Gbig names are on the witness list: When the Lübcke investigative committee of the state parliament deals with the circumstances of the murder of the former Kassel district president for the last time in a public questioning on February 23, the long-standing Prime Minister Volker Bouffier and Interior Minister Peter Beuth (both CDU) answer questions. Christian Heinz, the chairman of the parliamentary body, expects a large audience in the plenary hall. However, the political importance of the two known witnesses is no longer as great as it was when the committee was constituted in July 2020.
At that time, Bouffier’s resignation from the post of head of government was not yet foreseeable. It gave the opposition the chance to get nobody less than the Hessian Prime Minister into trouble with clever questions. And even from Beuth’s appearance, some people had probably expected more at the time than can actually be expected now.
Could Lübcke’s murder have been prevented?
Even unsuccessful statements by the incumbent Minister of the Interior would only have a limited impact today. Because Beuth announced in October that he intends to retire from politics by the end of the election period at the latest. The questioning of today’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) on January 20 is therefore of greater importance for the current political situation.
From 2010 to 2014 he held the office of the Hessian Minister of the Interior. After all, today’s member of the Bundestag, Stefan Heck, has also been invited. Because from 2019 to 2021 he was State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior under Beuth and therefore also formally responsible for the protection of the Constitution.
The committee of inquiry is about the authority. Could the murder of Walter Lübcke in June 2019 have been prevented if the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had not lost sight of the right-wing extremist perpetrator Stephan Ernst? That is the crucial, hypothetical question that MEPs have been grappling with for the past year and a half.
Even before the body was constituted, it was undisputed that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution made a serious mistake “from today’s point of view” by blocking Ernst’s personnel file for internal official use in 2015 for data protection reasons, because no new information had been gained about him in the past five years had been. In fact, however, Ernst was still relevant in the relevant period, for example in 2011 at a solstice celebration in Thuringia. A photo that was available to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was not assigned correctly. For example, Ernst, whose file the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Alexander Eisvogel, had labeled “highly dangerous” in 2009, was considered “cooled off” six years later.
130 new employees for the protection of the constitution
In a total of 36 meetings, the committee of inquiry did not come to any significant new findings. Eisvogel complained that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with 180 employees, had far too few qualified staff when it took over in 2006.
Robert Schäfer, head of the authority from 2015 to 2022, reported to the MPs in December last year that he had hired around 130 employees to combat right-wing extremism. Their department is now the strongest among the 380 employees.
After the last public meeting in February, the political groups will prepare their written reports. Heinz estimates that the plenum of the state parliament could finally debate this at the end of June.