Tino Chrupalla is on his way to his office in the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus. He is in a good mood and determined. "I can also make a good speech," he says and smiles. It's an allusion to a newspaper article that recently questioned his rhetorical ability.
But on the Saturday afternoon at the federal party convention of the AfD in Braunschweig it will be particularly important. For the Saxon Chrupalla, the AFD co-chief Alexander Gauland has chosen as his successor, must compete with another applicant, the AfD Bundestag deputy Gottfried Curio, 59.
Both will run for the post, which 78-year-old Gauland wants to vacate to become honorary chairman of the party and focus on working as a faction leader. It could be a speaker's contest of sharp, demagogic messages.
Curio, who studied music in his curriculum vitae and worked for many years as a physicist at universities in Berlin, Munich and the US, intervened in the words of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), "mass immigration is also immigrant mess", Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) he thought this summer with the remark that he was doing "the business of the tugs."
With such speeches Curio regularly enjoys his fan community. He has a strong following at the base, mainly because he broadcasts his speeches via a YouTube channel.
Title page as accolade
So, Chrupalla should not have an easy time against it. Even though he, in the cosmos of AfD speakers, can also lumber vigorously. Recently attacked the 44-year-old, who was once at CDU junior boys Union and 2017 beat the present-day Saxon CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer in his constituency in Görlitz, the Chancellor in the Bundestag, asked her past in the "Free German Youth" of the GDR and indirectly drew from her the image of a perpetrator in the SED state. With his appearance in the debate on November 9, 1989, Chrupalla even made it to the front page of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" ("AfD provokes scandal in debate over the fall of the Berlin Wall"). In AfD circles this is considered a knighthood.
For Gauland, the planned withdrawal from the party leadership - which he had taken rather grudgingly on the side of Jörg Meuthen two years ago - a risk. Often enough, he has called his party a "fermented bunch". He thus described the constant unrest in his own ranks, which has often led to chaotic party congresses. Once again, it could be turbulent in Brunswick.
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
AfD politician Tino Chrupalla and Beatrix von Storch
Chrupalla is not a member of the ethnic "wing" network around the AfD politicians Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz. But he enjoys sympathies there. Rhetorically, he is quite connected there: Television recordings of ZDF show how he speaks in March 2018 at a performance in Oppach, Saxony on the "Islamization of the West" as a "reality", also could "in fact of a certain change" talk.
Will Chrupalla's rhetoric arrive at the "Wings" but suffice for his election?
Curio, so the fear, could pull the delegates in Braunschweig by his side with a good speech - just as two years ago almost the then Schleswig-Holstein AfD head of state Doris zu Sayn-Wittgenstein would have succeeded. In order to prevent them, Gauland was finally elected party leader. The "false princess", as she is called mocking internally, was expelled from the party in August, among other things, because she was accused of supporting membership in a far-right club that denies the Holocaust.
Thus it is to be heard from the AfD that Gauland holds open this time for all cases, a candidature should the party congress drift into chaos. Nothing scares Gauland more than to dismiss the party founded in 2013 in an unstable future. In many state associations, most recently in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, the grave and direction struggles between so-called moderate and "wing" forces were pacified for the time being by the election of new state presidents.
Back to the triple top?
That the Braunschweiger Party Congress runs smoothly, but is not expected. Curio said in his application video that he also competes for a possible third speaker position at the top. In the early years of the party, there had been such a constellation of three equal spokesman for the Executive Board: Until summer 2015, Bernd Lucke, Frauke Petry and Konrad Adam officiated. Lucke and Petry have left the party, Adam largely withdrew from the public. Since July 2015, the AfD is led by a double top, in the statute states, however, that the federal board consists of "two or three national spokesman".
HAYOUNG JEON / EPA-EFE / REX
Will to the head of the party: AfD MP Gottfried Curio
Unlike Gauland wants his co-chief Jörg Meuthen definitely compete again. But even Meuthen is injured, in summer his own district association in the southwest had not set him up as a delegate to the federal party convention. Meuthen will probably have to fight back in Braunschweig a counter-candidate, the Rhineland-Palatinate AFD member of parliament Nicole Höchst. Not sure what their chances are. Höchst has been attracted by radical verbiage for a long time, most recently comparing Merkel to Hitler ("The schnauzer is now wearing a rhombus"), the women's quota calling it "titled socialism". And with the Lower Saxony country chief Dana Guth possibly another candidate applies for one of the two top posts - it is attributed to the camp of alleged moderates.
Dealing with the donation affairs
In addition to the staff there could be a tricky topic in Braunschweig: the donation affairs. So far, the AfD must pay fines of 402,900 euros to the Bundestag. It was about help by the Swiss advertising agency Goal AG for Meuthen and the Federal Executive Guido Reil in state election campaigns 2016 and 2017. Also open is a further penalty of 34,000 euros around the Kyffhäuser meeting of right-wing Höcke. Gaulands co-faction leader in the Bundestag, Alice Weidel - she is running for the first deputy in the Bundesspitze - is still in the sights with the unclear donation scandal in their Lake Constance district association.
For some at the base donation affairs are therefore far from over. Several delegates have tabled a motion that would be radical in its implications - should the issue be actually dealt with at the congress. In it, the initiators, who "deliberately by guilty financial practices, the party forced to punitive or dissuaded from state funds", must "personally liable for it". That the application comes through, is considered doubtful.
Another change, which is included in the application and is also supported by AfD Federal Treasurer Klaus Fohrmann, should have more opportunities - it provides for provisions on penalties and wants the national associations for "misconduct" in the "internal relationship" - ie by their respective Members - are liable to the Federal Party.