CDU: Party court rejects Hans-Georg Maassen’s exclusion from the party

A CDU district party court in Thuringia has rejected the expulsion of former Federal Constitutional Protection President Hans-Georg Maassen from the CDU. This emerges from a decision by the committee, which was distributed on Tuesday from Maaßen’s environment and is available to the dpa. Several media had previously reported. The basis for the decision is an oral hearing on June 23, according to the decision.

The district party court issues a “reference” to Maassen for a guest article in the online magazine “Die Weltwoche”. It accuses him of assigning a “left wing of the CDU” to an “ideology of the so-called anti-Germans in the left-wing parties”. According to the decision of the board, Maassen should also get his membership rights back.

Maassen reacts to the decision

Maassen described the decision of the Thuringian district party court against his exclusion from the CDU as a “resounding slap in the face” for the federal chairman Friedrich Merz. “I hope that Mr. Merz is now better advised and that the next instance will not be rebuffed,” said Maassen of the “Bild” newspaper. It had previously become known that the joint district party court of the CDU Thuringia rejected an application by the federal association to exclude Maassen from the party. In addition, he gets back his membership rights, which have been revoked in the meantime.

“I assume that with this verdict the so-called firewall against our union of values ​​has been torn down,” said Maassen. The longtime CDU member is head of the Union of Values, which is considered to be particularly conservative, but which is not an organization of the party.

CDU had decided on party exclusion proceedings

The CDU federal executive decided in February to initiate the party exclusion process. Even then, it was expected that the process would be lengthy and difficult.

In the past, Maassen had repeatedly made statements from the right-wing edge. However, he did not comply with a request from the party leadership to leave the CDU and had rejected allegations of party-damaging behavior in a statement. Among other things, the CDU leadership accused the 60-year-old of using “language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues to ethnic expressions”.

Secretary General Mario Czaja said in February that Maassen had “clearly distanced himself from the basic positions of the CDU, both in his choice of words and in his substantive issues”. “A fire wall” had been breached by Maassen. “He has lost nothing in the CDU.”

Hans-Georg Maassen without office or function

The long-standing CDU member Maaßen ran unsuccessfully as a direct candidate for the CDU in the 2021 federal elections in Thuringia. He has no office or functions in the party. Since the end of January he has been the federal chairman of the conservative Values ​​Union, which is not an organization of the CDU. At the end of January, the CDU Presidium issued a “political disapproval” for the Union of Values. Anyone who is a CDU member cannot also be a member of the Union of Values.

Maassen had triggered criticism with various statements. On Twitter, for example, he explained that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”. In an interview he spoke of “red-green racial theory”.

Exclusion procedures are generally considered difficult, the requirements for this are high – in the SPD, for example, several attempts were necessary to throw Thilo Sarrazin out of the party. And until it succeeded, there were still numerous controversies. Even with Maassen’s proceedings, a dispute that may last for years is expected.