AfD lawmaker Tillschneider proposes reducing focus on Germany’s Nazi past
Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a member of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, proposes changing the state’s history teaching and cultural policy. He advocates for the Nazi past to lose its current urgency in public perception, while not proposing the abolition of lessons about the Third Reich.
As Politico Europe reports, Tillschneider is one of the authors of the AfD’s program for governing Saxony-Anhalt after the September 6 election. If the party forms the state government, he could lead a ministry responsible for school curricula and cultural funding. The outlet notes that the AfD is ahead of its rivals in polls and is approaching the possibility of winning an absolute majority in the state parliament.
Education and cultural policy
Tillschneider, who is responsible for culture and education in the AfD parliamentary group, previously announced an approach placing greater emphasis on Bismarck and less on Hitler. This wording was later removed from the party’s policy document.
The program provides for a review of cultural funding, a reduction in support for what the AfD calls anti-German art, and the development of patriotic tourism. It also proposes funding and restoring memorials dedicated to soldiers killed in both world wars. Party leaders say they do not plan to dismantle memorials to victims of Nazi crimes.
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According to Tillschneider, the AfD does not intend to remove topics concerning Nazi crimes from the school curriculum, but seeks to shift the emphasis in teaching. He explained that, in his view, the history of the Nazi period should not be perceived as such an urgent, intrusive and constantly present topic.
Position on the culture of remembrance
Tillschneider compared Germany’s culture of remembrance of Nazi crimes to a zombie, considering the constant return of this past into the contemporary space unnatural. Politico Europe places him among the most radical wing of the AfD, whose representatives call the culture of remembrance a cult of guilt and link it to the weakening of German identity.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agencies classified the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch as an extremist organization which, in their assessment, seeks to abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form. Tillschneider and the AfD’s lead candidate in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, reject this assessment and call it state pressure.
At an AfD campaign event in Querfurt, Tillschneider also proposed introducing a month of pride in German cultural heritage and holding a festival of German music. He denied wanting to make Germans forget the Nazi past, stating that a lesser presence of the topic would not mean forgetting it.
