The Saxon master painter Tino Chrupalla is at the head of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Supporters see him as a credible man from the people. Critics think he’s overwhelmed. However, Chrupalla’s will to power is undisputed. Now he is standing for re-election.
Tino Chrupalla was elected federal spokesman for the AfD in 2019.
If you ask friend and foe Tino Chrupallas in the AfD what spontaneously comes to mind about the party’s federal spokesman, the same keyword usually comes up very quickly: “The master craftsman from Saxony stops.” Some say that appreciatively – he is close to the people, knows what a liter of milk costs. The others believe that in 2019 someone got into a top position who lacked the format to do so. “Little man, big,” they say angrily.
He has repeatedly offered his critics fodder. In the first television interview after the election, the new party leader gets hopelessly muddled. «I haven’t in the . . . um . . . ah . . . the persona con grata . . . in the . . . spoken by Umvolkung», he tries to counter the accusation that he used the NS term. And last year he ended up flat on his stomach when, in an interview, he first called for more German cultural assets in schools, but when asked, he couldn’t name a single German poem.
“We’re not on the construction site here”
When critics within the party held him responsible for the decline of the AfD in May, he chose an image that was as impressive as it was strange: “It’s like camping in the past: those who peed in the tent always complained that it was wet in the tent to have.” “We’re not on the construction site here,” many say, rolling their eyes. “One doesn’t just speak the smooth political language,” praise the others.
Chrupalla was born in Weisswasser in 1975. If you wanted to locate the demographic drama that parts of East Germany had to endure after reunification, you could hardly choose a better example. Located in the extreme northeast of Saxony near the Polish border, the city had 38,000 inhabitants immediately before the fall of the Wall. After 1990, the population dropped to around 16,000 today. The collapse of the glass industry drove out the young in particular.
Emotional distance to the West
Chrupalla, on the other hand, stays. He and his family still live there today. He successfully builds up a painting and varnishing business. The socialization and life in the East have an impact and shape his politics. This becomes particularly clear in his proximity to Russia – and the emotional distance to the West, especially to the USA. He was the only German politician to lay a wreath in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In doing so, he puts the Nazi psychological warfare against the Soviet Union on the same level as the re-education carried out by the Allies in Germany after the Second World War.
After reunification, Chrupalla initially oriented himself politically towards the CDU, and from 1990 to 1992 he was a member of the Junge Union. “But the party has moved further and further to the left, with simultaneous neoliberalization – that’s what prompted me to go to the AfD,” he told the NZZ 2019.
In 2015, Chrupalla joined the party. Companions recall that he did not want to be a paying member alone. He had a very clear desire to advance and knew exactly which buttons to press. In 2017, Chrupalla took over the direct mandate for the Bundestag from the CDU in the constituency of Görlitz for the first time – and thus created the conditions for his further rise. “The Conqueror” is the headline in the “Sächsische Zeitung”. In 2021 he successfully defended his mandate. The CDU, which ruled Saxony with an absolute majority for many years, is being humiliated again.
Meuthen’s opponent
In the AfD parliamentary group, he soon made a name for himself in restructuring the group’s finances. In November 2019, with 54 percent approval at the party congress, he became party leader of the AfD alongside Jörg Meuthen – and increasingly his opponent. It’s about the course of the party: bourgeois connectivity or more fundamental opposition? For Chrupalla, the radical right-wing wing, which has meanwhile been formally dissolved, is a matter of course. He is fighting against Meuthen’s expulsion of wingman Andreas Kalbitz from the party with all his might.
In May 2021, he prevailed in a member survey together with Alice Weidel as the top candidate for the federal elections. They cannot really convince the voters. The AfD loses votes. Nevertheless, Chrupalla has been leading the significantly shrunken parliamentary group together with Weidel since September 2021. He has been the sole leader of the AfD since Meuthen left the party in January.