By L. Whetherall
on August 9, 2019 - Last updated: September 4, 2019

Andreas Kalbitz

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Andreas Edwin Kalbitz, born November 17, 1972, in Munich, is a German politician of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) since the very beginning of the party. 

Since November 2017 Kalbitz is the chairman of the AfD faction in the State Parliament Brandenburg, and since December 2017, one of the six observers of the AfD federal board.1

Because of his affiliation to the far-right AfD faction “The Wing” (Der Flügel) and his memberships in, and connections to several right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi associations Kalbitz is classified as extreme right-wing.

The Tagesspiegel reported in 2017 that Kalbitz was nicknamed “Little Himmler” in the Brandenburg State Parliament - apparently an allusion to his appearance.2

Early Years

Member of the CSU and The Republicans

From early on Kalbitz was involved in far-right politics and member of various neo-Nazi groups. His political engagement must have started in his late teens, since Kalbitz was first a member of the youth wing of the CSU, the Junge Union (“Young Union”), before joining the regular CSU. 

During his stint at the Junge Union Kalbitz was a member of the state association committee, and in the early 1990s he became a delegate of the regular CSU state association. In the New Right weekly Junge Freiheit he demanded “a right-wing turn in the CDU/CSU” at the time.3

In 1992, at the age of 20, he joined the party Die Republikaner (“The Republicans”),3 classified a right-wing to far-right party, and at that time observed by the constitutional protection agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz).4 But Kalbitz’s name and address apparently also popped up on an NPD list of people having shown interest in the party.

Right-wing extremist activities

In parallel to his early political engagement, from the 1990s to the 2010s, Andreas Kalbitz was very active in German neo-Nazi circles.

In the mid-1990s he appeared in the mailbox system “Thulenetz” used by right-wing extremists at the time.5

He was affiliated with various neo-Nazi youth organizations, such as the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland (“Young Homeland Association of Eastern Germany”), the Witikobund (“Witiko Union”), and had appeared at a camp of the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (“German Youth Faithful to the Homeland”), which was deemed the catch basin for the forbidden Wiking-Jugend (“Viking Youth”), the successor organization of the Hitler Youth.

Furthermore, over the years Kalbitz rose to the rank of “Old gentleman” (Alter Herr) in the Munich student fraternity Saxonia-Czernowitz,6 closely linked to the right-wing extremist fraternity Danubia München.3

Kalbitz wrote for various far-right magazines, notably for the New Right weekly Junge Freiheit, and the publication Fritz, the journal of the right-wing extremist group Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland.

From 2010 to 2015 he was a board member of the right-wing extremist think tank Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte, Archiv der Zeit (“Cultural and Contemporary History, Archive of Time”), founded by the former SS-Hauptsturmführer and NPD functionary Waldemar Schütz.

Although Kalbitz denies to ever have been an NPD member he was in close contact with high-ranking politicians of the party. Der Spiegel revealed in 2019 that Kalbitz had attended a neo-Nazi demonstration in Athens together with 13 other right-wing extremist German delegates, among them Udo Voigt, longstanding leader of the NPD. During their stay in Athens some members of the group hung a flag with a swastika out of the hotel window.7

Below a short portrait of the most notorious organizations Kalbitz has been involved in.

“Young Homeland Association of East Germany” 

Andreas Kalbitz (AfD) was writing for the JLO publication Fritz. Here a picture of the March 2003 issue featuring an article by Thierry Meyssan.

It is not clear, when exactly Kalbitz joined the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland (“Young Homeland Association of East Germany,” JLO), but he has reportedly written for its publication Fritz in 2003.8

The JLO was founded in 1991 as the youth organization of the expellees association Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen (“Homeland Association of East Prussia”),9 established in 1948 by East Prussian emigrés.

In its early years, the JLO received federal funding to the tune of DM 11,400 (1991) and DM 21,739 (1992), as “Support for measures taken by displaced persons to promote peaceful coexistence with the peoples of central, eastern and south-eastern Europe.”10

When right-wing extremist JLO functionaries were elected into key managerial positions during a general JLO meeting in Bad Pyrmont in autumn 1999, the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen split from the JLO, and subsequently founded the Bund Junges Ostpreußen as its new youth organization. 

Among those right-wing extremists elected to the JLO’s federal board were Christian Schaar, previous chairman of the JLO Baden-Württemberg chapter and at times member of the Heidelberg fraternity Normannia, who was elected federal chairman, and Alexander Kleber, a neo-Nazi from the Saxony JLO chapter who was elected to the JLO’s executive committee.

“Alexander Kleber from Freiberg, born in 1977, was for a long time the chairman of the Saxony JLO … he maintained good relations both with the Saxony NPD and with the regional militant ‘Free Fellowships’ (Freie Kameradschaften) scene, from the environment of the meanwhile banned fellowship ‘Skinheads Saxon Switzerland’ (SSS). He was repeatedly a guest at SSS events.”11

After the official separation from the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen, in 2000 the JLO affiliated itself with the Sudeten German neo-Nazi organization Witikobund in the form of a “treaty,” of which Kalbitz was also a member.12

Officially, the JLO describes itself as non-partisan, but critics consider it a NPD cadre organization. Various NPD politicians had been involved with the JLO in their youth. Two prominent examples are Jürgen W. Gansel and Stefan Rochow.13

Mainly present in Eastern Germany, the JLO’s predominant public outings were annual marches to commemorate the Bombing of Dresden in World War II, where it reportedly marched side by side with NPD members.14

There are reports of the JLO’s attendance of a meeting to honour SS volunteers in Budapest on February 11, 2007, in which high-ranking NPD officials such as Udo Voigt took part.15 The JLO was still appearing in 2009, for example during a neo-Nazi demonstration in Dresden.16

In 2010, the JLO was categorized as right-wing extremist organization by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.17

Witikobund

Kalbitz was also a member of the völkisch Witikobund (“Witiko Union”) and author of its quarterly publication Witikobrief (“Witiko Letter”),18 in which he wrote in 2001 of an “ethnocide on the German people,”5 at a time Jean Raspail’s theme had not experienced such an upswing yet.

The earliest involvement of Kalbitz in the Witikobund can be traced to 1993, when he participated in a WB podium discussion led by the right-wing extremist Hans-Ulrich Kopp.19

The still existing “Witikobund e.V.,"20 of which also Manuel Ochsenreiter is reportedly a member,21 can be considered the far-right cadre organization

Emblem of the Sudeten German Party (1933-1938)

of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft (“Sudeten German Homeland Association”), an organization representing Sudeten German expellees from the formerly German-occupied zones in Czechoslovakia, who had settled in Germany after WWII.

The Witikobund was foreseen to secure political weight for the surviving fascists of the collaborationist Sudeten German Party (1933-1938), led by Sudeten German Freikorps leader Konrad Heinlein in the 1930s. Its seven founding members all had formerly a career in the NSDAP or SS, and the foundation was scheduled for the November 9, 1947, exactly 24 years after the Beer Hall Putsch.

In the publication “NS History of Former Members of the Hessian State Parliament,” published by the Hessian Landtag, the Witikobund is described as follows:22

“The aim of the Witikobund was - and apparently still is today - to support a nationalistic German, if not ‘völkisch’ line within the expellees’ associations. The aim was not to be a mass organization, but a cadre organization that exercised its influence through active memberships in various organizations as well as through cooperation with the politically extreme right spectrum. In order to be admitted to the organization, each new member had to present two guarantors from the ranks of the union. Until 1967, the Witiko Union was classified as a right-wing extremist organization in the [yearly] ‘Report on the Protection of the Constitution’ [Verfassungsschutzbericht] by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and in 2008 the Federal Government stated it showed ‘actual indications of right-wing extremist aspirations.’”

Emblem of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft

Members of the Witikobund tried - often successfully - “to occupy key offices in parties or other organizations.”22 These included the NPD, municipal party offices, positions in the state parliaments, the Sudeten German Homeland Association, the Confederation of Expellees, other far-right organizations, publishers, the media, as well as government and business positions. 

The Federal Assembly of the Sudeten German Homeland Association consisted “for decades to over fifty percent” of WB members. In many cases the curriculum of the school subject “Ostkunde” (“Eastern Research”), introduced in the 1950s in the Federal Republic of Germany, had been influenced or usurped by members of the Witikobund.23

“German Youth Faithful to the Homeland” 

On March 6, 2018, photos were published that show Andreas Kalbitz in 2007 in a camp of the neo-Nazi group “German Youth Faithful to the Homeland” (Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend, HDJ), banned in 2009 because of its right-wing extremist tendencies.24 Kalbitz later admitted his participation.25

“Kalbitz took part in a so-called Whitsun camp of the HDJ in 2007. The meeting, which lasted several days, had taken place on a farm in Eschede, and one agenda item had been ‘Germanic’ mixed combat.”24

The HDJ was a right-wing extremist German youth organization with a neo-Nazi orientation with an estimated four hundred members, registered as an association in 1990. It emerged as a splinter group of the extreme right-wing Bund Heimattreuer Jugend (BHJ) - Der Freibund (“Union of the Youth Faithful to the Homeland - The Free Union”). The Freibund is an organization oriented towards the structure and traditions of the Bündische Jugend, a youth movement that emerged from the Wandervogel movement in its second phase after the First World War.

Logo of the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend

After an internal dispute that lasted from 1975 to 1988, the Freibund largely turned away from militant right-wing extremism. As a result, the right-wing extremist wing left the Freibund in 1990 and founded Die Heimattreue Jugend e. V. (“The Youth Faithful to the Homeland”). The new organization had its focus on northern Germany and was headquartered in Kiel. At that time, the organization was largely meaningless and comprised only a small circle of activists. 

With a new federal leadership assuming office in 1999, a renewal of the organization began. In 2000 the name was changed to Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend.26 The registered association was based in Plön, but operated mainly from Berlin, where the post box of the association and of its newspaper Funkenflug were located.27

The association organized camps for children and teenagers who received military and ideological training there. An ARD Panorama report from 2008 shows that the HDJ was recruiting actively amongst children in several German cities at the time.28

Flyer of the Viking Youth presumably from 1987

There existed a clear personal continuity with the “Viking Youth" (Wiking-Jugend), the successor organization to the Hitler Youth, which was banned in 1994. The neo-Nazi celebrity lawyer Wolfram Narath (see memo on Gudrun Burwitz), who had been leading the Viking Youth from 1991 until its ban, became subsequently involved in the HDJ. (He would eventually in 2009 become the lawyer of SSPX Resistance figurehead Richard Williamson.)

Because of its right-wing extremist aspirations, the HDJ was banned with immediate effect on March 31, 2009, by the then Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, two years after Kalbitz had taken part in one of its camps.

“Cultural and Contemporary History - Archive of Time”

From 2010 to 2015, Kalbitz was member of the board of the right-wing extremist association “Cultural and Contemporary History - Archive of Time” (Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte, Archiv der Zeit e.V.), founded by former SS Hauptsturmführer and later NPD official Waldemar Schütz.

The declared aim of the Archive was “to safeguard a true account of Germany’s history, and to transmit the knowledge about Germany’s real plight over the last 75 years for future generations.”29 The association worked on establishing an archive and a politically oriented library.30 According to its own statements, as of 1994, the publications that it had sent to libraries, historians and students were worth around DM 250,000.31 The activities were financed by a support group of around 1,000 people.31

A Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte / Archiv der Zeit publication by revisionist historian Georg Franz-Willing entitled “The Question of Guilt for the War.”

The attached publishing house based in Rosenheim also called Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte / Archiv der Zeit,32 published works of i.a. Adolf von Thadden, a former Wehrmacht lietenant who played a leading role in the formation of the NPD, or of the revisionist historian Georg Franz-Willing.

In 2014, Kalbitz was registered as the chairman of the organization.33 After a rbb report, which revealed these connections, Kalbitz initially referred to the limited activity of the club in recent years, but then resigned in October 2015 from the post as chairman and left the organization, according to information provided by the AfD Brandenburg.34

The right-wing extremism researcher Hajo Funke commented: “With his role in this cultural association he outs himself as a right-wing extremist. This is a far-right organisation.”35

Professional life

From the age of 22, for twelve subsequent years (1994 to 2006), Andreas Kalbitz served as a temporary soldier in a paratrooper division of the Bundeswehr.36

In the end phase of his employment as paratrooper he was intensifying his efforts to establish a career as writer and publisher. 

In 2004, he was involved in the production of two documentaries about the Third Reich together with his father in law, Stuart Russell, a British soldier who had retired in Germany and died shortly after in 2006.37

Kalbitz had worked on the script of the two documentaries which were entitled “Hitler. The Unknown Soldier. 1914-1918,” and “From Garmisch to the Caucasus. The History of the 1st Mountain Division 1941-1942.”38

Although Kalbitz pertains that his father in law would neither be a “right-wing extremist nor a radical,”39 this seems rather unlikely. Russell wrote several books on the First and Second World War, including “Himmler’s castle. Center of the SS,” or “Front Soldier Hitler. The Voluntary of the First World War,” which were distributed by right-wing mail-order companies. Furthermore, he lived near the infamous SS cult site Wewelsburg close to Paderborn.37

The newspaper Welt, which ran the story, quoted the historian Thomas Weber of Aberdeen University, who said about the first film of 2004 that it appears to be a “skillful glorification of Hitler.” “I consider the depiction of Hitler’s anti-Semitism in the film to be particularly perfidious,” Weber told the newspaper. “The core convictions of Hitler are not criticized in the film and are thus ultimately complaisantly confirmed.”40 The second film would give the impression that the advance of the mountain division was a heroic military achievement.

Kalbitz CV states that he subsequently studied computer science at the University of Applied Sciences Brandenburg.36 Investigations of the Märkische Allgemeine revealed that he was enrolled there from 2005 to 2007, but did not take any exam.41 As a result, he was forcibly expelled.

According to his own account Kalbitz completed from 2006 to 2008 a vocational training as media merchant (digital and print). Subsequently, from 2009 to 2013 he was managing director of the audio book publisher Edition Apollon in Königs Wusterhausen. After the bankruptcy of Edition Apollon, he worked as a freelance IT consultant.42

In March 2013 he joined the AfD, right from the party’s beginning, and rose through its ranks until he became one of the six observers of the AfD federal board in December 2017.43

Career in the AfD

Below a list of positions Kalbitz held in the AfD:

  • Since March 2013 - Member of the AfD
  • Since March 2013 - 2nd Deputy Chairman of the AfD County Chapter (Kreisverband) Dahme-Spreewald
  • Since June 2014 - Member of the City Council (Stadtrat) Königs Wusterhausen
  • Since June 2014 - Chairman of the AfD faction of the Königs Wusterhausen City Council
  • Since September/October 2014 - Member of the State Parliament (Landtag) Brandenburg
  • March 2015 to October 2017 - Deputy Chairman of the AfD faction in the State Parliament Brandenburg (deputy to Alexander Gauland)
  • Since November 2015 - Deputy Chairman of the AfD Brandenburg State Association (Landesverband)
  • Since November 2017 - Chairman of the AfD faction in the State Parliament Brandenburg 
  • Since December 2017 - One of the six observers of the AfD federal board

2013 - AfD

Kalbitz started out his career in the AfD in March 2013 as “2nd Deputy Chairman of the AfD District Association Dahme-Spreewald,” the same month as he became AfD member, according to his official CV published on the website of the Brandenburg State Parliament.36

Given that only on February 6, 2013, the decision to form the AfD had been taken by a group of 18 people during a meeting in Oberursel,44 and on April 14, the AfD announced its presence to the wider public and elected a board, it seems Kalbitz was amongst the very early adepts of the new party.

2014 - Member of the Brandenburg Landtag

In the June 2014 Brandenburg Municipal Election Kalbitz was elected to the City Council of Königs Wusterhausen, and became chairman of its AfD faction.

In the September 2014 Brandenburg State election he ran as a direct candidate for the constituency Dahme-Spreewald II / Oder-Spree I, reaching 10.4 percent of the votes. He subsequently joined the State Parliament (Landtag) of Brandenburg via the AfD state list (list position 9), and became a member of the Committee for Infrastructure and Land Planning (A10), the Special Committee for the New Berlin Airport (BER), as well as of the Committee for Science, Research and Culture (A6), of which he is still a member.45 For some time he had also been a representative for the affairs of the ethnic minority Sorbs and Wends in the AfD.

2015 - The Wing

In 2015, Kalbitz became a member of the extreme right-wing faction inside the AfD, Der Flügel (“The Wing”), which started to become dominant in the AfD around 2015. 

Kalbitz co-signed in March 2015 the so-called Erfurter Resolution (“Erfurt Resolution”) initiated by two notorious figures from the extreme right-wing of the AfD, Björn Höcke and André Poggenburg.46 The text, signed by around 20 AfD politicians, had a twofold objective: to found the nationalist faction “The Wing” inside the AfD, and to overthrow the camp around Bernd Lucke and Hans-Olaf Henkel, dominant in the party at that time.

In June 2015, he joined the so-called Kyffhäusertreffen (“Kyffhäuser Meeting”) as a speaker, which ever since is taking place once a year to bring together members of The Wing.

“The Kyffhäuser Monument (German: Kyffhäuserdenkmal), also known as Barbarossa Monument (Barbarossadenkmal), is a monument built under Emperor William in the Kyffhäuser mountain range in the German state of Thuringia. It was erected in 1890–96 at the site of medieval Kyffhausen Castle near Bad Frankenhausen … Stylistically, it recalls the castles and fortresses of the Hohenstaufen era in Germany in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the beginning period of Wilhelminism, it was intended to suggest that the Prussia-dominated German Empire founded in 1871 was the legitimate successor to the medieval Holy Roman Empire. It also signifies the national theme of decline and rebirth.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyffh%C3%A4user_Monument.

On November 21, 2015, he was elected Deputy Chairman of the AfD Brandenburg State Association (Landesverband), and thus Alexander Gauland’s deputy.47

Since 2015 he is also a member of the advisory board of the Investment Bank of the State of Brandenburg (Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg, ILB).48

2016 - Employment of neo-Nazi assistant

Although in 2015 Alexander Gauland had said in an interview that former members of the DVU and the NPD would not be allowed to join the AfD,49 in March 2016, it became known that Andreas Kalbitz employed the former neo-Nazi Alexander Salomon from Cottbus as an assistant at the Brandenburg Landtag, who had been a member of the NPD for almost two years. 

This fact was initially vehemently denied towards inquiring journalists,50 but Kalbitz later admitted that he knew of Salomon’s neo-Nazi past.51 It also came out that Salomon, a law student, had worked for another AfD state parliament member.52

“At the beginning of the week, an AfD faction spokesman said, in response to a PNN request, that Salomon had not worked for either the faction or for parliament members [in the Brandenburg State Parliament]. The opposite appears to be the case. The delegate and parliamentary manager of the AfD faction, Birgit Bessin, had employed Salomon several months on a part-time basis according to the B.Z.- from her budget as parliamentarian designated for assistants, thus from taxpayer’s money. Solomon’s part-time job with Andreas Kalbitz ended only recently, Gauland’s crown prince, vice-chairman of the AfD faction and first deputy in the AfD state association.”

Alexander Salomon had been active in the local NPD section in Lausitz, his home district, and had been observed among local neo-Nazi gatherings at that time. But when at the end of April 2013 the Brandenburg AfD regional association was founded in Nauen (Havelland), Salomon jumped on the bandwagon, and was promptly elected to the board as an observer.50 Salomon remained an AfD member until 2014 but was subsequently sidelined, whereupon he simply changed to the state board of the party’s youth organization, the “Young Alternative” (Junge Alternative).52

“The NPD showed nothing but malice for Solomon changing fronts, and wrote on Facebook: ‘The decision to separate the AfD from the NPD has apparently been lifted. Now the AfD is already poaching in the NPD’s turf and is even electing our comrades-in-arms to the Brandenburg regional board.’”53

On December 16, 2016, the CDU MP Steeven Breetz sharply criticized the AfD in a speech addressed to the AfD Bundestag faction: “The only thing you understand of finance is your personal profit maximization” and “to me the AfD is just a rip off for Germany.” He made explicit reference to the fact that the AfD MP Alexander Gauland wanted to at least temporarily retain his mandate in the State Parliament after his aspired election to the Bundestag. Andreas Kalbitz then told Breetz that his speech was “Goebbels for the poor.” After Kalbitz refused to apologize  (“I cannot apologize to you for your miserable speech.”), Parliament President Britta Stark (SPD) excluded Kalbitz from the rest of the session. As a result, the entire remaining AfD Group left the hall in protest as well. Even later, Kalbitz defended his statement and stated that it was an exaggeration that must be endured in politics.54

2017 - Chairman of the AfD in the State Parliament Brandenburg

On July 16, RT published a 26-minute documentary by Yuri Kofner (Analytical Media “Eurasian Studies”) dealing with the influence of the US on Germany and the role of NATO that included a snippet of an interview with Andreas Kalbitz:55  

“We should discuss to what extent NATO can act as a political alliance, which serves mostly as means to pursue American interests. We must go back to all NATO members being equal partners again.”

In November 2017, Kalbitz was elected as the successor to Alexander Gauland as chairman of the AfD faction in the State Parliament Brandenburg at the state party convention in Frankfurt (Oder).56

On December 4, 2017, he was elected one of six observers of the AfD federal board.57

2018 - Institute for State Policy

In 2018, Kalbitz was spotted at Götz Kubitschek’s New Right “Institute for State Policy” (Institut für Staatspolitik) in Schnellroda.58 According to the magazine Stern, Kalbitz propagated “a kind of national socialism” during a lecture at the Institute on January 29, 2018.5

Andreas Kalbitz’s speech at the Institute for State Policy in Schnellroda, January 29, 2018, entitled “The AfD confronted with the Social Question.” Screenshot from the video available on YouTube.

In March 2018, at a speech at the Kyffhäuser meeting in Thuringia, he said: “The AfD is the last evolutionary chance for this country. After that, it will be ‘helmets on.’ And I do not want that.”59

In a similar vein, during an AFD demonstration in May 2018, Kalbitz complained that the AfD would be marginalized and outlawed, even though it would be “the last evolutionary chance for our country.”60 During his speech Kalbitz thanked others the racist groups for their participation, among them PEGIDA and the New Right initiative “One percent for our country” (Ein Prozent für unser Land), led by Götz Kubitschek and Philip Stein.61

In June 2018, the magazine Stern reported that Kalbitz was a potential successor to Gauland as federal party chairman. Kalbitz himself said he had patience and sees himself on a political “long-distance run.” “It is no secret where I politically stand within the AfD. But we have to reach a balance between all forces.”5

In an interview with Compact from October 2018, Kalbitz repeated his pledge for a cooperation with far-right citizens’ movements such as PEGIDA, “Kandel ist überall,” “Zukunft Heimat,” and “Ein Prozent.”62

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