Right-wing extremism | Teacher Max Heckel: No court ruling after AfD criticism

Max Heckel Photo: Private The air is out. The school authorities in Saxony-Anhalt have deleted the warning against the Stendal teacher Max Heckel. This is not unusual, explained the state education authority. The warning was removed from the personnel file due to the expiration of time. The deletion was expressly not an admission by the state education authority “that the warning against Mr. Heckel was not justified or appropriate,” the authority told MDR. The labor court was actually supposed to decide on this on November 26th.

The negotiation will no longer take place. This is an unsatisfactory situation for Heckel. "There couldn't be a more stupid ending," he told MDR. With a court decision, he wanted clarity about the extent to which teachers are allowed - or even required - to support the threatened democracy.

Heckel was warned about a conversation in March 2025. After class, two sixth-grade students asked him whether he had voted for the AfD in the federal election. When he said no, the students asked. He then showed them sources about the Potsdam meeting between AfD members and right-wing extremists in November 2023 and about the party's tax policy. He ended his remarks by pointing out that everyone is free to vote for the AfD. However, anyone who does this must be "very rich, morally devoid or not of sound mind."

Because of this sentence, the AfD apparently filed a complaint against Heckel. The state education authority then warned the teacher. Heckel took legal action against it.

Warnings are usually only deleted after two or three years - as the Saxony-Anhalt Education and Science Union points out. At Max Heckel it was significantly less. This leaves a bad aftertaste, said Eva Gerth, GEW President in Saxony-Anhalt, in a statement. The union would have wanted a verdict because it was convinced that Heckel was right. From their point of view, such a judgment would also have provided clarity about how teachers should behave.

The guiding principle for teachers is the Beutelsbach Consensus of 1976. It states that children and young people must not be indoctrinated and should be enabled to form their own opinions. A neutrality requirement is often derived from this. The AfD in particular insists on banning political expression in class.

However, the Ministry of Education in Saxony-Anhalt contradicted this view with reference to the Beutelsbach Consensus. If students question central basic principles of the constitution, it is the teacher's duty not to take a neutral position, but rather to openly support the content of the Basic Law, explained the Magdeburg ministry led by the CDU politician Jan Riedel.

But the situation is apparently not clear. Heckel says that he has received between 400 and 600 emails in the past few months - from colleagues who are in a similar situation of uncertainty as he is.

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