Bavarian deputy premier Hubert Aiwanger is seen at a craft fair. Photo: Reuters/Karl-Josef Hildenbrand

Forthcoming parliamentary elections in the southern German state of Bavaria have been dramatically overshadowed by accusations that its current deputy premier authored a violently antisemitic leaflet while at high school three decades ago.

On Saturday, the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) news outlet reported that Hubert Aiwanger, the state’s deputy prime minister, was behind the typewritten leaflet, discovered in the lavatory of his school in the town of Mallersdorf-Pfaffenberg in 1987, when he was 17 years old.

The leaflet parodied national history competitions and made demeaning references to the Holocaust. For example, the “prize” for the best answer to the question “Who is the greatest traitor to the fatherland?” was “a complimentary flight through the chimney at Auschwitz.”

According to the SZ, members of staff and former students at the school confirmed that Aiwanger had been summoned before a school disciplinary committee over the leaflet and was sanctioned as a result.

However, in a statement on Saturday, Aiwanger — the leader of the conservative Free Voters (Freie Wähler) Party, the junior coalition partner in the Bavarian government — flatly denied that he was the author of the leaflet.

“I did not write the paper in question and consider the content disgusting and inhumane,” he said. “The author of the paper is known to me; he will explain himself.”

Later in the same afternoon, Aiwanger’s brother, Helmut, claimed that he had been responsible.

“I am the author of the leaflet reproduced in the press,” Helmut Aiwanger wrote. “At the time I was completely furious, because I had failed in school and was being torn away from my group of classmates. I was still a minor at the time. That is basically all I can say about that.”

Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder of the right-wing Christian Social Union (CSU) confirmed that he would meet on Tuesday with representatives of Aiwanger’s party to discuss the controversy. On Saturday, Söder denounced the leaflet as “inhuman and disgusting.”

The chair of the Free Voters Party, Stephan Wefelscheid, also joined the condemnation. “We are shocked that someone is able to write and circulate such a disgusting and repulsive leaflet,” he told the dpa news agency. “There must be no doubt that antisemitism has no place in the Free Voters party.”

Opposition parties are piling pressure on Söder to dismiss Aiwanger from his post. Urging a special session of the Bavarian parliament, Florian von Brunn, the parliamentary leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said that “the aim is to put Hubert Aiwanger’s dismissal on the state parliament’s agenda so that the necessary consequences can be drawn — before even more damage is caused to Bavaria.”

A small crumb of comfort was offered to Aiwanger by the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party. Stephan Protschka, a senior party official, warned against “prejudgement,” citing attacks against his party from left-wing and liberal circles.

“The more left-wing society becomes, the more it will be your turn next,” Protschka asserted.