Right-wing extremist Gernot Mörig and his connections: A terribly right

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Landhaus Adlon on Lehnitzsee near Potsdam: According to “Correctic” research, AfD politicians, right-wing extremists and members of the “Union of Values” met here last November to plan the expulsion of millions of people from Germany

Photo: Filip Singer / EPA

A name that keeps cropping up these weeks: Gernot Mörig. A man who initiated the now infamous meeting in the Adlon country house on Lehnitzsee near Potsdam. According to “Correctic” research, AfD politicians, right-wing extremists and members of the “Union of Values” met here last November to plan the expulsion of millions of people from Germany.

Gernot Mörig is a man who prefers to stay in the background. When SPIEGEL recently sent him an email with questions, there was no answer.

For many years, things had been rather quiet around Gernot Mörig, at least as far as public perception was concerned. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, he was mentioned in reports by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and in the media. Mörig was a well-known name in the ethnic scene, once the “federal leader” of the right-wing extremist “Bund Heimattreuer Jugend”.

His past played a role again and again in the following years, but did not trigger any national headlines. In Antifa circles, however, his work has been closely followed for years, sometimes with surprisingly well-documented details and photos of his four children, who are said to be associated with right-wing extremist circles. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” recently reported on these family connections. His daughter Wiebke belongs to the “Identitarian Movement” (IB) Bavaria, and daughter Inka is married to Sebastian Zeilinger, the head of the IB Bavaria, according to the paper.

Mörig and Düsseldorf, these are two words that are mentioned again and again in the same context these days. Mörig, born in 1954, was once a dentist in the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital. He is considered the organizer of the “Düsseldorf Round,” which is now called the “Düsseldorf Forum.”

And Mörig's contacts with the AfD also play a role.

According to research by WDR, NDR and "Süddeutsche Zeitung", Gernot Mörig is said to have let donations for the "Düsseldorfer Forum" flow through the private account of his brother-in-law: Thomas Grebien, who is the AfD district executive in the Plön district (Schleswig-Holstein). heard.

Grebien, in turn, is said to have once been the founder of “Die Heimattreu Jugend”, which later renamed itself “Heimattreu Deutsche Jugend” (HDJ) and was banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2009.

The former HDJ kept the AfD federal party busy in 2020 when the membership of the former Brandenburg AfD state and parliamentary group leader Andreas Kalbitz was canceled. Among other things, he was accused of having hidden a previous HDJ membership.

Mörig and the AfD are obviously not just limited to the lower level. According to a draft email that SPIEGEL reported on in mid-January, Mörig invited the AfD co-party and parliamentary group leader Tino Chrupalla to a »5. “Düsseldorf Round”.

• »That - immediately after a strenuous federal election campaign - the federal spokesman for the AfD, Tino Chrupalla, gets into the car himself to answer questions in a completely uncomplicated and credible manner in front of a small private circle, only to do it again early the next morning “Going from Görlitz to Berlin was certainly not a given!” wrote Mörig.

Chrupalla, who did not comment on repeated requests from SPIEGEL, including the party and parliamentary group, ultimately tried to ridicule the report in other media without commenting specifically on the matter. He is like Chancellor Olaf Scholz, "I don't remember anything anymore."

But the connections to the AfD do not seem to be limited to Gernot Mörig senior.

Now his son, Arne Friedrich Mörig, also hit the headlines with the Potsdam meeting in November. The son gave a lecture in the villa about founding a new right-wing social media agency. WDR, NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ) had previously reported on this with new details.

An attempt by SPIEGEL to contact Mörig junior on Wednesday was unsuccessful until the text was published. He did not respond to a written request.

However, well-informed AfD party circles confirmed the report from WDR, NDR and SZ to SPIEGEL on Wednesday and provided further details. Accordingly, Mörig junior worked for the AfD on the basis of a “mini-jobber contract”, possibly since the end of 2022.

“At times” he was actually paid for this from the personal budget of party co-chair Weidel. Mörig junior was therefore requested “to support his work” at the request of Weidel’s personal advisor at the time, Roland Hartwig. Hartwig was also one of the participants in the Potsdam meeting; after the publication by “Correctiv” on January 10th, Weidel separated from him by “mutual agreement”.

Mörig junior, it was learned from the AfD, also spoke to the AfD federal executive board about his influencer project after his lecture in Potsdam.

When the "Correctiv" research appeared on January 10th, it was "suggested to him to separate by mutual consent." There was no need for a resolution from the AfD federal executive board; the formal processing of the contract termination was carried out by an employee of the AfD federal office.

How closely Mörig junior was involved in the work of the AfD remained unclear. "He didn't have a desk in the federal office," said AfD party circles.

Before the AfD, however, Arne Friedrich Mörig had worked elsewhere: at the “Federal Association of German Waste Management, Water and Circulation Management” (BDE) in Berlin. From October 2019 to July 2020 he was personal assistant to the then BDE President. His name: Peter Kurth.

The former Berlin ex-CDU finance senator has also made the headlines in the past three weeks. Kurth invited AfD politicians, right-wing conservatives and right-wing extremists to a meeting in his Berlin roof terrace apartment last summer. Also present: among others, the right-wing extremist Martin Sellner from the “Identitarian Movement”.

The man who gave his lecture on “remigration” in November 2023 at the Potsdam meeting organized by Mörig senior, at which his son also spoke.