In Hamburg and Munich, rallies had to be broken up due to a much larger-than-expected attendance. Aerial photos from across the country showed crowds of people braving Germany's harsh January temperatures to fill city squares and roads. According to police figures, about 100,000 people gathered in Berlin on Sunday on the lawns of the Reichstag, which houses the lower house of the German Parliament.
The banners raised at the protests stressed Germany's special responsibility to stand up to the extreme right, given the country's dark history under Nazi rule, which led to the Holocaust. Some of the banners read: “Never again” and “Now we can see what we would do if we were in the position of our grandparents.”
The protests were sparked by an investigative report earlier in January, which revealed that members of the AfD met with right-wing extremists in Potsdam in November to discuss a “return migration” plan should the AfD come to power. According to a report by the non-profit research institute Correctiv, Martin Sellner, a right-wing extremist and leader of the Austrian “identity movement,” proposed a “master plan” that would “reverse the trend of foreign settlement.” The report said the focus would be on asylum seekers, non-Germans with residency rights and “non-integrated” German citizens.
The idea of sending people to a “model state” in North Africa was reportedly discussed – similar to the 1940 Nazi plan to deport millions of Jews to Madagascar.
With less than six months to go until Germans go to the polls in the European Parliament elections, the AfD continues to maintain its months-long hold on second place in national opinion polls. At about 22%, the party is only slightly behind the conservative opposition, the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, known as the CDU/CSU.
Meanwhile, approval ratings for the centre-left ruling coalition have fallen to record lows amid rising costs of living, a budget crisis and debate over immigration.
The protests that erupted last week highlighted a sense of urgency among many voters to ban the AfD ahead of regional elections this fall. In September, voters will go to the polls in three eastern states – Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia – where the AfD is currently in the strongest position.
Asked last week whether the Interior Ministry was surprised by the Correctiv report, ministry spokeswoman Britta Belaj-Harman told reporters: “We cannot comment on the intelligence here.” She said that the country's internal intelligence “keeps its eye on these matters.”
After the report's publication, comparisons were immediately drawn with the 1942 Wannsee Conference, also in Potsdam, at which senior Nazi officials formulated the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
Germany's leading legal organizations strongly condemned the extremist plans, warning that the meeting should not turn into a “second Wannsee Conference.”
“It is an attack on the constitution and the liberal constitutional state,” a group of six organisations, including the Association of German Judges and the Association of German Lawyers, said last week. “The legal validity of such delusions [of mass deportation] “It must be prevented by all legal and political means.”
However, Joseph Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, urged extreme caution when making comparisons with the Wannsee Conference.
“The industrial mass murder of European Jews is unique in history in its cold blood and insanity,” Schuster told the German news agency on Monday. He added, however, that “the meeting in Potsdam between officials of the AfD and the Identity Movement is undoubtedly evidence of the brutality of thinking directed against the foundations of our democratic society.”
Politicians, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended one of the initial protests in his Potsdam constituency, condemned the far-right meeting. He said any plan to expel immigrants or citizens alike is “an attack on our democracy, and therefore on all of us.”
Local intelligence services consider the Alternative for Germany party “extremist right-wing” in three of Germany's 16 states. But the legal hurdle to actually banning the party is very high. The German constitution allows for the banning of parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order,” and the country’s Constitutional Court has only done so twice.
The Socialist Reich Party, the successor to the Nazi Party, was banned in 1952, and the German Communist Party in 1956. In 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) was too insignificant to be banned, despite meeting the criteria The ideology of the ban.
However, German Interior Minister Nancy Weisser said last week that she did not “rule out” taking action to ban the AfD, even if the obstacles to this “last constitutional resort” were high. Such a move would be “the sharpest sword” available, Weser told regional radio SWR. Visser said the country's democratic parties must first address the content of the AfD.
But German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann expressed doubts about possible ban measures.
“You have to be 100% sure that this procedure will be successful” if you want to pursue such a procedure, Bushmann told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag. “If such a measure fails before the Constitutional Court, it would be a major PR victory for the AfD.”
The shift in rhetoric was also evident among top German executives who had long avoided questions about increasing support for the AfD. Lars Riedeljx, CEO of Düsseldorf Airport, said the results of the Correctiv investigation made it necessary to speak out.
“These ideas that pose a threat to the Constitution are poison for Germany as an economic location,” he said. He added: “It threatens our peaceful coexistence, threatens our prosperity, and sends a deadly signal to the world.”
The Potsdam discoveries have raised concerns that Germany's image as an attractive destination for foreign investment and skilled labor is at risk at a time when an aging population and a shortage of skilled local workers are hampering growth.
The AfD says banning the party would be “undemocratic.” In the wake of the Correctiv report, it sought to downplay the significance of the meeting. At a press conference last week, party co-leader Alice Weidel accused Korektiv employees of infiltrating and spying on the private meeting “using Secret Service methods to ignore personal rights.”
Large-scale protests against the AfD were last seen in 2017 and 2018 after the party was elected to the Bundestag – the first time in nearly six decades that a far-right party had entered parliament. However, turnout at the time was small compared to the numbers seen this weekend.
