Wolfgang Gedeon | |
|---|---|
.png) Gedeon at a protest in 2018 | |
| Member of theLandtag of Baden-Württemberg forSingen | |
| In office 11 May 2016 – 11 May 2021 | |
| Preceded by | Hans-Peter Storz |
| Succeeded by | Bernhard Eisenhut |
| Constituency | Second Mandate |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1947-04-23)23 April 1947 (age 78) |
| Known for | Politician |
| Website | wolfgang-gedeon.de |
Wolfgang Michael Gedeon (born 1947) is a German far-right author and former politician of theAlternative for Germany (AfD).
In March 2016, the retired physician and author of several books was elected a deputy of theBaden-Württemberg state parliament. Soon thereafter, scholars and the media widely denounced his controversial books asantisemitic and trivializing the Holocaust. Fellow party members turned against him, the state party's vice chair calling him the "prototypicalantisemitic conspiracy theorist", while others insisted on further investigations. In July 2016, the party's parliamentary caucus broke in two, though the AfD national leadership eventually forced him to temporarily stay off the party's caucus. Gedeon however kept his parliamentary mandate and remains a regular member and first speaker of the party's local chapter.
Wolfgang Gedeon was born into aRoman Catholic milieu inCham, Germany, where he attended the localgymnasium. Following hisAbitur in 1966, he studied medicine atWürzburg University and, from 1969 on, at theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich, where in 1972 he received hisStaatsexamen. A year later he acquired hisdoctorate with a thesis in the field ofgynaecology. Following a brief period as a trainee in asurgical department in Regensburg, he specialized as ageneral practitioner, opening his own medical practice inGelsenkirchen.
In the early 1970s, ahead of theSino-Albanian split, Gedeon became involved with theanti-revisionistCommunist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (Central Committee) (KPD/ML-ZK). Gedeon was involved in the 1971 protests against fare increases in public transport, nationally known as theRote-Punkt-Aktion [de].[1] A leading cadre of the party's local organization in Gelsenkirchen,[2] he was particularly notorious for selling the party's publicationRoter Morgen in front of the factory gates of local heating systems manufacturerSeppelfricke [de]. According to a former comrade, most of the factory's workers chose him as their general practitioner. His doctor's office was decorated with photographs fromAlbania, and had copies ofRoter Morgen and ofDritëro Agolli'sCommissar Memo available, until he left the KPD/ML in the mid-eighties. While Gedeon initially remained active in Germany'santi-nuclear and peace movement as a member of theInternational Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), he gradually turned to pendulum dowsing and otheresoteric practices.[1]
In 2006, Gedeon retired and moved toRielasingen-Worblingen near Konstanz. In April 2013, he joined theAlternative for Germany (AfD) and was appointed first speaker of the party's local chapter in theKonstanz district.[3] Gedeon, who is associated with the party's hard right wing,[4] entered theBaden-Württemberg parliament in the state's2016 regional election,[5] where the AfD received a record result of 15.1% from scratch.[6]
In June 2016, a number of books authored by Gedeon came under crossfire following a report by theAmadeu Antonio Foundation. Gedeon was accused of blaming Jews for antisemitic resentments in his 2012 bookDer grüne Kommunismus und die Diktatur der Minderheiten ("Green Communism and the dictatorship of minorities"), where Gedeon suggests that "Jews themselves brought about sufficient justification for the hostilities they had to face,"[7] a line of reasoning that the critic at Amadeu Antonio Foundation considered one of the most perfidious while also most common antisemitic patterns.[8] Political scientistArmin Pfahl-Traughber, an expert on antisemitism and right-wing extremism who worked for theVerfassungsschutz and theBundestag followed up with further evidence. Several passages in the second volume of Gedeon's trilogyChristlich-europäische Leitkultur, published in 2009 under the pseudonym "W. G. Meister", made clear that Gedeon was a proponent ofantisemitic conspiracy theories, who repudiates all evidence ofThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion being a forgery.[9]
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung learned that Gedeon considers the convicted neo-NaziHolocaust deniersHorst Mahler andErnst Zündel as mere "dissidents", an assessment he repeatedly voiced in both works, which were all printed by Germanvanity publisher R. G. Fischer.[10] AfD Baden-Württemberg's vice chairMarc Jongen confessed in theGerman New Right's newspaperJunge Freiheit that Gedeon'sLeitkultur trilogy made him shiver the more he studied it, summarizing that Gedeon sees the influence ofJudaism behind every intellectual or political step that helped build the modern world with its secularRechtsstaat, democracy and liberal market economy, and its free and mature citizens. Gedeon literally denigrates all of these achievements as manifestations of "individual or general societal degeneration", or a regression behindChristendom which he considers as "essentially antijudaistic." All in all, Jongen characterizes Gedeon as a prototypicalantisemitic conspiracy theorist, nonwithstanding his quibbling dissociation from (racial) antisemitism.[11]
Historian Marcus Funck from the Berlin-basedCenter for Research on Antisemitism identified antisemitism on three levels: primarily, ideologemes straightly derived from the historicalantisemitism of the 19th and the early 20th century; secondly, imaginations of aZionist world conspiracy, in Gedeon's books also featuring clearanti-American elements; and on a third level asecondary antisemitism in form of the relativization of the Holocaust, where Gedeon characterizes the Holocaust remembrance as a "civil religion."[12]
In March 2020, he was thrown out of the party, but remained in contact with former colleagues.[13] On 5 July, Gedeon was forced totemporarily[citation needed] stay off the party's caucus. The controversy led to the state party being split into two camps and caucuses.[14]
Gedeon is married and has three children.[15]
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