The result of the legislative elections on Sunday, February 23rd in Germany, marked by a clear advance of the right-wing national party Alternative für Deutschland, reshuffles the cards for this party, which has seen its political weight considerably strengthened. Two controversial figures, Maximilian Krah and Matthias Helferich, who had been temporarily excluded, are returning among the party’s MPs.
Maximilian Krah, who had previously been implicated in a Chinese espionage scheme involving his parliamentary assistant, was sidelined at the time of the European elections in June 2024, after making controversial statements about the SS units. Speaking in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the German parliamentarian had judged that people who wore the Nazi SS uniform during the Second World War were not “automatically criminals,” raising the indignation of AfD partners within the now-defunct Identity and Nations Group (ID) in the European Parliament. “Guilt must be assessed on a case-by-case basis,” he explained at the time, recalling the case of Günter Grass, who used to wear the Waffen-SS uniform.
Without denying his words, Krah made amends and resigned from the AfD’s federal executive board—without, however, being completely excluded from the party. At the time of his statement, the lists had been closed, and Krah’s candidacy for the EU Parliament had already been validated, allowing him to be elected as an MEP for the AfD. “I recognise that my factual and nuanced statements are being misused as a pretext to harm our party,” he explained on X, before announcing that he was withdrawing from the campaign and renouncing all media appearances.
Immediately after the European election, Krah was excluded from the newly elected delegation of AfD MEPs. Another indirect consequence of Krah’s outburst was that the Patriots for Europe group, which succeeded the ID group in the European Parliament, was formed without the AfD, which was forced to join a new group, Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), mainly made up of parties rejected by the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) groups. The AfD is numerically the largest party in that group, with 14 MEPs.
Matthias Helferich was expelled from the AfD parliamentary group in 2021 after making comments online in which he described himself as “the friendly face of the Nazis.” He had defended himself, in vain, by claiming that he was only parodying the attacks of the Left. He had since sat in the Bundestag as a non-attached member.
Both Krah and Helferich were elected as MPs in last weekend’s German parliamentary elections. Krah, who enjoys a solid base of popularity, won a clear victory in his constituency of Saxony. On Tuesday, February 25th, the inaugural meeting of the AfD parliamentary group decided to end their exclusion. Only a two-thirds majority vote of their group could lead to a new exclusion—a procedure unlikely to happen in the new political configuration of the party, which gathered more than 20% of the vote and is now the second-largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
For the opposition, their return to favour is not acceptable, and some left-wing MPs are renewing their calls for an outright ban on the AfD.
The International Auschwitz Committee, which brings together former deportees to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and coordinates the remembrance of the Holocaust internationally, has expressed outrage at the decision and denounced the “cynical arrogance” of the party that agreed to reinstate them.
The public channel ZDF emphasises that the Krah and Helferich cases are only part of the problem, and that the new AfD delegation includes several problematic figures, such as Birgit Bessin, a member of the Brandenburg parliament with links to a neo-Nazi organisation, and Dario Seifert, a former activist in the NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, considered the heir to the NSDAP).
For the time being, Alice Weidel, the chair of the AfD, celebrates her indisputable victory and has no intention of responding to the controversy.
