Offenburg (dpa / lsw) – Offenburg’s mayor, Marco Steffens, complained of hostilities immediately before the start of the AfD state party conference. There is defamation against employees of the city administration and himself in the social networks, said the CDU politician on Friday in the local memorial “Der Salmen”, as the city announced.
The AfD Baden-Württemberg invited its members to the two-day party conference in Offenburg (Ortenaukreis), which begins on Saturday. Parallel protests against the meeting are planned.
Steffens said the city was in a dilemma. “Of course, you could refuse the meeting place, have a legal dispute and then predictably lose this legal dispute,” he said, according to the announcement, without once explicitly mentioning the AfD and the party congress. “Then the representatives of this unspeakable ideology would still gather here in the end – and would also enjoy weeks of attention and ultimately the triumph of having won in court.” You wanted to avoid that. He now expects civil society in the city to fly the flag.
Steffens said in January that he did not share many of the AfD’s views. But the party can rent the Oberrheinhalle from the Offenburg-Ortenau trade fair, because the AfD has a legal right to transfer.
