If Count Dracula and Klaus Kinski had a son, and sent him for an elocution lesson to Adolf Hitler, the result would be Alexander Eichwald.
The political newcomer made his first – and possibly last – appearance last weekend at the first conference of the far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) new youth wing: Generation Deutschland (GD).
The new organisation was almost up and running as a training ground for future party personnel until Eichwald popped up at the podium and flipped the script.
“My honourable comrades, it is our obligation to protect German culture from foreign influences,” he thundered into the microphone, dressed in a blue dinner jacket, his high forehead shining in the spotlights.
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His speech continued in a similar fascist vein, with exaggerated hand gestures and his Rs rolled with the precision of the Nazi dictator.
Delegates began to look at each other in wonder until, eventually one grabbed a microphone and asked: “Are you an agent of the state? There’s no other explanation for this.”
Days later, speculation is still rife over whether Eichwald, a relatively new AfD member, was smuggled in by one of Germany’s satirical television news shows.
For now, the only online trace of Eichwald – with a surname that translates as oak forest – is a music website with an artist who looks similar, calling himself Alex Oak.
The Eichwald episode was an unwelcome distraction for the AfD, according to regional leader Michel Schneidermann: “He dragged all of us into the dirt with his remarks using language and rhetoric from the National Socialist era that has no place in the AfD.”
Despite his exaggerated Hitler cover act, Eichwald still ran for a minor party role and attracted 12 per cent support from delegates.
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The new organisation came about after AfD leaders wound up their party’s previous youth wing, the Young Alternative.
Three of its leaders were convicted of planning terrorist attacks and German domestic intelligence classified their organisation as right-wing extremist.
They have the same classification for the new group’s head, Jean-Pascal Hohm, a 28-year-old media manager and web designer. At the weekend he described the members of his new organisation as “German patriots who always ask ourselves first what is in the best interests of our citizens and land”.
Hohm joined the AfD in 2014 and sits for the party in the Brandenburg state parliament. A recent Spiegel investigation highlighted links to far-right organisations in Italy and Austria and social media posts of neo-Nazi bands with album art that includes Hitler and concentration camp fences.
Hohm denies repeating or favouring extremist views or media content and wants real change through legitimate means.
“Thankfully we live in a parliamentary democracy and achieve change through elections and government responsibility,” he said.
In interviews Hohm repeats unfounded extremist narratives of large-scale population replacement and demands a “migration shift”.
He left it to other delegates to use more radical language and revive a policy buried by the AfD after huge protest: the promise to deport non-ethnic German citizens in large numbers, so-called “remigration”.
AfD delegate Julia Gehrkens attracted applause for predicting that “only millions of remigration cases will protect our women and children”.
The weekend conference attracted about 30,000 protesters outside the hall and running street battles with police. Some 37 protesters and more than 50 officers were injured after clashes.
As the AfD reboots its youth organisation, the far-right party is leading opinion polls with 27 per cent support.
Next year the party is hoping to score well in a series of regional elections, including in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Local polls give the AfD there 40 per cent support which, in certain circumstances, would secure the party an absolute majority.
