It is a brief email: Bavaria’s Minister of the Interior and district head of the CSU Middle Franconia, Joachim Herrmann, writes in response to a request from Bayerischer Rundfunk that he wants to hold a meeting with the district board of the Mittelstands-Union in October. Before then, he does not want to give an interview on this topic, but he will say this much: the event with Ulrich Vosgerau was not acceptable.
Mittelstands-Union Mittelfranken sticks to decision
The district chairman of the Mittelstands-Union, Robert Pfeffer, however, continues to defend Vosgerau’s invitation to Erlangen: “We invited Mr. Vosgerau as a member of our sister party, the CDU,” says Pfeffer. Furthermore, Vosgerau spoke exclusively about questions of European law during the fireside chat.
Defender of Björn Höcke and participant in “Potsdam secret meeting”
Critics point out that Vosgerau is not only an expert in European law. As a lawyer, he also represented the Thuringian AfD party leader Björn Höcke in court and was a member of the board of trustees of a foundation close to the AfD. The research network Correctiv has also revealed that Vosgerau took part in the so-called Potsdam secret meeting, at which right-wing extremists were also present and the topic of remigration was discussed.
Alliance against right-wing extremism calls for Pfeffer’s resignation
Frank Riegler pointed this out in an interview with Bayerischer Rundfunk. He is the spokesman for “Aktion Courage Erlangen”, which demonstrated against the fireside chat of the Mittelstand-Union. “We want the CSU to get more involved here and show its edge against the far right,” stresses Riegler. The Alliance against Right-Wing Extremism in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region is going a step further and demanding the resignation of the Mittelstand-Union’s district chairman Robert Pfeffer.
Controversial invitations and posts
The district association had already attracted attention before: two years ago, for example, Hans-Georg Maaßen was invited to a fireside chat in Erlangen. At that time, Maaßen had already lost his post as head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and since this year he has been classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In addition, videos of AfD politicians were distributed a year ago via an X-account of the Mittelstands-Union Mittelfranken, as research by Bayerischer Rundfunk shows.
Pfeffer: “Don’t step back”
Robert Pfeffer waves it off: “Of course I will not resign. And we in the Mittelstandsunion are also clearly against right-wing extremism,” says the chairman of the Mittelstands-Union Mittelfranken. For him it is all about seeking dialogue.
Several members of the Erlangen Mittelstands-Union, however, have resigned from their posts in protest after they were unable to dissuade the district association from holding the event with Vosgerau. Among them is the deputy chairman of the Erlangen Mittelstands-Union, Kurt Höller. He is very worried about the effect of such a speaker being invited to Erlangen on the many international specialists and managers of Erlangen’s employers, especially the university, hospital and Siemens. Höller continues: “Anyone who gives such speakers a platform in Erlangen is doing us all a great disservice – regardless of the actual title of the event.”
“Something similar must not happen again”
Both Kurt Höller and the CSU district chairman Joachim Herrmann stress in their emails that they assume that something similar will not happen again. Whether this will be ensured in the future and what consequences the fireside chat with Vosgerau will have will only be revealed in the conversation that Herrmann plans to have with Robert Pfeffer and the other board members in October.
