On Friday, Saxony's Justice Minister Katja Meier (Greens) sent two letters in the mail.

One went to Jens Maier, the former AfD MP who, after his defeat in the federal elections last September, applied to the ministry to return to his former position as a judge.

Before entering the Bundestag in 2017, Maier, who comes from Bremen, had been a judge for civil matters at the Dresden Regional Court for twenty years and thus has a legal right to an equivalent, but not the same position.

The Minister of Justice has now informed him that he has been assigned a position as a judge at the Dippoldiswalde District Court from March 14th.

Eastern Ore Mountains instead of the state capital.

Stephen Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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This means that Maier's formal right to return has been fulfilled, explained Minister Meier, who, with her second letter, wants to ensure that Maier can no longer administer justice in Saxony.

She sent the second letter to the magistrate's court in Leipzig.

In it, she requested that Jens Maier be "temporarily prohibited from conducting official business from March 14, 2022 in order to prevent a serious impairment of the administration of justice".

If the court follows the request, Maier would have to be retired and would then receive a pension – albeit below his salary.

The minister refers to paragraphs 31 and 35 of the German Judges Act, according to which a judge can be retired if there are objective facts against his or her constitutional loyalty, independence, impartiality, neutrality or integrity of the conduct of office and there is a risk of a judicial crisis.

Maier sees himself as a "little Höcke"

Katja Meier, who did not take the decision lightly, sees the latter as a given.

She referred to the heated public debate in recent weeks, the objections from the judges themselves and from institutions such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany or the International Auschwitz Committee against Maier's continued employment in the judicial service.

The "serious shaking of confidence in the Saxon judiciary" was "manifested in many ways" through this debate.

Because Saxony's protection of the constitution has been observing Maier for a long time as a right-wing extremist.

Maier belonged to the officially dissolved nationalist-völkisch "wing" of the AfD and is an ardent admirer of the Thuringian AfD chairman Björn Höcke, who is also being observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Maier describes himself as a "little Höcke".

In addition, he makes no secret of his xenophobic attitude and his rejection of the free and democratic basic order.

On the Internet he described Muslims as "rabble" and "barn owls" and praised the anti-constitutional NPD as "the only party that has always stood by Germany".

At an event, he defended the Norwegian terrorist Andres Breivik, saying that he had become a mass murderer "out of desperation" over immigrants, and he called for the "German cult of guilt to be finally ended".

Among other things, because of such statements, the Dresden Regional Court initiated disciplinary proceedings against Maier for violating the judicial rule of moderation, which ended in 2017 with a reprimand that Maier accepted.

The former Saxon AfD chairman Frauke Petry, in turn, had unsuccessfully initiated party exclusion proceedings against him because of Maier's statements.

Maier plays down political extremism, he does not stand on the ground of the free-democratic basic order and has caused the party considerable damage, it said in the justification.

However, the party base voted Maier in 2017 to be number 2 on the list, so he entered the Bundestag.

Beaten by the CDU and the left

Four years later, however, things went wrong, Maier lost in Dresden to the candidates from the CDU and the left, and his supposedly advantageous list position was of no use to him this time due to the many direct mandates that the party had won in the Free State.

A job as a legal advisor in the AfD parliamentary group in Saxony fell through, which is why Maier, who had just turned 60, finally applied to return to the judiciary in December.

"Anyone who is classified as a right-wing extremist by state authorities cannot be a credible representative of the judiciary and seriously damages the public's reputation for the administration of justice," said Minister Meier.

She declared that she wanted to "exploit all existing options for action" and to "preserve the immovable principles of the rule of law".

Nevertheless, the case remains a problem for them for the time being.

Because it is not clear whether the path she is now proposing will be successful.

Judicial independence is a valuable asset, and the options for political intervention are extremely limited.

The pressure that has been on Meier for weeks is all the greater.

"Sometimes it leaves me speechless what is held against me and the employees in the ministry," explained the minister.

"I would like to emphasize that we are breaking new legal ground and that this situation has never existed in Germany before." The legal hurdles are "extraordinarily high".

However, there are still two other alternatives if the route via the judges' service court fails: The district court in Dippoldiswalde, where Jens Maier will be seconded from mid-March, could initiate disciplinary proceedings against him.

And finally, the Saxon state parliament would also have the opportunity to bring charges against a judge.

But the latter in particular would also be new legal territory.