The head of government of the powerful German region of Bavaria announced on Sunday the retention of his number two, trying to put an end to a lively controversy over accusations of anti-Semitism a month before the elections. The controversy is aimed at Hubert Aiwanger, who is Bavaria’s economy minister and leader of the populist “Free Voters” party. The 52-year-old man is accused of having written an anti-Semitic leaflet when he was a high school student, which he denies. “To oust him from his post would not be proportionate,” Bavarian regional government chief Markus Söder, head of the Bavarian branch (CSU) of the German conservatives, said on Sunday during a press conference.
As the scandal dragged on for more than a week, he acknowledged that his decision to retain Hubert Aiwanger “would not please everyone” but argued that there was “no evidence that ‘he wrote the tract’. “In addition, the facts go back 35 years, no one today is who he was at the time,” he argued, inviting his number two to engage in dialogue with German Jewish associations to s explain and “repent”.
The person concerned had begun by rejecting the accusations as a whole, revealed by the press, then by acknowledging that the leaflet, found in his schoolbag at the time, did exist, while ensuring that it had been written by his brother. Only later did he finally apologize for not distancing himself from the contents of the leaflet soon enough. The text, written in high school during the 1987/88 school year, was apparently a reaction to a competition organized on German history to determine “Who is the greatest traitor to the fatherland”.
In the leaflet, these “traitors” were invited to report “to the Dachau concentration camp for a job interview” and “a free flight through the Auschwitz camp chimney or a lifelong stay in a mass grave. “. Following the announcement of his retention in office, Hubert Aiwanger proclaimed the failure of a “campaign of slander” against him and reaffirmed that he had nothing to reproach himself for. The decision in Bavaria also appears to be politically motivated as regional elections on October 8 loom.
“Pure political calculation” that “tarnishes the reputation of our country”
His departure would most likely have caused a breakdown in the local alliance between the CSU and the Free Voters party, which could have backfired on Markus Söder’s movement and forced him to ally with environmentalists in a region in the very conservative electorate. According to an Insa poll published on Sunday in the daily Bild, 39% of Germans are opposed to the resignation of Hubert Aiwanger and 38% are in favor. “We will continue the coalition” between CSU and Free Voters and “there will be no coalition with the Greens”, decided Sunday Markus Söder, who does not hide his ambition to become chancellor one day.
German Interior Minister, member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, Nancy Faeser, denounced in the RND press group the conservatives’ decision not to break with Hubert Aiwanger, speaking of “pure political calculation which “tarnishes the reputation of our country”. This case has indeed revived concerns in Germany about a tendency to relativize Nazi crimes, in a context of strong progress of the far right and questioning of national guilt which dominated the post-war period. “The Germans are proud of their Nazi and Holocaust memorial culture, the Aiwanger affair shows how hollow it all is,” the weekly Der Spiegel wrote this weekend.
