The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency lost his job Tuesday after his remarks downplaying anti-migrant violence became a battleground between Chancellor Angela Merkel
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom. Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslems ..
and her conservative critics.
The ouster of Hans-Georg Maassen is the latest political aftershock resulting from the influx of more than a million refugees into Germany since 2015, which has boosted right-wing populism in Germany and beyond.
Critics have long questioned whether Maassen, who took charge of the BfV spy agency in 2012, was still suitable for the post over his handling of the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack and his contacts with the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Maassen’s decision to openly contradict Merkel in an interview with the mass-circulation daily Bild this month appears to have sealed his fate.
Responding to violent right-wing protests following the killing of a German man, allegedly by
He added that "according to my cautious evaluation, there are good reasons for thinking that it is deliberate misinformation, possibly in order to distract the public from the murder in Chemnitz."
Maassen provided no evidence to back up his assertion, but his comments were seized upon by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which called him "a very good top civil servant who had the courage to criticize Merkel’s completely failed asylum policy" and now faces a "witch hunt."
Merkel’s coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, accused Maassen of downplaying apparent anti-migrant violence and called for him to be fired .
For a senior civil servant to publicly wade into such a politically sensitive issue would normally have meant swift career death, but Maassen’s direct boss ‐ Interior Minister Horst Seehofer ‐ initially backed the spy chief.
Seehofer has regularly sparred with his conservative ally Merkel on migration since 2015, when he was one of the most prominent critics of her decision to keep open Germany’s borders as hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers trekked across the Balkans.
In a short statement following three-way talks Tuesday between Merkel, Seehofer and the head of the Social Democrats, the government said Maassen will be moved to a new job within the Interior Ministry and will be replaced at the spy agency.
Maassen may be out of the firing line for now, but the 55-year-old will likely remain influential behind the scenes within Germany’s security apparatus. The government statement noted that Seehofer "values his expertise in questions of public safety" and observers say the new job comes with a hefty pay rise.
| An Nahar adds: |
"Mr Maassen will become state secretary in the interior ministry," Merkel and the leaders of her coalition parties announced in a statement after crisis talks.
The face-saving compromise lets Merkel's fourth-term government live to see another day, after her Social Democratic coalition partners had insisted on Maassen's departure as head of the BfV intelligence service, against the wishes of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer from her Bavarian CSU sister party.
In his senior new role, essentially a promotion, Maassen will not be responsible for supervising the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the party leaders stressed in their statement.
Maassen has rejected accusations that he has supported AfD lawmakers with early access to unpublished data and advice on how to avoid surveillance by his office.
The conflict over Maassen's fate once more highlighted the deep chasms within Merkel's coalition.
On one level, both major parties, the CDU and SPD, are distrustful partners stuck in a political marriage of convenience after the AfD, a one-time fringe party, poached millions of their voters in last year's elections.
But the rift is deepest between Merkel and Seehofer, whose own political future hangs in the balance as his CSU braces for potentially massive losses to the AfD in Bavarian state elections next month.
Seehofer recently labeled the migration issue "the mother of all problems" in German politics -- a comment read by many as a veiled reference to Merkel's nickname "Mutti", or Mummy.
| An Nahar backgrounder on Hans-Georg Maassen can be seen here. |