Stephan Brandner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephan Brandner (2017)

Stephan Brandner (born May 29, 1966 in Herten ) is a German lawyer and politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and since December 2019 one of three deputy national spokesmen for his party. He has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2017 and was Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Bundestag from January 31, 2018 until he was voted out on November 13, 2019 because of alleged previous abuse and anti-Semitic abuses . The process of voting out is unique in the more than 70-year history of the Bundestag. Stephan Brandner was also the top candidate of AfD Thuringia for the 2017 federal election . Before that he was a member of the Thuringian state parliament from 2014 to 2017 . He was assigned to the völkisch-nationalist " wing ".

Life

Brandner passed his Abitur in 1987 at the municipal high school in Herten , then completed an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk until 1990 and then studied law at the University of Regensburg until 1994 . From 1994 to 1996 he completed his legal clerkship in Memmingen , Kempten and Munich . He has been working as a lawyer since 1997 , first in Munich, then in Gera .

Brandner is a longstanding member of the German Language Association . Before 1990 he was committed to the International Society for Human Rights . For almost 30 years he was a member of the Catholic student association KStV Agilolfia Regensburg in the cartel association of Catholic German student associations and was excluded from this in January 2020. According to the Agilolfia, this is the first exclusion of a member in the history of the corporation.

Brandner is married and has a multiple father. He lives in Gera.

politics

As a teenager, Brandner became a member of the Junge Union (JU), and later the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). During his studies and further training in Bavaria (Regensburg, Memmingen, Munich) he was a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), and after moving to Thuringia in 1997, he was back in the CDU. He later resigned from the CDU. Brandner has been a member of Alternative für Deutschland since November 2013. Since then he has been chairman of the AfD district association Gera-Jena-Saale-Holzland-Kreis together with Michael Kaufmann. In the municipal elections in Thuringia in 2014 , he ran on the list of Gera citizenship for a mandate in the Gera city council.

In the state elections in Thuringia in 2014 , Brandner entered the Thuringian state parliament via the state list of the AfD Thuringia . There he became chairman of the Committee on Migration, Justice and Consumer Protection.

After Brandner missed the necessary two-thirds majority in a first election in spring 2015, he was finally elected to the Thuringian judges' committee on November 4, 2015 by the state parliament . Since all political groups have to be represented in the committee, the committee was only able to function after its election.

In February 2017, Brandner was elected to first place in their state list for the 2017 federal election at the AfD Thuringia party congress with 201 of 220 delegate votes cast. The state chairman Björn Höcke had renounced the candidacy in advance and recommended Brandner for election. The AfD became the second strongest force in Thuringia, so that Brandner entered the Bundestag as one of five candidates on his party's state list. Klaus Rietschel was appointed successor in the Thuringian state parliament .

In the local elections in Thuringia in 2019 , Brandner moved into the city council of Gera.

Work as a member of the Bundestag

Stephan Brandner in the Bundestag (2019)

On January 31, 2018, Brandner was elected chairman of the legal committee of the German Bundestag. The election had become necessary because several committee members had appealed against Brandner. Normally the nominees are chosen as chairperson without being elected. Brandner is also a full member of the Bundestag's mediation committee , the council of elders and the legal and consumer protection committee . He is also represented as a deputy member of the election committee , as well as the committee for election review, immunity and rules of procedure .

In an interview almost a year after the 19th German Bundestag met , Brandner highlighted the most important legislative initiatives in which he was significantly involved: “We want to protect diesel drivers, abolish the ' Soli ', lower taxes, abolish the Network Enforcement Act, German as Establish the national language , expand the age assessment of allegedly underage refugees and prevent knife crimes. ”The AfD was unable to enforce any of these contents from the opposition.

In addition to the demand for German as the national language, Brandner drafted another motion to amend the Basic Law. Art. 4 para. 2 ("The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed") should be included in the forfeiture rule according to Art . Specifically, Brandner had Muslim "hate preachers" in mind. The legal scholar Helmut Aust , on the other hand, referred to legal restrictions on religious freedom that are already possible. Since there have been only four, all unsuccessful, proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court since 1949, for good reasons , the motion is "superfluous symbolic politics". However, Brandner saw the possibility that, in addition to the subsequent criminal prosecution of calls for violence, a future-oriented ban on preaching could be imposed on individuals.

The application to abolish same-sex marriage introduced in June 2017 was rejected by the Bundestag . This violates GG Art. 6 , the protection of marriage and family . In her counter-speech, the SPD MP Barbara Hendricks emphasized the change in the concept of marriage and the acceptance of homosexuality, which was hardly imaginable at the time the Basic Law was passed .

Role within the party

Brandner is considered a confidante of the Thuringian AfD state chairman and the most influential protagonist of the party's national wing, Björn Höcke. Because Höcke was not running for a Bundestag mandate, the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung wrote that Brandner “could thus become a kind of Berlin representative for Höcke and the nationalist wing”.

With this extreme political positioning, Brandner was elected on November 30, 2019 by the AfD federal party conference in Braunschweig as one of three deputy federal spokesmen for his party. He prevailed against the more moderate candidates Uwe Junge and Albrecht Glaser .

Controversy

During state parliament speeches and rallies, Brandner attracted attention several times by insulting political opponents. In the three years of his membership in the state parliament, Brandner received 32 calls to order, which he meticulously listed on his personal website. In the previous legislative period, a total of 42 calls to order were issued in the Thuringian state parliament within four years against all 88 members. On May 19, 2016, Brandner was excluded from a state parliament session after several verbal attacks against the parties Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen (“Climate protection, child molesters and coke noses”) and the CDU, and on June 1, 2017 he was expelled from the hall again. In his farewell speech from the state parliament he spoke of himself as the “mob from the state parliament”.

At a performance in Jena on September 12, 2017, he described the counter-demonstrators present as “the result of sodomy and inbreeding ” and also compared them with the SA . Federal Minister of Justice Heiko Maas he called a “result of political inbreeding in Saarland” and his partner Natalia Wörner a “State radio and GEZ chick”. At the same appearance he also wanted to send Angela Merkel , whom he called a “thumb”, “to jail” for at least 35 years. Brandner told MP Madeleine Henfling in the state parliament: "The next time I see you, I'll pull my pants down". During an election campaign appearance in Erfurt, he said of Merkel: “Accusations. Snap. So. "In a speech on September 20, 2017 in Erfurt, Brandner said on family reunification for refugees that Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière , in his estimate of a small number of applications to be expected, was probably based on" the notorious Syrian nuclear family ":" Father, mother and two Goats ". In November 2018, in a speech in the Bundestag, Brandner accused the Federal Minister of Justice Katarina Barley of having met a "dodgy, dubious, internationalist puller", which Brandner used to describe the entrepreneur and philanthropist George Soros , who is subordinated to the right in a conspiracy-theoretical manner that he is directing streams of refugees to Europe and wants to build a “ new world order ”. At the end of October 2019, Brandner posted a photo of an Advent calendar from the Kinder company on Twitter , which was labeled “Presents-Lager”, and wrote: “It used to be called #Adventskalender, wasn't it?” Other users have shown that Brandner only had photographed and distributed the back of the cardboard box and the product certainly bore the words "Advent Calendar" on the front. Shortly thereafter, Brandner presented his tweet as a (won) bet as well as a test and made derogatory comments about “do- gooders ”, “ Antifa ” and “Krampf gegenRechts | ler”.

At the end of April 2020, Brandner demanded that public service broadcasting “be obliged to broadcast party information”. Brandner's justification was the ban on major events until August 31, 2020, which, according to Brandner, was not due to the corona virus , but to "silence the AfD". According to Brandner, the party hardly had a say in the broadcasters. The private broadcaster Tele 5 then sent a fictional AfD commercial. In the video, which was supposed to "inform about the AfD as a party [...]", racist quotes from AfD representatives were reproduced. Channel boss Kai Blasberg also announced that he would donate 9999 euros to the refugee organization Pro Asyl for 999 retweets . Within a short time, the video received more than 1200 retweets on Twitter , whereupon the donation was rounded up to 10,000 euros. In May 2020, Brandner said at an AfD event that the corona restrictions would violate, among other things, the right to free expression and the right to demonstrate. He described the group of prime ministers and the chancellor coordinating the action of the federal and state governments in the corona crisis as the “epidemic politburo ”. The federal government indirectly compared Brandner with hostage-takers by relating the positive reactions of people to the Corona measures and the increasing polls for Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Stockholm Syndrome . The Germans would like to thank them for the loosening and reversal of the restrictions, said Brandner, although there was no reason to do so, as it was a matter of course.

Conversation at the Buchenwald Memorial

A conversation on August 8, 2018 at the Buchenwald Memorial with, among others, Volkhard Knigge , the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorial Foundation , brought no approximation in the assessment of historical revisionism within the AfD. Knigge had previously named as examples:

  • Björn Höcke's criticism of a “ guilt cult ”, for which he received approval from wide circles of his party wing.
  • Comments by AfD chairman Alexander Gauland in 2018 that "Hitler and the Nazis" are "just a bird shit in over 1000 years of successful German history", as well as on his pride "of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars".
  • The activity of employees of the Thuringian AfD parliamentary group in " right-wing extremist fraternities" and the "close [...] cooperation between members and candidates of the Thuringian AfD with neo-Nazis ".

Brandner announced that he was disappointed with the conversation. He had not received any answers to his questions, "how the foundation works, which receives tax money", why it "agitates" against the AfD or why political opponents such as representatives of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation or Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff , the head of the Thuringian State Chancellery, could give lectures in Buchenwald, but the AfD cannot. He does not want to interpret Mr. Gauland and Mr. Höcke. According to the Foundation, however, Brandner had "clearly and unambiguously" acknowledged Höcke's demand that the culture of remembrance in Germany had to be "turned 180 degrees". In addition, he had “ trivialized ethnic and anti-Semitic statements as brief derailments by a few individuals”. For this reason, "there was no substantive discussion about the work of the foundation."

Immediately before the visit, Brandner had declared: “Buchenwald in particular is a warning to everyone that every dictatorship, be it politically red or brown, produces crimes and criminals.” In the conversation, Knigge saw this as a relativization. Instead, it is important to strive for historical “accuracy and depth of field”.

Advice from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution?

In mid-August 2018, Brandner's conversation with Hans-Georg Maaßen , the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , was publicly discussed that had taken place two months earlier. The background was allegations that Maaßen gave the then AfD chairwoman Frauke Petry advice in 2015 on how the AfD could avoid being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Policy advice of this kind is not permitted. Brandner said, however, that his conversation with Maaßen was about the work of the Bundestag legal committee and the current report on the protection of the constitution. Maassen had not had a conversation with Brandner's predecessor Renate Künast . She noted critically that the responsibility for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution lies with the Interior Ministry, thus also with the Interior and not the Legal Committee.

On the other hand, Brandner reported from a conversation with the Thuringian constitution protection president Stephan J. Kramer that he had given him “tips” on how to work with external groups. In particular, one should not maintain any contact with the Identitarian Movement . Kramer, on the other hand, made it clear that he had only repeated his public clarification. “Even a party that runs the risk of being infiltrated by extremists has a right to have us tell it where things are going in the wrong direction. We don't do strategic advice. Of course, we also do not communicate what measures we may take. "

Controversial tweets

Brandner at the state party conference of AfD Thuringia in August 2019

In October 2019, the German Lawyers Association (DAV) and the German Association of Women Lawyers (djb) demanded Brandner's resignation as chairman of the legal committee in the Bundestag. The background was Brandner's tweets in connection with the attack on a synagogue in Halle in October 2019, in which he described the publicist and former Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Michel Friedman as a “ German Michel ” (“Every minute of broadcasting this German Michel drives us new followers in droves - keep it up! "), provided with the hashtags #Paolo Pinkel , #Koksnase and #Zwangsfunk . He had also shared a report that read after the attack that politicians were “lounging” in front of synagogues , although “a German who liked to listen to folk music” and “an organic German” had perished in Halle.

On October 31, 2019, Brandner described the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class, which was awarded to the musician Udo Lindenberg at the beginning of the month, in a tweet as " Judas wages ". He referred to a post by Lindenberg on Facebook about the election results of the AfD in Thuringia , in which the AfD had declared that there was no need for “backward-looking racists, agitators and misanthropic arsonists”. Politicians from the SPD, Greens, FDP and CSU then questioned Brandner's suitability as chairman of the legal committee. On behalf of the parliamentary groups of the Union, SPD, FDP, Left and Greens, the CDU member Jan-Marco Luczak asked Brandner to resign voluntarily, as he lacked “decency, respect and dignity” for the office. If he does not withdraw, he will be voted out of office at the next committee meeting.

Deselection as chairman of the legal committee

Brandner speaks at a press conference in front of the legal committee.

Brandner was voted out of office by the members of the Legal Affairs Committee on November 13, 2019 as a result of the renewed escalations that all other parties in the Bundestag considered untenable - a previously unique event in the Bundestag. The SPD parliamentary group vice-chairwoman Eva Högl said in November 2019: “Mr. Brandner is neither personally nor politically qualified to chair the Legal Affairs Committee. He has repeatedly demonstrated that. ”The committee members of all other parties adopted this point of view when they were voted out of office. The legal situation of being voted out of office was examined in advance by the Bundestag's committee of rules of procedure. The AfD parliamentary group initially refrained from appointing a new chairman, which it is entitled to under the current rules of the Bundestag. The meetings of the Legal Committee are therefore initially chaired by Deputy Chairman Heribert Hirte (CDU). Against the criticism after Brandner was voted out of office, including Alexander Gauland , who spoke of an "unreasonable demand for democracy", Severin Weiland stated in the Spiegel that "[v] considerable and callous remarks towards political competitors [..] the limit" that a parliament that "respects its dignity" cannot accept. Brandner was the "imposition for democracy". A democratic parliament has to "endure a lot", but it does not have to "put up with everything".

Mask refusal in the corona pandemic

On August 12, 2020, Brandner triggered an operation by the Federal Police because he refused to wear a mask on the ICE Berlin - Rügen , which violated the mask requirement applicable at the time . According to his own statement, he was eating a pastry when the conductor spoke to him. He said to the conductor: “Eating, won't work, then I'll think about it.” The conductor then informed the police and Brandner is said to have locked himself in the toilet. The SPD politician and physician Karl Lauterbach then criticized Brandner on Twitter as a "self-righteous mask refuser who shows where we would have come in the corona crisis if the AfD had co-governed."

literature

  • Joachim Jahn : Right wing in the legal committee . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift-aktuell . Issue 12/2018, pp. 18/19.

Web links

Commons : Stephan Brandner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jana Wolf: Why Agilolfia is separating from Brandner. January 19, 2020, accessed January 19, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Catholic student association excludes AfD politician Brandner. January 20, 2020, accessed January 28, 2020 .
  3. ^ Foundation of the district association Gera - Jena - Saale-Holzland-Kreis der Alternative für Deutschland on November 23, 2013. Archived from the original on February 10, 2015 ; accessed on February 10, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Sylvia Eigenrauch: Citizenship Gera wants to move in with ten councilors. Ostthüringer Zeitung, March 6, 2014, accessed on March 5, 2016 .
  5. ^ Announcement by the election officer on the result of the city council election of the city of Gera on May 25, 2014 - corrected version. (PDF) Gera weekly magazine, June 8, 2014, accessed on March 6, 2016 .
  6. ^ AfD Thuringia ( Memento from September 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Committee on Migration, Justice and Consumer Protection
  8. ↑ We are all career changers - who is the AfD? : Thuringian General. Retrieved February 10, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Volkhard Paczulla: Committee for the election of judges: parties argue about occupation. Ostthüringer Zeitung, March 4, 2015, accessed on November 8, 2015 .
  10. ↑ a b Volkhard Paczulla: Dispute over judge election committee: Thuringian state parliament comes to terms with the AfD. Ostthüringer Zeitung, November 5, 2015, accessed on November 8, 2015 .
  11. ↑ dpa / Reuters: Höcke does not want to go to the Bundestag. In: FAZ.net . February 18, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Höcke apologizes for the Dresden speech. Zeit Online, February 18, 2017, accessed February 18, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Fabian Klaus: Thuringian AfD puts Stephan Brandner on list position 1 for the federal election , Thüringer Allgemeine from February 18, 2017
  14. ^ Controversial AfD politicians become committee chairmen in the Bundestag . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on January 31, 2018]).
  15. ↑ AfD politician heads budget committee , on tagesschau.de, accessed on January 31, 2018.
  16. ↑ Brandner, Boehringer, Münzenmaier AfD MPs elected to chair three Bundestag committees , Der Tagesspiegel , January 31, 2018
  17. ^ German Bundestag - MPs. Retrieved April 8, 2020 .
  18. ^ Politicians in the home check: Stephan Brandner (AfD). In: Ostthüringer Zeitung . October 1, 2018, accessed October 16, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Simon Berninger: AfD deputy calls for changes to the constitution. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . September 26, 2018, accessed October 17, 2018 .
  20. ^ Motion against marriage for everyone: SPD MPs rigorously defy AfD. In: Stern . Retrieved October 17, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Bundestag: AfD proposes to abolish marriage for everyone. Queer Communications GmbH, September 27, 2018, accessed on October 17, 2018 .
  22. ↑ a b Right-wing extremists, ideologues and Stasi officers: How right is the AfD? ( noz.de [accessed November 1, 2017]).
  23. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel: Weidel, elected by Storch and Brandner as the new party vice , accessed on December 1, 2019
  24. ^ Dietmar Neuerer: Historical showdown in the budget committee . In: Handelsblatt . January 31, 2018.
  25. ↑ Calls to order Stephan Brandner, Member of the Bundestag 2015–2017 ( Memento from February 22, 2018 in the web archive archive.today )
  26. ↑ Ludwig Bundscherer: Thuringia's most furious MP comes from the AfD and will soon be in parliament . In: MDR . 26th September 2017.
  27. ↑ AfD MPs have to leave the room after mobbing. Spiegel Online, May 19, 2016, accessed September 13, 2018 .
  28. ↑ Plenary Minutes 6/85 . In: Thuringian Parliament . June 1, 2017.
  29. ↑ Ludwig Bundscherer: Until just Pöbler - from now on Chairman of the Legal Committee . In: MDR . January 31, 2018.
  30. ↑ Benjamin Reuter: This completely crazy appearance of the Thuringian AfD top candidate shows what Germany can expect after the election . In: Huffington Post . 13th September 2017.
  31. ↑ Mariam Lau : She lurks behind the scenes . In: The time . 4th October 2017.
  32. ↑ Lennart Pfahler and Jürgen Klöckner: "Göring-Eckardt dispose of": In Erfurt AfD politicians are again making tasteless missteps. In: Huffington Post . September 20, 2017. Retrieved March 4, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Patrick Gensing : Facts against Fake News or The Struggle for Democracy. Berlin, Duden 2019, p. 126 ff.
  34. ↑ AfD politicians: Advent calendar posting causes malice wave. www.morgenpost.de, November 1, 2019
  35. ↑ Nicole Diekmann: AfD in the crisis: In search of the greatest enemy. www.zdf.de, April 26, 2020
  36. ↑ Tele 5 annoys the AfD with a fictional commercial. www.rnd.de, April 20, 2020
  37. ↑ AfD Vice Brandner compares corona policy indirectly with hostage-taking rp-online.de, May 22, 2020
  38. ↑ a b c Concentration camp memorial accuses AfD politicians of trivializing after meeting. Thüringische Landeszeitung , August 8, 2018, accessed on August 9, 2018 .
  39. ↑ Questions to Brandner before Buchenwald visit: What goals does the AfD pursue in the culture of remembrance? Thüringische Landeszeitung , August 8, 2018, accessed on August 9, 2018 .
  40. ↑ a b Brandner's explosive visit. FAZ , August 9, 2018, accessed on August 9, 2018 .
  41. ^ After AfD visit to Buchenwald - Ramelow: Disappointment was "expected". ZDF, August 9, 2018, accessed on August 10, 2018 .
  42. ↑ Interview by Thomas Dirr with Volkhard Knigge: "Brandner refused to provide any clarification". Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 9, 2018, accessed on August 13, 2018 .
  43. ↑ a b c Head of the Protection of the Constitution Maaßen also met with AfD politician Brandner , FAZ.net, August 16, 2018, accessed on October 16, 2018.
  44. ↑ Frank Schauka: Thuringia secret service chief, AFD and supposed to do. In: Thuringian General. September 15, 2018, accessed October 16, 2018 .
  45. ↑ Legal associations demand the resignation of AfD man Brandner from the legal committee chair. In: www.handelsblatt.com. October 15, 2019, accessed October 17, 2019 .
  46. ↑ Legal associations demand the resignation of AfD politician Brandner in the legal committee www.spiegel.de, October 15, 2019.
  47. ^ Outrage over tweets from AfD politician Brandner. www.welt.de, October 12, 2019.
  48. ↑ Four parliamentary groups call for the resignation of AfD politician Stephan Brandner . 2nd November 2019.
  49. ↑ Outrage over tweet from AfD MPs. In: n-tv.de. November 2, 2019, accessed November 2, 2019 .
  50. ↑ Dagmar Pepping: Deselection of AfD politicians: For lack of "decency, respect and dignity." Www.tagesschau.de, November 13, 2019.
  51. ↑ FAZ.net January 31, 2018  ; sueddeutsche.de / Jens Schneider: The AfD committee chairmen are unacceptable ( comment )
  52. ^ Deselection of AfD politicians - "Clear signal against agitation and hatred" on tagesschau.de from November 13, 2019
  53. ↑ cht / mes / dpa: Legal committee elects AfD politician Brandner as chairman on Spiegel.de on November 13, 2019
  54. ↑ Helene Bubrowski and Markus Wehner: Hetzen als System. In: https://www.faz.net/ . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 13, 2019, accessed on November 14, 2019 .
  55. ^ Criticism of AfD man Brandner: "Neither humanly nor politically the necessary aptitude". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, accessed on November 13, 2019 .
  56. ↑ Deselection and what then? In: Verfassungsblog. Retrieved November 13, 2019 .
  57. ↑ AfD man Brandner: A worthy deselection , Spiegel Online , November 13, 2019
  58. ↑ Without a mask on the ICE: AfD politician Brandner triggers a police operation . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 20, 2020]).
  59. ↑ Member of the Bundestag refuses to wear the mask on the ICE. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .
  60. ↑ https://twitter.com/karl_lauterbach/status/1296130936879423489. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Brandner, Stephan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (AfD), MdB, MdL
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Herten