Dennis Froese was a normal pond keeper from Brandenburg. Recently he has been fighting with AfD voters on the Internet every day - and is risking more than just bad Google reviews.
Oranienburg. The first thing every morning a pond keeper from a small town in Brandenburg reaches for his smartphone to find out who has already insulted him on the Internet that day. As a "piece of shit", "brainless vermin", "human waste" or something like that: "You're already in the forest. Now all you're missing is a rope." Then he strikes back. Hundreds of thousands see this. On Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook.
Dennis Froese is, as far as can be judged, a completely normal pond cleaner. Someone who was once a painter, a business IT specialist, who didn't make a lot of money renting out aquariums. A 44-year-old, thin man in a hoodie who constantly wears sunglasses outside because he has a migraine. Someone who private individuals and municipalities hire when ponds and larger bodies of water are too covered by plants.
But Froese isn't a normal pond cleaner. Because he is clearly positioning himself against the AfD. He wants to show: “If a damn pond cleaner can stand against a party, then anyone can do it.” For him it is clear: This has to happen on social media. Where the people are.
“Die Teich-Profis” is the name of Froese’s company with an office in Oranienburg. Until three years ago it was still a GmbH with almost 20 employees and an annual turnover of more than one million euros. Then a lot came together: unpaid bills, high wage costs, changes in taxation. The GmbH went bankrupt. Froese started over with just one employee and from then on hired his pond workers for daily work via an online job board. Whatever the reason, Cameroonian students in particular are coming forward. He also turned his idea into a small franchise. According to his own statements, his sales are 300,000 euros per year. He's back in the black.
Dennis Froese: Selfie with dog. Photo: PRIVATE
The first political posting
Then on May 4, 2025, he posted a video on Instagram with the note: "Even though I swore I would never make a political post, I have to take a stand at this point."
A few days earlier he had been with two Cameroonians in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a good area, right on the Baltic Sea. “Such a really nice single-family home area with well-kept gardens, electric cars in front of the door.”
The customer had already become suspicious a few times that day. Had Froese's employee drive his very used looking car off the lot. What should the neighbors think? After they had worked for hours on the pond, the Cameroonian asked the man if he could use the toilet. The owner said no. Froese asked again. His recollection is that the man said, “I don’t want that guy with his black ass coming into my bathroom.”
Froese had already been active with his company on Instagram and Facebook, quite successfully for a pond care account. Even back then he knew how to get people with headlines like “20,000 liters of water for a Hallelujah” or “The ugliest stream in the world”. The contributions were apolitical.
The clip in which he talked about the racist customer made its rounds on social networks and received a lot of feedback, including a lot of positive ones.
He shot a few more reels in the next few months, about multilingualism in his team, for example. But it still took a very cold winter for the Instagram account to become what it is now.
Back then, Froese himself noticed how things had turned around, in Germany, in Brandenburg, especially because of Corona. He had always seen Nazis running around, he knew the houses with the Reich war flags. But because of Corona, he says, things went more towards “those up there”. He later realized that in his company before it went bankrupt, he not only employed AfD voters, but also people he would call Nazis.
He once voted for the AfD
But politics hadn't interested him much before. “I always just wanted to be left alone.” SPD voter trend. He voted for the AfD once, at the very beginning, then never again.
“I’m just against right-wing extremists,” he says. “I’m really for integration.” He grew up in West Berlin. "We already had Turks in the class back then. They didn't really speak German well either. So we taught them German."
The winter of 2025/26 in Brandenburg was long and cold. No orders for pond care, so also little material for pond videos. The followers wanted to be kept busy. The AfD became increasingly stronger in the polls. Froese followed YouTuber Marcant, who confronted Nazis at demonstrations. But Froese also saw how present the AfD was on social networks, that the party understood marketing “to pick up these complete idiots out there”. At the time he thought: "I have to do something about it within the limits of my limited possibilities as a pond cleaner. I want to continue to employ foreigners. Someone should wipe my ass when I'm old."
He posted further videos in which he clearly positioned himself. But then he started doing what has become something of a trademark in recent months: He took screenshots of the insults, threats of violence and death threats that people sent him as a result of his videos, or more precisely: mainly wrote them under his public Facebook postings. Most came from white men. He also uses offensive headlines such as “Freedom of expression for AfDeppen” or “I can see stupid people”. "I also just understood social media. You have to get people to watch the video."
In the legal gray area
Almost from the start, he posted the screenshots without blacking out his name or profile photo, and he also accessed her Facebook photo folders. The goal: to show people outside who is voting for the AfD. So that even ideally you don't do it. The fact that people are clearly recognizable doesn't bother him: "Anyone who posts such comments publicly should also be recognized. So that others might recognize their neighbors or acquaintances. Apart from that, they already post these insults under their real names, and anyone can see them in our videos either way."
He doesn't think it's a private matter: "In the end, we're all affected by it."
What is humanly understandable still remains a legal gray area. Not just because he can't just use other people's photos. The legal situation is a little more complicated, even with public postings. “It is obvious to invoke a violation of general personal rights when publishing on the Internet,” says lawyer Christian Töpfermacher. The fundamental right to freedom of expression would always be on the part of those who express themselves. "These two legal positions must be weighed against each other. The result is always a question of the specific individual case." Töpfermacher advises the creators of the high-reach Instagram account Hogesatzbau, who work in a similar way to Froese.
Lawyer Katrin Giere, who specializes in press and expression law, differentiates between sharing the comment and the photo. More problematic for them is the publication of images, which in principle cannot take place without the consent of the person depicted. An exception is possible if the photo comes from the area of contemporary history, i.e. it has contemporary historical information value. This is a trade-off.
Sharing a comment that is already public is not always permitted. It must be taken into account to what extent there is a legitimate interest in information “and how much this affects the data subject’s personal rights,” says Giere. But an already public comment is an argument for them that privacy protection is significantly lower. In addition, the owner of the profile, Froese, "is likely to have a so-called right to counterattack. That means he has the right to deal with the statements and to defend himself against them."
Froese says that some people have already threatened to report him, but no one has reported him yet.
One video, 6000 insults
He also accepts that a lot of time is spent on account maintenance every day. “Two hours, definitely.” The viewing, the shooting of the video, the compilation. And every video leads to more insults. He says there are videos of 6,000 insults in the first three hours.
Froese doesn't necessarily look like someone who's still standing after the first blow, but he's not afraid, he says. He is recognized more often, also because of his company car. Someone who lives two villages away once threatened him with violence. At a gas station someone stood in front of him and said he should look behind him more often. Once he let two employees out at a train station in Brandenburg. A Golf drove behind him, parked next to him at a traffic light, window down. He had just let the [N-word] out of the car and the driver said: “Why are you bringing them into our country?”
Companies repeatedly make a name for themselves because they oppose the shift to the right or promote diversity. The dairy cooperative Deutscher Milchkontor was guaranteed several weeks of coverage because it did not only depict white people on the packaging of its cheese brand “Milram”. But many companies do not position themselves, at least not publicly.
Companies fear economic consequences
Daniel Vorpahl from the “Brandenburg Shows Attitude” alliance observes that the impulse often comes from individuals in management. Many people would not have had the topic on their radar for a long time. Or they are afraid of economic consequences, for example because the AfD could soon be in a position to award public contracts. For many companies, however, it is now becoming increasingly clear that there are concrete economic consequences if democratic pillars are eroded, for example due to a shortage of skilled workers from abroad. “For most companies, promoting democracy is a completely new field,” says Vorpahl. They haven't seen this as their job yet.
“As employers, you have long been in the middle of these debates, at the latest when your own employees are hostile or advertising campaigns with people of color become targets,” says a spokesman for the “Companies Against the Right” initiative. Companies that get involved have recognized: “Doing nothing means a far greater risk to their future viability than a clear commitment to democracy.”
Marie Christina Schröders, who runs a financial consultancy, founded the initiative “Values before sales. Economy contradicts”. She says: “Maybe sometimes reticence isn’t indifference at all, but simply helplessness.” What should you do as a company? Your initiative provides a kind of orientation symbol for companies that promote democracy. This becomes visible through a button on the company’s website. The criteria for getting this include not having any business contacts with AfD-affiliated structures and treating customers and employees respectfully. More than 150 companies have joined.
“Something is now happening that I didn’t even expect in this form at the beginning,” says Schröders. “The participating companies support each other.” Orders, recommendations and new business relationships are created. “For example, people say: If I need insurance anyway, why don’t I go to someone whose values I share?”
Lost 3,000 followers, gained 30,000
Dennis Froese has also joined the initiative. But he says clearly: It is not part of his business model that he positions himself against the right. "We are still a company that has to make money. I don't make any money with this content. That's pure conviction."
But he also says: “It definitely has a positive side effect for the company.”
“We definitely lost some customers,” he says, although he can’t remember a single one canceling an order. But some only booked him because of his videos. Some wrote: “Because of you, I’m having a pond built for me.” He lost 3,000 followers and gained 30,000. The Instagram channel alone currently has a monthly reach of six million.
With social media you can reach the most people who aren't already thinking about you. Dennis Froese pond keeper
Its average Google rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. He used to spend a lot of money getting a lawyer to contact Google to have apparently abusive criticism removed from people who just didn't like Froese's worldview. Now he leaves it. After all, he gets a lot of five-star reviews from people who simply like him because of this worldview.
Froese appeals to smaller companies in particular not to be afraid. “You won’t lose sales because you take a side.” He explains this using his company as an example. “It’s not just AfD voters who have ponds.” How many customers do you need to do well? He has 200, 250 customers. “We can still find the 250 people.”
And he is convinced that his commitment will make a difference. “I mean, it always does something.” Perhaps he has already found the perfect metaphor for democracy work himself without knowing it. Ponds, he says, are not biotopes. "Of course we can let the reeds grow in the water, but then at some point we will have a meadow. If you want to preserve water, the plants would have to be removed. You have to take care of them."
