Holger Apple

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Holger Apfel 2013

Holger Apfel (born December 29, 1970 in Hildesheim ) is a former German politician who was federal chairman of the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) from November 13, 2011 until his resignation on December 19, 2013 .

From 2000 to 2009 Apfel was deputy federal chairman of the NPD, from 2004 to December 2013 chairman of the NPD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament and from 2009 to 2012 state chairman of the NPD Saxony . In addition, Apfel was chairman of the Dresden National Alliance .

On December 24, 2013, Apfel left the NPD.

Life

Apfel completed his Abitur in Hildesheim in 1991 and then an apprenticeship as a publishing clerk . In 1996 he became the publishing director of the German Voice Publishing House and in 2000 he became editor-in-chief of the NPD party organ of the same name , the " German Voice ". He is married to Jasmin Apfel (nee Langer, * 1983), with whom he has four children. Jasmin Apfel was the managing director of the NPD women's organization “ Ring Nationaler Frauen ”. In the course of the initially only temporary separation from her husband in 2012, she resigned from both organizations.

According to a report in the German-language “ Mallorca Zeitung ” (MZ), Apple has been running a restaurant on Mallorca since May 2014 . He took over the "Maravillas Stube" from a German restaurateur, on December 30, 2017, he announced the closure of the restaurant on Facebook.

In February 2017 it became known that Apple's wife had finally separated from him in December 2014 and had broken with the right-wing extremist scene ; she is taking part in a dropout program.

Political career

Through his involvement with the Student Union of Silesia, Apfel found contact with the NPD youth organization Young National Democrats (JN), of which he had been a member since 1988. From 1992 to 1994 he was Deputy Federal Chairman, then Federal Chairman of the JN until 1999. When Udo Voigt was elected as the new NPD federal chairman in 1996, Apfel was elected to the federal executive board along with other JN officials. From 2000 to 2009, Apfel was deputy national chairman of the NPD. Since 2003 he has been chairman of the Dresden National Alliance.

On July 10, 2011, at a secret party congress of the Saxon NPD in Auerbach in the Ore Mountains , Holger Apfel was confirmed with 87.3% as state chairman.

At the NPD federal party congress in November 2011, at which he professed a “serious radicalism”, he was elected federal chairman on November 12th, with 126 out of 214 votes, with 126 out of 214 votes to succeed Udo Voigt.

On December 19, 2013, Apfel resigned as chairman of the federal party and chairman of the NPD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament.

On December 24, 2013, he resigned from the NPD.

Worked with the Young National Democrats

Under Apple, the influence of the JN within the NPD increased. In 1993, the JN participated for the first time in the so-called Rudolf Hess memorial march . Apple demanded that JN activists see themselves as “political soldiers”, and that the Young National Democrats should look to the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS as models. In the thesis papers of the JN under Apple's chairmanship, a “new national community” is propagated as the goal.

Member of the state parliament in Saxony

Apple at an election rally

Apple was the top candidate of the NPD Saxony for the state elections on September 19, 2004, which received 9.2 percent of the list votes (1999: 1.4 percent). Holger Apfel and 11 other NPD candidates moved into the Saxon state parliament. On election evening he made headlines when he spoke of a “great day for all Germans who still want to be German” , whereupon the top candidates of the other parties left the studio in protest. At the constituent group meeting, he was also elected group chairman.

In October 2006, the plenum of the Saxon state parliament lifted Apple's immunity. The background was a criminal case for insult.

Scandal in the state parliament

In January 2005, during a provocative speech by Apple, tumultuous disputes broke out in the Saxon state parliament, which caused a stir nationwide and rekindled the debate about how to deal with the NPD.

The reason was that the President of the State Parliament, the CDU politician Erich Iltgen , at the beginning of the State Parliament session on January 21, 2005, remembered two upcoming memorial days - the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 2005 and the 60th anniversary of the Bombing of the city of Dresden on February 13, 2005. Because this plenary session was the last before the two days of commemoration, he asked the members of parliament to commemorate all victims of the Nazi tyranny with a minute's silence .

The Saxon NPD parliamentary group refused to accept this and left the conference room closed. The parliamentary group had previously applied for a minute's silence for the victims of the bombing of Dresden, which the state parliament administration had refused to accept.

In a speech in the following current hour of the state parliament on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, Apfel described the end of the Second World War on May 8, 1945 as “the supposed liberation of Germany”, called the Allies “mass murderers” who were “on the verge of today [are] to wage new wars from the field ”. When Apple did not respond to calls to order, the President of the State Parliament switched off his microphone at the end of his speaking time. Age President Cornelius Weiss ( SPD ) then described Apple's speech as " tirades of hate presented with foam at the mouth in Goebbels' manner".

On May 18, 2005, at a session of the state parliament, Holger Apfel modified a quote from Joschka Fischer , with which he described the then Saxon Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière as an “asshole”.

On May 9, 2007, a debate about the immigration law erupted. Holger Apfel described immigrants as "arrogant affluent negroes" and spoke of "state-rich oriental large families". Two days later, Apple drew attention again with statements. As part of a security policy debate, he characterized the rejection of the law to remedy the needs of the people and the Reich (so-called Enabling Act ) by the SPD in 1933 as "embarrassing". In addition, he accused Otto Wels , who at that time justified the SPD's opposition to the law in the Reichstag, of having “lamentably lamented” the consequences for himself and the SPD.

Because of several anti-Israeli statements in a current debate brought to the agenda by the NPD parliamentary group on the subject of "No cooperation with rogue states - end the Saxon-Israeli partnership", Apfel was elected on June 17, 2010 by the state parliament's president Matthias Rößler (CDU) referenced. The Presidium of the Landtag then decided to exclude him from Landtag and committee meetings for ten days “because of the particular gravity of the criticism”. He could not attend a meeting again until December 17, 2010 at the earliest. The Constitutional Court of the Free State of Saxony confirmed the exclusion as legal on December 3, 2010.

Bundestag candidacy

In the 2005 Bundestag election , Apfel ran unsuccessfully in the Kamenz - Hoyerswerda - Großenhain constituency , where he received 6.7 percent of the first votes.

resignation

In 2013, Apple was heavily criticized in his party: “A party leader with a speech impediment is absurd in itself,” said Deputy Federal Chairman Karl Richter in October. The background was differences of opinion about the candidate list of the NPD for the European elections in 2014 . On December 19, Apple surprisingly resigned from his post as federal chairman of the NPD and chairman of the Saxon NPD parliamentary group for "health reasons". His group colleague Jürgen Gansel indicated that Apple suffered from burnout syndrome . On December 22nd, the party presidium of the NPD demanded clarification at a special meeting about an alleged sexual assault in which the then 42-year-old is said to have immorally approached a “young comrade” in August 2013 against his will. If these allegations were not cleared up, they would “suggest leaving the party soon”. Apple then resigned from all party offices on December 24, 2013 and left the NPD. In a personal statement, he complained that the party had carried out a real hate campaign against him. A pistol bullet was sent to him with the request to kill himself. He has no memory of the incident he was charged with due to alcohol. On January 17, 2014, Apfel also gave up his state parliament mandate.

He still has a “patriotic attitude”, but “never stood for the extremes” of the NPD. Instead, he tried to turn the NPD into a “modern, bourgeois” party. However, the NPD could not be reformed. That is why he decided at the end of 2013 "after years of disputes and intrigues" to withdraw from the NPD.

reception

“Front German Apples” in action

Apple is the unwilling sponsor of the satirical organization Front Deutscher Äpfel , which parodies right-wing extremist parties.

In November 2011, the election of Apfel as NPD chairman was reported by numerous media and in some cases also commented on. Der Spiegel wrote: “After nine years as federal vice-president, the 40-year-old has more than enough experience in dealing with the media and political competitors. He knows how to maintain the harmless facade and thus makes himself accessible to potential new right-wing voters. Public failures such as in the Saxon parliament, where he has to be called to order again and again, he should resist in the future. "

In the satirical novel He is back by Timur Vermes , published in 2012, the author lets Adolf Hitler speak to Holger Apfel, who is also named as such. In the film adaptation of the novel from 2015 , which takes place in 2014, when Udo Pastörs was NPD chairman, apple is parodied as Ulf pear .

The book Apfels, Errtum NPD , published in 2017, was judged to be superficial because, although it reproduces anecdotes from the neo-Nazi movement, it does not deal with the subject matter in more depth. In this, Apple does not break with the scene, but merely criticizes his political opponents in it.

Publications

  • (Ed.): Everything great is in a storm. Tradition and future of a national party. 35 years NPD - 30 years JN . German Voice Publishing House, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 978-3-9805844-3-2
  • Mistake NPD: views - insights - knowledge. A quarter of a century in the NPD . Gerhard Hess Verlag, Bad Schussenried 2017, ISBN 3-873-36597-9

Web links

Commons : Holger Apfel  - Collection of Images
Wikiquote: Holger Apfel  - Quotes

Remarks

  1. ↑ Leaving NPD leader and party ( memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Sueddeutsche.de , August 10, 2012, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  2. ↑ Oliver Cruzcampo: Planned new beginning: Jasmin Apfel leaves NPD leader and party . Endstation Rechts , August 8, 2012, accessed on September 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ Fabian Reinbold: Wirtshaus zum netten Hetzer , Spiegel Online , May 22, 2014, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  4. ↑ Andreas Debski: From activist to dropout: Jasmin Apfel breaks with the neo-Nazi scene . Leipziger Volkszeitung, February 28, 2017, accessed on September 2, 2017.
  5. ↑ Leipziger Volkszeitung, dpa: Right-wing extremist Holger Apfel in Auerbach (Erzgebirge) confirmed as NPD head of state , accessed on September 2, 2017.
  6. ↑ The man for the rough takes the chair , Spiegel Online, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  7. ↑ Christina Hebel, Sven Röbel: NPD boss Apfel resigns , Spiegel Online, December 19, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  8. ↑ Stefan Schölermann, NDR-Info: Right-wing extremism: Apple leaves NPD ( Memento from December 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . Tagesschau.de from December 24, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  9. ↑ State Parliament lifts immunity , n-tv.de , October 11, 2006, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  10. ^ The Saxon NPD parliamentary group , Denktag.de, accessed on September 2, 2017.
  11. ↑ NPD scolds interior minister “asshole” , Focus Online, May 18, 2005, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  12. ↑ Plenary minutes of the Saxon State Parliament 4/17 of May 18, 2005.
  13. ↑ NPD failures cause outrage in Saxony . Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 9, 2007, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  14. ↑ NPD mocks Nazi victims , n-tv.de, May 11, 2007, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  15. ↑ NPD parliamentary group leader has to leave state parliament after anti-Semitic tirades , Spiegel Online, June 17, 2010, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  16. ^ Constitutional Court of the Free State of Saxony: On the legality of calls to order against members of the NPD parliamentary group ( Memento from September 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), press releases 2010, December 3, 2010 (on SächsVerfGH, rulings of December 3, 2010 - Vf. 12- I-10, Vf. 16-I-10, Vf. 17-I-10), accessed on September 3, 2017.
  17. ↑ Andreas Speit: Holger Apfel resigns. NPD without a leader . Die Tageszeitung, December 19, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  18. ↑ NPD boss Apfel resigns . Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 19, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  19. ↑ Frank Jansen : Apple in need of explanation . Der Tagesspiegel, December 23, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  20. ↑ Christina Hebel: Party friend suggested Holger Apfel suicide , Spiegel Online, December 25, 2013, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  21. ↑ Holger Apfel also resigns from the Landtag . RP Online (dpa), January 17, 2014, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  22. ↑ Stephanie Schuster: Former NPD boss tries his hand at a landlord in Mallorca , Mallorcazeitung, May 21, 2014, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  23. ↑ Benjamin Schulz: Quatsch with brown sauce , Spiegel Online, August 18, 2011, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  24. ↑ Johannes Korge: Apple is turning the NPD inside out , Spiegel Online, November 19, 2011, accessed on September 3, 2017.
  25. ↑ Oliver Cruzcampo: Ex-party leader Apple accounts with NPD . Endstation-rechts.de, April 29, 2017, accessed on September 3, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Apple, Holger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim