“In the AfD you remain a member until the coffin lid is closed,” says Alexander Gauland in an interview. However, he no longer wants to run for office.
AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland has announced his withdrawal from active politics. “I have decided not to run again in the next federal election,” Gauland told “Welt”. “As an 85-year-old, I don’t think I’m still properly in parliament.” The former party and faction leader is now 83 years old. “At my age, the end is in sight,” he said.
“Unless something extraordinary happens, it will be the end of my parliamentary career,” Gauland continued. But he wants to stay in the AfD. “In the AfD you remain a member until the coffin lid is closed,” said Gauland, who was a member of the CDU before switching to the AfD. “I will continue to take part in discussions, that is absolutely clear.”
Alexander Gauland co-founded the AfD in 2013
Gauland was one of the party co-founders in 2013 and has been a member of the federal executive board ever since. Between 2017 and 2019 he was party chairman together with co-leader Jörg Meuthen and led the AfD into the Bundestag for the first time in 2017 together with today’s designated candidate for chancellor Alice Weidel. There, Gauland was at the head of the parliamentary group together with Weidel until the 2021 election. In 2019 he became honorary chairman of the party and in 2021 of the parliamentary group.
The journalist and doctor of law is considered a right-wing conservative representative of his party, which is partly classified as right-wing extremist. He sparked discussions several times with statements about German history and migration issues. In 2018, he called the Nazi dictatorship under Adolf Hitler a “bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history.” About the former German national soccer player Jérôme Boateng, he said that many people think he is “good as a soccer player. But they don’t want to have Boateng as a neighbor.”
CDU member for 40 years
Before his career in the AfD, Gauland was in the CDU for more than 40 years. From 1987 to 1991 he headed the Hessian State Chancellery. He then served as publisher and managing director of the “Märkische Allgemeine”, which belongs to the FAZ publishing group, until 2005. He was born in Chemnitz in 1941, graduated from high school there in 1959 and then fled to the Federal Republic.
The AfD is currently on the rise following election victories in East Germany and recently announced that it would nominate its party leader Alice Weidel as candidate for chancellor in the federal election in a year’s time. However, as things stand, she currently lacks potential coalition partners to participate in government.
Gauland now said in the “Welt”: “We work even without government responsibility. Our influence is strong because the others are afraid of us.” He believes his party is “so moderate that I don’t know where we should moderate ourselves.” The AfD has “not radicalized itself at all.”
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
