The far-right party said it made a "mistake" in handing out copies of a coloring book that contained xenophobic images. The AfD commissioned the book, which included drawings of men holding guns and waving Turkish flags.
In a statement sent to DW, the AfD's state parliamentary group in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) said it wanted to "sincerely apologize" for the incident.
"Although the majority of the drawings were unobjectionable and in line with the project assignment, unfortunately there were also a few that are definitely not OK and also obviously do not represent the beliefs of the parliamentary group," the statement said.
The AfD said that although they'd commissioned the coloring book, it was "prematurely published."
One of the images from the AfD coloring book shows people waving around guns alongside Turkish flagsImage: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Bischof
Markus Wagner, the head of the AfD's state parliamentary group in NRW, also walked back his initial defense of the project.
"The assessment I made yesterday was a mistake. The book should not have been published in this form," Wagner said in the statement.
The party previously defended the project, saying the criticism was "an attack on artistic and satirical freedom."
Earlier on Wednesday, the NRW state parliament announced it launched an investigation into whether the AfD improperly used public funds in order to commission the coloring book.
Police and prosecutors said they are also investigating the incident over suspected incitement.
The coloring book, entitled "North Rhine-Westphalia for coloring in," was handed out an event held by the AfD's state parliamentary group in the western city of Krefeld over the weekend.
Another scene from the book shows a swimming pool with women in burqas and depicts people with thick lips and bones in their hairImage: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Bischof
One of the drawings in the book depicted a scene at a pool — with women wearing burqas and other characters wearing swimming caps adorned with bones. A hand towards the bottom of the page is holding a knife while a banner over the pool reads: "We have to carry the can for this."
Another page depicts a group of people leaning out of cars and brandishing guns while waving Turkish flags.
NRW is Germany's most populous state and also one of its most diverse. It is home to large communities of Turkish immigrants.
Pictures of the coloring book drawings sparked outrage online and drew ire from politicians across Germany's political spectrum as well as censure from the Catholic Church.
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
