Monday:
Once again, a new party is announced. The members of the WerteUnion have decided to depart from the CDU and establish a new party under their name. Hans-Georg Maaßen, the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is set to lead the party. His party intends to participate in the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, just like the group of Sahra Wagenknecht and the Free Voters led by Hubert Aiwanger. The prospects of success are difficult to assess. After all, the Free Voters have left the “Others” in the polls and are currently rated at three percent nationwide.
Also in the new edition:
Trump’s Shadow: The spectacular rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani
State Crisis or Chancellor Crisis? Why the Scholz project is on the verge of failing for good
FDP, it’s not working anymore! The former party leader of Saxony on his resignation
Whether they enter parliaments or not, they will take away voters from other parties and thus shift the balance. Aiwanger can make gains from the CSU and also gather sympathies from disappointed Liberals. Maaßen’s WerteUnion, positioned between the CDU and AfD, can score in both groups. His statement of not ruling out coalitions with the AfD could bring him switchers.
Sahra Wagenknecht is expected to attract Eastern Germans who want to protest and express frustration by voting for the AfD. However, she will certainly heavily damage her former party Die Linke. Already, communal factions and entire local associations are switching to her. The transition of the left-wing mayor of Eisenach in Thuringia is perceived by many as a sign. Bodo Ramelow, the left-wing Minister President in Erfurt, could lose so many votes that his CDU rival Mario Voigt succeeds him. And here’s a speculative calculation model: If many parties end up below five percent, Björn Höcke and his AfD could emerge victorious and he himself might even become the Minister President.
Thursday:
On Sunday, the Red Square in Moscow was filled with Communists. Loyal comrades had gathered to commemorate the revolutionary Lenin on the 100th anniversary of his death. They waved flags with his image and laid flowers in front of his statue.
The current Kremlin ruler Putin was not thrilled with the rally and announced on his state television that Russia had been a superpower even before Lenin. The tributes to Lenin once again bring me to the question of whether world history would have unfolded differently if the Bavarian security authorities had functioned better.
Lenin lived illegally for a year and a half with his wife and mother-in-law in Munich, under false names. In an initial apartment, provided by a Social Democrat, he went by the name Meyer. Later, he moved to Schwabing and called himself Dr. Jordanoff. Despite the fact that the czarist police were looking for him, he wrote revolutionary texts undisturbed and met with agents from many countries. The Bavarian authorities neither deported him nor imprisoned him.
A few years later, the Bavarian justice system missed the opportunity to deport the Austrian criminal, Adolf Hitler. In 1913, the two future mass murderers were even in Munich at the same time. There is evidence to suggest that they even frequented the same taverns. Lenin enjoyed Bavarian beer. Hitler was fond of strawberry pastries, as described by Klaus Mann.
FOCUS founding editor Helmut Markwort was an FDP member of the Bavarian State Parliament from 2018 to 2023.
