Wilhelm von Gottberg

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Wilhelm von Gottberg (2020)

Wilhelm von Gottberg (born March 30, 1940 at Gut Woopen / Groß Klitten , Bartenstein district (Ostpr.) ) Is a retired German politician and civil servant . Since 2017 he has been a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the 19th German Bundestag . Among other things, he is considered to be right-wing extremist because of statements about the Holocaust .

From 1992 to 2010 he was federal chairman of the East Prussian Landsmannschaft . From 1971 to 2011 he was a member of the CDU , since 2013 he has been a member of the AfD. From 1991 to 2016 he was mayor of Schnega .

family

Wilhelm von Gottberg was born in 1940 as the son of the landowner Heinrich von Gottberg and his wife Gertrud, b. Freiin von der Goltz, born on Gut Woopen / Groß Klitten in the administrative district of Königsberg . The parents came from the noble families Gottberg and Goltz . His family fled with him from what was then East Prussia before the end of World War II . According to her own statements, her flight took place from Gdynia via Swinoujscie and Schwerin to Lüneburg .

Von Gottberg has been married since 1972. He is the father of six children. He is of the Protestant denomination.

Education and employment

Von Gottberg first completed an agricultural and manual training and then became a police officer. In his nine years as a police officer, he obtained his technical diploma while working . During the following six years as a manager in the security department of an industrial company, he completed a degree in mathematics and history for the teaching profession , followed by an additional degree in psychology . From 1977 he taught state and constitutional law as well as psychology at a police school of the Federal Border Guard (BGS).

Von Gottberg has been a member of the Order of St. John ("Knight of Honor") since 1969 . Since 1988 he has had the title of “legal knight”.

Political career

Wilhelm von Gottberg 2020 in the German Bundestag

Von Gottberg joined the CDU in 1971 because he rejected the Ostpolitik of the SPD-FDP coalition at the time and its renunciation of the formerly German areas on the other side of the Oder-Neisse border . In 1986 he was elected to local parliaments for the first time. 1991 became a member of the district council in the Lüchow-Dannenberg district . In 2011 he resigned from the CDU because he did not want to support the “ policy of rescue packages ” for indebted EU states. The trigger for the decision was a lost election for a previously desired list position for the district council election at that time. In 2013 he was a founding member of the state association of AfD Lower Saxony and was elected a board member there. On January 19, 2018, the entire state board was removed from office by the federal board and after a ruling by the AfD Federal Arbitration Court, because it "seriously violated the principles or the order of the party".

From 1991 to September 2016 von Gottberg was mayor of Schnega. The community in debt when he took office became debt-free under von Gottberg. In May 2016, for financial reasons, he took a position against yellow place-name signs for more traffic safety in the sub-municipality of Molden . The local council finally rejected this. In the same month, the Schnega municipal council decided to have an empty, municipal-owned apartment converted into a doctor's practice for a Gottberg's son for a total of around 100,000 euros, as there was no family doctor care in Schnega at the time, which the municipal council wanted to maintain. The German Taxpayers Association criticized this in a letter to von Gottberg as a waste of taxes. This accused the federal government of aiding and abetting "character assassination and defamation ". In September 2016 he was elected in the local elections in Lower Saxony for the AfD in the district council of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district and then as parliamentary spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group.

In February 2017 he was involved in an affair directed against an internal critic of the AfD state chairman Armin-Paul Hampel , which was referred to in the media as "Operation Bustard Hunt ". On February 13, 2017, the AfD decided on the electoral list for the upcoming federal election 2017 , in which he was elected to fourth place in the state association. In 2017 he was elected to the 19th Bundestag via the state list for the AfD.

In the 19th German Bundestag, Gottberg is a full member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture and a deputy member of the Mediation Committee .

Positions in organizations of displaced persons

Von Gottberg has been a member of the board of the Lower Saxony regional group of the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen (LO) since 1983 . In 1987 he took over their state chairmanship. From October 1990 he was first co-opted as deputy spokesman and elected to this position in 1991. From November 1992 to November 2010 he was speaker (federal chairman) of the LO. During his time as spokesman, the federal board of the LO had Hans-Günter Schodruch appear as a speaker at the 1994 annual meeting, who represented the party The Republicans in the European Parliament, which was then classified as the right-wing extremist . The right-wing extremist magazine Nation und Europa (7–8 / 1994) welcomed the appearance: “Under Wilhelm von Gottberg, the East Prussian Landsmannschaft, which used to be fixated on the Union, seems to be freeing itself from party political clutches and looking for new allies.” In 2005, the East Prussian Landsmannschaft awarded him its highest Award, the Prussian shield .

From 1994 to 2013 von Gottberg was chairman of the board of trustees of the East Prussian Cultural Foundation .

As LO spokesman, von Gottberg was responsible for the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ), which was formerly known as the "Ostpreußenblatt". He had it renamed in 2003 in order not to have it appear as a pure association journal of the LO and to gain new readers. In spring 2011 he was acting editor-in-chief of the paper.

Positions

Demands on former German eastern regions

In 1995, Federal Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel publicly criticized the activities of right-wing extremist publisher Dietmar Munier in the Russian part of the former East Prussia. Munier ran house and land purchases and the settlement of Russian Germans there with several associations he founded in order to demonstrate the claim to former German eastern territories. In a letter to Kinkel, von Gottberg warned that Kinkel's overly sweeping criticism could harm the interests of the displaced East Prussians. This was then reported by the "Ostpreußenblatt" (13/95). Kinkel rejected the allegations on April 4, 1995 and affirmed that right-wing extremist activities by Germans abroad damaged Germany's image. However, he does not see how this criticism affects the interests of the displaced East Prussians. The German government confirmed the dialogue in response to a request from the left-wing parliamentary group and confirmed that Munier's associations “acted with a strictly nationalist and chauvinist ideology” and received considerable support from the associations of expellees. However, she did not have any specific knowledge of how von Gottberg and the LO could help Muniers clubs.

At the fiftieth anniversary of the LO (July 1998) in the Schöneberg Town Hall , von Gottberg complained, according to the social scientist Samuel Salzborn : The “return to our homeland East Prussia” had been denied to the displaced to this day. A lifting of the visa requirement for trips to Kaliningrad is desirable so that the "human right to the homeland" for the Germans and their descendants can be realized. He called for “acquisition of property and unhindered entry and exit” to Russia, “bilingual place-name signs” and “state-sponsored ethnic group autonomy for Germans” in Poland and declared: “We have long been waiting for an official request for forgiveness from Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia the genocidal eviction crimes . "

In 2001 Wilhelm von Gottberg wrote: “The residents who had recently settled in East Prussia after the Germans had fled and were expelled knew nothing about the cultural value of the buildings found.” The Polish historian Krzysztof Ruchniewicz named the quote as an example of how the word “expulsion” is used today is still used ideologically and is limited to the flight and forced transfer of Germans after 1945, although many non-German and German Jews were also forced to flee and expelled during the Nazi era and afterwards.

Statements about the Holocaust

In an editorial in the Ostpreußenblatt of January 6, 2001, von Gottberg claimed: “The genocide of European Jewry is still used as an effective instrument for criminalizing the Germans and their history .” He asked, “How long will the next generation continue with the stigma of guilt for twelve years of the Nazi dictatorship ”. In response, he quoted the neo-fascist Mario Consoli : “Every flimsy pretext (...) is good enough to bring the Holocaust to mind. The propaganda steamroller is not getting weaker over the years, but stronger, and in more and more states the Jewish "truth" about the Holocaust is being placed under legal protection. The Holocaust must remain a myth, a dogma that is beyond any free historical research. ”Von Gottberg commented:“ We have nothing to add to that. ”The weekly newspaper Die Zeit announced the passage in March 2017. When asked, he claimed that he had publicly apologized for the quotes, but did not want to indicate when and where. In addition, he clearly named and ostracized the Holocaust in several of his own articles. Further inquiries about what he understood by a “Jewish truth” and a “myth of the Holocaust” remained unanswered. After it became known, he said that the quote was "a little frivolous" and that he regretted it in a regional newspaper. There was no clear distancing from the content of the quote. Gottberg's approval of the quote was understood as a Holocaust denial . Von Gottberg himself says that he does not deny the Holocaust and refers to previous publications that prove this.

Further statements and appearances

In 2003, von Gottberg defended the Bundestag member Martin Hohmann in the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung against the accusation that his perpetrator speech was anti-Semitic . When the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland and the Lower Saxony Green State Chairwoman Brigitte Pothmer wrote that von Gottberg had publicly defended Hohmann's anti-Semitic speech, he filed an injunction . This was rejected as hopeless, so that von Gottberg withdrew it and had to bear the legal costs.

In 2007 von Gottberg gave a speech on “East German homeland awareness today” at the Danubia Munich fraternity . Ten years later this was treated critically in the newspaper Die Zeit , because the protection of the Constitution of Bavaria dealt with the Danubia because of right-wing extremist views.

In February 2017, the AfD decided on the election list of its candidates for the 2017 federal election . In his application speech, von Gottberg stated that he wanted to work to end the “cult with guilt” . The Nazi era was the darkest time in German history, but it had been dealt with. The statement was compared with Björn Höcke's (AfD) demand to move away from Holocaust remembrance.

As the oldest member of the Bundestag in the 19th legislative period, von Gottberg would have become old-age president when the AfD entered the Bundestag and would have been able to give the opening speech. In order to prevent a suspected Holocaust denier from claiming this right, a majority of the members of the Bundestag changed the rules of procedure of the German Bundestag in April 2017 so that from now on the oldest member of the Bundestag, but the longest serving member of the Bundestag, becomes the old-age president. Because of his statements about the Holocaust, Die Zeit von Gottberg classifies as one of several “ultra-right” members of the AfD's Bundestag.

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm von Gottberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stiftung Deutsches Adelsarchiv (Hrsg.): Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels. Starke, Limburg 2000, p. 113.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Liminski: Gottberg: "The Flight" is in parts unrealistic and clichéd. Deutschlandfunk , March 7, 2007
  3. ↑ lateral thinker relies on the "alternative". Allgemeine Zeitung, June 8, 2013
  4. ↑ Source: Reasons for the decision of the AfD Federal Arbitration Court of February 7, 2018 (file number 01_18_EA_Hampel-ua_BuVo_BSG).
  5. ^ Tilo Giesbers: Right- wing candidacies in the Lower Saxony municipal elections on September 11, 2016. Antifascist press archive and education center Berlin , September 8, 2016
  6. ^ People are fighting for yellow place-name signs against their mayor Wilhelm von Gottberg , Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung , May 27, 2016
  7. ^ AfD in Wendland: Present for mayor's son , taz , June 1, 2016
  8. ↑ Lüchow-Dannenberg, district council, elected officials
  9. ↑ https://www.haz.de/Nachrichten/Ppolitik/Niedersachsen/AfD-Niedersachsen-will-Vorstandskritiker-mundtot-machen
  10. ^ Federal Returning Officer : Elected on the AFD state list
  11. ^ German Bundestag - Biographies. Retrieved May 29, 2020 .
  12. ^ Federation of Young East Prussia: The Königsberg area and its perspectives. October 23, 2002
  13. ^ German Bundestag: Small question from the MPs Ulla Jelpke and the PDS group. Printed matter 13/1186
  14. ↑ Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen: Carrier of the Prussian shield
  15. ↑ a b German Bundestag: Wilhelm von Gottberg, AfD (biographies of the MPs, 19th electoral period)
  16. ^ Anton Maegerle : Author network in the gray area. In: Stephan Braun, Daniel Hoersch (ed.): Right networks - a danger. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 978-3-322-81009-0 , p. 37
  17. ↑ The large kress.de overview: The media workers in the German Bundestag , kress.de , October 14, 2017
  18. ^ German Bundestag: Answer of the federal government to the minor question of the MP Ulla Jelpke and the group of the PDS. July 16, 1997
  19. ↑ Samuel Salzborn: Saddle the elk, Wilhelm! Jungle World , July 22, 1998.
  20. ↑ Krzysztof Ruchniewicz: Reconciliation - Normalization - Good Neighborhood. In: Andreas Lawaty , Hubert Orlowski (Ed.): Germans and Poles. History, culture, politics. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49436-6 , p. 135.
  21. ^ A b Paul Middelhoff: Wilhelm von Gottberg: "The genocide of European Jewry is still used as an effective instrument for criminalizing the Germans (...)". Die Zeit, March 30, 2017
  22. ↑ AfD politician von Gottberg: "The Holocaust must remain a myth". ( Memento from October 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Bayerischer Rundfunk , March 16, 2017
  23. ^ Wilhelm von Gottberg: AfD politician refused to distance himself from the Holocaust quote. Die Zeit, March 15, 2017
  24. ↑ Christian Bommarius: AfD politician: Designated Bundestag senior president calls the Holocaust a "myth". Berliner Zeitung , March 15, 2017; Christian Bommarius: Wilhelm von Gottberg: The AfD and the "myth" Holocaust. Frankfurter Rundschau , March 15, 2017
  25. ^ Hohmann dispute for the judiciary: "New Germany" and Wilhelm von Gottberg before the regional court. State newspaper for the Lüneburg Heath , March 9, 2005; Defeat for von Gottberg: “New Germany” wins legal battle. State newspaper, May 11, 2005
  26. ↑ List places: Fine art at AfD top, the rest takes. NDR, February 5, 2017
  27. ↑ Bundestag: Coalition prevents possible age presidents of the AfD. Die Zeit, April 27, 2017
  28. ^ Kai Biermann, Astrid Geisler, Christina Holzinger, Paul Middelhoff, Karsten Polke-Majewski: AfD parliamentary group: right to extreme in the Bundestag. Die Zeit, September 26, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070
personal data
SURNAME Gottberg, Wilhelm von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU, AfD) and expellee functionary
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Gut Woopen, Groß Klitten , Bartenstein district , East Prussia