Bonhoeffer descendant removes AfD wreath at Berlin’s 20 July commemoration
On 20 July 2026 Germany marked the 82nd anniversary of the failed Stauffenberg assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler with a federal commemoration at the Bendlerblock in Berlin. During the ceremony, Tobias Korenke – a grand‑nephew of the anti‑Nazism theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer – seized a wreath laid by the AfD parliamentary group and tried to remove it. Security staff intervened, a scuffle broke out and the wreath was damaged before it was taken away and later dumped in the nearby Landwehr Canal.
The AfD confirmed it had supplied the wreath but said it could not say whether any of its members were present. Federal Family Minister Karin Prien (CDU) delivered the main speech, recalling her own family’s persecution under the Nazis. Similar remembrance events were held in Potsdam and other German cities, focusing on the resistance of figures such as Friedrich von Rabenau.
The incident sparked debate over the role of right‑wing parties in historic remembrance and drew widespread media coverage across Germany.