Götz Kubitschek

Deployment Abroad

From December 1997 to March 1998, Kubitschek, a reserve officer in the Army, served voluntarily with the Bundeswehr as part of SFOR in Bosnia. He was stationed in Sarajevo as second lieutenant and led a platoon in "Operative Communications". After Ernst Jünger died in February 1998, he organised a reading of his works. Having returned to Germany, he published a book about his experiences in Bosnia together with a first lieutenant who was classified as a right-wing extremist by military intelligence.

Family

Kubitschek is married to Ellen Kositza, his second wife, who also wrote for the JF. The couple has seven children and lives in Schnellroda Manor in the village of Steigra (Saxony-Anhalt).

Relationship with NPD

Members of the National Democratic Party (traditionally the most important of Germany's post-war far-right parties, usually categorised as neo-Nazi) accused him of indulging in "intellectual self-gratification" and that he was part of the "system". Kubitschek had spoken dismissively about the NPD and its aim to "overcome the system": "What I got to know here in my region [in Saxony-Anhalt state] regarding NPD structures or proto-political structures, like Kameradschaften etc. [i.e. loosely-organised neo-Nazi gangs], this is – with due respect – beneath contempt and does not live up to their self-imposed aspirations of advancing Germany. It starts with manners, continues with their political models and their dangerous semi-knowledge, and ends with their outline of how to organise things after taking power. This competition about who may frame the most radical solution and the most radical view, is alien to me." His and the NPD's overlap are "pretty small", he said. Kubitschek's activities were deemed by Endstation Rechts (a Young Social Democrat watchdog of the far-right) to be "non-extremist" in 2010, but explicitly without excluding historical revisionism.

Nonetheless, Kubitschek gave an interview in the NPD paper Deutsche Stimme (German Voice) in 2008. In a talk at IfS, he stressed: "The way our state is composed now, it can hardly be stabilised. In its foundations, there are many inclusions that are corrupting the Nation. And through its current policies, it is destroying the substance of the German people, which is without ifs or buts the foundation of a German future." Uwe Backes, a researcher of extremism, called the relationship with the NPD "elitist distance" in 2012. Likewise, Armin Pfahl-Traughber, another German scholar of extremism, said in 2008 that "the differences are less in their animosity towards the norms of the democratic constitutional state but more in regard to methods and target groups."

Relationship with AfD and German Republicans

Kubitschek said he worked for a short time in the early 2000s as an advisor for the Baden-Württemberg section of the Republicans, a German far-right fringe party. In 2005, he accepted an invitation to the summer convention of their youth chapter at Mainz-Kostheim where he gave a talk amongst other members of European rightist parties like the Austrian FPÖ and the Belgian Vlaams Belang.

Both Kubitschek and his wife applied for membership in the Saxony-Anhalt section of the newly formed AfD party (variously termed national-conservative or right-wing populist). This was approved on 27 January 2015 and their ID cards were issued on 5 February, but on 17 February, they were told by the party's federal secretary that their applications had been rejected.

Kubitschek responded positively to the Erfurt Resolution by party right-wingers and state-level party chairmen Björn Höcke (Thuringia) and André Poggenburg (Saxony-Anhalt) in March 2015, stating his support for this "neo-rightist [...] assembly movement" within the party. Poggenburg approved Kubitschek's joining and criticised its revocation by the federal party board around Bernd Lucke.

In November 2015, Kubitschek allowed Höcke to give a talk in Schnellroda that was available online for a short time and that was widely seen as racist. According to Pfahl-Traughber, Kubitschek is part of Höcke's "political friends", whose state party chapter facilitated "German-nationalist voices with clear orientations in a far-right direction."

After the AfD's huge success at the Saxony-Anhalt state elections in 2016, Kubitschek was a guest at their election night event and was quoted as saying: "I can assure you that these pragmatists, now represented with 27 members in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament and with big groups in Rhineland-Palatinate and [Baden-] Württemberg, would very, very much like to adapt and politically realise some of the concepts, some of the topics, some of the expertise from our projects." In June 2016, he and his wife were guests at the so-called Kyffhäuser Meeting of the AfD's right wing around Höcke and Poggenburg.

Conflict with the Bundeswehr

On 16 August 2001, one day before his 31st birthday, Kubitschek, by then reserve first lieutenant, was dismissed from a training exercise in progress as he was charged with being "involved in right-wing extremist endeavours" according to the Bundeswehr's Office of Personnel and as his "remaining in the Bundeswehr [would] seriously endanger military order and security among the troops." He had frequently written articles for Junge Freiheit which was at that time under observation by federal security agencies.

As a response, the JF started a campaign in September 2001, appealing to the Bundeswehr to revoke its decision and protesting against categorising their activity as right-wing extremist. The Bundeswehr repealed its decision in the first half of 2002. The communication historian Lutz Hachmeister claimed that this was not due to the JF's appeal but due to possible legal problems. Kubitschek received no further promotions. He commented in 2008: "To be a soldier, you don't have to wear epaulettes; to serve the state, you don't have to be a state [i.e. public] servant."

Political position

Neo-rightist metapolitics

Kubitschek is seen as a spokesman for the Neue Rechte. While his companion Dieter Stein, the JF's chief editor, has rejected the label Neue Rechte (New Right) as impractical, Kubitschek has actively used the term. Whereas Stein is said to favour developing the JF along the lines of a pragmatic national-conservatism, Kubitschek is closer to traditionally metapolitical views, supported by his colleagues Martin Lichtmesz and Manfred Kleine-Hartlage. His former companion Weißmann criticised him politically and personally in 2015. Helmut Kellershohn sees in his thinking an overlap of Conservatism, the Conservative Revolution and Fascism. Kellershohn cites Filippo Marinetti, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Jünger and Primo de Rivera as influences.