Siegmund: The cheerful AfD politician and the political symbolism of his name

Name jokes are forbidden, but in this case it is highly political to point out that the cheerful Siegmund would also be suitable as the title of a Middle High German epic or a romantic fairy tale. The furious Roland, the blonde Eckbert, comes to mind. In this way, the fun-filled field of association in which Ulrich Siegmund conducted his successful election campaign is onomatopoeically supplemented with the gravitas that the Swallow-driving, selfie-producing, teeth-baring AfD top man otherwise lacks.

But anyone who can let Middle High German or German-Romantic traditions work for them, as soon as their own name is mentioned, has an easy time arousing expectations of political salvation. Siegmund then appears not only as an air expert and manager of surfaces, which he presented himself as in the election campaign, but also as a proper name as a substance thinker who lives from the depths. This hidden substance can now be called a nationalist, right-wing extremist or fascist type.

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“We are taking our country back”

There is no need to ignite a dispute over terms when Siegmund, poetically the father of the dragon slayer Siegfried, calls for people to finally be able to come to themselves after the election results, to their “own Germanness,” as he proclaimed on Sunday evening, combined with his core electoral policy phrase “We are taking our country back.” You can sense what depth lies behind the always funny performances.

An astonishing change in meaning can be reported: While Siegmund's cheerfulness, his penetrating good mood, was considered rather disreputable by AfD critics during the election campaign, because politics was only managed as a surface phenomenon, bypassing differentiated political argumentation, Siegmund's cheerfulness underwent a change in meaning on election evening to the extent that it was now suddenly presented by some commentators as a sign of quality for a successful election campaign.

So his “great abilities” as a salesman who knew how to hug everyone and love everyone were sincerely recognized in the Phoenix election round. What sort of wholesale sell-out of politics are we in for if the cheerful Siegmund were to set the tone for the party landscape?