Reaction to art action in Bornhagen: "Dirt pack, leave the humps alone!"

It takes four hours before the meticulously prepared spectacle unfolds the desired force. At 9.55 clock two patrol cars roll on the church square of Bornhagen, a gravel road in the south of the picturesque village. "That's not right," an official shouts to the camera crew that is currently positioned there. "Now take the camera out and erase the material."

Reporters and police then deliver a heated verbal battle - it should not be the last in this morning. Bornhagen, a 270-soul idyll in the Thuringian Eichsfeld, is the residence of AfD politician Björn Höcke. And it is the scene of a political art action, as the genteel Eichsfeld has probably never experienced.

In the garden of the neighbors of the Höcke family, an offshoot of the Berlin Holocaust memorial has been secretly created in recent days. 24 replicas of the well-known concrete steles are now in Bornhagen, built for only one observer: Björn Höcke.

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The head of the Thuringian AfD, who is attributed to the right-wing party wing, has been looking out of the window at the memorial since this morning. The steles were planned, poured, secretly rigged and erected by activists of the Center for Political Beauty, ZPS for short. The artists have rented the neighboring house for this purpose. The goal: provocation.

The plan is working.

Shortly after ten an elderly gentleman rushes to the church square, he snorts with rage. "They should get away, the dirt package," he shouts to the journalist, "get away, leave the humps alone!" The tyrant, a little gentleman in a track jacket, reveals himself as a pensioner from the village. He knows the family of the AfD politician well, he says, "the Höcke is my best friend."

What upset him so much? "That everyone is always buzzing around the humps," he says. The memorial of the activists did not interest him, the family of the politician should just be left alone. "We are glad that we have such a guy," he adds. "Because he does good politics."

"It's really grown up"

Of course, the initiators of the Höcke Memorial see it differently. The memorial was a reaction to his infamous Dresden speech from January. At that time, the AfD-man said in front of co-thinkers among other things: "We Germans, so our people, are the only people in the world, which has planted a monument of shame in the heart of his capital."

The Bornhagen memorial is a reaction to this speech, says Morius Enden from the ZPS, who walks smiling between the steles this morning. And apparently it had managed to surprise Höcke with it - he was quite amazed in the early morning: "At some point, three people stood in the window," says Enden, "and looked like that." The 26-year-old tears open his eyes and mouth and slightly weighs his head.

The action is not exhausted in concrete blocks: in a tidy room of the ZPS shelter, originally planned as a kitchen, a poster full of names and lines hangs on the wall. In the middle is "Björn Höcke", around it buzzes terms such as "German College", "Bund Deutscher Unitarian", "Republicans". Outside, the activists built "the most memorable concrete of all time", inside they analyzed their neighbors' behavior.

Höcke did not notice any of this, since activist ends is safe. How was it possible to set up 24 concrete blocks undetected next to the house of the AfD man? "With an absolutely great team and precision work," says Enden - the cost was a crowdfunding, supported by a lavish campaign, on this day within four hours. He does not want to reveal more details about the preparations, ends says, only that: "It has really grown big."

At 10.15 clock it rings at the door. It's the two policemen; they apparently made it their business to somehow sort out the curious bustle in the village. "Have you considered the parking situation?" Asks one, "people are already parking on the sidewalk." His colleague is more diplomatic. "Maybe you should talk to the mayor so that there is no trouble," he says - and adds another question afterwards: "Is there a fixed opening time here?" The answer: "Nope."

The activists do not want a Holocaust museum and certainly no public traffic - because that would disturb a part of their work quite: on several trees in the garden behind the house cameras are installed - facing the old rectory in which live the Höckes. There is also a room in the ZPS shelter, to the right of the front door, which they call "surveillance room". Six screens are stacked in and next to each other, on the table are two bitten waffles on a plate. Artists watching politicians?

However, and according to ZPS already for ten months. The activists founded a "Civil Society Protection Agency" that spied on Höcke. Supposedly, they now know when their unloved neighbor chops his wood, which publishers send him brochures, how his sheep are doing. All they want to make public - unless the AfD man makes apology and kneels before the Bornhagener Holocaust memorial.

"I have to get a stick now"

No question, Björn Höcke is a controversial and controversial politician, his proximity to ultra-right and racist ideas can not be denied, even his own party wanted to get rid of him - in vain. But does that justify snooping and extortion with details from his private sphere?

"We use Nazi methods against Nazis," ends says. That sounds pithy - but it does not answer the question of whether the situation in Germany is really so serious that private life can be attacked in the political battle. And is not it in the end Höcke himself, who can stage himself as a victim of a left-green dirt campaign - and possibly still benefits from the action?

In Bornhagen there is support for Höcke. "This has something to do with filial piety," says one of the construction workers shaking his head, paving a disabled parking space next to the church in front of Höcke's house. "They should come up with him at work and not here," says another, and a third: "This is his privacy, with family and such."

That Höcke in Bornhagen does not have to fear a revolt against him was already clear. In the Thuringian state election three years ago, long before the nationwide breakthrough of the AfD, he achieved considerable numbers in his village: 36.5 percent of Bornhagener second votes accounted for his party, the direct candidate even got even more than 38 percent.

At noon, the casserole in front of the house of Höckes is getting bigger. Half a dozen emergency vehicles are now there, the public order office is on site, everywhere reporters and cameramen are walking around. In front of the house of the activists rages in the afternoon an angry mob together, a police officer expects her to the AfD.

The group turns into the driveway to the house, which the artists have rented - and tries to deny access to journalists. It comes to a rip-off, assaults, beating cameras - even a team of SPIEGEL TV is attacked. A little later, the police intervene and sends home the resident-like troupe: They roar in eight cars later.

The angry retiree, who has called himself Höck's best friend, has quickly left again. "I've got to get a cudgel," he had shouted to a few journalists in farewell, "I would have taken you with the noose in the old days!"

Two streets down he has calmed down again. The TV crews have recorded his tirade, and he too got rid of his message that day. "I'm going home now," he says quite peacefully. "I said enough."