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Ex-AfD politician Andreas Kalbitz: "undeterred"
Photo: ALEXANDER BECHER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
After AfD co-chairman Jörg Meuthen left the party, there was a call from the party base for former AfD right-winger Andreas Kalbitz to return.
In the social media, there are voices, especially from the East German AfD, calling for his return.
The "unspeakable reprisals" against him should be withdrawn and "his full membership rights" should be returned to him, writes a party member from Saxony.
The right-wing extremist Kalbitz lost his membership in May 2020 at the instigation of Meuthen through an AfD federal executive board decision.
However, no formal exclusion procedure had been initiated.
However, the AfD federal arbitration court later confirmed the decision of the federal executive board.
Kalbitz, who was once the AfD state and parliamentary group leader in Brandenburg, was accused, among other things, of not mentioning a previous membership in the neo-Nazi »Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend« when he joined the AfD and also not stating his temporary membership in the »Republicans« to have.
The "Republicans" were observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 1992 to 2007.
For years, together with the Thuringian AfD state leader Björn Höcke, Kalbitz had been one of the leaders of the internal nationalist “wing” network, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as right-wing extremist in 2020.
Höcke then officially dissolved the network.
Kalbitz, who has been a non-party member of the AfD parliamentary group in Brandenburg since spring 2020, is fighting legally to return to the AfD, but has so far lost two cases he had brought before Berlin civil courts.
He is "undauntedly striving to regain his membership, whether by legal means or by other means," he told SPIEGEL.
In the matter, he was, “regardless of the currently very increased popularity, very confident”.
The question for him is not "if, but when and how" he will return to the party.
Politics is “a long-distance run”.
Main hearing on April 22nd
In the near future, the Kalbitz case is likely to be the focus of public attention again.
On April 22, the district court of Berlin is to negotiate the cancellation of his membership in the so-called main proceedings.
A court spokesman confirmed the planned date to SPIEGEL.
The procedure was originally supposed to take place in early March, but was postponed to April at the request of the AfD.
The demands from parts of the base to resume Kalbitz even without the outcome of the court proceedings have so far been commented on with caution in the AfD.
The AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, who had always criticized the cancellation of membership and had a dispute with Meuthen about it, recommends waiting for the verdict before the regional court.
"We can't just reverse the decisions of the federal executive board and the federal arbitration court," Gauland told SPIEGEL.
