Sebastian Krumbiegel in an interview: “It has become chic to be on the right”

Sebastian Krumbiegel is best known as one of the lead singers of Die Prinzen. The Leipzig native has long been taking a decisive and public stand against right-wing extremism. We talked to him about the AfD, the unspeakable Sylt mob video and confidence.

ME: You have been committed to fighting right-wing extremism for decades – how shocking were the AfD’s 2024 state elections?

Sebastian Krumbiegel: It wasn’t really shocking for me because it was predictable. I was rather surprised that everyone was so surprised about it, because it has been developing in this direction over the years. And also because developments have been hushed up in recent decades. We’re paying the bill for that now.

What developments do you mean specifically?

In the 1990s, the Saxon Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf claimed that the Saxons were immune to right-wing extremism. This was not only a mistake, but also a concealment of things that happened back then. During the post-reunification period in the East, these were the so-called baseball bat years in which right-wing extremism showed itself at its ugliest side. People should have woken up politically long ago.

You were clearly aware of the danger from the right back then, otherwise you wouldn’t have founded a festival against right-wing extremism.

Yes, we started organizing our “Leipzig Shows Courage” festival back then. And with the first edition in 1997 we directly prevented a Nazi demonstration. That was the time of all these counter-right concerts by people like Grönemeyer, Lindenberg and Niedecken, who all took a clear position back then.

And after the turn of the millennium did this commitment wane?

In the noughties there suddenly came a phase in which many people told me that what we were doing was totally outdated. This whole anti-Nazi thing is full of nineties, it doesn’t need any more pigs. This was all very underestimated back then. There was another brief public outcry from the NSU, but then it started with Pegida and the AfD…

… which today is not only well received by those of the past.

What shocks me most about this is that a lot of young people voted for right-wing extremists in the state elections. That’s not a good sign at all. In principle, I always assumed that the generation that is coming up now stands for something new, progressive and positive. But now it has apparently become fashionable to be on the right.

At the demos in January after the scandal surrounding the remigration plans that became public, one still had the feeling that a powerful counter-movement was forming. Has this solidarity effect simply fizzled out?

I don’t think it did anything. Different people often tell me that I do so much, but that everything doesn’t really work. But I fear that without the commitment of so many people, things would have been much worse, because the AfD is specifically tapping into the diffuse fears of foreign infiltration and the economic frustration of many people.

The celebrating rich kids in the Sylt “Pony” club probably didn’t blame economic frustration. “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out,” they chanted in May to Gigi d’Agostino’s hit “L’Amour Toujours”.

Political opinion doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with social background. There are tons of educated people supporting the AfD. But educated does not necessarily mean intelligent, if you think of the clever words of the Viennese musician Gerhard Bronner: “There are three things that cannot be combined: intelligence, decency and National Socialism. You can be intelligent and a Nazi. Then you are not decent. You can be decent and a Nazi. Then you are not intelligent. And you can be decent and intelligent. Then you’re not a Nazi.”

For you, was the scandal on Sylt more of a nasty derailment by a few drunken idiots – or a conscious form of border crossing and provocation in a pop guise that was deliberately placed online?

I think neither. It is the middle of society that shows itself here. I’m afraid these rich kids really think that way, and their parents can afford good lawyers to get them out of it. Apart from that, it is of course true that the right-wing scene has a really good command of the media keyboard. Nazis have always been media professionals. This already started with Goebbels’ propaganda and the People’s Receiver. And what was popular back then is now TikTok. If you look at the numbers, the AfD is far ahead of the other parties. The others overslept a lot.

You yourself are also counteracting it with musical means, for example with a satire like your new song “Der Führer would have been happy”, in which you slip into the perspective of right-wing extremist hollowheads. A tried and tested remedy?

I get very different feedback on this song. My parents are 88 and 82 years old. When they heard the song for the first time, they said: “Boy, you can’t do that, people don’t understand that.” And it’s basically best to deal with big things to confess clarity. But at the same time, I also believe that there must be other means to reduce this twisted right-wing extremist worldview to absurdity and make it ridiculous.

Your new song “Not again” brings clarity, in which you pick up a conversation with your grandmother, who described to you her powerlessness during the so-called Kristallnacht.

It really hit home for me when my grandma told me with tears in her eyes how ashamed she was that she hadn’t done anything back then. When someone tells you personally about the horrors of that time, it affects you in a completely different way.

In 2003 you were beaten up by Nazis in a Leipzig park – did this incident actually strengthen your commitment?

I think that strengthened me. But apart from this matter, I feel neither a victim nor a hero, but simply a politically minded person who uses his reach to take care of certain things. I sometimes get a shitstorm or threats for that, but at the same time I also notice that many people think it’s good and feel empowered by it. In the end, it also fulfills me to open my mouth and – who knows – maybe I’ll do that for my grandma too.

At the end of your autobiographical book “My Voice” you encourage us not to lose confidence even in times like these. But a certain amount of attitude is also essential. So without attitude there is no confidence?

Either like this or the other way around – I don’t know which is more correct. It’s not easy for me to maintain my optimism when I think about the elections in the USA and what’s at stake. (The conversation took place before the US election – note) But it doesn’t make sense to just cry all day long. As democratic-minded people, we all really have to work on ourselves in order to maintain our “glass is half full” feeling. We can’t let that be taken away from us.