Despite coming from Kazakhstan, Maurer identifies as a German from Russia or as a Russia German rather than a Kazakhstan German.[6] From 2009 until 2018, he was a member of the Lower Saxon state board of the Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, an interest group for Germans from Russia in Germany.[9] During his political career, Maurer has been viewed as a representative of the Russia German community.[10][11]
After leaving the CDU, Maurer founded the Bürger fürs Artland (English: Citizens for the Artland) in 2006 and successfully ran for council in the town of Quakenbrück and in the Artland collective municipality, becoming the head of his group in both councils.[8][15][16]
Despite not being a member of The Left at the time, the party nominated Maurer to run as a direct candidate for the 2008 Lower Saxony state election, which he did unsuccessfully.[17][18] Maurer joined The Left in 2011, successfully running for council in the town of Quakenbrück, the Artland collective municipality and the District of Osnabrück in the same year. He became the head of The Left fraction in Quakenbrück and the Artland in 2011.[15][16] In 2014, Maurer ran for mayor of the Artland, but came in third, losing to Claus Peter Poppe.[19]
In 2016, Maurer became the head of The Left fraction in the district of Osnabrück,[20] which initially consisted of two members, Maurer himself and Lars Büttner. Maurer's fraction gained a third member when Tanja Bojani, a former member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, switched from the AfD fraction to The Left fraction in 2018. Maurer had described the move as a "sign that it is possible to bring people back", and Büttner added that The Left fraction would not have taken Bojani in if she had not changed.[21] The Lower Saxon state branch of The Left called the move "damaging to the party"[22] and asked Maurer and Büttner to exclude Bojani from their fraction, which they did not. Subsequently, the Lower Saxon state branch of The Left unsuccessfully tried to exclude Maurer and Büttner from their party in early 2019.[23] The incident was also discussed outside of the party, critics calling it a "confirmation of the horseshoe theory"[24] and said that "The Left in the district of Osnabrück lost credibility".[25] Bojani ended up leaving The Left fraction and rejoining the AfD and their fraction in 2021, explaining that "in terms of policy, [she] had always been and always will be aligned with the AfD".[26]
In the 2016 local elections in Lower Saxony, Maurer's party The Left received unusually many votes in Quakenbrück, with especially high numbers on mail-in ballots. Some voters had received mail-in ballots even though they did not request them, and some mail-in ballots had been stolen from mail boxes. Several voters trying to vote in-person on election day had been told that they had already voted by mail. Also, some mail-in ballots were signed with fake signatures. This caused suspicions of electoral fraud.[27] The following lawsuit revealed that Maurer and his accomplices went from house to house, and instructed people who did not speak the German language well to request mail-in ballots. Maurer and his accomplices would later fill out the ballots and fake the voter's signature. In June 2018, the regional court of Osnabrück sentenced Maurer to seven months and one week on probation for electoral fraud.[28][29][30][31]
Maurer claimed that the judgement was "politically motivated"[28] and appealed. However, the Federal Court of Justice confirmed the previous judgement in August 2019. As a consequence, Maurer lost his council seats in Quakenbrück, the Artland and Osnabrück, as well as his party membership. He was not allowed to run for elections or be member of a party for four years.[32][33][34]
Relations with Russia
The town of Quakenbrück had 13,000 inhabitants during Maurer's time as councilmember. Maurer has never held office on national or state level and is virtually unknown in Germany. In Russian state television and the Russian press, Maurer has been presented as an important German politician and expert and has been interviewed and invited to prime-time talk shows frequently, where he praised Vladimir Putin's policies.[28][35][36][37][38][39] According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Maurer "can without exaggeration be called one of the most famous German politicians in modern Russia".[40] The Huffington Post has described Maurer as "part of the Russian propaganda machine".[41]
Since 2016, Maurer travelled to Crimea several times without a Ukrainian visa. In 2016, Maurer was banned from entering Ukraine.[44] The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk condemned Maurer's travel to Crimea and asked the German government to stop German citizens from entering Crimea without a Ukrainian visa.[45] In 2017, Maurer entered Crimea again, meeting with president of RussiaVladimir Putin and then-prime minister of RussiaDmitry Medvedev to discuss the People's Diplomacy project.[46]
Before the 2018 Russian presidential election, the European Union and the OSCE said that they would not send election observers to monitor the election in Crimea, since doing so would mean that it is a legitimate part of Russia. Maurer and other fringe foreign politicians acted as election observers on Crimea instead, having been invited by State Duma member Leonid Slutsky to give the elections on Crimea the appearance of international acceptance.[36][37][47][48]
^"Wahlkreis: 073 Bersenbrück". Vorläufiges amtliches Endergebnis der Landtagswahl am 27.01.2008 in Niedersachsen (in German). Retrieved 13 August 2021.
