Overview
- A Bonhoeffer descendant, Tobias Korenke, tried to remove a wreath placed by the AfD at the Bendlerblock memorial, prompting a short scuffle with security in which the wreath was damaged or taken away, according to multiple reports of the incident on Monday.
- Police recorded Korenke’s details and the federal protocol office filed a damage complaint that was later withdrawn, and Korenke was removed from the memorial during the ceremony.
- Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald memorial, publicly defended Korenke’s action as civil courage while the Stiftung 20. Juli 1944 urged that the ceremony remain free of party political staging.
- The AfD described the action as an unworthy disturbance and offered to discuss its positions, while some descendants such as Stauffenberg’s grandson said the party’s wreaths are offensive but should not be forbidden from participating.
- The episode has widened a national debate on memory culture by highlighting the tension between parliamentary custom that allows parties to lay wreaths and relatives’ and institutions’ view that certain actors’ participation politicizes or appropriates resistance remembrance.