2024-04-25 03:15:04
Björn Höcke claims not to have known that “Everything for Germany” is an SA slogan: How the AfD politician and history teacher explains his ignorance.
For Björn Höcke, the matter is apparently so simple that he can summarize it in two sentences: “I didn’t know, and I’m actually completely innocent.”
The Thuringian AfD state chairman is on trial in Halle on Tuesday because he used the SA slogan “Everything for Germany” in a speech. Höcke confirms that he said the sentence, but he claims to have done so in ignorance. The history teacher and well-connected AfD politician sees himself as innocent because he allegedly knew nothing about the meaning and criminality of the slogan.
That was Höcke’s line of defense on this day of the trial. To underline this, the AfD politician gave surprising insights into what he had not dealt with and what he supposedly did not know. And Höcke once again presented himself as a victim of law enforcement.
“Certainly not used”
If he had known about the slogan, he “certainly wouldn’t have used the phrase,” said Höcke in the courtroom. He testified on the second day of the trial, and knowledge of this is the crux of the trial over the accusation of using the symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations: Anyone who does not know that the wording is problematic and punishable is not guilty. Höcke’s defense attorney, Philip Müller, put it this way: His client is assumed to have an “inner, secret will to send a secret signal to a few people in the know. There is unlikely to be any concrete evidence.”
Höcke also explained why he had no idea of the significance of the formulation. He only found out afterwards that two AfD politicians had already been investigated because of the wording. He hardly spoke to party colleague Ulrich Oehme, signatory of the “Erfurt Declaration” from Höcke’s wing, and if he did, then never about his criminal proceedings. He doesn’t know the other person, Kay-Uwe Ziegler, the state deputy of Saxony-Anhalt, at all. Ziegler had used the SA slogan months before Höcke.
He also did not notice the media coverage of these incidents. Höcke said he hardly follows established media anymore because they have turned him into the “devil of the nation.” The public prosecutor’s office accused him of having employees who analyzed media reports. And maybe someone warned you not to use “AfD” as an abbreviation for “Everything for Germany”? Höcke sticks to it: it never reached him. “Even if one assumes that I am the éminence grise and everything reaches me: No, the opposite is the case.”
But in history lessons and in his studies, when he trained to be a high school history teacher? Höcke apologizes, saying that the universal history of humanity is the broadest field of knowledge that exists. The history teacher is not a polymath and cannot know everything, just as a criminal lawyer does not have to be familiar with media law. “You wouldn’t let psychotherapists operate your appendix,” he told the judge. The Nazi era is therefore also a specialist area that he hardly wants to have to deal with.
No seminar during the Nazi era
He looked through all the certificates from his studies again: “I didn’t take a seminar on National Socialism at university, that’s not atypical.” Höcke brought with him from his time at high school “World History in Brief”, a book from the advanced history course: “Only one or two sentences about the SA” can be found in it, but not the motto that is now being discussed. The SA slogan cannot be found in the book from his time as a teacher (“Historical-political world studies. Weimar Republic and National Socialism”) either. “The SA and its slogan don’t seem to be that important for history educators,” concludes Höcke.
His focus was on the history of the 19th century, where the language was “flowery”: “So I explain that I sometimes use language that sounds like the 19th century.”
It sounded different to the public prosecutor’s office: it had armed itself with articles in which striking parallels were to be demonstrated between Höcke’s speeches and the Nazi era. The examples suggest that Höcke is well acquainted with texts from that period. It’s also about Goebbels’ Sportpalast speech. After his presentation, Höcke cannot even say for sure whether he has read it. The 52-year-old told the court that he had hardly paid any attention to the 20th century. Höcke claims that he hasn’t even read “Mein Kampf”, Adolf Hitler’s work with its central ideas.