Dr Alice Weidel stormed to victory last night with Germany’s far-right AfD party
One of the key figures in Germany’s resurgent far-right party Alternative für Deutschland party is a lesbian mother-of-two who has faced claims she employed an illegal immigrant as a cleaner – and is against gay marriage.
Dr Alice Weidel, 38, stormed to victory last night with the AfD claiming almost 13 per cent of the vote and due to hold 94 of the 709 seats in the Bundestag, the first time a right-wing party will sit in the Bundestag since the defeat of the Nazis in 1945.
The dynamic former Goldman Sachs banker, who speaks Chinese, has used her sexuality on the campaign trail as an example of how her party is misunderstood, telling a rally in Viernheim last week: ‘I am homosexual. I waited on purpose to see, but nobody seems to have got up and walked out. Which is of course a surprise as the AfD is a homophobic party. I read this everyday!’
She is on record as an opponent of gay marriage, tweeting that a ‘marriage for all’ debate while millions of Muslims illegally immigrate to Germany is a joke.’
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that they will put a stop to what they call an ‘invasion of foreigners’, after becoming the third largest party in parliament last night.
Far-right star: The dynamic former Goldman Sachs banker, who speaks Chinese, has used her sexuality on the campaign trail as an example of how her party is misunderstood
Family first: German tabloid Bild used this picture of Dr Alice Weidel with her partner Sarah Bossard, with whom she has two children
Dr Weidel lives with the mother of her two children, Sarah Bossard, in Biel, Switzerland.
She has faced damaging allegations – which she denies – that she employed a Syrian women to work in her house without reporting it to authorities.
The weekly magazine Did evZeit claimed that Weidel employed a student and then a Syrian refugee to work in her house in Biel, Switzerland in 2015.
According to the report, Weidel never offered the women work contracts, nor were they asked for invoices for the work they had done. Payment was also always in cash.
The AfD leader’s lawyer told Die Zeit that she had ‘friendly relations’ with a Syrian woman, who was also a guest in her house on occasion.
‘That the asylum seeker was employed in our client’s house, or that she had worked for a wage is false,’ the lawyer stated.
AfD spokesman Christian Lüth claimed on Tuesday that certain payments to people who work in one’s house are legal according to Swiss law.
‘Household employees only need to be registered with local authorities if the yearly salary is higher than 750 francs. Payments under this sum do not needed to be registered,’ he said.
Garlanded with flowers: AfD top candidate Alice Weidel was widely praised during an election party after the party stormed to success in the German elections
Poster girl: Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that they will put a stop to what they call an ‘invasion of foreigners’, after becoming the third largest party in parliament last night.
‘Lesbian – but nevertheless AfD front woman’ was a recent headline in the Merkur newspaper about the woman now guaranteed a parliamentary seat who seems a paradox to many.
Her partner is called Sarah Brossard, 35, a Swiss citizen with Indian roots who works as a movie and TV producer.
Economist Dr Weiden declared in the election campaign that she was in favour of maintaining the legal status quo and was also in favour of the registered partnership for homosexual couples.
When the Bundestag decided at the end of June to introduce same-sex marriage, Weiden made her negative stance clear.
‘ As if it were Germany’s most pressing problem, the coalition now whips up the ‘ marriage for all ‘, ‘ she said. The AfD is opposed to gay marriage.
When it was legalized in June, the AfD website posted: ‘In deep sorrow, we say goodbye to the German family, whose constitutional protection was buried by the ‘representatives of the people’ at the German parliament.’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel shakes hands with her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party’s secretary general Peter Tauber as they arrive for a meeting in Berlin one day after general elections
You can’t sit with us! AfD co-leader Frauke Petry storms out of a press conference after announcing that she will serve as an MP but not sit with her party in parliament
Anger: Opponents of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) protest against the result of the AfD after reaching a better-than-expected 13 per cent and third place finish in German federal elections
The anti-immigration AfD won 12.6 per cent in an election which saw both Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and her coalition partners hemorrhaging millions of voters to the far-right.
However the AfD’s celebrations came to an abrupt end on Monday morning when one of their leaders announced that she was refusing to join them in parliament.
Frauke Petry, co-leader of AfD, stormed out of a news conference after saying she would take up her seat but would not be part of AfD’s parliamentary group.
‘I’ve decided I won’t be part of the AfD’s group in the German parliament but will initially be an individual member of parliament in the lower house,’ Petry said.
Petry branded the AfD an ‘anarchistic party’ that could be successful in opposition but would not be able to offer voters a credible option as a government. For this reason, she had decided not to take up her seat as part of the AfD group.
She declined to answer further questions, including whether she would remain the AfD’s co-leader, but said the public would hear from her in the coming days.
Alexander Gauland, one of the AfD’s top candidates, said neither he, nor the other top candidate Alice Weidel nor co-leader Joerg Meuthen knew why Petry left.
Speaking during the conference, Mr Gauland said the one million refugees and migrants who have entered Germany since 2015 were ‘taking a way a piece of this country’.
Alexander Gauland, one of the AfD’s top candidates, said the one million refugees and migrants who have entered Germany since 2015 were ‘taking a way a piece of this country’
The German Green party was among the first to react to the AfP’s gains, accusing the country of failing to learn from its Nazi past. Jewish groups from around the world also expressed concern
Marchers in Berlin who had been gathered in a public square moved to surround the club where the AfD were holding their victory party after news of the election result spread
He said the reason why the party had won such a large part of the votes was due to the way they ‘uncompromisingly addressed’ the aftermath of the migrant crisis.
‘One million people, foreigners, being brought into this country are taking away a piece of this country and we as AfD don’t want that,’ Mr Gauland was quotes as saying by the BBC.
‘We say, I don’t want to lose Germany to an invasion of foreigners from a different culture. Very simple.’
The news that the AfD had become the third largest party in parliament led to protests across Germany on Sunday evening.
Activists chanting anti-Nazi slogans and waving banners surrounded the Berlin nightclub being used by the AfD to celebrate their win on Sunday night.
More marchers were pictured in Frankfurt, holding a banner which read ‘Frankfurt hates the AfD’.
And their success is the first time in 60 years that the far-Right has garnered enough votes to secure such a show of strength in the Bundestag. The Greens said the shock result meant that the Nazis were in parliament again.
One report said that in parts of the former East Germany, the AfD had polled 45 per cent of the vote.
The AfD’s strong showing could see them taking as many as 90 seats.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took 33 per cent of the vote, down 8.5 points from the last election, and its former coalition partners the Social Democratic Party (SPD) only nabbed 20 per cent – meaning both parties saw their worst results since since 1949.
Mrs Merkel will now likely have to forge a messy three-way arrangement with the liberal FDP and Greens.
However, Merkel’s party is still the biggest parliamentary bloc and Europe’s most powerful leader said her conservatives would set about building the next government, adding she was sure a coalition would be agreed by Christmas.
‘There cannot be a coalition government built against us,’ she said.
The anti-immigration party had waged a virulent campaign against Mrs Merkel’s decision to let in some one million people by operating an ‘open doors’ policy to refugees during and after the 2015 migrant crisis.
Protesters took to the streets of Berlin angry that the far-right AfD won 13.5 per cent support during Germany’s election, meaning they will get seats in parliament for the first time (pictured, a banner that reads ‘Smash the AfD’)
While Mrs Merkel’s party came out of the election the largest, she did worse than most polls had projected as the far right gained a huge amount of support, causing alarm and protests across the country
Election hangover: German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives for a meeting of her Christian Democratic Union party, CDU, at their headquarters in Berlin on Monday morning
Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term as her party emerged as the largest, but now faces controlling a country that is deeply divided over her response to the refugee crisis
Merkel acknowledged the rise of the AfD as demonstrators took to the streets, saying she would try to win votes back by focusing on security and prosperity for Germans
Two activists carried a banner which reads: ‘Germany is not full. Your identity crisis is nationalism. Your homeland is racism’
Mrs Merkel’s coalition partner, the SPD, returned its smallest share of support post-war at 20 per cent, and announced it will not be rejoining Mrs Merkel in government.
Martin Schulz, leader of the SPD, said his party will go into opposition following the result, leaving Mrs Merkel to search elsewhere for support.
Having vowed not to work with the AfD, Mrs Merkel now faces the prospect of cobbling together a tricky three-way agreement involving the FDP and Greens.
Mr Schulz told despondent supporters: ‘Today is a difficult and bitter day for social democracy in Germany.
‘Particularly pressing for us tonight is the strength of the AfD party. For the first time, with them, there will be a far-right party in the German Bundestag.
‘The acceptance of one million migrants it was almost guaranteed to divide our country and it has divided us too much.’
Mrs Merkel acknowledged as much in her own speech to party faithful, acknowledging that the last four years had been ‘extremely challenging’.
She spoke of wanting to regain votes lost to the AfD and said ‘prosperity and security’ will be at the centre of her thinking once a new government is formed.
‘We need to work for a just and free country, she said ‘that of course means we need to bring together all of the European Union counties.
‘That means we need to fight against the causes of migration and we need to find legal ways to fight against illegal migration.’
The AfD vowed to ‘reclaim our country and our people’ following the Sunday election result as protesters took to the streets
Marchers also gathered in Frankfurt waving a banner which reads ‘Frankfurt hates the AfD’
Protesters with their middle fingers raised, in a sign of defiance against the AfP, march in Berlin on Sunday night
A young protester give a middle finger to the camera as she marches against the rise of the AfD in Germany
An anti-Merkel protester with a sign that reads ‘not my mother’, a reference to the Chancellor’s nickname of Mutti Merkel
Commentators called the AfD’s strong performance a ‘watershed moment’ in the history of the German republic. The top-selling Bild daily spoke of a ‘political earthquake’.
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, has warned that ‘for the first time since the end of the second World War, real Nazis will sit in the German parliament’.
The AfD will be a pariah in parliament as all mainstream parties have ruled out working with it, but the populists could still be vocally disruptive from the opposition benches.
Thorsten Benner, head of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, said the AfD’s rise shows that ‘our population is no more virtuous than the French population,’ and that ‘even Le Pen pales in comparison’.
The presence of the AfD ‘will very much change the tone of debate in parliament,’ Benner warned.
The election has been closely watched by Brussels, and there is now fear that the result may have an effect on EU policies.
One casualty of Merkel’s weakness may be a rapid move to deepen integration of the euro zone along lines that new French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to outline in a speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Tuesday.
Macron ran for the French presidency on a pledge to ‘relaunch’ Europe, in tandem with Germany, after years of economic and financial crisis and the new shock dealt by Britain’s vote last year to leave the bloc.
Macron has called for a finance minister and budget for the single currency bloc, ideas that Merkel has tentatively supported even though scepticism in her own party runs high.
Those plans, as with reform proposals floated this month by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, may run into increased scepticism in Berlin, where many are wary of what they see as more demands for German bailouts of states like Greece.
Resistance may come both from Merkel’s Christian Democrats, spooked by the surge on their right flank, where Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered parliament as the third biggest party, and from the Free Democrats (FDP), whose leader Christian Lindner ruled out Germany contributing to a shared euro zone budget.
The liberal leader in the European Parliament, committed federalist and former Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt, said he hoped for a ‘pro-European’ coalition to push EU integration.
The FDP leader in the EU legislature, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, said it was ‘an open-minded, pro-European party’.
The European Greens’ German co-chair Reinhard Butikofer said his party wanted to strengthen the European Union, ‘making use of the window of opportunity that exists … between Paris, Brussels and Berlin’. He was referring to a keynote speech by Juncker 10 days ago in which the EU chief executive said anti-EU populists were in retreat and called for deeper EU integration.
But Guntram Wolff, the German director of the Brussels think-tank Bruegel, questioned Juncker’s thinking. He forecast a rightward shift in Germany due to the AfD and resistance from the FDP that would stymie Macron and Juncker’s grand visions.
‘Populism definitely not dead,’ Wolff tweeted. ‘Juncker speech completely miscalculated the situation.’
Merkel’s CDU party won the largest share of votes at the German election, with exit polls reporting 32.5 per cent support
Mrs Merkel’s first task will be to find a new coalition partner after the SPD, her former partner, announced it would go into opposition after polling just 20 per cent
Alexander Gauland (left) of the AfD vowed to ‘go after Merkel’ while Alice Weidel said the party will push for a committee to investigate ‘legal breaches’ by Mrs Merkel’s government
Marine Le Pen was quick to congratulate the AfD on their historic poll result, saying it was ‘a new symbol of the revival of the European peoples’
Meanwhile Alexander Gauland, a top candidate of the AfD, vowed to ‘go after Merkel’ saying his aim is to ‘reclaim our country and our people.’
Alice Weide, another of the AfD’s most prominent candidates, vowed that her part is ‘here to stay’ during a victory speech on Sunday night.
She told supporters that the party’s first move will be to establish a committee to look into ‘legal breaches’ by Mrs Merkel’s government.
Ms Weide also vowed to focus on content and political positions, and vowed to live up to the trust that voters have placed in the party.
Mrs Merkel said she had hoped for a ‘better result’ and pledged to listen to the ‘concerns and anxieties’ of AfD voters in order to win them back.
The result is also a blow for Theresa May, who had been banking on an emboldened Mrs Merkel helping her reach a good deal on Brexit.
Now it appears Mrs Merkel could be bogged down in coalition talks for weeks or even months – meaning she will have little time to bolster her British counterpart.
A worst-case scenario is that Mrs Merkel may now have to take an even harder line against the UK.
The German election is just the latest shock result to stun political observers, following last year’s vote for Brexit, the election of President Trump and Mrs May’s general election disaster in June.
Beatrix van Storch, one of the AfD’s leaders, told the BBC the result was ‘a huge success … it will change the political system in Germany, and it will give back a voice to the opposition’. She added: ‘We will start debates on migration, we will start debates on Islam, we will start debates on ever closer [European] union.’
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was quick to congratulate the AfD after they made massive gains in the election.
Le Pen, who lost France’s presidential election to Emmanuel Macron earlier this year, wrote on Twitter: ‘Bravo to our allies from AfD for this historic score! It’s a new symbol of the awakening of the peoples of Europe.’
Elswhere Jewish groups from around the world reacted to the news of the AfP’s strong showing with dismay and concern.
German Central Council of Jews President Josef Schuster says the party, known by its German initials AfD, ‘tolerates far-right thoughts and agitates against minorities.’
He said he expects Germany’s other parties will ‘reveal the true face of the AfD and unmask their empty, populist promises.’
The head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, congratulated Chancellor Angela Merkel on securing a fourth term, calling her a ‘true friend of Israel and the Jewish people.’
‘It is abhorrent that the AfD party, a disgraceful reactionary movement which recalls the worst of Germany’s past and should be outlawed, now has the ability within the German parliament to promote its vile platform,’ Lauder said.
Mrs Merkel’s CDU and the SPD, the two most established political parties in Germany, both took a hammering at the polls compared to the last election in 2013, as the public looked to fringe parties to provide answers
Mrs Merkel shakes hands with Martin Schulz, leader of the SPD party which served as her junior coalition partner in the last parliament, but will now leave and go into opposition
Supporters of the AfD cheer after receiving the news that their party will enter the German parliament for the first time
Martin Schulz, leader of the SPD, told supporters that ‘the acceptance of one million migrants it was almost guaranteed to divide our country and it has divided us too much’
Support for Mrs Merkel’s party fell by almost 9 per cent, and was lower than the 34 to 37 per cent that late polls had suggested she would get as she was punished over migration
The election was fought on the tense backdrop of surging support for far left and far right parties across Europe.
Germany in particular is coping with the arrival of more than 1 million refugees and other new migrants, with tension with Russia since Moscow’s incursions into Ukraine, and with doubt about Europe’s future since Britain voted to quit the EU.
After shock election results last year, from the Brexit vote to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, leaders of Europe’s establishment have looked to Merkel to rally the liberal Western order.
But after acting as an anchor of stability in Europe and beyond, she now faces an unstable situation at home as she must now form a coalition, an arduous process that could take months.
Immediately after the release of exit polls, the deputy party leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in a ‘grand coalition’ with Merkel’s conservatives for the last four years, said her party would now go into opposition.
‘For us, the grand coalition ends today,’ Manuela Schwesig told ZDF broadcaster. ‘For us it’s clear that we’ll go into opposition as demanded by the voter.’
Without the SPD, Merkel’s only straightforward path to a majority in parliament would be a three-way tie-up with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens, known as a ‘Jamaica’ coalition because the black, yellow and green colours of the three parties match the Jamaican flag.
Such an arrangement is untested at the national level in Germany and widely seen as inherently unstable. Both the FDP and the Greens have played down the prospect of a three-way coalition, but neither won enough seats on Sunday to give Merkel a majority on its own.
Whatever the make-up of her coalition, Merkel, 63, faces four years of government in a fragmented parliament after the return of the FDP – unrepresented at national level for the last four years – and the arrival of the AfD.
Founded in 2013 by an anti-euro group of academics, the AfD has surged as an anti-immigrant group in the wake of Merkel’s 2015 decision to leave German borders open to over 1 million migrants, most of them fleeing war in the Middle East.
The party’s entry into the national parliament heralds the beginning of a new era in German politics that will see more robust debate and a departure from the steady, consensus-based approach that has marked the post-war period.
The other parties elected to the Bundestag all refuse to work with the AfD, which says it will press for Merkel to be ‘severely punished’ for opening the door to refugees and migrants.
After the AfD hurt her conservatives in regional elections last year, Merkel, a pastor’s daughter who grew up in Communist East Germany, wondered if she should run for re-election.
But with the migrant issue under control this year, she threw herself into a punishing campaign schedule.
Despite losing support, Merkel, Europe’s longest serving leader, will join the late Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany’s rebirth after World War Two, as the only post-war chancellors to win four national elections.
She has campaigned on her record as chancellor for 12 years, emphasizing the country’s record-low unemployment, strong economic growth, balanced budget and growing international importance.
That’s helped keep her conservative bloc well atop the polls ahead of Sunday’s election over the center-left Social Democrats of challenger Martin Schulz.
AN EARTHQUAKE – AND AN ECHO OF THE 1930s
Comment by Mark Almond
This morning we are waking up to nothing short of a political earthquake in Europe as Germany’s Iron Lady is discovering what it’s like to have feet of clay.
Yes, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party came first, but it fell far short of the 40 per cent share of the vote it was expecting, delivering the worst performance by the Christian Democrats since 1949.
Scoring barely one third of the national vote can hardly be called a ringing endorsement of a leader in power for the past 12 years.
Indeed, our own Prime Minister Theresa May could be forgiven for wondering why she is seen as a loser for getting ‘only’ 43 percent of the vote in June.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has won a fourth term, but it was the worst showing at an election for her Christian Democratic Party since 1949, echoing back to a dark chapter in Germany history
Until yesterday, the woman known as Mutti – mother – Merkel was seen as mistress of all she surveyed. Now her own future and certainly the stability – which is what she prides herself on safe-guarding – of Germany are in question.
As a European historian, I can barely believe I am writing those words, but facts are stark.
For the first time since Hitler’s suicide in that Berlin bunker more than 70 years ago, a nationalistic Right-wing party has won dozens of seats in the German parliament. The Communist Left has done well too.
Almost a quarter of Germans voted for parties which reject the status quo. That level of alienation hasn’t been seen since the last days of the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s.
So what on earth went wrong?
For the first time since Hitler’s suicide, a nationalistic Right-wing party has won dozens of seats in the German parliament. Pictured is Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right AfD party
Two issues bedevilled this election: Mass migration and wage stagnation were the underlying concerns for many Germans who felt ‘left behind’ in a prosperous nation.
Mrs Merkel was praised as decisive two years ago when she opened Germany’s borders to a million migrants from the Middle East in a grand humanitarian gesture.
True, the hordes of people fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, through Turkey and on to Germany, was a crisis that needed solving, but she set aside both German and EU law to let them in.
She declared Germany ‘could do it’. It did, but now the political price is beginning to be paid as the hundreds of thousands of Germans who felt their views and concerns had been ignored make their voices heard.
Despite Germany’s export success, fuelled by a weak euro and static wages, resentment about the costs of integrating so many new arrivals has soared.
Decades of shame about the country’s Nazi past had kept a lid on nationalism in Germany, but suddenly Right-wing attitudes began to make themselves heard.
The so-called Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) is often dismissed as neo-Nazi by its opponents, but its leaders present themselves very differently from the fringe neo-Nazi skinheads of the past few decades.
Instead of brawling beerhall types, AfD candidates are often university graduates and career women who seem more yuppy than neo-Nazi.
They highlight the genuine difficulties of integrating a sudden influx of a million people who don’t speak German, and claim they are the real defenders of women’s rights and Jews against reactionary Muslim fundamentalists. Terrorist attacks by asylum seekers boosted their fearmongering.
They also play up the fact that some four million Turks and Kurds have lived in Germany for 50 years but remain largely unintegrated, relatively poor outsiders.
Nor was the AfD alone in playing to anti-migrant sentiment. One of Mrs Merkel’s likely coalition partners, the Free Democrats, ran on an anti-immigrant ticket too. Its leader promised economic migrants and failed asylum seekers would be sent home.
That puts them at odds with the Greens – who are committed to immigration – whose votes Merkel will also need to form a three-party coalition with 50 per cent of the seats in parliament. How to handle the migration issue is going to be a tricky one in any talks on forming a coalition.
The SPD, Merkel’s former coalition partner and the second largest in Germany, was also punished at the ballot box as the public looked outside of established politics for answers
In addition to its anti-immigrant rhetoric the AfD, like the Communist Left, has appealed to millions of Germans who have secure jobs but no prospects of a pay rise. Too many Germans are just getting by to appreciate being told they’ve never had it so good. Both Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats lost millions of votes because people felt that the parties had abandoned their traditions.
If Merkel was accused of sacrificing Christian heritage to a multicultural approach, the moderate Left lost support because it was seen as abandoning its socialist credentials for jobs in a pro-business government.
We should remember that this seismic shift has occurred in what are economic good times. What if the German economy stalls or slips into recession?
A stable democratic and co-operative Germany is in all our interests. The biggest and richest country in Europe has too often been an uncomfortable neighbour. For 200 years, from the era of Karl Marx to Angela Merkel, Germany has struggled to find a way of being at peace with herself and the rest of Europe.
Until yesterday Angela Merkel seemed to offer a one-woman model of achieving a stable Germany while managing Europe as well as anyone could hope to.
Now her high-handed approach to policy-making will be under sharp scrutiny. Not only will radical Right and Left use their parliamentary soap-boxes to challenge her, but her allies won’t be docile any more.
And what might it mean for Britain? Without clear guidance from Berlin, what will Brussels do about the Brexit negotiations? Until now Whitehall has been blamed for the slow progress, but as the Germans wrangle in the coming weeks over who should have what ministry in their new government, Brexit will take a back seat.
Drift may be even worse for all of us than Merkel’s high-handed approach. If the Chancellor can rule Germany only by forming an unholy coalition of her conservatives with Free Democrats and Greens, then the hard Right and Left will look forward to even better poll results next time.
Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford