So far, Ralph T. Niemeyer has primarily been talked about as the “ex of”. But recently the ex-financial advisor, ex-journalist and ex of Sahra Wagenknecht has been on the road in Russia as head of a German “government in exile”. Who is the man – and if so, how many?
The convicted financial adviser and self-proclaimed anti-capitalist Ralph T. – the T. stands for Thomas – Niemeyer appears every jubilee in publicity. Either because he is currently running for the Bundestag, speaking at a “lateral thinker” demo or, as recently, as head of a German “government in exile” flies to Vladivostok and Moscow and is actually received there by the Kremlin authorities.
Niemeyer diligently posted pictures of his trip to Russia – with Foreign Minister Lavrov, Putin spokesman Peskov and Gazprom boss Miller. The first impression: well done satire. But then no “hidden camera” appears, no “Today Show” reporter rips the mask off his face.
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The candidate for the Bundestag, who failed three times (SPD, Linke, die Basis), is serious when he leaves for Russia on September 8th and, on the plane, uses a video message that is later deleted to announce that the “FRG administration” is suspended, the ” Government-in-exile” with him at the helm will now represent Germany under international law.
Nobody in Russia laughs – at least not in public.
The question arises: are Putin’s henchmen so desperate that they now rely on people like Niemeyer, the son of a ministry official from Bonn? What does Moscow hope for from someone like him?
First of all, you have to know who this Ralph T. Niemeyer is, what he was and what he might like to be. In a portrait of him in Bonn’s “Generalanzeiger” from 1988, it is said that he – only 19 years old at the time – was a hyper-intelligent multitasker. One who worked as a correspondent for US television as a student and interviewed Helmut Kohl at the age of 17.
In 1996, Niemeyer was sentenced to three years and four months in prison by the Cologne Regional Court for fraud in 46 cases. The sentence was later suspended on probation. Niemeyer denies the allegations to this day, claims to have researched the high-trading business as a kind of undercover journalist. A year later he married Sahra Wagenknecht, the up-and-coming star of the left, and moved to a cottage in Ireland, “because I no longer had a contract with Germany, I felt harassed,” the “taz” quoted him in 2013 as saying.
So now Russia. What exactly was the 53-year-old doing there and how did he meet the main protagonists of the war of aggression against Ukraine and the economic war against Germany? As “t-online” reports, Niemeyer, according to his own account, provided the Russians with constructed justifications so that they received him as a representative of Germany.
Accordingly, on July 11, in a letter to Putin, he made the offer to negotiate past the Federal Republic as the new state leadership for Germany. The invitation to Russia came five days later. The assumption is that the Kremlin wanted to use Niemeyer for propaganda purposes. Appearances by Niemeyer on the state broadcaster RT, where he was sold as a representative of a German opposition group, went well with this.
Earlier posts, according to which the meetings in Russia meant the de facto recognition of his “government-in-exile”, were collected by Niemeyer in an interview with “t-online”: No government can simply recognize an opposition leader, he says, “and I’m not even that opposition leader”. The aim of his foreign mission was a contract for Russian gas. Because then Germany would have gas, the FRG would not, explains Niemeyer to the portal. A fine distinction that is popular in rich citizen circles.
However, Niemeyer does not believe that the Scholz government will actually be overthrown by his “government in exile”. That would be “overconfidence,” he says “t-online”, but more pressure will certainly be built up, he believes, adding: “Sahra does it in parliament, I outside of parliament.”
Niemeyer was married to Sahra Wagenknecht from 1997 to 2013. He fathered three children during this time, but not with the left front woman. Like her ex-husband, she is also counting on an end to the sanctions against Russia, which would be repaid with cheap energy. The left, of which Niemeyer was a member and candidate for the Bundestag, is in danger of imploding. Several well-known leftists have already pulled the ripcord and declared their withdrawal.
You can find all this cute, the man maybe even bizarre. Or also: dangerous? If you scroll through the timeline of Niemeyer’s Telegram channel, you will find passages that leave no doubt as to whose brainchild he is: (sic)
To ask?
