It is only a seemingly minor personnel decision, but it speaks volumes about the state of the Saxon CDU after this election Sunday: Marco Wanderwitz will not lead the group of Saxon CDU members in the Bundestag again.

With 17.2 percent and only seven parliamentarians - less than half as many as before - the Union in the Free State is in worse shape than ever.

Stefan Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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Even the SPD, which has always been behind the CDU since 1990, overtook it in this federal election.

The state chairman and prime minister Michael Kretschmer, who won a comparatively brilliant victory in the state elections two years ago, could not have dreamed of that.

No debate

When the badly trimmed state group of the Saxon CDU members of the Bundestag formed on Monday evening in Dresden, the news reached the outside shortly before that Wanderwitz would no longer preside over it.

Kretschmer intervened at short notice in favor of the Zwickau MP Carsten Körber.

This was elected unanimously.

Afterwards, Wanderwitz is said to have left the meeting without discussing it with his critics.

He did not want to comment on Tuesday.

"I have nothing to say about political issues at the moment," he said.

Kretschmer was all the more detailed about this.

Compared to the Leipziger Volkszeitung he gave Wanderwitz complicity in the devastating losses.

Generalization of the East Germans

In the months leading up to the election, Wanderwitz, who is also the federal government’s commissioner for the East, repeatedly and publicly expressed the opinion that some East Germans were more susceptible to right-wing extremist parties like the AfD than West Germans, also due to historical experience.

“We are dealing with people who are partly socialized by dictatorship in such a way that they have not reached democracy even after 30 years,” he said in the FAZ podcast and then added it several times.

For example, he brought low vaccination rates and corona deniers across the board with AfD supporters. "That was certainly not helpful," said Kretschmer, who had remained silent during the election campaign. There are many reasons for the election result. “But people felt stigmatized and attacked by Mr. Wanderwitz. It was certainly not meant that way, but that is part of the history of this election campaign. "

Wanderwitz lost his direct mandate in the Ore Mountains, which he had previously won five times, to the AfD.

But he moves back into the Bundestag via the CDU state list, which he headed.

Previously, he had been insulted, insulted and threatened many times during the election campaign.

Previous colleagues in the Bundestag, who also lost their mandate, also blamed Wanderwitz for complicity.

He and Armin Laschet were "a heavy burden in the election campaign".

Saxony's CDU General Secretary Alexander Dierks did not join the criticism of Wanderwitz, but reiterated the demarcation of the Union from the AfD.