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Doris von Sayn-Wittgenstein: Continue in the AfD

Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa

The personality of Doris von Sayn-Wittgenstein is once again a concern for the AfD.

The party actually wanted to exclude the former Schleswig-Holstein state leader.

But the AfD was threatened with defeat in the legal dispute - it has now withdrawn an appeal in the proceedings because of the low chances of success.

This is reported by “Welt”, and the facts were confirmed to SPIEGEL by a party spokesman.

The AfD federal executive board decided last week to withdraw the appeal proceedings against Sayn-Wittgenstein that had been conducted before the Berlin Court of Appeal.

This means that Sayn-Wittgenstein is still an AfD member.

The AfD sees itself as a party based on the rule of law and respects the formally correct decision-making of the Court of Appeal, said the spokesman.

This means that Sayn-Wittgenstein can exercise her membership rights in the AfD again in the future.

Written procedure for party exclusion is insufficient

The AfD's Federal Arbitration Court decided in 2019 that Sayn-Wittgenstein should be expelled from the party.

The case ended up in the regular courts.

The Berlin Regional Court found in April 2021 that Sayn-Wittgenstein was still a member of the AfD.

The reason given by the regional court was that Sayn-Wittgenstein had not been granted a fair hearing in the Federal Arbitration Court's party exclusion proceedings.

The decision of the party judiciary should therefore not have been made in a written procedure.

The exclusion from the party was “not effective because the procedure prescribed by the statutes was not observed.”

The party court should have given Sayn-Wittgenstein another oral hearing - but that didn't happen at the time.

According to the court, the appeal “obviously has no chance of success”

The party appealed against the regional court's decision by appealing to the Chamber Court.

However, in mid-February, the Senate announced in a so-called advisory decision that the Senate intended to reject the appeal because it "obviously had no chance of success."

The decision of the Berlin Regional Court is not based on a violation of the law.

The background to the decision to exclude Sayn-Wittgenstein - then head of Schleswig-Holstein - from the AfD in 2019 were reports that she had called for support of the "Memorial Site Association" as a supporting member.

The organization was founded by Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck and is classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

According to “Welt,” Sayn-Wittgenstein has openly promoted neo-Nazis on her Telegram channel in recent months.

When she was active, Sayn-Wittgenstein was a leading figure in the far right wing of the AfD.

She first became more widely known to the German public in December 2017, when she was surprisingly chosen by the then nationalist-ethnic "wing" movement around the Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke at the federal party conference in Hanover against the candidate Georg Pazderski, who was considered to be moderate was sent.

In the end, only one vote was missing for her election.

In 2019, the state constitutional court in Schleswig-Holstein confirmed that Sayn-Wittgenstein's exclusion from the AfD parliamentary group in the Kiel state parliament was legal.

The party is now no longer represented in the state parliament.

sev/ulz