The CDU is examining a party expulsion of the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen. Secretary General Mario Czaja commissioned "the examination of party order measures up to and including party exclusion," said a CDU spokeswoman on Tuesday in Berlin. The federal party is “in close contact with the responsible Thuringian state association”.

The background is interview statements by Maassen on the subject of racism. "According to the green-red racial theory, whites are an inferior race," he said on a right-wing populist Internet portal last Monday. Several leading CDU politicians then distanced themselves from Maassen.

"Mr Maassen's statements are again unacceptable," said CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Tuesday in Berlin. "We will continue to deal with this case and also assess it from this point of view," announced Merz. "But we're not making any hasty decisions here," he said. Czaja previously wrote about Maaßen on Twitter: "There is no room in our party for his statements and the ideas they express."

"Should Mr Maassen still be a member of the CDU at our next federal executive board meeting on February 13, I will submit a request to the federal executive board to exclude him from our party," said CDU federal vice president Karin Prien on Tuesday in Kiel. The Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Education accused Maassen of repeatedly using anti-Semitic and conspiracy theory codes and playing down racism.

Maassen had previously claimed in a tweet that the "driving forces in the political and media space" were aiming for "eliminatory racism against whites". He also gave an interview to the publicist Alexander Wallasch for his blog. In it, Maassen also speaks of racism being "acted against the native Germans". "This way of thinking is an expression of a green-red racial theory, according to which whites are regarded as an inferior race and that Arab and African men must therefore be brought into the country," Maassen claimed. Frequent topics on Wallasch's blog include a supposed suspension of the rule of law during the corona pandemic and immigration, which is considered "illegal mass immigration".

In a guest article for the "Jüdische Allgemeine", the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorials Foundation, Jens-Christian Wagner, accused Maassen of engaging in "classic extreme right-wing reversal of guilt". "When he speaks of 'eliminatory racism', it's an echo of the concept of eliminatory anti-Semitism introduced into public discourse by Daniel Goldhagen, which led to the Holocaust," Wagner told the German Press Agency. Without having introduced the term Holocaust and without expressing himself explicitly anti-Semitic, Maassen makes the reference to the Holocaust, "via this completely insane accusation that someone is waging a war of annihilation against whites here". In this way, the Holocaust is played down by reversal of guilt.

According to Maassen, he wants to run for chairman of the Union of Values ​​on Saturday. The arch-conservative group claims to have around 4,000 members - not all of them are also members of the CDU or CSU. The group supported Maassen. "At no time has there ever been an anti-Semitic statement by Hans-Georg Maassen," said the union of values.

The Thuringian CDU, on the other hand, distanced itself from Maaßen: "Mr. Maaßen's statements reflect neither the language nor the mentality of the CDU Thuringia. The language of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues has no place in our midst," said Christian Herrgott, Secretary General of the Thuringian CDU national association of which Maassen is a member.

The Berlin CDU country chief Kai Wegner told the "Tagesspiegel" that Maassen had crossed another border. "Now it has to be over. Anyone who makes such statements has no place in the CDU."