was excluded from the party by the federal board. The parliamentary director of the AfD parliamentary group, Dennis Hohloch, announced it on Tuesday.
Berndt heads the association “Zukunft Heimat”, classified by constitutional protection as a right-wing extremist. Berndt was also a “proven right-wing extremist,” said Jörg Müller, head of the constitutional protection department. Müller had also called Kalbitz a “proven right-wing extremist.”
In addition to state MP Berndt, AfD Parliamentary Managing Director Dennis Hohloch and former deputy group leader Birgit Bessin had applied for the presidency in a battle vote. Bessin was one of the founding members of the now-dissolved right-wing national “wing” AfD around the Thuringian party and leader of the Björn Höcke parliamentary group.
Berndt won the election with eleven votes, ahead of Hohloch, who received seven votes. Three voted no.
In May, the federal AfD executive had decided by a narrow majority to cancel Kalbitz’s membership in the AfD, because when he joined the party in 2013, he was said to have hidden previous memberships with Republicans and the now-banned right-wing extremist “German youth loyal to home”. The party’s federal arbitration court confirmed the expulsion at the end of July. In mid-August, Kalbitz resigned from the Brandenburg parliamentary group.
Artists protest with a concert
With a piano concert under the motto “wings instead of wings”, pianist Igor Levit and other artists protested in front of the Brandenburg state parliament against the election of the new leader of the AfD parliamentary group. “In this election, one right-wing extremist will be traded for the other,” Brandenburg artist and organizer Rainer Opolka said at the start of the concert at Potsdam’s Alter Markt.
“We want to bring stupidity and hatred out of the world with bright wings.” Opolka noted that both the resigned Kalbitz and his three successor candidates were protagonists of the now-disbanded völkisch-national wing of the AfD.
Also performing at the concert was the singer and leader of the band “Die Prinzen”, Sebastian Krumbiegel. “You have to clearly oppose what is happening here in Parliament,” Krumbiegel said.
