German far right in row over Nobel laureate's name
Germany's far-right AfD party will decide Friday whether to adopt a think-tank named after Nobel peace laureate Gustav Stresemann, despite anger from the former chancellor's descendants who have threatened legal action. "The politics undertaken by Gustav Stresemann in his time are a perfect ideological fit with our ideas. His heritage is in the very good hands of the AfD," said Alexander Gauland, co-leader of the anti-immigration party, in an interview with Die Zeit weekly. But Stresemann's descendants are mounting a resistance against the party formally associating itself with the think tank, arguing that the late Weimar Republic statesman did not share the ideology of the AfD. "We will examine all possible avenues of justice to prevent this," said Walter Stresemann, one of the late German politician's grandsons. "My grandfather's conviction fundamentally goes against what the AfD is about," he said. Leading members of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, who view the liberal politician as one of their own, have also hit out at the AfD's plan. Chancellor for just three months in 1923, Stresemann became foreign minister the same year and served in the post until his death in 1929. He fought to bring Germany back from the political wilderness after World War I. The politician preached reconciliation with France and in 1926 received the Nobel Peace Prize along with former French prime minister Aristide Briand. Founded in 2011, the Gustav Stresemann Foundation declares on its website it is "close to the AfD" and describes itself as a "free, conservative-patriotic workshop of the future". Think tanks are an integral part of Germany's political scene, as they provide parties with intellectual influence and offer an amount of respectability. They can also be a key source of financing for parties. German media reported that if the AfD adopted the small Gustav Stresemann Foundation, the party could stand to receive tens of millions of euros (dollars) in public funding. Capitalising on the public's misgivings against the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers since 2015, the AfD won more than 90 seats during September's elections, unleashing a political earthquake in Germany.
