Tobias Korenke, the great-nephew of the resistance fighters Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer, has agreed to meet with the AfD parliamentary group-a party he had previously challenged during a memorial ceremony-and announced his intent to engage in a frank confrontation.
In speaking to the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and the “Frankfurter Rundschau”, Korenke stated that he was happy to accept the invitation to help explain the motivation behind his previous actions. He affirmed that nothing inherently opposes an exchange of views, even with political opponents, adding, “I will enter the conversation openly.”
The AfD faction had publicly invited Korenke to discuss the party’s agenda and objectives after he had attempted to remove the AfD wreath from the Federal Government’s memorial service on July 20th, held at the Bendlerblock in Berlin. This act garnered widespread national attention.
Korenke made clear the issues he plans to raise during the meeting. “I will certainly critique how the AfD handles the legacy of the two German dictatorships and how it relativizes the crimes of the National Socialist period,” he said. He also intends to address the AfD’s complaints about what it calls a “cult of guilt.” He specified that this “cult of guilt”-a term he noted is used by the far-right-is supposedly detrimental to national identity formation.
Korenke left it open whether he would attend the meeting alone or with other members of the “20 July 1944 Foundation,” stating that he needed to await the formal invitation from the AfD before deciding. Looking back at his protest at the memorial, he described it as a spontaneous reaction: “My action was an expression of nausea that struck me when I suddenly saw the AfD wreath at that ceremony.” He felt unable to tolerate the idea that the AfD was instrumentalizing the resistance fighters for its own purposes.
Regarding political bans, Korenke has abandoned his long-standing critical stance against the ban of the AfD. He now believes a ban is reasonable. According to the newspapers, his change of heart regarding the party ban was influenced by an AfD event in Dessau in mid-July. There, the cabaret artist Uwe Steimle questioned Chancellor Merz, asking, “Where is Stauffenberg, when you truly need him?” His observation was punctuated by cheers from AfD representatives in the audience-including Tino Chrupalla and the top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund-who reportedly merely smiled, and then sang the national anthem of the GDR. Korenke stated that since witnessing this “fantasy of violence and murder,” he began to rethink things.
Earlier, he had viewed party bans with fundamental skepticism, arguing that “parties bans have justly high hurdles in a democracy.” However, he also worried that many AfD supporters were now so ideologically unreachable that they could not be reached through debate. Despite this, he maintained clear views on the party, asserting, “The AfD uses the freedoms of our democracy to restrict or even abolish those same freedoms.” He concluded that the party “is not a normal party; it is antidemocratic.”
