The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is not happy about a new protest stunt that has appeared on its doorstep.
Leading members of Germany’s governing party have reacted angrily after the political art-activist group the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) last week placed a life-size bronze statue of the late CDU politician Walter Lübcke outside their party headquarters, the Konrad Adenauer building in Berlin. The memorial is meant to protest the CDU’s alleged accommodation of racist politics and warns against its potential collaboration with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Lübcke, a local CDU leader in the state of Hesse, was shot dead by an AfD supporter in 2019 after he had become a hate figure for Germany’s far-right at the height of Germany’s refugee crisis. At town hall meeting in 2015, he made a speech defending government policy on taking in Syrian refugees.
He was shot in the head four years later on the porch of his home by Stephan E., a far-right extremist who saw Lübcke speak, and who had, according to investigations by Die Zeit newspaper, donated to the AfD in the state of Thuringia.
The memorial includes an information board and a benchImage: Ben Knight/DW
Exploitation or commemoration?
The statue of Lübcke has been erected on a small patch of public ground next to the CDU building, along with a bench and an information board with an audio feature that tells the story of his life in German, English and Spanish. The local authority in Berlin has given permission for the memorial to remain in place for two years. The CDU headquarters did not respond to a DW request for comment on the memorial.
In a YouTube video about the action, the ZPS drew explicit parallels between how conservatives enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists in the early 1930s and how the CDU has been allegedly aping the AfD’s policies.
The main reaction from prominent CDU figures has been outrage. At an event in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the memorial as “utterly tasteless,” and Berlin’s CDU mayor, Kai Wegner, took a similar line.
“Those who so shamelessly exploit the memory of Walter Lübcke for their own political agenda demonstrate one thing above all else: Disrespect and indifference toward a man who stood up for our democracy and paid for it with his life,” Wegner wrote on the social media platform X.
The ZPS said it was disappointed with this reaction: “Of course we had the hope … that at some point one of the top officials from the CDU might have come out of the glass Konrad Adenauer building and had a look at it or laid flowers down,” ZPS spokesperson Tobias von Laubenthal told DW.
But, von Laubenthal added, the reaction from German civil society had been overwhelmingly positive. “The question that we were asking ourselves was why the CDU has not done anything years ago to honor the memory of Walter Lübcke,” he told DW. “That’s something that a lot of people have wondering.”
“This was a man with clear lines, and when those red lines were crossed, such as when it came to far-right extremism, he took a very clear stance,” von Laubenthal added. “He was a man with a stance that we miss in the CDU today.”
Lübcke’s has become one of the most prominent politically-motivated murders in recent German history, marking as it did the first time that an elected leader had been assassinated by a right-wing extremist since the end of World War II.
At least one prominent former CDU figure has defended the action against the attacks from the party. “I wonder what this ‘exploitation’ is supposed to consist of?” said Michel Friedman in a speech at the opening of the memorial last Friday.
Friedman, who has also hosted a DW talk show, was a member of the CDU’s leadership board in the 1990s and left the party earlier this year in protest at its perceived rightward drift. “It’s not exploitation to commemorate such a man, it’s an expression of respect, of honor, and of gratitude,” he said in his speech.
Lübcke was murdered by a far-right extremist and AfD supporter in 2019Image: Swen Pförtner/dpa/picture alliance
Lübcke family’s ambiguous reaction
According to Berlin media reports, the local authority that approved the memorial was told by the ZPS that Lübcke’s family had been made aware of the concept in advance, and had not offered any opposition.
But Lübcke’s family have said they were not consulted. “Simply dropping a letter in our mailbox the day before the monument was erected cannot be considered participation,” Lübcke’s widow, Irmgard Braun-Lübcke and her children wrote in a statement to the media. “This does not constitute adequate information or involvement.”
Nevertheless, the family also noted that they supported the message of the action, saying they were grateful to everyone who remembers their father and husband “in a sincere, appreciative, and respectful manner.”
“The firewall against the right, regardless of which democratic party, must remain in place; there can be no tolerance of that,” they said.
Though largely reluctant to appear in the public eye, Irmgard Braun-Lübcke has criticized the CDU leadership in the past. In February this year, she responded with some irritation to a remark made by Merz about demonstrators during an election campaign event in Munich, when the soon-to-be chancellor said, “I’d like to ask all those people out there, Antifa and anti-right-wingers: Where were you when Walter Lübcke was murdered in Kassel by a right-wing extremist?”
“Contrary to his account, there was in fact strong widespread public support for our democracy and its values after my husband’s assassination,” Braun-Lübcke said. “Thousands of citizens — whether left-wing, liberal, or conservative democrats — took to the streets in Wolfhagen, Kassel, and many other places in Germany.”
The prominent Jewish writer Michel Friedman left the CDU earlier this yearImage: Bernd Wüstneck/dpa/picture alliance
CDU and AfD: A tricky relationship
Though Merz has repeatedly vowed never to allow his party to collaborate with the AfD, doubts are growing whether the CDU’s “firewall” can hold, giving the growing strength of the AfD and upcoming state elections where the far-right party looks set to emerge as the strongest party.
The CDU has been seen to cooperate with the AfD at state level in the past. In January this year, Merz — then still leader of the opposition — triggered a wave of outrage by pushing a motion to
curb immigration through parliament with the support of the AfD. The chancellor has also frequently been accused of using racist rhetoric and fearmongering typical of far-right parties.
The ZPS first made the headlines in 2017 when it erected a replica of Berlin’s monument commemorating the Holocaust outside the home of AfD politician Björn Höcke. This was an allusion to Höcke’s controversial speech at a party event where he criticized Germany’s remembrance of the Holocaust as misguided and called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin a “monument of shame.”
Edited by Rina Goldenberg
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