As of: January 19, 2024, 3:41 p.m
By: Kilian Beck
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New revelations: Berlin's former finance senator Peter Kurth is a member of an ultra-right fraternity.
Kurth's former speaker took part in the secret meeting of AfD members and right-wing extremists.
Berlin – The former Berlin Finance Senator Peter Kurth seems to have been active in networks of ultra-right fraternities for years.
This was reported by
Spiegel
.
The former CDU politician is a member of the obligatory Berlin fraternity Gothia.
According to the report, in January 2023 he was even elected chairman of the old men's association.
He is said to have been elected second chairman “nine and a half years ago”.
The connection owns a villa in Berlin-Zehlendorf.
Right-wing extremist events have been taking place there for more than a decade.
Kurth remains silent about this.
In the 2009 election campaign he was still the “new force for integration” and today he appears to be active in right-wing extremist networks - former Berlin senator Peter Kurth.
© imago
“Fearless and persistent” – motto of ex-Senator Kurth’s ultra-right fraternity
The fraternity’s motto is “fearless and persistent.”
According to Spiegel,
it is
also on a poster at the villa.
Behind the facade there is a selection of the hardest right-wing extremists in the republic.
In 1999, the former RAF terrorist and current neo-Nazi Horst Mahler gave a lecture to the fraternity.
In 2010, extremists behind the propaganda portal “PI” are said to have held their Christmas party in the villa.
The “Institute for State Politics” (IfS), which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as “secure right-wing extremist,” is also said to have held lectures there.
In 2016, the Berlin AfD also invited people to a “grill buffet” for “party friends and supporters” in the Wilhelminian style villa.
In 2017, actors from the right-wing extremist Identitarian movement celebrated there.
In the same year they gave a lecture there on the racist “Defend Europe” campaign they had launched.
An attempt to hinder private sea rescue on the Mediterranean.
Research shows: The “Goths” network extends deep into the AfD and the Berlin CDU
From meeting minutes of the fraternity and files from the district court in Charlottenburg, which is responsible for association law,
Spiegel
identified some members of the AfD and CDU, in addition to Kurth.
For example, the chairman of the Young Alternatives Berlin Martin Kohler, who is also the AfD district councilor in Berlin-Wilmersdorf.
Also Philipp Runge, speaker in the Bundestag faction and former employee of the Federal AfD.
Kohler confirmed to the magazine that he was a “proud member of Gothia”.
Runge did not respond to the magazine.
The mirror
also named
Michael Büge.
Today the man is the managing director of the AfD in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, and was previously the “campaign manager” of the AfD top candidates Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland for the 2017 federal election. Büge is said to have given ex-senator Kurth as a reference in his application.
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Until 2013, Büger was part of the Berlin state government as Secretary of State for Social Affairs for the CDU, like Kurth.
According to the research, the treasurer of the old gentlemen's association is Mario Meusel.
Meusel is a CDU member and was once treasurer of the Alt-Pankow local association.
He told Spiegel
that the fraternity had “distanced” itself from right-wing extremist events on its premises
.
He sees no “contradiction” between his CDU party membership and the Gothia membership.
He did not tell Spiegel
when the fraternity distanced itself from the extremists' performances
.
CDU internal politician claims to have known nothing about right-wing extremism in his fraternity
Domestic politician Robbin Juhnke probably still has contacts in the CDU parliamentary group.
Spiegel
has a “circular email” from April 2023, which was also addressed to Juhnke
.
In it, the Gothia student association asked for the membership fees to be transferred.
When asked, Juhnke did not want to know anything about any contacts with the right-wing extremist scene.
And he hasn’t been to the Zehlendorf villa for “several years”.
In addition, according to research, four other CDU local politicians from three federal states are said to be Goths.
CDU man Robbin Juhnke in the Berlin House of Representatives.
He doesn't claim to have been to the Gothenhaus for years.
© IMAGO/Bernd Elmenthaler
According to Spiegel
, ex-Finance Senator Kurth, who was actually considered a liberal for years, is also said to
have contributed a “large sum” to an Identitarian house project in Chemnitz.
He left all
Spiegel
's inquiries about this unanswered.
In this context, two identities are being investigated for money laundering.
The Handelsblatt
also reported on a detail about the secret meeting between AfD and CDU members in Potsdam
that points in Kurth's direction.
Friedrich Arne Mörig was among the participants in the meeting at which, according to the investigative portal
Correctiv,
the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner is said to have laid out plans to deport millions of people.
He is the son of the organizer of the meeting, Gernot Mörig.
He has been an actor on the extreme right in various capacities for decades.
Kurth's personal advisor was a participant in the Potsdam deportation secret meeting
According to his Xing profile, Mörig Junior worked at the Federal Association of the German Waste Management, Water and Raw Materials Industry from June 2019 to July 2020.
The association confirmed this at the request
of
fr.de.
After an internship, he was the “personal advisor” to the association president from October 2019.
Back then he was Peter Kurth.
A spokesman for the
fr.de
association said they were “stunned” .
A more detailed answer would be formulated later in the day.
The club separated from its ex-president on the same day that Kurth's contacts with the AfD and the extreme right first became known.
“Right-wing extremism, racism or anti-Semitism have no place in the BDE,” it said in a statement.
We distance ourselves “from any forces that threaten our free basic order”.
Kubitschek, Sellner, Kaiser and Krah - extreme right-wingers at home with ex-Finance Senator Kurth
Last Friday (January 12th) it became known that Kurth invited the AfD's ethnic-nationalist European election top candidate Maximilian Krah to a book launch in his Berlin apartment.
According to Spiegel, the right-wing extremist authors Martin Sellner, Benedikt Kaiser and Götz Kubitschek also took part.
Kubitschek is one of the brains behind the IfS.
In 2023, Krah published “a manifesto” in the Antaios publishing house, which is affiliated with the IfS, in which he outlined his plan for a radical right-wing “turning point”.
Kurth told
Spiegel
that he did not personally know everyone present in his apartment.
Kurth did not rule out a party donation to the AfD in 2016, which the magazine provided with a receipt.
This Spiegel
research once again
showed that ultra-right forces in the republic are working “fearlessly and persistently” to abolish it and also want to influence right-wing conservative circles .
(kb)