One of the big promises made by the Hamburg CDU state leader Christoph Ploß is that he wants to lead the party more as a unit, as a team – but a special personality has made many Christian Democrats doubt this since Wednesday. Alone with his party friends in the northern district association, which Ploß chairs, it was decided to approve Jörn Kruse’s application for membership in the CDU. Kruse, who was also a member of the SPD and the Free Voters, became known to a broader public as the leader of the AfD Hamburg parliamentary group. Four years ago, he left the party and resigned from office. He had previously distanced himself from the AfD’s shift to the right, which was becoming increasingly clear, but also tacitly supported many of the party’s statements and decisions.

Since the recording became known, the ranks of the CDU have been on the phone a lot. There is a need to speak and vote, and there is also a premiere to be experienced: For the first time, Hamburg’s faction leader Dennis Thering – at least in public – is not in line with the party leader, who, although a year younger than Thering, is considered his sponsor. The two have already negotiated that Thering should run as the top candidate in the 2025 state elections; whether also as a candidate for mayor should be decided later depending on the survey situation. Regarding personnel Kruse, Thering, who is district chairman in Wandsbek, now clearly says that he would not have accepted the 74-year-old because he would have “at least accepted” racist and anti-Semitic statements. Protests can also be heard from other district associations, for example from Altona. The chairman there, Anke Frieling, would not have accepted Kruse either and reports that they also received many inquiries from all over Hamburg.

Marcus Weinberg, who led the CDU in the last general election campaign – the election ended with a devastating 11.2 percent of the votes for the CDU – also sees an “effect on the entire CDU”, he sees it as a burden for the party, a previous one It was therefore absolutely necessary for the state board to deal with it.

The reason that Ploß himself gave for his admission reveals his strategic approach for his party. “The CDU has always been successful when it has united Christian-social, liberal and conservative tendencies. Such an approach has always strengthened democracy in Germany,” said Ploß. Since it can hardly be assumed that he sees Kruse as a candidate for party offices, he is obviously primarily interested in sending a signal to the outside world: the big-city CDU should no longer try to emulate the SPD and the Greens, but act independently and also involve them who otherwise can no longer find a political home – but who also do not or no longer want to vote for the AfD as a protest. It is an attempt to achieve equal inclusion and exclusion. Ploß is also aware that this procedure requires explanation. In any case, he sends his general attitude to the AfD in his message: “I reject any collaboration or cooperation. The AfD belongs on the pyre of history” – which prompted the party to make an angry reply.

But there are quite a few in the party who want to endure this balancing act. Dirk Fischer, for example – the former CDU parliamentary group and party leader was one of Christoph Ploß’s major sponsors – is clearly in favor of admission: “I rate Professor Kruse’s CDU entry as an excellent strategic opportunity, the AfD protest voters win back and thus remove the AfD in Hamburg from the parliaments in the coming elections in 2024 and 2025. We don’t want anything to do with neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists in the AfD,” he told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. Kruse is a personality of integrity. “I saw him several times during the 2013 federal election campaign as an opponent in panel discussions in Hamburg. His economic policy statements were identical to the CDU positions,” says Fischer about the professor of economics, who joined the AfD in the days of Bernd Lucke. The CDU member of the Bundestag Christoph de Vries made a similar statement in the newspaper: “I am very much in favor of giving all middle-class conservative forces a political home in the CDU that share our basic values ​​and move with their positions in the democratic spectrum.”

This process also makes it clear that not only the Hamburg FDP – which the Christian Democrats in particular like to scoff at because of the ongoing internal party dispute – continues to have a problem with camp formations. This became visible in June of this year when Ploß stood for re-election as state chairman unopposed and received a rather modest 78.2 percent of the votes, although the new federal chairman Friedrich Merz had previously spoken out very strongly for him. When he was first elected to office, Ploß had achieved 86 percent. In the meantime, however, the Bundestag elections for Hamburg’s Christian Democrats had been lost with a crash, the CDU performed far below average here.

The fact that Ploß can lead the Elb-CDU out of the long and deep valley with its independent course, which includes a nationwide initiative against forced gender, is seen in this way as nothing more than an assertion. Rather, his internal party critics fear that the CDU could win votes on the one hand, but lose them again on the other – and above all lose any ability to connect with other parties with a view to possible coalitions. For the Greens, for example, Ploß has long been a kind of persona non grata – and the new volte with the personality of Jörn Kruse could have deepened the gap even further to the SPD.