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Ex-Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution Maassen: Is it over in the CDU now?
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa
According to information from SPIEGEL, the CDU is examining a party expulsion procedure against the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen.
After Maaßen had recently attracted attention with disturbing statements in an interview, Berlin's top candidate Kai Wegner and CDU Vice Karin Prien had publicly demanded that Maaßen be excluded from the party.
As SPIEGEL learned, the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus is now in contact with the CDU Thuringia to initiate proceedings.
Maassen, who belongs to the CDU state association in Thuringia, recently claimed in an interview with the author Alexander Wallasch on his platform that there is racism towards white people.
Not recognizing this is "an expression of a green-red racial theory, according to which whites are regarded as an inferior race and one must therefore bring Arab and African men into the country".
Wallasch had been noticed several times in recent years by the spread of conspiracy theories.
Maaßen has also been irritating his party for years with right-wing and conspiracy-themed positions.
So far, however, the CDU had rejected an exclusion procedure against the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Party leader Friedrich Merz was also reluctant to exclude him.
Now a limit seems to have been crossed.
In the CDU, Maassen's recent statements led to disbelief.
With Prien and Wegner, who is currently campaigning in Berlin, two members of the federal executive board pushed for proceedings against Maassen.
'Mr Maassen has crossed another line.
It has to be over now," Wegner told the "Tagesspiegel" on Monday.
Anyone who says so has no place in the CDU.
Maassen himself rejected the criticism of him.
In a tweet, the CDU politician spoke, among other things, of a “shabby dirt campaign”.
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