The president of Bavaria, the Christian Socialist Markus Söder, announced this Sunday that he is keeping in office the vice president, Hubert Aiwanger, regional leader of the Free Voters (FW) party, who for days has been leading a political scandal in Germany for his links to a pamphlet Nazi and anti-Semite of the late eighties. Söder had summoned Aiwanger to respond in writing to 25 questions about it, which he did on Saturday.
In a statement to reporters in Munich, Söder said Aiwanger “has clearly apologized, clearly distanced himself,” that there is so far no evidence that he wrote “the disgusting” pamphlet in his youth, and that it all happened 35 years ago. . Since then, argued the president of Bavaria, Hubert Aiwanger, “nothing comparable” has happened, and removing him now from his positions in the regional government – ??he is vice president and Minister of Economy – would therefore be “disproportionate.”
Aiwanger’s party, Free Voters (FW, for its German acronym), has been a junior partner of the Social Christian CSU in the Bavarian government since 2018. Bavaria holds elections on October 8 and the controversy over the Nazi pamphlet, with echoes throughout Germany, shook the election campaign. Markus Söder had said on several occasions that he aspires to renew the government pact with FW. The latest polls in Bavaria give the CSU 39% (that is, again without an absolute majority), followed by The Greens (14%), Free Voters (12%) and the Social Democratic Party (9%).
The pamphlet, a typewritten flyer whose existence was revealed on Saturday, August 26, by the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, pretends to be a contest to choose the “greatest traitor to the country” and promises prizes, mocking the concentration camps and the Holocaust. Supposed contestants are encouraged to show up “at the Dachau concentration camp for a job interview,” to compete for prizes like “a free flight through the chimneys of Auschwitz” or “a forever stay in a mass grave.” ”, among other similar formulations.
Hubert Aiwanger, 52, denies being the author of the text, which was written in 1987, when he was 17, and his older brother has claimed authorship. But he does admit that a copy of the pamphlet was found in his school bag and that the high school principal punished him by giving him a history paper on the Third Reich. Söder said that, in addition to the apology, “it is important that Hubert Aiwanger works to regain lost trust,” holding talks with the leaders of the Bavarian Jewish community.
