Far-right German MP’s clothes are stolen at lake, thief shouts ‘Nazis need no bathing fun’

Alexander Gauland, whose half-naked walk through Potsdam with a police officer has gone viral, has called for pride in the achievements of German soldiers in both world wars

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Alexander Gauland’s clothes were stolen while he swam in a lake in Potsdam last week, forcing the co-leader of the German Parliament’s most far-right party to walk half-naked through the streets – an image that is going viral on social media. Photo: Twitter

Published: 9:33am, 7 Jun 2018Updated: 9:33am, 7 Jun 2018

Police have yet to find the man who stole Alexander Gauland’s clothes while he swam in a lake last week, forcing the co-leader of the German Parliament’s most far-right party to walk half-naked through the streets – an image that is going viral on social media.

At least the motive for the crime seems clear. “Nazis need no bathing fun!” Gauland said the thief shouted as he stole the 77-year-old lawmaker’s shirt and pants.

Gauland has never publicly defended the German Nazis, who during their 12-year rule started World War II, killed millions of people and tried to exterminate all Jews. But he has repeatedly suggested that it’s time to stop apologising for the past.

Alexander Gauland, co-faction leader of the Alternative for Germany, AfD at the federal parliament Bundestag, attends a congress of the party's youth organisation at Seebach on Saturday. Photo: DPA

“If the French are rightly proud of their emperor, and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars,” Gauland said in September, according to The Guardian. “People no longer need to reproach us with these 12 years. They don’t relate to our identity nowadays.”

A week and a half after he made that speech, the Alternative for Germany – a party co-led by him – came third in a six-way national election, becoming the first far-right party to join the German Parliament since the Nazis.

The party’s other leader, Alice Weidel, once wrote an email peppered with “Nazi-era connotations,” according to Deutsche Welle – words such as Überfremdung, or “foreign infiltration,” which Weidel applied not to Jews but to “culturally foreign people such as Arabs, Sinti and Roma,” as well as to “puppets of World War II allies” in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.