The Vice President of Bavaria, Hubert Aiwanger, the protagonist since the weekend of a political scandal in Germany over a Nazi and anti-Semitic pamphlet from the late eighties that, according to the media and witnesses, he distributed and perhaps wrote in his youth, appeared for the first time time in public this Thursday to deny the facts. Days ago he had done so with a brief written statement.
“I was never an anti-Semite, I never hated people,” Aiwanger, 52, Bavaria’s vice president and economics councilor, said in a terse, no-questions-asked appearance before reporters in Munich. The Bavarian politician insisted that he had not written the pamphlet found in his school bag 36 years ago, a pamphlet he called “disgusting” and the content of which he says he distances himself. “However,” he maintained in his statement, “it is not acceptable that these errors be exploited in a political campaign against me and my party.”
Hubert Aiwanger is the regional leader of Free Voters (FW, for its acronym in German), a conservative party allied with the Social Christian CSU in the Bavarian government since 2018. Bavaria holds elections on October 8 and this matter has had a full impact on the election campaign. Aiwanger assured this Thursday that he wants to “destroy him politically and personally.” Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other federal government ministers have demanded these days that the aforementioned clarify the facts attributed to him, while the German media continue to echo the controversy and Jewish associations show their indignation that Aiwanger continues in his positions in the Bavarian Government.
The brochure, a typewritten flyer whose existence was revealed last Saturday by the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), pretends to be a contest to choose the “greatest traitor to the homeland” and promises prizes mocking concentration camps and the Holocaust. . The would-be contestants are encouraged to show up “at Dachau concentration camp for a job interview,” to compete for prizes like “a free flight through the chimneys of Auschwitz” or “a stay forever in a mass grave.” ”, among other similar formulations.
At the appearance in Munich, Aiwanger presented his “sincere apologies” to the victims of the Nazi regime, to the survivors and to those who work in historical memory. He also denied having “rehearsed Hitler’s speeches in front of the mirror” in his youth – one of the behaviors attributed to him – and maintained that he does not remember whether or not he told hate jokes then. “If that happened, I sincerely apologize,” she said.
The president of the land, the Christian Socialist Markus Söder, had called on Aiwanger to respond in writing to 25 questions to clarify the situation. Söder aspires to renew the government pact with Free Electors as a junior partner, since the polls once again predict victory for the CSU but without an absolute majority. The latest polls in Bavaria give the CSU 39% (that is, again without an absolute majority), followed by the Greens (14%), Free Electors (12%) and the Social Democratic Party (9%).
Free Voters defines itself as a conservative and liberal-bourgeois party, but Hubert Aiwanger had already caused resentment by espousing ideas close to the far-right AfD, especially on immigration. During covid, he declared himself anti-vaccination.
