No longer wearable
AfD politician Maier has to retire as a judge
October 5, 2023, 5:07 p.m
In 2017, Jens Maier swapped his life as a judge for a political career with the AfD. After years in the Bundestag and chairman of the right-wing extremist wing of the party, he is barred from returning to his old job – rightly so, as a court decides.
The transfer of former AfD member of the Bundestag Jens Maier into early retirement as a judge remains in effect. The service court in Saxony made no legal errors in its decision, explained the federal service court at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. It rightly decided that the public’s trust in Maier and his administration was seriously impaired. The 61-year-old himself has been classified as a right-wing extremist by the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2020.
“I am not the devil in person,” he said at the start of the trial. His statements during his time as a member of the Bundestag had nothing to do with his qualifications as a judge. “I can differentiate between being a judge and my political opinion.” It is completely normal that not every judge personally approves of what he has to enforce by law. “I feel treated unfairly,” said Maier.
The 61-year-old Maier worked as a judge until 2017. In 2013 he joined the AfD and in 2017 he entered the Bundestag for the party. He was chairman of the now formally dissolved so-called wing of the AfD, which was classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2020. After Maier was not re-elected to the Bundestag in 2021, he applied to return to the Saxon judicial service.
The state Ministry of Justice, in turn, requested his early retirement. The service court in Leipzig declared this admissible in December. It was based on various statements made by Maier outside the Bundestag and in social networks, which, among other things, dealt with dealing with Nazi crimes. Maier appealed against this decision, but was unsuccessful.