The organizers long kept the meeting's location secret – the invitation vaguely stated only the region: "The Nienburg (Weser) area" in the state of Lower-Saxony, located between Hannover and Bremen. The guests arrived inconspicuously. Just over 50 people gathered at the Hof Frien, a farm with a restaurant and event center, in nearby Uchte, Lower Saxony, at the end of February to talk about "The Wild 20s."

The invitation to the secretive "strategy meeting" had been issued by the youth wing of the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) from Lower Saxony. Other members of the youth wing of the party, the Young Alternative (JA) traveled from other states including Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse to the event.

The deputy head of the Hesse state chapter of the JA, Dominik Asch, who likes to wear a Thorshammer around his neck, a symbol popular with right-wing extremists, gave a lecture on "meta-politics." The subject was how to occupy the pre-political space to shift the discourse to the right. Both the JA and the AfD have been speaking openly about this topic for years, so why all the sudden secrecy?

A Classic Neo-Nazi Background

According to DER SPIEGEL's research, there was also a AfD politician present – and another speaker: Peter Steinborn, whose real name is Pierre Dornbrach. He used to be the national head of training for the Young Nationalists (JN), the youth wing of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD). He also attended meetings of an organization modeled on the banned neo-Nazi group Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ), which translates loosely as German Youth Faithful to the Homeland. He now works as an author and speaker for a think tank that feeds off people and ideas close to the NPD, which recently renamed itself Die Heimat (The Homeland). In other words, a classic neo-Nazi background.

Time and again, the AfD and its youth wing have claimed that they want nothing to do with neo-Nazism and right-wing extremism. Both are taking legal action to try to prevent the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency responsible for monitoring extremism in Germany, from classifying them as "confirmed right-wing extremist" organizations. However, reporting and research by reporters at DER SPIEGEL has now revealed that the AfD is closer to groups of a right-wing extremist or outright neo-Nazi nature than previously known. This once again reveals how far the AfD and JA have moved into right-wing extremist territory.

Publicly, the AfD tries to maintain a dividing line between itself and such organizations or parties. When the NPD campaigned in recent years for people to vote for the AfD so that it could get its issues into parliament, AfD leaders distanced themselves from it. The party tries to keep out the even more extreme forces with what it calls its "incompatibility list." Anyone who becomes a member of the AfD and does not declare their membership in any of the groups included on that incompatibility list can potentially be expelled from the party.

Even one of the most powerful men in the AfD, Andreas Kalbitz, a former member of the party's national executive committee, was forced out of the party amid a power struggle via this rule. Media had reported various neo-Nazi activities on the part of Kalbitz, including that he had been photographed at a camp of the banned HDJ. A dispute arose as to whether he had also been a member of the group. Kalbitz  was also present at a neo-Nazi march in Athens, Greece, in 2007 that had also been attended by then NPD leader Udo Voigt and other officials of the neo-Nazi party.

But the party hasn't been very strict in adhering to its list of banned groups. Kalbitz, for example, has not been stripped of his membership in the AfD's parliamentary group in the Brandenburg state legislature. Others who violated the rule on banned groups were also allowed to stay in the AfD.

NPD Candidate Worked for the AfD

There is a long list of cases with a neo-Nazi connections in the AfD – and it runs right up to the national executive committee. For example, a member of the last national executive committee is said to have written texts under a pseudonym for an NPD-affiliated magazine in the past, and one of his colleagues reportedly published a book of National Socialist songs during his student days. Both officially belong to the more "moderate" wing of the AfD.

It's also not uncommon for the AfD's offices in the federal parliament, the Bundestag, or state parliaments to employ people who were previously active in the NPD or even in banned organizations such as the HDJ. Even a man who had run for the neo-Nazi party as recently as 2014 and gave a speech to the JN in 2017 was allowed to earn his money from the AfD. And Alice Weidel, the party's leader alongside Tino Chrupalla, employs a staff member as a policy adviser in the parliamentary group, who visited the NPD's state headquarters in Thuringia in June. He claims he was there in his capacity as a lawyer to meet with a client.

For top AfD officials like Thuringia's state chapter leader Björn Höcke,  the incompatibility list has meant little, if anything. He now makes public appearances with people whose organizations are on this list, as he did last October. On the other hand, Höcke has tried for years to conceal his friendship with militant neo-Nazi and NPD national chairman Thorsten Heise.

The growing proximity with the neo-Nazi spectrum comes at a time when the AfD is doing better than ever in public opinion polls. According to surveys, one in five people nationwide would currently vote for the AfD, and even more than one in four in the state elections in the east – although contacts with neo-Nazis are also most intense in the east. What does that say about a party that tries convulsively to pretend in public that it is civic-minded and grounded in the constitution?

Right-wing extremism experts like sociologist Matthias Quent, who teaches at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, aren't surprised by the AfD's proximity to the neo-Nazis. "The AfD and NPD are closely linked ideologically." He says the AfD has long been a kind of "NPD light." The NPD "paved the way for the AfD, in both East and West Germany," Quent says.

In a constituency analysis he completed together with other colleagues back in 2017, the researcher found that the AfD is performing especially well in areas where the NPD used to be strong. At the same time, it performs worse where the NPD hasn't been as successful. There is a "specific cultural-political space," Quent says, that favors parties like the AfD. This has nothing to do with the current policies of the governments in these areas. Quent speaks of normalization effects. "Neo-Nazism in the respective regions has increased the acceptance and electability of the AfD," says the sociologist. He adds that people are no longer frightened by it.

Today, there seems to be less inhibition within the AfD and JA to working together with people who were or are active in a neo-Nazi environment – or have those contacts. A number of current cases show this to be the case.

For example, Mario Müller – a neo-Nazi with a criminal record who was most recently involved in the Identitarian Movement, a group that is also included on the AfD's incompatibility list – works for an AfD member of the Bundestag. Photos by Recherche Nord, an independent collective that conducts research into neo-Nazis, show him in mid-July together with a hiking group near the city of Bremen. The hikers' destination was Stedingsehre, a former Nazi pilgrimage site. Müller's companions included active and former members and officials with the NPD, JN and Der Dritte Weg, or third way, a tiny neo-Nazi party. Müller did not respond to a request for a comment.

According to DER SPIEGEL's reporting, the AfD parliamentary group in Brandenburg employs a man who was active with the Spreelichtern in Brandenburg. The group was banned in 2012 because of its "affinity to National Socialism." The parliamentary group did not answer any questions when contacted.

An AfD District Councilor at the NPD's Summer Party

Annett Michler, a district councilor in the city of Meissen near Dresden attended the summer party of the NPD/Die Heimat and its newspaper Deutsche Stimme (German Voice) on July 1, as photos from Recherche Nord show. When contacted for comment, Michler wrote that the photos that DER SPIEGEL had apparently obtained, do not show "that I took part in this celebration in any way." She also threatened legal action. In fact, the photos clearly show the AfD politician, together with her husband and another person, at least entering the cordoned-off area.

Michler already had trouble over two years ago relating to an NPD contact. She had been photographed talking at a demonstration against the coronavirus containment measures with a man affiliated with the NPD who is also a moderator at Deutsche Stimme as he held out a microphone to her. There was brief rumbling inside the AfD, and then the party began defending Michler, saying that in the end, no interview had been conducted.

The party continues to stand by one of its district chairmen, who has been active in the far-right scene for more than 20 years and has had contacts with officials, members and supporters of the NPD/Die Heimat, the extremist German People's Union (DVU), the Republikaner and Holocaust deniers. The connections have been public since 2017 – but nothing has been done about them to this day. The man also took part in the secret "strategy meeting" of the JA in Uchte, where right-wing extremist Steinborn, alias Dornbrach, spoke.

Dornbrach is a writer at Metapol, a think tank that claims to be a "platform for right-wing metapolitics." It operates a blog on which it posts articles, interviews and podcasts. The publishing house connected to it holds events and sells books. Among experts, Metapol is considered a front organization for right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi groups and parties.

Through Metapol's publishing arm, Dornbrach released a book about soldiers who write poetry and have put their lives "in the service of the people, tradition and fatherland." It's a book for all those "who long for real images of men in today's world and want to be carried away by the power of action," the description states. When contacted for comment, Dornbrach stated that he left the JN and the NPD "many years ago" and "does not maintain any activities in the JN or in affiliated structures."

Between the Identitarians and the Kremlin

Dornbrach edited the book together with Johannes Scharf, whose real name is Jonathan Stumpf. He used to be a militant neo-Nazi and was even given a suspended sentence for chasing a 14-year-old Black boy through the streets with other like-minded individuals. Stumpf dreams of an "alliance of all white states, including the United States and the Russian Federation, whose populations have become aware of the importance of race." In 2019, Stumpf ran for the NPD in a local election.

In addition, Metapol also publishes a magazine, whose editor-in-chief is an Austrian, who is also an editor at the NPD/Die Heimat organ Deutsche Stimme, co-founded the Identitarian Movement and is involved in an institute with proximity to the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded him with a medal for his involvement in the World Festival of Youth, a 2017 propaganda event held in Sochi.

Also writing for the magazine are a longtime NPD activist, a far-right rock musician and the Russian neo-fascist Alexander Dugin. Nevertheless, the head of the publishing house, who calls himself Richard Müller, states that the company has "no affinity whatsoever, either visually or in terms of content, with historical National Socialism or neo-Nazi ideas."

Metapol also publishes authors from the "New Right" including Alain de Benoist and Heino Bosselmann, who works for the AfD in its parliamentary group in the state legislature in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the east.

He also writes for Sezession, the AfD-affiliated publication published by Höcke's far-right friend Götz Kubitschek. The latter also founded the Institute for State Policy (IfS) in Schnellroda, Saxony-Anhalt, which maintains close contacts with AfD officials. Experts and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution see the IfS as a front organization and idea factory for the AfD and JA. Erik Lehnert is the head of IfS.

Lehnert, in turn, in the meantime also works for the AfD in the Brandenburg state parliament in the east. At the same time, he also made an appearance for the think tank Metapol. On July 1, he gave a lecture in Guthmannshausen in the eastern state of Thuringia. Some participants arrived at the "Seminar for Right-Wing Metapolitics" hiding their faces. Some had even unscrewed the license plates of their cars in order to remain unidentifiable.

Photographers from Recherche Nord were able to take pictures of around 40 participants and identify many of them. The photos have also been provided to DER SPIEGEL. Among them is a man with an SS skull tattoo on his arm and the "black sun" symbol over it. A high-ranking functionary with Der Dritte Weg, a neo-Nazi party that is also on the AfD's incompatibility list, was also there.