According to the Nazi saying: Thuringian state parliament should lift the immunity of AfD man Höcke

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AfD state chairman Björn Höcke

Photo: Jacob Schröter / imago images / Jacob Schröter

The justice committee in the Thuringian state parliament is supposed to lift the immunity of the AfD state and parliamentary group chairman Björn Höcke this Wednesday.

According to SPIEGEL information, the background is a request by the Halle public prosecutor's office in the neighboring state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The Saxony-Anhalt Greens chairman Sebastian Striegel had filed a criminal complaint against Höcke.

The reason was a speech by Höcke in Merseburg in May, which he ended with the words "Everything for Germany".

Höcke could have used symbols of unconstitutional organizations and thus made himself liable to prosecution.

In an expert opinion by the Scientific Service of the Bundestag, for example, it is said that "the use of the sentence› Alles für Deutschland ‹in a speech at a meeting" is a criminal offense, since it was the "slogan of the SA," the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic.

The public prosecutor's office could not initially be reached to comment.

In his criminal complaint, Striegel wrote that the Thuringian AfD chairman had hardly made the ruling spontaneously: "The statement comes at the end of a thoroughly orchestrated speech by the representative of a party that is the object of observation of the constitutional protection in Thuringia," said Striegel.

"The reported speaker can be judged as a 'fascist' because this value judgment is based on a verifiable factual basis."

The SA slogan has already been used by AfD politicians.

The Saxon-Anhalt AfD deputy Kay-Uwe Ziegler was reported because of it.

In Brandenburg, a poster with the slogan caused outrage.

In both cases, the authors denied having known the historical background.

The office of the former history teacher Björn Höcke had not responded to a SPIEGEL inquiry about Striegel's complaint.

On Monday, the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that the authority had classified the AfD state association as a "proven extremist object to be observed" since March.

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