Thilo Sarrazin has found a few hearts on stage. They are SPD-red fruit gums in heart shape, which are distributed here, during a reading with Sarrazin in Thessnai Pößneck, together with flyers and SPD fly swatters. He was invited by his comrade Oskar Helmerich, who is currently in the middle of the provincial election campaign. Helmerich is a former AFD member who joined the SPD - and thus the red-red-green state government secured the majority.
It rustles on the stage. Sarrazin slowly reads what is on the fruit gum bag. "Choose SPD on Sunday," he says. Anyone who wants something sweet can pick it up later, but that was my only campaign contribution. " Now it's about his latest book.
These are quite frank words from Sarrazin, who apparently just came to Thuringia to support an SPD colleague. Sarrazin, the former Berlin Senator for Finance and Bundesbank executive, is one of two charms that cause a lot of nonsense in their parties and are now involved in the Thuringian election campaign. The other is called Hans-Georg Maaßen, until 2018 president of the constitution protection and member of the CDU-WertUnion. The two appear separately, they do not know each other. "If we met, we would have a lot to discuss," said Sarrazin a few weeks ago the magazine "Cicero".
While the SPD has argued with Sarrazin for years about whether he can stay in the party, sparked by CDU chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer discussion on the exclusion of Maaßen violent counter-speech in her party. The Thuringian top candidates Wolfgang Tiefensee, SPD, and Mike Mohring, CDU, distanced themselves from the performances of their quarrelsome party colleagues - but this seems to hardly worry. In any case, during their visits to Thuringia, they give the impression that they are less concerned with a good performance of their parties than with their own concerns.
Maaßen was once "the softie"
Wednesday evening last week. Maaßen is in Gotha, the conservative ValuesUnion invited him. Reason: "Today one is already right-wing populist, if one arrives on time punctually," says lawyer Christian Sitter from Gotha, founding member and chairman of the Thuringian WertUnion. Maaßen is an example of how to counteract it.
John MACDOUGALL / AFP
Controversial best-selling author Sarrazin: Theses on Muslims
Sitter's group in Thuringia has about 100 members according to their own statements, but the rows of seats in the conference room of a hotel are empty: only about 40 listeners have come. Maaßen speaks quietly and emphasizes factual - it's a cozy round. The scrapped chief of the constitutional protection tells from former times, when he was in the CDU still "the liberal". Under SPD Interior Minister Otto Schily he had accompanied the immigration law in the Ministry. The CDU opposition politicians Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Bosbach were then in the mediation committee, his opponents, he describes. "They were the hardliners", he was "the softie".
"I did not slip to the right," says Maaßen. Especially with people outside the political spectrum, one must speak, "perhaps to win them for democracy." As examples he names the AfD, Islamists and leftists. "Even the worst of people can be right," he says. In Saxony AfD supporters made a pilgrimage to his events - here in Gotha there are only a few CDU members who, as they say, feel themselves rebuffed by their party.
The red-red-green state government called Maaßen as a "new edition of socialism." "Just as one dismantled the constitution protection in Thuringia after the discovery of the NSU, it is simply not good for the security in the country," he says. He affirms that a coalition with the AfD should be ruled out after a CDU member in the audience has recommended that the AfD be "disenchanted" in a joint government.
There are such hints from the audience, at Maassen as at Sarrazin, which can be heard again and again. Resentment and xenophobia are exchanged here in an acceptable manner - even if both ex-authority directors draw their limits: both pretend that they only want to warn against certain developments. They are worried, both claim. But the audience already seems to be thinking about further consequences from their words - such as about a coalition with the AfD.
25 euros for Sarrazin's theses
Back to Pößneck: The performance of Thilo Sarrazin lasts a good one and a half hours. He speaks of Islam as a "ideology of violence". There is a "tendency of insulting" among Muslims. 35 to 40 percent of the first graders in Bremen and Berlin today are Muslims. The demographic development must be stopped.
He works with facts, he emphasizes. One of these alleged facts: that so many media would not report on the problems of migration, is because of the fact that journalists and politicians have so few children and therefore do not care about the future of Germany, he claims. Another alleged fact served by Sarrazin: We did not live on the back of the Third World, rather we live it at our expense, he expects - and receives applause for it.
The 200 visitors had to pay 25 euros to listen to the theses of the bestselling author. According to the office of Oskar Helmerich but you have even had to pay 3,000 euros to pay Sarrazin's fee.
Hans-Georg Maaßen explains on request that he was satisfied with the travel costs.
