Joachim winner

Joachim Siegerist ( Latvian Joahims Zīgerists , actually Werner-Joachim Bierbrauer ; born January 29, 1947 in Neukirchen (North Friesland) ) is a German - Latvian journalist , author and politician . The winner is the managing director of the Aktion Reiskorn e. V. as well as the German Conservatives e. V. and was co-editor of the Germany magazine, which existed until 2002 .

Life

Joachim Siegerist is the son of a German mother and a Latvian father who served in the Waffen SS during the Second World War . Siegerist grew up in Schleswig-Holstein . Between 1962 and 1965 Siegerist completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter at Bremen Weser-Kurier . Later trained as a journalist at the Norddeutsche Volkszeitung , he finally moved to the Bremen editorial office of the Bild-Zeitung , of which he was a member from 1971 to 1973. In 1975 Siegerist hit the headlines when he passed on a confidential phone call to the local CDU that he had recorded with the Bremen police chief at the time . The winner was then excluded from the journalists' association.

Political career

Later he worked as an advisor to the Christian Trade Union Federation and as chief reporter for the television magazine Hörzu . In 1980, Siegerist was co-founder and provisional managing director of the “Citizens' Action Democrats for Strauss”, an electoral support association for the then CSU candidate for Chancellor Franz Josef Strauss . The initiators of the organization were a. the former Czech chess grandmaster Luděk Pachman and the ZDF television journalist Gerhard Löwenthal . After Strauss was defeated in the election, Pachman, Löwenthal and Siegerist founded the Conservative Action (KA) in 1981 . After internal disputes, which involved both the political orientation of the association and financial irregularities, his position as managing director of KA was terminated in June 1986 and he was expelled from the association. On September 17, 1986 Siegerist and some followers founded the association Die Deutsche Konservativen e. V. , whose chairman he became and is to this day.

In the mid-1980s, the German Conservatives campaigned for the release of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, who was imprisoned in Berlin-Spandau . On August 20, 1987, the German Conservatives published an obituary notice in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for Hess, who had died three days earlier . The signatories were Joachim Siegerist as chairman and the honorary president of the association, Clovis Prince zur Lippe .

In September 1987 Joachim Siegerist left the CDU Hamburg voluntarily . With this step he preceded an exclusion from the party that the CDU executive committee had initiated on May 21, 1987. CDU leader Peter Tucholski accused Siegerist, who had stood with his German Conservatives in the Hamburg state election in 1987 and received 0.2% of the vote, of “right-wing extremism”.

In 1990 Joachim Siegerist ran as a single candidate in the Leipzig II constituency for the federal election . Although Siegerist was confident of being able to win the direct mandate in the run-up to the election , he ultimately only received 2,042 votes.

After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the independence of the Baltic states, Siegerist acquired Latvian citizenship in 1992 in the name of Joahims Zīgerists . In 1993 he moved for the Latvijas Nacionālās Neatkarības Kustība (LNNK) party in the Latvian parliament, the Saeima . During the election campaign, Siegerist said he met a delegation of former members of the Waffen SS. In 1994 Siegerist was expelled from the faction of the LNNK for "repeated anti-party behavior". He then founded the People's Movement for Latvia (Tautas kustība Latvijai) , which was also called the “Siegerist Party” (Zīgerista partija) . With 15% of the vote, the TKL became the second strongest force in the 1995 parliamentary elections. Since the conservative parties refused to accept him, Siegerist was unable to form a coalition with a majority and failed in the election as head of government. In 1998 the people's movement for Latvia only received 1.7% of the vote. Siegerist resigned his party positions on the evening of the election and withdrew from Latvian politics.

In the 1995 report on the Protection of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, the association Die Deutschen Konservatives e. V. referred to as " right-wing extremist ". On November 21, 1997, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced Joachim Siegerist in an appeal process for sedition and incitement to racial hatred to a prison sentence of 21 months on probation and a fine of DM 24,000  . Siegerist wrote in two donation letters in 1992 on the subject of “Gypsies” among other things: “Nobody is outraged that every third criminal case is now committed by foreigners (mostly bogus asylum seekers). [...] The gypsies [...] play a particularly lousy role here, acting like Jews persecuted by Nazis. Consistently a bad, criminal pack. They rob, steal, blackmail, threaten. ”The letters included transfer slips with the reference“ Gypsy terror ”. On the other hand, Siegerist objects in an interview with the right-wing weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit that he did not want to attack the "Gypsies" in their entirety, but only wanted to denounce those responsible for "Gypsy children" used to beg in Germany, and in this context also refers to his alleged humanitarian work for Romanian "gypsy children". On the other hand, in its judgment, the Hamburg Regional Court took the view that Siegerist had “depicted gypsies as subhumans, animals and visits, made them contemptuous and attacked them in their human dignity”. One has to fear that Siegerist's circulars “gave further impetus to right-wing extremist and xenophobic currents”. Siegerist “knew exactly and wanted to” the effect of the texts.

In November 1998 a German Conservative group was refused entry to Israel . The reason for the Israeli government's decision was the fear that Joachim Siegerist, who had been banned from entering the country, might also be on board.

After his failure in Latvia, Joachim Siegerist turned back to German politics, whereby his activities were primarily limited to the regular sending of donation letters and the organization of trips and congresses. In his circulars, which were sent on behalf of the German Conservatives, Siegerist spoke out in favor of ending the reparation payments to Nazi victims, against the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and “for fair treatment” with the Austrian legal politician Jörg Haider . He also asked for donations for the construction of a soldiers' chapel and a museum for the German Wehrmacht in Latvia. Since 1992, collections for the humanitarian support of former Waffen SS soldiers living in Latvia and their relatives have been organized on a regular basis.

On October 6, 2006, Joachim Siegerist presented the Bremen must live voter initiative at a kick-off event , which since January 2007 has been the regional association of Die Deutsche Konservativen e. V. is. Bremen must live ran for the general election on May 13, 2007 . Siegerist wanted to win 25% of the votes right away with his new formation. Eventually they reached 1.62% in the state of Bremen.

criticism

Critics from journalism and politics accuse Joachim Siegerist of representing right-wing extremist , anti-Semitic and racist positions in his writings . In an answer to a small inquiry from the PDS parliamentary group in the German Bundestag , the federal government certified Joachim Siegerist in March 2001, “having primarily made an appearance through ultra-national and right-wing extremist statements”. Siegerist regularly rejects such allegations. He sees himself as “Christian-social-conservative” and emphasizes his anti-communist stance. Among representatives from the right-wing political spectrum, Joachim Siegerist is still regarded as an "exotic" one.

In an open letter, the Young Conservatives, a former youth association of the German Conservatives, sharply criticized Joachim Siegerist and also accused him of dubious donation behavior. Siegerist is "always at the forefront when it comes to spitting big tones [...] Joachim Siegerist has achieved one goal: his association has received horrendous donations. Donations that he lures out of his pocket to unsuspecting followers in his numerous begging letters. ”The letter also claimed that the German Conservatives would“ collect money from Joachim Siegerist and let it disappear senselessly in some dark channels ”. The former chairman of the Republicans , Franz Schönhuber , who described the winner in a 2004 book as the "undisputed king among the fundraisers " made a similar statement . Schönhuber also wrote: “If it were up to its political significance, the name would not be worth mentioning. It is zero. But if the title 'Abused Patriotism' applies to someone, then it is Siegerist. "

Criminal proceedings

In April 1987 the chairman of the German Conservatives, Joachim Siegerist, his deputy, Michael Stange, and honorary president Chlodwig Prinz zur Lippe were sentenced in the first instance to a fine of 17,550 DM for insulting the former Federal Chancellor and SPD chairman Willy Brandt . In a circular circulated by the defendants in 1986, Brandt was described as a “traitor to the fatherland” and a “dodgy man [...] without political decency” who wanted “Germany to submit to Moscow's dictates”. The judgment was upheld in 1989 by the Hamburg Regional Court .

The financial conduct of Joachim Siegerist and The German Conservatives also met with criticism . In 1993, the extremism expert Andreas Speit characterized Siegerist as a "political businessman like Gerhard Frey". In proceedings before the Landgericht Hamburg, in which Joachim Siegerist for sedition and racial hatred incitement had to answer, the prosecutor described the run by Joachim Siegerist club The German conservatives as a "commercial enterprise" with which the accused Siegerist earn a living. In his further plea, the public prosecutor asked Siegerist verbatim: “You received 1.5 million marks in donations. Where is this money? ", To answer later himself:" Siegerist receives 7,000 marks gross per month as chairman, Mr. H. as managing director 14,000 marks. Not a bad livelihood. ”In view of the almost 85,000 DM that Siegerist had collected with his diatribes against Sinti and Roma on behalf of the German Conservatives, the prosecutor took the view in the later appeal process that the accused was“ a kind of commercial seducer ”.

Others

Joachim Siegerist published numerous books and brochures, including Willy Brandt - Das Ende einer Legende (1989), Das Testament des Uwe Barschel (1989), Ceausescu. The Red Vampire (1990), Uncle Herbert as He Really Was, The Red Quartet (1994), Leibchen und Straps (2005), What Was Unwritten (Short Stories, 2006), Talking Pictures (Short Stories, 2007) and Pee Against the Wind ( Short Stories, 2008).

Joachim Siegerist is chairman of Aktion Reiskorn e. V. , which, according to its own statement, carries out humanitarian actions in Asia and Eastern Europe. The German Central Institute for Social Issues (DZI), which checks social and charitable non-governmental organizations in Germany for the use of their donations, refused the DZI donation seal to Aktion Reiskorn eV. The institute called a promotional letter from the Reiskorn campaign “emotional and highly oppressive”. It is suitable "to hinder the donor in his independent, factual decision".

literature

• Joachim Siegerist: A Politically Incorrect Life Hamburg, WPR Wirtschafts- und Verbands-PR GmbH 2019, ISBN 978-3-910087-20-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Joachim Siegerist in the catalog of the German National Library
• Curriculum vitae at Die Deutsche Konservativen eV
• Article dossier of Spiegel 9 articles between 1986 and 1995

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 20, 1977; Der Spiegel , 35/1980, p. 25.
2. ↑ Der Spiegel, 28/1986, p. 38.
3. ↑ Ludek Pachmann, Chairman of the Conservative Action, quoted in in: Der Spiegel, 42/1986, p. 129.
4. ↑ Die Aula, 3/2003, p. 12; Obituary notice in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from August 20, 1988.
5. ^ Hamburger Morgenpost, June 19, 1987; Hamburger Morgenpost, September 29, 1987.
6. ↑ The Right Edge, 25/1993, p. 21.
7. ↑ Spiegel, 30/1994, p. 171; BT-Drs. 14/5635 , p. 11.
8. ↑ Ojars J. Rozitis in: haGalil Online, November 12, 1998.
9. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report of the Federal Republic of Germany 1995, p. 188.
10. ↑ cit. according to Hamburger Abendblatt , March 9, 1996, p. 17.
11. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 22, 1997; the daily newspaper , November 22, 1997, p. 23.
12. ↑ Interview in Junge Freiheit , May 11, 2007.
13. ↑ cit. according to Hamburger Abendblatt, November 22, 1997, p. 14.
14. ↑ Ojārs J. Rozitis in: haGalil Online, November 12, 1998; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 11, 1998.
15. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau , FR-online.de, April 27, 2007.
16. ↑ Official end result  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 62 kB), Statistics Bremen.  
17. ↑ So Daniel Kilpert: counterweight , in: looking to the right, issue 7/2004; Christine Kröger : Brauner Bauernfänger , in: Weser-Kurier, January 13, 2007, p. 16.
18. ↑ BT-Drs. 14/5635 of March 22, 2001, p. 11.
19. ↑ Memorandum, Edition 12/03, p. 3.
20. ^ Open letter from the Young Conservatives, quoted in in: Memorandum, Edition 12/03, pp. 3–4.
21. ↑ Franz Schönhuber: The Abused Patriotism in Germany and Europe , 2004.
22. ↑ Der Spiegel, 42/1986, p. 127.
23. ↑ Der Spiegel, 13/1993, p. 178.
24. ↑ The Right Edge, 25/1993, p. 21.
25. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, April 16, 1994, p. 11.
26. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, November 12, 1997, p. 15.
27. ↑ Weser-Kurier, February 28, 2009, p. 2.