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The new Brandenburg AfD parliamentary group leader Berndt
Photo: Soeren Stache / dpa
It was a signal of support from the far right.
Björn Höcke, the Thuringian AfD country chief and once the front man of the officially disbanded "wing" network, recently called on his supporters to take part in a rally in Cottbus.
It is organized once again by Hans-Christoph Berndt and his association "Zukunft Heimat".
At the end of the week, when Höcke will speak there, he will be able to welcome Berndt in a new role.
Because the 64-year-old has been the parliamentary group leader of the AfD in the Brandenburg state parliament since Tuesday, Berndt prevailed against the parliamentary parliamentary group manager Dennis Hohloch - with eleven to seven votes.
Berndt succeeds former chairman Andreas Kalbitz, who has now been excluded from the party.
The Brandenburg AfD will not appear more moderate in the future - on the contrary.
Berndt's "Zukunft Heimat" association is classified as right-wing extremist by the Brandenburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Jörg Müller, recently called Berndt - like Kalbitz before - a "proven right-wing extremist".
The entire AfD regional association has also been treated as a suspected right-wing extremist case by the secret service since the summer.
The new parliamentary group leader is a trained dentist, he once worked as a laboratory doctor at the Berlin Charité, where he was also chairman of the faculty's staff council for ten years.
Since 2015 he has been demonstrating with "Zukunft Heimat" at rallies in Brandenburg against refugees, most recently he has also made a name for himself with protests against the anti-corona measures.
The fact that the Brandenburg constitutional protection classed the association as right-wing extremist in January of this year has, among other things, to do with personnel and structural overlaps with the "Southern Brandenburg resistance movement", which was banned in 2012 and under which the neo-Nazi organization "Spreelichter" was active.
This group had once organized unannounced, nightly torchlight parades in East German municipalities, where participants wore white masks and with their outfits reminded of the Ku Klux Klan.
Berndt's club is a kind of apron organization of the Brandenburg AfD.
Berndt owes the fact that he is now leading the parliamentary group to the power struggles within the party.
The post became vacant because his predecessor Kalbitz lost his party membership in May through a decision brought about by AfD Bundeschef Jörg Meuthen in the federal executive board - and subsequently also his chairmanship at the head of the state association and the parliamentary group.
Kalbitz and Berndt were seen as rivals, even if Berndt avoided open criticism of the party leader at the time.
The elections to the state list last year showed that he can build on a basis in the Brandenburg regional association.
Although Kalbitz led the party in the state elections, Berndt landed in second place with a similarly good result as Kalbitz.
He now belongs to the parliamentary group as a non-party and continues to sue the Berlin district court against his expulsion from the AfD.
In terms of content, the two were never as distant as their personal competition would suggest.
In mid-September both appeared as speakers at a Pegida event in Dresden.
In the Saxon capital, Berndt had exclaimed with a view to the internal struggles: "If the AfD wants to rise again, it needs strong wings."
And so little is likely to change on the right wing course of the parliamentary group under Berndt.
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AfD politician Berndt: In previous life he was chairman of the staff council for many years
Photo: Patrick Pleul / DPA
Admittedly, it would not have been any different if the election had been different.
The now defeated 31-year-old Hohloch is no less to the right than Berndt or Kalbitz.
He made headlines in August when he tore his spleen after being punched by Kalbitz and had to be hospitalized.
Kalbitz then spoke of a "regrettable matter", his protégé Hohloch never really kept his distance from Kalbitz even after the incident.
The 42-year-old vice parliamentary group leader Birgit Besssin, who also ran for election on Tuesday, but was eliminated with six votes in the first ballot, would probably have made only marginal changes to the previous course.
In 2015, the business lawyer was one of the signatories of the "Erfurt Declaration", from whose ranks the "wing" was later founded under Höcke and Kalbitz.
Reactions from other parties
The outcome of the election was therefore no surprise to the other parties in the Brandenburg state parliament.
"You had the choice between extreme, extreme and the most extreme and chose the most dangerous person," said SPD parliamentary group leader Erik Stohn.
The parliamentary group leader of the Free Voters, Péter Vida, considers Berndt to be a southpaw and agitator: "If the AfD Brandenburg had ever intended to evade surveillance by the constitutional protection and radicalization, it has now finally slammed this door."
And the left-wing parliamentary group leader Sebastian Walter summarized the election as follows: "Two neo-Nazis just change chairs, and the right wing will be further strengthened."
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