Germany’s most prominent far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is surging ahead in the polls with the potential to become Germany’s most popular party. This makes it all the more concerning that the initial success of this party was enabled by a Nazi billionaire family. The latest insa poll has the AfD at 21 percent as the second-strongest party, within reach of overtaking the Christian Democrats, currently at 25 percent. If elections were held next Sunday, the AfD’s success would make it either impossible for traditional coalitions to form or ensure that another coalition emerges that will further contribute to the AfD’s rise. The AfD is now able to shape its own destiny. It has risen from being the haunted to the one haunting others. This is a frightening development; one of the party’s main goals seems to be changing how Germans view their past. The AfD has repeatedly made light of Germany’s Nazi past and called for a change in the nation’s Holocaust remembrance. The party’s goals become a hundred times more alarming if you consider who helped the party get where it is today: entrepreneur August von Finck Jr. Finck Jr. inherited his wealth from his father, banker August von Finck, who helped finance the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1920s. He benefited from the Aryanization of Jewish banks, which he personally called for. In a letter to Munich’s Chamber of Commerce in 1937, he wrote: “Today, the German private banking sector is still largely made up of non-Aryan firms. The gradual cleansing of this trade, which is strongly influenced by the Jewish element, must not be halted by the granting of applications for exemptions but must … be promoted by all means.” After the war, the Finck family became politically active again. In the days of Franz Josef Strauss, Finck donated large sums to the conservative Christian Social Union. In 2010, it was revealed that donations of millions also flowed to the business-friendly Free Democrats. The latter is said to have benefited the families co-ownership of more than a dozen hotels in Germany. Finck has shied away from discussing political views publicly and from publicity in general. But his business partner and right-hand man, Ernst Knut Stahl, made a disturbing statement about Jews in the banking industry. “There is danger ahead,” Stahl said. “There is a street in New York with lots of investment bankers, lawyers and so forth. Coincidentally, they are all Jews, but that’s not relevant here. They want to push Germany into ruin. They control everything.” The context of this quote, published by Der Spiegel magazine in 2018, is also interesting. Stahl was seeking to establish a new newspaper, Deutschland Kurier. The above statement is from a May 1, 2017, meeting with a publisher he sought to win for his cause, who later shared Stahl’s comment under oath. Soon after the meeting, Deutschland Kurier landed in people’s mailboxes and aided the AfD’s campaign against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. Der Spiegel’s article “A Billionaire Backer and the Murky Finances of the AfD” highlights how Stahl and Finck helped the AfD from its earliest beginnings.
via thetrumpet: The Nazi Billionaire Family Behind Germany’s Far Right August von Finck Jr.