Markus Krall discharged after allegations of anti-Semitism

Markus Krall is definitely a man who has something to say. On the one hand, as CEO of Degussa Goldhandel GmbH based in Munich, he is a well-known manager. On the other hand, he has written several bestsellers. In these, he deals with economic crash scenarios and controversial socio-political demands from a right-wing libertarian point of view. His most famous work is “The Draghi Crash”.

The 60-year-old manager is Catholic and repeatedly causes a stir with his theses on the Christian social order. Krall is a member of the papal Order of the Holy Sepulchre, known for its conservative views. It is probably thanks to his anchoring in this milieu that he was invited to be a guest speaker at the General Assembly of the Deanery of the Diocese of Chur.

“Intellectual rioter”

But last Wednesday Krall was prevented from giving his lecture entitled “Five Pillars for Preserving a Liberal Christian Social Order”. The prominent speaker was unloaded shortly before the meeting. The trigger for the expulsion was an intervention by Professor Christian Cebulj, the rector of the Chur Theological University, as reported by the portal kath.ch.

The allegations with which Krall reached the dean’s management are steep. In the “Zeit Online” Cebulj claimed that Krall was “significantly involved in the financing of the right-wing AfD in Germany”. “He sympathizes with conspiracy theories, has to put up with accusations of anti-Semitism, wants to abolish church taxes as well as parliamentary democracy and likes to describe himself on Twitter as an intellectual rioter,” the university rector stated.

Cebulj considered it his political and theological duty to point out to the dean “that a speaker with such reactionary positions has no place at a dean’s meeting”. The rector of the Chur Theological University could not be reached for comment.

This “register of sins” did not fail to have an effect. Jürg Stuker, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Chur, unloaded the apparently unwanted guest. Additional ammunition for the organizers’ decision was provided by kath.ch, which prefers to target right-wing conservative tendencies in the Catholic Church.

The portal contacted Michael Blume, the representative against anti-Semitism of the state government of Baden-Württemberg. He explained: “Markus Krall spread conspiracy myths about an alleged cultural Marxism-world conspiracy of the German-Jewish Frankfurt School.” Blume wrote in 2021 in the «Time Online»: “Krall then went so far as to compare that, like the Nazis as ‘national socialists’, the ‘Frankfurt School’ was aiming for no less than the long-term ‘erosion of institutions’ and the destruction of the ‘liberal system’.”

Donations to the Catholic Church instead of AfD

In an interview with the NZZ, Krall denies ever having financed the AfD. “The party has never received even one euro from me. I limit my donations to the Catholic Church.” Krall has already given lectures at the AfD. But he did that with all parties except for the left.

The fact that he was portrayed as an anti-Semite hit him hard, says Krall. “This is an outrageous accusation, a serious insult.” He has been to Israel dozens of times and has always stood up for Israel’s right to exist. He has always been interested in Jewish life and has given financial support to Jewish institutions and the Association against the Forgetting of the Holocaust.

The allegations of anti-Semitism are accordingly completely constructed. They are primarily based on Krall’s critical attitude toward the Frankfurt School, whose “cultural Marxism” he rejects. However, his disapproval had nothing to do with the fact that leading figures in the Frankfurt School, such as Max Horkheimer or Theodor W. Adorno, had Jewish roots. “And I’m by no means claiming that this is a ‘world conspiracy’. I am criticizing the political program.”

Krall describes himself as an anti-socialist because, from his point of view, socialism means lack of freedom. Very different from the Christian, liberal worldview that he represents. “It is based on the individual and not on the masses, on property without us always living in dependency, and on the family as the nucleus of our society.” Krall has criticized the German government’s corona measures because he does not consider them to be evidence-based. “From this, certain people have wrongly and maliciously concluded that I am a corona denier and conspiracy theorist and that this is an ‘anti-Semitic narrative’.”

The fact that he was uninvited from the lecture didn’t bother him, says Krall. “As the CEO of a company, I have enough to do, I didn’t want to impose myself on anyone.” But the fact that he was pulled through the media by the cocoa, he could not sit on himself. Bishop Joseph Maria Bonnemain had expressed his regret about the process. The diocese of Chur confirms that there was a telephone conversation between the bishop and Krall.

Bishops should put pressure on

But Krall expects kath.ch that the portal will correct the report about him. “That was character assassination. You could have just called me, then I could have shown that these allegations are false information.” Especially bothers him the French translation of the text on cath.ch. There Krall is already referred to in the title as “complotiste allemand”, as a “German conspiracy theorist”.

If the editors do not comply with his request, the bishops’ conference would have to put pressure on their portal, Krall believes. If this is unsuccessful, Krall reserves the right to take legal action. These would possibly be directed against the portal kath.ch and the authors who had spread false claims about him there.

Meanwhile, Raphael Rauch, editor-in-chief of kath.ch, keeps calm. “With Michael Blume and Christian Cebulj, we have very credible key witnesses for our articles,” he explains when asked by the NZZ. Your statements, which kath.ch relied on, “are scientifically supported”. “We are therefore relaxed about any objections or complaints to the press council,” emphasizes Rauch.