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Demonstrators with Reich flags in front of the Reichstag building
Photo: Fabian Sommer / picture alliance / dpa
The AfD is a deeply divided party anyway.
Hardly a day went by without reports about the former Brandenburg AfD chairman Andreas Kalbitz, whose membership was declared null and void at the instigation of co-party leader Jörg Meuthen.
And now the protests against the Corona measures, which got out of hand in Berlin last weekend.
Many AfD members of the Bundestag attended the demonstration in Berlin.
In the social media alone 39 AfD parliamentarians - the parliamentary group counts 89 - were documented photographically.
Sometimes the pictures looked like they were from a family outing: people in a good mood.
Including the picture of the doctor and AfD member Robby Schlund, who is posing next to his colleague Karsten Hilse and holding up a poster.
On it the virologist Christian Drosten in blue and white striped convict clothing, provided with the saying "Guilty".
Another picture shows the MP Hansjörg Müller in the middle of the turmoil, nearby a man with a bald head and a T-shirt: the inscription "Germany", in Fraktur.
These images suggest solidarity with the demonstrators.
In fact, the course in the AfD is controversial.
If the party is portrayed with right-wing extremists and Reich citizens, some fear that it would be a template for the protection of the constitution.
Meuthen fears observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
Meuthen in particular is skeptical.
When, in the week before the demonstration, his co-party leader Tino Chrupalla, party vice-president Stephan Brandner and co-parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel publicly called for people to go to Berlin, von Meuthen did not give a statement.
It has remained so to this day, even after a request from SPIEGEL.
Meuthen - like others in the party - only sharply criticized the public and even called for Geisel's resignation, pronounced by the Berlin SPD interior senator Andreas Geisel and later repealed by a court order.
According to SPIEGEL information, Meuthen had expressed concerns about the participation of AfD members in the demonstration to confidants.
He feared images of the kind taken in 2018 on a funeral procession in Chemnitz that was registered by "Flügel" supporters around the Thuringian AfD boss Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz, in which neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists also took part.
Images that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution carefully registered at the time and that were incorporated into its ratings.
But Meuthen fears nothing more than a possible observation of the entire party by the secret service.
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AfD co-boss Jörg Meuthen in Berlin: No statement made about the protests
Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
During the protests on Saturday, some demonstrators, including right-wing extremists with Reich flags, temporarily occupied the stairs to the Reichstag building.
These were images that caused general outrage and horror.
AfD co-party leader Alice Weidel also called it "unacceptable that some chaos broke through the police barriers after the peaceful Corona demonstration".
The building stands for "parliamentary disputes in the plenary hall" and should not "be misused as an object of political disputes on the street, regardless of which side".
Obviously, Weidel was unsure of the pictures.
Days before, she had written about the demonstration on her Facebook page: "Courageous and absolutely welcome".
Co-party leader Chrupalla, on the other hand, avoided a clear statement, instead wrapping a ten-question catalog in a press release on Tuesday.
It is a paper of conjecture that culminates in whether the Berlin authorities "consciously 'approved' 'the alleged' storming of the Reichstag '".
Another question Chrupallas asked was: whether the protection of the constitution had told Berlin's Senator for the Interior, Geisel, "how many informants were there during the action on the steps?"
Should the AfD be a movement party?
In fact, it has not yet been decided whether the AfD can really benefit from the corona protests.
It is debated in the party, for example in internal chat groups.
It is about a conflict that has accompanied the AfD since the beginning: How far should it be a "movement party", show itself on the street with possible sympathizers?
The anti-Muslim and xenophobic Pegida rallies in Dresden had already led to disputes about this, especially Höcke and other representatives of the "wing", which has now officially been disbanded and classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, appeared at Pegida rallies and also spoke there.
This time Höcke had called in a video message to go to Berlin.
But he obviously didn't want to see any AfD symbols there.
He expressly called on people to take part in the demonstration "not as partisans" but "as freedom-loving citizens".
Can the AfD, as Höcke and others hope, reach another target group from the protests?
Maybe so.
The AfD is currently between nine and eleven percent in surveys, and 12.6 percent in the federal election.
While the vast majority of Germans continue to show understanding for the protective measures against Corona, the demonstrations receive great approval from AfD supporters: Four fifths of those surveyed support them, according to a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL.
The protest movement is diverse: leftists, conservatives, esotericists, right-wing extremists and others were out and about in Berlin.
The North Rhine-Westphalian AfD boss Rüdiger Lucassen was there.
Any "party-political appropriation of this movement" is prohibited, the member of the Bundestag told SPIEGEL.
That could not succeed at all because the demonstrators' goals were "far too heterogeneous".
However, says Lucassen, he is convinced "that many demonstrating citizens can find numerous points of contact in the AfD's program."
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