Alice Weidel

She has sat in the Bundestag for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) since 2017 and co-chairs the party, which reference works describe as far-right. She leads its parliamentary group and is the opposition leader since May 2025. She is named in the race for the next Chancellor of Germany, in which she was the AfD's chancellor candidate in 2025.

Career

Weidel was born in Gütersloh and studied economics at the University of Bayreuth, where she took a doctorate in 2011 with a thesis on China's pension system. She worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2005 and 2006, spent about six years in China including at the Bank of China, was a vice president at Allianz Global Investors from 2011 to 2013 and has worked as a freelance consultant since 2014. She joined the AfD in October 2013, entered its federal executive in 2015, was co-lead candidate in the 2017 federal election and has held a Bundestag seat since October 2017. She chaired the AfD in Baden-Württemberg from 2020 to 2022, has been federal co-chair since June 2022, and was the party's chancellor candidate in the February 2025 election, in which the AfD won 20.8 per cent and 152 seats.

Positions

Wikipedia describes Weidel as an economic liberal who favours tax cuts, abolishing inheritance tax and opposes a minimum wage. She opposes current asylum policy and favours a skills-based, Canadian-style immigration system. On energy she backs nuclear power, coal and restarting Nord Stream, and opposes wind turbines. She says human-caused climate change is overstated. She keeps Germany in the EU but has said she would call a referendum on leaving if its democratic deficit is not resolved, and she opposes sanctions on Russia. Wikipedia places her in the party's moderate 'Alternative Mitte' wing; it supports civil partnerships but opposes same-sex marriage.

Controversies

In 2017 the Swiss-based donor Henning Conle paid about 132,000 euros in instalments, via intermediaries, to support Weidel's campaign; The Local reported in 2019 that she was under investigation over it, and that the party's separate fine of 402,900 euros that year concerned other Swiss donations to AfD figures. Wikipedia states the party was fined and she herself was not punished. In 2018 she was reprimanded in the Bundestag over a speech about migrants. Wikipedia also records that a Hamburg court ruled against her in a 2017 lawsuit over a satirical remark, and that her January 2025 conversation with Elon Musk, in which she called Hitler a communist, was rejected by historians.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · The Local Germany

Photo: Elekes Andor, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)