It is often said: time clarifies what is still in the fog today. Maglev activist David Harder, 22, business student from Meppen and operator of the website magnetbahn.de, is an example of this.
In mid-2025 he submitted a petition to the Bundestag calling for the Transrapid to be reinstated in Germany. He also handed it over personally to a delegation from the AfD in Berlin.
MPs from the SPD and the Greens had also signaled that they were willing to meet, but declined “after the petitioner had used the petition to work with the AfD,” said Swantje Michaelsen to the taz at the time, as a member of the Bundestag for the Greens in the Petitions Committee. The suspicion quickly arose that Harder preferred the AfD, The way the petition was handed over had political backgrounds.
Harder has the Cologne media law firm Höcker answer questions from the taz. In mid-September 2025, lawyer Carsten Brennecke wrote to the taz about Harder: “No, he is no closer to the AfD than to other parties.” There is “no justifiable reason” for “putting our client politically close to the AfD”.
Board member and assessor in the AfD local association
Michaelsen wanted to know more and did her own research, including on social media: “It became clear very quickly,” she tells the taz, “that Mr. Harder follows AfD accounts, is very close to the AfD and is looking for it.”
Since January 24, 2026, it has been obvious that Harder now officially identifies himself as blue-right: Harder is a member of the AfD Altkreis Meppen local association newly founded by the Ems-Vechte AfD district association. He is even on the board there, as an assessor, and he is responsible for youth work, according to a press release from the AfD. This also highlights that Harder “already attracted nationwide attention through his initiative to save the Transrapid”.
Asked again by the taz to comment, this time Harder answered himself. The “lawyer’s information,” he wrote to the taz, “related to the current state of affairs at the time and was accurate at that point in time.” His “subsequent decision to join the AfD” was “the result of personal experiences in the months following the handover of the petition. In terms of time and fact, it does not contradict the information provided at the time.”
The petition was offered to all parliamentary groups represented for delivery. Later “private, party-political memberships” would have had “no influence” on this.
His later decision to join the AfD was “the result of personal experiences in the months following the handover of the petition,” writes Harder
Harder leaves unanswered what exactly “later” means, when he applied for his AfD membership, and when he joined the party. If you believe him, in just a few months he went from being politically neutral to becoming an official of a party that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as “certainly right-wing extremist” shortly before Harder handed over his petition.
However: Is Harder really politically neutral at the time of handing over the petition? After all, he showed up at the summer festival of the AfD state representation in North Rhine-Westphalia just a few days beforehand. In a group of AfD politicians, in an embrace. The AfD Bundestag members Maximilian Kneller and Tobias Ebenberger are also there.
When it comes to Transrapid, which he describes on his maglev website as “innovative transport technology that Germany urgently needs”, he remains “non-partisan”, writes Harder to the taz. Despite his “personal political decision,” magnetbahn.de remains a “politically neutral” platform.
Harder wants to continue his activism for maglev technology. However, things are not looking good: the Bundestag petition presented to the AfD was unsuccessful. It is “finished,” writes Michaelsen to the taz, and will therefore not be pursued further.
Harder had already submitted a petition to the Bundestag on the subject of Transrapid in 2020; In 2024 it was rejected by the majority. The current petition did not even go through the parliamentary process because it already existed. A stillborn child.