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Ex-AfD politician Frauke Petry
Photo: Carsten Koall / dpa
It is probably one of Frauke Petry's last appearances in the parliament buildings.
She has been a non-attached member of the Bundestag for four years after turning her back on the AfD one day after the 2017 federal election.
Since then, Petry has not seen such a boost in the media. The E800 meeting room in the Paul-Löbe-Haus is well filled. However, it is not her departure from federal politics in a few weeks' time that attracts journalists on this hot summer day: Petry presents her book »Requiem for the AfD«. 311 pages long, published by her husband Marcus Pretzell, once a leading AfD politician. Pretzell is also sitting in the hall.
It is a poisoned farewell gift that the 46-year-old left her former party.
A work of reckoning in which she explains her view of things - on the personal and political struggles that broke out before the official founding in 2013, on the intrigues and power games behind and in front of the AfD's scenes.
The media are also criticized, including SPIEGEL.
It's a mixture of attack and justification.
The AfD is "in contrast to the past, a chaotic protest party", still exists, but there is not much left of what made up the founding idea, even if the voters may not even notice it that way.
After the losses in the three most recent state elections, "the trees no longer grow into the sky."
In her day there was "in addition to a protest character also a substantive constructive approach" in the party, claims Petry.
With the Cologne party congress in spring 2017, however, it was over when their "future proposal" had not even been discussed.
The AfD is now "much, much further" away from assuming government responsibility than it was in 2015/16, when it was at the top together with Jörg Meuthen.
The increasing influence of the officially dissolved "wing", which can still organize majorities at party congresses, will not bring the AfD closer to government responsibility.
The AfD, she is convinced, "can no longer turn this process back."
For a long time, Petry himself had tolerated the völkisch-nationalist "wing" network around the Thuringian AfD country chief Björn Höcke.
She defends herself that she should have officially announced the “disparities” with Höcke “even earlier”.
Therefore, she had to put up with the accusation of "covering him up", but was the only party leader in the history of the AfD who tried to exclude Höcke from the party.
In the press conference, she mentions the internal dispute in the Baden-Württemberg parliamentary group over the MP and anti-Semite Wolfgang Gedeon in 2016 as the point that, in her opinion, accelerated the decline of the AfD. "Until then there was an influx of sensible members" , then this was "abruptly" interrupted - with "cutbacks" in the eastern regional associations.
Attacks against Meuthen
A significant part of her book and press conference revolves around financial flows.
Petry's story goes like this: Those who were once in the temperate camp in their time - Jörg Meuthen, Alice Weidel, Maximilian Krah, Nicolaus Fest, Guido Reil - have tipped over to the »other side«.
For example, after accepting hidden donations, Meuthen defected to Höcke's "wing", top candidate Weidel had given up her opposition to Höcke and subsequently also received money.
Those affected had rejected the allegations this week to SPIEGEL (read the details here).
The fact is: In the case of Reil and Meuthen, the party was sentenced to fines of around 400,000 euros for illegal party donations; in the Weidels case, a fine of around 396,000 euros was recently confirmed by the administrative court, against which the AfD may still be in the next higher instance wants to appeal.
In her book Petry writes of financial "networks" around the billionaire Baron August von Finck junior, his company Degussa Goldhandel and the billionaire Henning Conle.
"How the AfD presented itself to the electorate was no longer determined by them as politicians or members of parliament, but by those who corrupted them with money," she said.
But how reliable are Petry's statements?
In September 2016, she had claimed in the federal press conference at Meuthen's side that she did not know who was behind the dubious election campaign aids in favor of the AfD.
In response to a journalist's question at the time, she said: "We can't say anything about that because we don't know."
In the video: Press conference on September 19, 2016
In the book, however, she describes an encounter with Conle in October 2015 in Leipzig, in December of the same year in Zurich with Meuthen and again alone and for the last time with Conle in May 2016. "Financial resources were also discussed".
And what about a blunder who should make it easy for their opponents to question the credibility of their book? In the PDF version previously received by some journalists, the billionaire von Finck is mentioned in a chapter on the scandal of covert party financing in the old Federal Republic of Germany - but instead the industrialist Friedrich Karl Flick and his corporate manager Eberhard von Brauchitsch were involved in it in the 1980s. This entry had to be changed in the book, which Petry also admitted when asked by SPIEGEL. That is "annoying", the error has now been corrected.
In the book, but also this week with the ZDF magazine »Frontal 21« and the research network »Correctiv«, Petry primarily addressed Jörg Meuthen, who broke with the »wing« in May of last year. She was aware that AfD boss Meuthen had diverted illegal donations from the controversial real estate billionaire Henning Conle "past the official party committees into illegal channels". This was primarily intended to strengthen the AfD's Facebook presence for the 2017 federal election.
What is she based on? "I have electronic proof of this claim," she says when presenting her book. On June 15, she and her husband Pretzell presented to the Bundestag administration's control department responsible for party financing. In the days before, she had also asked Meuthen "in several ways," including personally by SMS, whether they would not want to go to the Bundestag administration together. But Meuthen did not answer. The co-party leader had confirmed in a phone call to SPIEGEL this week that she was unsuccessfully seeking contact with Meuthen - but without giving details.
The guerrilla war against Meuthen seems to continue.
Meuthen also told SPIEGEL this week about Petry's remarks about the contact with Conle regarding illegal donations: Petry pretends to "have knowledge of something that is not true."
At the book presentation, she now publicly announced that she would take legal action against Meuthen's statement in SPIEGEL - she had set him a deadline by Monday.
And the AfD as a whole?
It dies in the eyes of Petrys "a slow death", it is quite conceivable that a "shrunken remnant AfD still survives".
In the "bourgeois camp, the AfD is dead," she says.
In 2025, if the FDP and Union did not do everything wrong, the party could even be kicked out of the Bundestag, so their forecast.
And what do you choose yourself in September?
That remains her secret, but she wants "a black-yellow coalition".
