2023-08-30 00:06:02
by Paolo Valentino
Prime Minister Söder’s ally (CSU) is under accusation and everything will be played out in October. The pamphlet with Nazi theses was found in his briefcase, the brother claims that he is responsible for it
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BERLIN – Hubert Aiwanger, Bavarian deputy prime minister and economy minister, remains in his post for the time being, accused of harboring anti-Semitic opinions in his youth. At the end of a crisis summit between his CSU and the Frei Wähler, the minority partners led by Aiwanger, the minister-president of Bavaria, Markus Söder, said he was dissatisfied with the clarifications provided so far by the ally, to whom he now has asked to fully answer the 25 questions posed to him by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the newspaper that sparked the scandal. “This is not just a silly youthful joke, even the mere suspicion damages the image of Bavaria, where there is no place for anti-Semitism,” said Söder, immediately after the consultations.
In the investigation published on Saturday and based on anonymous testimonies, the newspaper said that at the age of 17, when he was studying at the Mallersdorf-Pfaffenberg gymnasium in Lower Bavaria, Hubert Aiwanger was punished by the school authorities for having written an anti-Semitic leaflet. in which he launched a mock competition on knowledge of German history entitled “Who is the greatest traitor of the motherland”. The participants were supposed to appear for an interview “in the Dachau concentration camp”. The list of prizes followed: the first, “a free flight through the chimney of Auschwitz”; the second, “a lifetime stay in a mass grave” and other amenities such as “a visit to the Gestapo”. It was the 1987/88 school year.
Typewritten, the flyer (of which the newspaper published a photo) had appeared in the school toilet. Immediately afterwards, in a search, some copies had been found in the folder of the young Hubert, then in the 11th class together with his older brother Helmut, repeater. Nobody spoke. The police did not open a formal investigation. And the internal authorities only imposed on Hubert the obligation to write a report on the Third Reich and read it to the class. On Sunday the Bavarian minister, who had so far denied any wrongdoing by refusing to answer questions posed in writing by the newspaper before publication, admitted the circumstance, but said he did not remember if he had distributed any copies and above all that he remained silent ” because it is not like me, then as now, to denounce other people ». How to say, it wasn’t me. A few hours later, his brother Helmut declared that he was the author of the pamphlet, explaining that he did it out of anger after the rejection of it the previous year and in any case “to distance himself in every respect from that gesture”.
Aiwanger moved when the fire had already started. Söder branded the flyer as “inhuman and disgusting”. Chancellor Scholz also defined a text that “shows real contempt for humanity” as “horrible”, demanding that there be “political consequences”. The co-president of the SPD, Saskia Essen, has more explicitly called for the resignation of the Bavarian politician. While Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Israelite community of Munich and historical figure of German Jewry, said she was “speechless” in front of a writing, “which reminds me of the hatred of the Nazi era and is connected to a politician of the first slowly»: «Already the only suspicion is dangerously arsonist».
The hypothesis that the Aiwanger brothers acted together remains probable. It is evoked by Karl Freller, director of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation and Christian-Social Vice-President of the regional Parliament: «It looks like a plan. Writing such a thing is one thing, but distributing it is not much different.
The affair could have traumatic consequences on the political scene in Bavaria, which goes to the polls on 8 October, with repercussions also at a national level. In fact, Söder absolutely needs to erase the shame of 2018, when with 37.2% the Christian-Social Union obtained the worst result of the post-war period and was forced to embark the Frei Wähler, a local populist right-wing formation, breaking the historical taboo of «no space to the right of the CSU». After reluctantly giving way to Armin Laschet in 2021, then defeated by Scholz, the Bavarian prime minister in fact aspires to be the chancellor candidate of the CDU-CSU in 2025. Söder said he wanted to continue the collaboration with the Frei Wähler even after the elections in October, adding that “coalitions do not depend on a single person”. But the party totally identifies with Aiwanger and the scandal can have unpredictable outcomes.
August 29, 2023 (change August 29, 2023 | 22:07)
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