German nationalists pictured with Hitler wine, swastikas
Anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party trying to expel local politician who posed with outlawed Nazi symbols
BERLIN, Germany — The right-wing Alternative for Germany party is trying to expel a regional lawmaker who posed in front of wine bottles featuring pictures of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
German news agency dpa reported Wednesday that an AfD chapter has started proceedings to force out Jessica Biessmann, a party member serving in Berlin’s state parliament.
The bottles appeared in photos from social media posts that Biessmann says are a decade old.
They are available for purchase in Italy, but publicly displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany.
Separately, daily newspaper Thueringer Allgemeine reports that a senior AfD member in Thuringia state quit after photos surfaced showing him posing behind a swastika tablecloth while visiting Hitler-related sites in 2015.
There have been calls for Germany’s domestic intelligence agency to monitor the Alternative for Germany over extremism concerns.
Political opponents have increasingly called for Germany’s domestic intelligence agency to keep tabs on it amid fallout from the killing in the eastern city of Chemnitz of a German man, in which migrants are suspects.
They argue that recent protests point to an increasing blurring of boundaries between AfD and the extreme right neo-Nazi scene.
Building on the backlash to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than a million refugees in 2015 and 2016, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won its first parliamentary seats in elections last year is now the country’s biggest opposition party.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.