Dhe former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, has rejected all allegations of party-damaging behavior in a written statement to the CDU leadership. He called the request to leave the party unlawful. According to the 26-page defense letter, which is available to the German Press Agency in Berlin, there are no material reasons for a procedure to exclude the party.
In it, Maassen attacks the CDU leadership massively: “The illegal request to leave and the announcement of a party exclusion procedure because of political expressions of opinion are an attack on freedom of expression and inner-party democracy. It’s intimidating and ostracizing.”
It is also illegal that there has not yet been a hearing of him by the federal executive board and presidium of the CDU. First, the “Tagesspiegel” and the interview format “Schuler! Ask what is” reported about the writing.
CDU board advises this Monday
Maassen suggested that the CDU leadership refrain from an “essentially futile application for exclusion from the party”. Instead, she should, for example, issue a warning as part of a party order procedure, “which I would basically be willing to accept depending on the progress of the procedure”. The CDU federal executive board wants to decide this Monday about the initiation of a procedure for party exclusion.
Maassen ran unsuccessfully as a direct candidate for the CDU in the 2021 federal election in a constituency in Thuringia. He has no office in the party. Since the end of January he has been the federal chairman of the Values Union, which is considered to be close to the CDU but is not an official grouping of the party.
Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2012 to 2018
In the letter to CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja, the former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution firmly rejected all allegations made against him. The allegation by the party leadership was “absurd” that he had used language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists.
Maassen emphasized: “The material requirements for a party exclusion procedure are not in place because I have not violated the principles and order of the CDU and consequently have not caused her any serious damage.”
Maassen has been causing a stir with right-wing populist statements for several years. Most recently, in an interview with a right-wing populist Internet portal, he claimed that “according to green-red racial theory” whites are “an inferior race”.
From 2012 to 2018 Maassen was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He had to leave the post after questioning right-wing extremist riots in Chemnitz.
