The anti-Höcke: Thadäus König in portrait | EUROtoday

Thadäus König has maybe the toughest job in a German parliament. He is President of the Erfurt State Parliament. The Julia Klöckner of Thuringia, so to talk. The 43-year-old CDU politician chairs the conferences and is the face of the House.

The Thuringian blackberry authorities made up of the CDU, BSW and SPD doesn’t have a majority within the state parliament. And the AfD faction there’s stronger and extra radical than that within the Bundestag. Under the management of Björn Höcke, it goals to impress in parliament. King should be sure that the conferences don’t get out of hand, that guidelines are adhered to and that the dignity of the home is preserved.

The begin was already tough for König. In the constituent session of the state parliament on the finish of September 2024, he was elected solely after a two-day interruption. The Thuringian Constitutional Court needed to dissolve the AfD’s blockade of the election. As the strongest faction, they’d claimed the workplace for themselves and didn’t wish to settle for that almost all of MPs would change the foundations of process so that somebody from the ranks of the CDU might be elected President of Parliament.

The chaos on the primary day of the assembly was upsetting for him, König remembers in an interview in his workplace on the ninth ground of the Thuringian state parliament. After his election, issues grew to become much more traumatic for him, “because then the personal attacks on me began.” For many AfD supporters, König was the person who stole workplace from their occasion. For days he was closely insulted in emails and on social media, together with loss of life threats. King endured it. However, he knowledgeable all MPs the place they need to flip in the event that they have been threatened.

König didn’t select his job. He would in all probability have appreciated to be a minister. But at the moment’s Prime Minister Mario Voigt from the CDU introduced the workplace to him over a cup of espresso in König’s residence city of Heilbad Heiligenstadt. He has the power to get by way of this. And it wasn’t simply his personal individuals who valued him due to his mediating nature, Voigt stated. King may have refused. But that did not correspond to his beliefs. “A basic motto of mine is: Wherever you are placed, you have to fulfill your task,” he says. And provides a quote from the Catholic priest Adolph Kolping: “If everyone in their circle does the best, things will soon look better in the world.”

There was one more reason for König to be President of Parliament: he was the one candidate within the state election to realize an absolute majority of the primary votes: 54.3 %. This meant that in his constituency he was 15 proportion factors above the CDU’s second vote and 25 proportion factors forward of the AfD candidate. Five years earlier, he had already achieved the perfect end in all of Thuringia in his Eichsfeld I constituency, specifically 49 %. His direct competitor on the time was Björn Höcke. He lives within the city of Bornhagen, twenty kilometers from Heiligenstadt. The Thuringian AfD chief had introduced years earlier than that he would storm the CDU bastion of Eichsfeld. But in opposition to König he solely ended up with 21 %. In 2024, Höcke most well-liked to run elsewhere.

The Höcke conqueror is in some ways the precise counterpart of his former opponent. An anti-Höcke. Höcke is shrill – King is quiet; Höcke polarizes – König equalizes; Höcke makes use of intelligent ways – König stays undeterred. He responded to the AfD’s empty risk that it could request his deselection with the calmness of a Catholic Buddha. In truth, in no way.

König himself additionally connects this together with his origins. “We from Eichsfeld are characterized by our down-to-earth nature, a healthy degree of trust in God and a strong connection to our homeland,” he says in regards to the residents of the Catholic enclave in Thuringia. In King’s workplace there’s a cross and an angel determine on the heavy bookshelf. He grew up in Heiligenstadt with three generations below one roof; Today he continues to reside within the metropolis of 19,000 together with his spouse and two sons.

König is concerned within the parish; he’s president of 1. SC 1911 Heiligenstadt, the most important sports activities membership within the area. The Eichsfeld extends throughout the western a part of Thuringia to northern Hesse and Lower Saxony. That is why, as König says, the Eichsfelders have “a strong westward orientation”. It is becoming that the sports-loving President of Parliament has been a fan of Borussia Dortmund since his early youth and has been a member of the membership for a few years.

The guidelines in sports activities are like in politics – they should be enforced. König is at the moment training this when coping with the AfD. Recently, for instance, in a particular session of the state parliament, when the AfD demanded that Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier be fired from the SPD. Maier is campaigning for a ban on the AfD, which is why they wish to eliminate him. The first MP to talk for the AfD stated that Maier sat on the Interior Committee with a “stupid grin.”

King is just not a fan of fast calls to order; he prefers to offer warnings first. But right here he took motion proper at first of the assembly. “If personal attacks and insults are not reprimanded and punished in parliament, then this has consequences beyond politics,” he says. Citizens would conclude that “then I can say it in public, at school, at work or in a club”. He can be involved with coping with dignity in society.

Höcke then spoke on the assembly. He described Maier as a “left-wing extremist minister”, referred to as him “IM Maier”, after the abbreviation for an unofficial Stasi worker, and insulted him as a “political Pinocchio”, i.e. a liar. When King’s deputy, the left-wing politician Lena Güngör, gave Höcke a name to order for the final two phrases, he insulted the presidium as “partisan”. That may have resulted in a 3rd order name and Höcke would have been expelled from the corridor. They did not do him the favor of a scandal. The AfD referred to as the Council of Elders collectively to debate the legality of the calls to order. She described the expressions criticized as “trivialities”.

Some AfD MPs are eager to get calls to order. This is what Sascha Schlösser stated when he obtained a name to order in June 2025: “Finally I have a call to order” – whereupon he obtained one other one. In the present election interval, 13 of the 18 requires order went to the AfD.

The local weather within the state parliament has now grow to be even harsher, says König. Some debates are solely held to be exploited on social media. That modifications her character. The AfD additionally depends on what König calls the “principle of transformation” within the debates. “The AfD shapes every topic that is dealt with in a law or an application with the topics that particularly contribute to its account.” It is commonly about migration, opposition to wind generators or “generally about painting a bleak picture of the current situation”.

This typically takes on absurd traits. In September, AfD MP Jan Abicht claimed in a debate about tourism that the catering business in Thuringia was doing badly as a result of migrants have been working there. These don’t have any connection to the Thuringian meals and host tradition, and “the authenticity and the quality of the experience suffer when the Thuringian Rostbrätel or the roulade with hats (dumplings) and red cabbage is suddenly served by someone who has nothing in common with the regional identity and culture.” The vacationer “appreciates authenticity and mostly rejects artificially created diversity”.

Such speeches aren’t remoted circumstances. In December, MP Thomas Benninghaus stated in a debate by which the AfD criticized the supposedly poor situation of German struggle graves: “In some cities in Thuringia, golden stones are even being installed on sidewalks to commemorate the victims of the wars, while our traditional memorials are being forgotten.” By the golden stones he meant the obstacles, small memorial plaques made from brass which are positioned on sidewalks in lots of cities to commemorate the destiny of earlier, largely Jewish, residents on the respective deal with who have been persecuted, expelled, deported and murdered through the Nazi period.

Does a speaker of parliament should tolerate such contributions? König considers calls to order in such circumstances to be problematic for authorized causes; What is essential is the contradiction from the opposite factions, which additionally occurred in these circumstances. But the President of Parliament may intervene in different methods, difficulty warnings and classify issues. This is what König did when AfD MP Torsten Czuppon repeated the slogan “Everything for Thuringia!” in a speech. used, an allusion to the Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany!”

Höcke was convicted twice for his or her use. König shunned calling for order, however objected within the assembly to the truth that “a forbidden slogan from the National Socialist era” was being utilized in a modified kind. If this occurs once more, he’ll use his powers of order.

Despite such disputes, König is happy with how issues are entering into Thuringia. The Blackberry authorities is doing a very good job and the nation has gained stability, he believes. Thuringia is out of the unfavorable headlines that it has delivered for years. The indisputable fact that Chemnitz University of Technology just lately revoked Prime Minister Voigt’s doctoral diploma, which he’s taking authorized motion in opposition to, may put a damper on König’s optimistic view.

The matter additionally impacts the political scientist personally, as he additionally obtained his doctorate on the TU below the identical doctoral supervisor as Voigt. And König additionally needed to cope with the spectacle that the AfD placed on within the state parliament this week. It was clear from the beginning that her vote of no confidence in opposition to Voigt would fail.

König additionally has to cope with the AfD’s complaints that it’s being denied rights in parliament as a result of the state parliament has not but elected a vice chairman from its ranks. König is essentially in favor of the AfD additionally getting this workplace. But a vice chairman should match the dignity of the parliament; that’s the decisive criterion. “Legal convictions and previous convictions, for example, as well as statements that contradict our free and democratic principles or human dignity, do not fit in with this.” The AfD first appointed a member of parliament who was convicted of fraud after which a parliamentarian who “distinguished himself with positions that trivialized the Holocaust and revised history,” in keeping with the International Buchenwald Committee.

A 3rd candidate was additionally not elected. Because the AfD is obstructing the election of representatives from the opposite factions to the judges’ election committee. This should comply with the appointment of judges for all times, so it’s essential for making certain that the judiciary in Thuringia continues to perform. König is in favor of lifting the blockade. “We should not give the AfD the opportunity to endanger or destroy the functioning of our constitutional state,” he says. But he has little hope that the AfD will give in. “For peace in parliament, a de-radicalization of the AfD is also necessary,” König informed the FAZ shortly after his election. But it would not appear like that. By the way in which: Thadeus is the identify of the saint whom Catholics name for assist in hopeless conditions.