“Full of pride”, Höcke, who leads the AfD in the former GDR state, says he is “ready to take on the responsibility of governing” after winning Sunday's regional election by a landslide.
A native of western Germany, a 52-year-old former high school history teacher, he has built a reputation as a provocative tribune within the group, of which he leads the most radical fringe. In Thuringia, which was the first region where the Nazis came to power in 1932, Mr. Höcke warned his opponents: “Traditionally, we invite the strongest party to talk.”
But anyone who says they are “ready for cooperation” with other parties is exposed to rejection from all the political forces that have ruled out governing with the AfD.
His divisive personality also has something to do with it. A few months before the election, Mr. Höcke was convicted twice, in May and July, for deliberately using the National Socialist slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (“All for Germany”) on separate occasions.
It was a motto used by the SA, a paramilitary formation of the Nazi Party that was instrumental in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. In Germany, the law strictly prohibits the use of Nazi slogans or the display of symbols of the Third Reich. Mr Höcke said he did not know the phrase was a Nazi slogan, but the judges found he knew perfectly well.
Under supervision
Born on April 1, 1972, he grew up in a family convinced of the extreme right theses, under the influence of his paternal grandparents, expelled from East Prussia conquered by the Red Army in 1945.
Parted to the side, this slender man with steely blue eyes advocates a break with the culture of penance for Nazi crimes, the bedrock of the country's post-war period. In January 2017, he described the Shoah Memorial in the heart of Berlin as a “monument of shame” during a speech in Dresden, Saxony, and his expulsion from the party was considered.
The spring of 2013 marked the starting point of this father of four's political ascent: he was a founding member of the AfD's regional branch in Thuringia, where he had moved five years earlier.
In August of the same year, he became its president. After the 2014 regional elections, in which the AfD entered the Thuringian parliament (with 10.6% of the vote), he became head of the parliamentary group, a position he still holds.
Due to very radical positions, the AfD in Thuringia, like the one in Saxony-Anhalt, has been put under surveillance by the intelligence services. Even if he did not grow up in East Germany, he knows how to speak perfectly to the citizens of the former GDR, cultivating their nostalgia.
A day before the election, he posted a video on his X account showing him riding with young people from the region on a motorcycle from the cult brand of the former East Germany, a Samson. After signing autographs, he said: “this is a piece of freedom, a piece of ancient culture, and we are fighting for traditions.”