SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: A former member of Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats has formed a party to attract voters enthralled by Thilo Sarrazin and disappointed by Germany's existing parties. Berlin politician René Stadkewitz's new Freedom Party aims to leverage fear of Islam for political ends.
The 52 men and women meeting in a conference room at the Hotel Maritim in Berlin's Tiergarten district were determined to remain undisturbed. No one else was privy to the location and time of the meeting, in a deliberate attempt to prevent protestors and journalists from showing up at the scene. The only outsider present was Daniel Pipes, an American author, critic of Islam and advisor to former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who happened to be in the city.
The Hotel Maritim is on Stauffenbergstrasse, near the Memorial to the German Resistance. It is an historic point of reference that the 52 attendees would likely have drawn encouragement from. Like would-be Hitler assassin Claus von Stauffenberg, after whom the street is named, they too hope to protect Germany against what they perceive to be pending disaster. The group drafted a set of bylaws and discussed a 77-page party platform, which includes such statements as: "We will do everything in our power to oppose the Islamization of our country."
They gave their party a grand name, a name worth fighting for: "Die Freiheit" (Freedom).
The 52 men and women chose as their party chairman an unprepossessing man with a short haircut and melancholy eyes, the 45-year-old manager of a company specializing in alarm systems and security technology and a member of the Berlin state parliament, René Stadtkewitz. >>> Jochen-Martin Gutsch | Thursday, January 06, 2011
