The firing of Martina Müller in Jever was by no means a surprise: It is the visible result of a structural, long-planned stance adopted by church welfare associations. Official guidelines published by regional Diakonie chapters reveal how employees affiliated with the AfD are intentionally isolated and pushed out of professional life.
The case of long-serving Diakonie employee Martina Müller from Jever caused significant unrest. After 15 years of successful and faultless service in social care, her nomination as a lead candidate for the AfD was immediately followed by summary dismissal. What management often portrays as a necessary step to safeguard Christian values proves, upon closer inspection, to be part of a calculated strategy. Discrimination against and termination of employees based on party affiliation does not happen spontaneously; it follows clear bureaucratic mandates.
Methodical Exclusion: Official Directives Against Colleagues
How deeply rooted this practice of exclusion is within institutional structures is evidenced by publications and “guidelines” issued by regional Diakonie chapters in Schleswig-Holstein and Central Germany, among others. These documents serve leadership and employees as concrete manuals on how to handle colleagues who are active in or associated with the AfD.
These directives blanketly claim that the AfD denies the “equal value of all human beings” and thus acts contrary to the fundamental principles of Diakonie. A concrete proof in individual cases or a reference to the employee’s actual behavior in the workplace is not even attempted. Mere affiliation with a legal, democratically elected party is deemed sufficient to construct moral and professional incompatibility.
The action recommendations in these manuals are explicit and aim at a gradual social and professional isolation:
- Exclusion from Events: AfD members are explicitly not to be invited to company or professional events.
- Ban on Participation in Working Groups: Involvement in internal committees or project groups is to be fundamentally prohibited.
- Targeted Social Isolation: Colleagues are implicitly encouraged to reduce professional and personal contact with affected individuals to an absolute minimum.
Group-Based Discrimination Instead of Christian Charity
Through this practice, Diakonie turns its own foundational values upside down. The Christian stance and the core principles of Diakonie historically rest on the primacy of the individual: Every person should be judged by their actions, character, and care for others—not by their membership in a specific group.
By blanketly condemning and excluding employees based on a party card, church leadership levels and their welfare associations practice the exact form of group-based discrimination they claim to fight. The individual, their years of faithful duty, and their concrete care for those in need no longer matter once their political views diverge from the board’s prevailing narrative.
Political Warfare on the Backs of Employees
The events surrounding Martina Müller and the existence of these exclusion guidelines highlight how deeply the two major Christian churches in Germany have become political actors. In their intensely waged “fight against the right,” these institutions employ methods hardly compatible with the principles of the rule of law and general protection against wrongful dismissal.
This exposes a striking double standard:
- Special Status as a Free Pass: Church employment law (loyalty law), originally intended to protect religious identity, is instrumentalized to conduct internal political purges.
- Taxpayer Funding: Because Diakonie is overwhelmingly funded by public money and taxpayer funds from all citizens, this ideological discrimination weighs particularly heavily.
- Destruction of Workplace Peace from Above: Instead of fostering peaceful coexistence and professional boundaries between politics and work, Diakonie’s guidelines inject distrust and division directly into the workforce.
Conclusion: Church and Diakonie Disregard Christian Charity
The case of Martina Müller is not an unfortunate isolated incident, but the logical outcome of an institutional strategy. When church welfare associations issue official guidelines to isolate their own employees, they abandon both Christian charity and ideological neutrality in the workplace.