Secret plan against Germany
Nobody should know about this meeting: high-ranking AfD politicians, neo-Nazis and financially strong entrepreneurs met in a hotel near Potsdam in November. They planned nothing less than the expulsion of millions of people from Germany. January 10, 2024
Two dozen people gradually enter the brightly lit dining room of a country hotel near Potsdam. Some are members of the AfD, and a leading figure in the Identitarian Movement is there. Some are fraternity members, middle class and middle class people, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs, doctors. Two CDU members are also there, members of the Union of Values.
A detailed portrait of the co-operator of the hotel has just been published in Die Zeit, which describes her proximity to right-wing circles.
Two men invited to the appointment. One is in his late 60s and has been in the right-wing extremist scene almost his entire life: Gernot Mörig, a former dentist from Düsseldorf. The other is called Hans-Christian Limmer, a well-known investor in the catering sector. Limmer made the back discount chain Backwerk big, and today he is a partner in the burger chain “Hans im Glück” and in the food supplier “Pottsalat”. Unlike Mörig, Limmer is not present; he remains the rich man in the background. When CORRECTIV asked him about this before this text was published, he replied: He distanced himself from the content of the meeting and “didn’t play any role” in the planning.
It is the morning of November 25th, just before nine o’clock, a cloudy Saturday. Snow collects on the parked cars in the yard. What happens that day in the Adlon country house seems like a chamber play - but it is reality. This shows what can happen when right-wing extremist idea providers, representatives of the AfD and financially strong supporters of the right-wing scene mix. Their most important goal: People should be able to be expelled from Germany based on racist criteria - regardless of whether they have a German passport or not.
The meeting should remain secret. Communication between organizers and guests should only take place via letters. However, copies of it were leaked CORRECTIVELY. And we took pictures. In front and behind the house. We were also able to film covertly in the house. A reporter was on site undercover with a camera and checked into the hotel under a different name. He followed the meeting closely and was able to observe who arrived and attended the meeting. In addition, Greenpeace researched the meeting and provided CORRECTIV with photos and copies of documents. Our reporters spoke to several AfD members; Sources confirmed the participants’ statements to CORRECTIV.
So we were able to reconstruct the meeting exactly.
It is much more than just a meeting of right-wing ideologues, some of whom have a lot of money. Among the participants are people with influence within the AfD. One of them will play a key role in this story. He boasts that he will be speaking for the AfD’s federal party executive committee that day. He is Alice Weidel’s personal advisor.
About ten months before the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, this meeting shows that racist attitudes extend to the federal level of the party. And it shouldn’t just stop at attitude; Some of the politicians also want to act accordingly - although the AfD claims that it is not a right-wing extremist party.
This is legally sensitive for the AfD with regard to the debate about a possible ban procedure. At the same time, it is a foretaste of what could happen if the AfD comes to power in Germany.
What is being drafted there this weekend is nothing less than an attack on the Constitution of the Federal Republic.
The Conspirators
AfD
Roland Hartwig, right-hand man of party leader Alice Weidel
Gerrit Huy, member of the Bundestag
Ulrich Siegmund, parliamentary group leader for Saxony-Anhalt
Tim Krause, deputy chairman of the Potsdam district
THE MÖRIG CLAN
Gernot Mörig, a retired dentist from Düsseldorf
Arne Friedrich Mörig, son of Gernot Mörig
Astrid Mörig, wife of Gernot Mörig
NEON-NAZIS
Martin Sellner, a right-wing extremist activist from Austria
Mario Müller, a convicted violent criminal
A young “identitarian”
HOST
Wilhelm Wilderink
Mathilda Martina Huss
ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Simone Baum, Union of Values NRW, Board of Directors
Michaela Schneider, Values Union of North Rhine-Westphalia, deputy board member
Silke Schröder, German Language Association, board member
Ulrich Vosgerau, former board member of Desiderius
rden.
The AfD parliamentary group leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, is also in the room. He will appear later to solicit donations. He is powerful in his party, also because his regional association has high approval ratings. His sales argument, in keeping with the spirit of the “master plan”: the streetscape needs to change and foreign restaurants need to be put under pressure. It should be “as unattractive as possible for this clientele to live in Saxony-Anhalt”. And that can be done very easily. His comments could have consequences in the next election.
CORRECTIV sent some of the participants questions about the meeting afterwards. Among other things: Looking back, what do you think about the central statements made there?
AfD member of the Bundestag Gerrit Huy did not respond to our questions by the time of going to press, nor did AfD politician Roland Hartwig or the party’s federal executive committee.
Ulrich Siegmund from Saxony-Anhalt had the media law firm Höcker write what they usually write: You are not allowed to quote from their answer, but your client is being accused of false things. Among other things, he was not there as a member of parliament for the AfD, but as a “private person”. In its answer, the law firm leaves open how Siegmund views the concept of “remigration”. He simply states that he does not want to “unlawfully expel” people.
And Gernot Mörig distances himself. He “remembers” Sellner’s statements “differently.” He writes to us: If he had consciously perceived such statements, they “would not have gone without objection from me” - especially with regard to the unequal treatment of German citizens.
The AfD feels that it is on the road to success; the current shift to the right is inspiring the party. According to recent surveys, it would be the strongest force in federal states such as Saxony and Thuringia with more than 30 percent - well ahead of the CDU, SPD and the Greens. At the same time, however, the party is under pressure. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution rates the AfD in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony as right-wing extremist. Most recently, he classified the Junge Alternative (JA) in North Rhine-Westphalia as a suspected case. The reasons given were proximity to the Identitarian Movement, a “national-ethnic understanding of the people”, and “to make people with a migration background look contemptible”.
A ban on the party is being discussed more frequently these days. Over 400,000 people signed a petition for this, and the CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz, in turn, is gathering supporters in the Bundestag who would like to support a motion for a ban with him.
The AfD itself takes a stand against this and presents itself to the outside world as a democratic force: “As a party based on the rule of law, the AfD is unconditionally committed to the German people as the sum of all people who have German citizenship,” it says on its website. Immigrants with a German passport are “just as German as the descendants of a family that has lived in Germany for centuries” and: “There are no first or second class citizens for us”.
The statements at the meeting were different: At least the AfD politicians represented there freely professed their nationalistic ideals, unobserved from outside; There are no significant differences to the positions of extremist right-wing ideologists. Act 1. Scene 4 The utopia of the Nazis
Outside the snow crumbles into gray slush. But according to sources, the group is in a good mood; for them it is a good time. Organizer Gernot Mörig says he is usually a pessimistic guy. But on this day he feels hopeful. And that has, among other things, to do with the “master plan” of the right-wing thinker Sellner.
One idea is a “model state” in North Africa. Sellner explains that up to two million people could live in such an area. Then you have a place where you can “move” people. There are opportunities for training and sport there. And everyone who supports refugees could go there too.
What Sellner designs is reminiscent of an old idea: in 1940, the National Socialists planned to deport four million Jews to the island of Madagascar. It is unclear whether Sellner has the historical parallel in mind. It may also be a coincidence that the organizers chose this villa for their conspiratorial meeting: just eight kilometers away from the hotel is the house of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazis coordinated the systematic extermination of the Jews.
Sellner throws in another combat term from the right-wing extremist vocabulary: the so-called “ethnic choice”. He has already secured the domain for it. Sellner says: “It’s not just that the strangers live here. They vote here too.” “Ethnic vote”, which means that people with a migration background would primarily vote for “migrant-friendly” parties.
This means: He doesn’t just delegitimize