The controversial former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen (CDU), has allowed the ultimatum set by the CDU leadership to voluntarily leave the party to expire, according to the CDU.
“The federal office of the CDU Germany has no resignation from Dr. Maaßen,” said a CDU spokesman for the German Press Agency in Berlin on Sunday. Thuringia’s CDU General Secretary Christian Herrgott also said on Sunday: “We have no reaction from Mr. Maassen.”
The spokesman for the federal party further announced, “in the event that has now apparently occurred that Dr. Maaßen does not leave the party voluntarily by 5 February at 12:00 p.m.,” the presidency has applied to the federal executive board of the CDU to initiate party exclusion proceedings against Maaßen and to withdraw his membership rights with immediate effect.
In the run-up to the corresponding meeting of the CDU federal executive board planned for February 13, Maassen will have the opportunity to comment in writing, the party spokesman said. Maassen was informed by email and letter last Wednesday that he had the opportunity to get involved in writing until next Thursday.
The CDU presidium issued an ultimatum to Maaßen by 12 noon on Sunday to leave the party. In the past few weeks, he had again come under massive criticism for statements. In a tweet, he claimed that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”. The historian and head of the Buchenwald Memorial, Jens-Christian Wagner, then accused him of “classic extreme right-wing reversal of guilt” and trivializing the Holocaust. In an interview, Maassen also spoke of a “red-green racial theory”.
