Alice Weidel

Alice Elisabeth Weidel (; born 6 February 1979) is a German far-right politician who has been serving as of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party alongside Tino Chrupalla since June 2022. Since October 2017, she has held the position of leader of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

Weidel became a member of the Bundestag (MdB) in the 2017 federal election, where she was the AfD's lead candidate alongside Alexander Gauland. In the 2021 federal election, she once again served as their lead candidate, alongside Tino Chrupalla. From February 2020 to July 2022, Weidel held the position of chairwoman of the AfD state association in Baden-Württemberg. In 2024, she was selected as her party's candidate for Chancellor in the 2025 German federal election.

Early life and career

Alice Elisabeth Weidel was born on 6 February 1979, in Gütersloh. She grew up in Harsewinkel, where she graduated from a Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands (CJD) '' Gymnasium'' in 1998. She studied economics and business administration at the University of Bayreuth and graduated as one of the best in the year in 2004. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Weidel went to work for Goldman Sachs Asset Management from July 2005 to June 2006 as an analyst in Frankfurt. In the late 2000s, she worked at the Bank of China, and lived for six years in China. Subsequently, she wrote a doctoral thesis with the health economist at the Faculty of Law and Economics in Bayreuth on the future of the Chinese pension system. In 2011, she received a doctorate in international development. She received her doctorate magna cum laude. Her doctorate was supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the political party foundation associated with but independent of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

From March 2011 to May 2013, Weidel worked as Vice President at Allianz Global Investors in Frankfurt. Since 2014, she has worked as a freelance business consultant. In 2015, she worked for Rocket Internet and Foodora. , Weidel was a member of the Friedrich A. von Hayek Society.

Politics

Alternative for Germany

Weidel joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in October 2013. According to Weidel, she was first attracted to the party due to her opposition to the euro. She was elected to the federal executive committee of the AfD in June 2015. In April 2017, she was elected co-lead candidate of the party. She is the first lesbian to serve as a lead candidate of her party. She has been identified by the media as belonging to the more moderate conservative '' Alternative Mitte'' faction within the AfD.

The Switzerland-based property billionaire Henning Conle supported AfD. He donated a total of 132,000 euros by means of straw men for the 2017 federal election campaign of Alice Weidel. Conle disguised his donation from Switzerland in 18 tranches. The AfD had to pay the Bundestag a high fine for this donation, but Weidel and three other officials went unpunished. A German-wide record-setting donation of 2.35 million Euros to AfD by local Austrian FPÖ politician Gerhard Dingler in early 2025 has been identified as being linked to Conle. If substantiated, such a donation would break both German and Austrian laws and would be heavily penalized.

In January 2024, Weidel fired advisor Roland Hartwig after he attended a controversial meeting with German far-right activists in which plans to deport millions of people living in Germany were discussed.

Political positions

European Union and economic issues

Weidel vigorously defends economic liberalism and declares former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to be her role model.

In terms of economic policy, Weidel argued against the abolition of cash. During the euro area crisis, she called for economically weak states, such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal to leave or be expelled from the Eurozone.

Weidel expresses support for tax cuts and the abolition of inheritance tax and opposes the minimum wage.

Weidel supports continued German membership in the European Union; however, in an interview with the London Financial Times published in January 2023, Weidel outlined her party's approach in the event of a government takeover: if an attempt by the AfD to resolve the EU's "democratic deficit" were unsuccessful, Germany's exit from the EU would be put to a vote following the example of Great Britain. Leading economists consider this to be the economic worst-case scenario. In 2015, she also spoke out in favor of Germany leaving the euro/Eurozone and called for a return to a gold-backed currency. In early 2025 she indicated that she no longer believes in a return to the Deutsche Mark, saying it would be "far too late to leave the euro“. Thereby she relativized her party's demands for a return to national currency, which the AfD laid out in its programme for the 2025 federal election. However, she forecasted that the Euro would be abolished in an unorganized manner and that this would cost huge amounts of wealth.

During the AfD party conference in June 2024, she said that it was in the interests of Germany and Europe that "Ukraine does not belong to the European Union".

Since 2025, the AfD has been working with Hungary's nationalist and right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Weidel praised Hungary as a model for the AfD, saying that the AfD shares Hungary's opposition to illegal immigration and stance on the European Union. In February 2025, Weidel stated about the AfD's policy towards the European Union: "We should work together to reform the European Union at all costs. And that can only be done from within. We can achieve this by reducing the competences of the European Union, by dismantling the entire bureaucratic, expensive — and, in my view, corrupt — superstructure."

Asylum and integration policy

In December 2016, Weidel said that German chancellor Angela Merkel was "of course" partly responsible for the rape and murder of Maria Ladenburger.

In 2017, Weidel criticized the immigration policies of Merkel, stating that "the country will be destroyed through this immigration policy. Donald Trump said that Merkel is insane and I absolutely agree with that. It is a completely nonsensical form of politics that is being followed here." Weidel saw Merkel's asylum policy as a violation of "international agreements". Weidel called for a "Fortress Europe" and "effective development aid". Weidel opposes health insurance for asylum seekers, criticises what she sees as a "naive approach" to radical Islamic preachers in Germany and has warned against excessive expectations regarding the integration of refugees into the labour market. In the context of the German refugee debate, she speaks of an incalculable burden on the economy and the welfare state, and that voters of established parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) have, in her opinion, "lost their minds". According to her, "no important question of our time ..can be separated from the migration question". Weidel wants to ban the burqa and niqāb and has also spoken out in favour of a headscarf ban: the headscarf should be "banned from public spaces and the streets" because it is an "absolutely sexist symbol" and represents an "apartheid between men and women".

She has called for the German government to invest in "special economic zones" in the Middle East to encourage educated and skilled persons to remain in their home countries and avoid the possibility of brain drain, but also says she supports a " Canadian-style system" which would prioritize skilled, over unskilled, immigrants.

Foreign policy and international relations

General stance

In October 2022, she said that the AfD slogan "Our country first" (based on the "French first" of the Front National under Jean-Marie Le Pen) called for "not a values-based foreign policy", but "an interest-driven foreign policy for our country".

Russia and Ukraine

According to Weidel, Germany had damaged itself and was being "crushed between the major powers" with its sanctions policy against Russia. The "big loser", according to Weidel, would not be Russia or Ukraine, but Germany, because "an economic war is being waged against Germany". Although the Russian attack on Ukraine was "contrary to international law", she sees no need to "interfere", because what it ultimately meant for Ukraine and for Russia, for the division of territory, was "not our issue at all". Putting President Vladimir Putin before a war crimes tribunal is "completely unrealistic", according to Weidel. The hostilities must stop and Ukraine must also be "held accountable" because it cannot be "that the West accepts the Ukrainian maximum demands without thinking about it".

Although advocating for economic relations with Russia, Weidel is not considered to be part of the AfD pro-Russia movement; Weidel responded to the question why she – unlike her co-chair Tino Chrupalla – did not attend the Russian embassy's reception to celebrate the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany: "Celebrating the defeat of one's own country with a former occupying power is something I have personally decided - also with my father's escape story - not to take part in."

Middle East

In contrast to her AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla, Weidel expressed support for Israel in context to the Gaza war. During an interview with Elon Musk she said she supported the state of Israel and its right to self-defense but expressed uncertainty on how to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

United States

In early 2025, in an interview with ''The American Conservative'', she said regarding the demand of US president Donald Trump that Germany had to increase its military spending, while allegedly having to stay under the political influence of the US, that the US could not have it both ways. She compared Germany with a slave and said that "slaves don’t fight. A slave who fights will invariably demand freedom as a reward." Weidel said that, if Germany has to take responsibility for its own security in the future, this comes with the price of independence from the US, especially regarding energy policy, Nord Stream in particular.

COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Weidel's stance changed. In March 2020, she said that COVID-19 could "spread unhindered" in Germany, while all EU countries were "practically shutting down public life." This would have "fatal consequences" for Germany, and the government must "finally take appropriate steps now." She spoke of a "negligent game with the lives and health of our citizens," because, according to everything we know, the virus "poses a higher risk of infection and a greater risk of mortality than the common flu." After the shutdown, however Weidel called for the economy to be restarted "immediately"; the "chaos policy of the federal government" was "disastrous." At the end of May 2020 she called the federal government's Corona policy "pre-democratic" and accused it of "a blanket restriction of basic rights and then distributing them again piecemeal as if by an act of mercy". After party leader Jörg Meuthen had criticized the party for showing too much solidarity with the COVID-19 protests in Germany, Weidel said that she could "recommend to anyone who tries to defame this movement to simply attend a demonstration. She described the Infection Protection Act as unconstitutional; therefore, they "were right to take to the streets".

In July 2021, Weidel stated that she would not be vaccinated against COVID-19 for the foreseeable future and complained that healthy unvaccinated people in Germany were being discriminated against - she also did not believe in an implied vaccination requirement. In mid-November 2021, she contracted COVID-19 and had to go into quarantine at home. In an interview with journalist Erhard Scherfer for the Phoenix on 8 December 2021, Weidel emphatically denied his statement that the majority of hospital intensive care units were unvaccinated. When asked where she obtained the figures, Weidel cited the Federal Statistical Office as her source. The Federal Office itself, however, quickly clarified that it did not have such data at all, which triggered considerable media attention. At an AfD event in Heilbronn in March 2024, Weidel asked who actually takes responsibility “for all the vaccine-damaged people, who are in wheelchairs, who have died.”

LGBTQ issues

Weidel has said she supports civil partnership for gay and lesbian couples, noting she is a lesbian herself and in a civil partnership with another woman.

She combines this position with her negative attitude towards asylum in Germany and Islam. Weidel said that she sees family policy as more liberal than her party: "Family is where children are."

Weidel has stated her opposition to discussion of sexuality prior to puberty saying that "I don't want anyone with their gender idiocy or their early sexualisation classes coming near my children." She has also expressed her opposition to legalization of same-sex marriage, stating that she supports protection of the "traditional family" while also supporting "other lifestyles".

German churches

At the end of 2017, Weidel accused the two biggest churches in Germany, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, of "playing the same inglorious role that they played in the Third Reich", accusing both churches of being "thoroughly politicized" and stating that AfD is "the only Christian party that still exists" in Germany. Such statements were dismissed by the Catholic German Bishops' Conference and the Evangelical Church as "polemics" and "derailment".

Global warming

Weidel has expressed doubts about global warming; in 2019, Weidel expressed that she did not believe "that human influence on global warming is decisive." The AfD had previously modified its position on this during the election campaign for the 2019 European elections and spoke of signs of human influence. Weidel cited the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who believes that the influence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) on the climate is overestimated. Weidel's press officer named the geophysicist Eigil Friis-Christensen, who worked at the NBI until 2006, as another source besides Svensmark. However, his research on this subject, which was taken up by Weidel and other climate skeptics, is unsubstantiated.

With regard to the Fridays for Future rallies, Weidel spoke of "this campaigning ability that is rolling towards us," and said: "The power of this cumulative stupidity is frightening."

At the AfD party conference in Riesa in January 2025, Weidel said that an AfD government would "naturally bring functioning nuclear power plants back online"; she called for longer operating times for coal-fired power plants. She also promised to restart Nord Stream to supply Russian gas through the Baltic Sea. She also said that a government with her participation would "tear down all wind turbines," calling them "windmills of shame."

Controversies

"Political correctness" incident

In April 2017, Weidel railed against political correctness, saying that it belonged in the "dustbin of history". In response, on 27 April, TV presenter Christian Ehring of the satire program ''extra 3'' addressed this, saying "That's right! Let's put an end to political correctness. The Nazi slut is right. Was this incorrect enough? I hope so!" Weidel sued the channel seeking to forbid re-airing of the program, and on 17 May the Hamburg District Court ruled against her, stating that a public figure must tolerate exaggerated criticism. Weidel disagreed with the decision and promised to bring it to the (Higher Regional Court). , no further action had taken place.

Illegal immigration incident

A September 2017 report by ''Die Zeit'' claimed that Weidel had illegally hired a Syrian refugee to do housework at her home in Switzerland. The report also alleged that the asylum seeker did not have a written work contract, nor were there invoices for her work. Weidel responded in a tweet that the ''Die Zeit'' report was "fake news" and "false" and Weidel's lawyer stated that Weidel had a Syrian stay at her home as a guest but not as a worker.

Allegations of border revisionism

In June 2023, Weidel commented on the election polls results in former East Germany without Berlin, stating that AfD has great support in this region. However, she referred to the region as '' Mitteldeutschland'' ( Central Germany), which was seen by some in Poland as suggesting that the so-called Recovered Territories belong to Germany, which caused controversies with the Polish politician Beata Szydło.

Remarks about migrants and generational replacement

In May 2018, Weidel was reprimanded by Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), the then President of the Bundestag, after Weidel made the following statement in a speech in the Bundestag: "Burkas, girls in headscarves, knifemen on subsidies and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth and, above all, the welfare state."

These remarks were sharply criticized. Weidel subsequently asserted in an interview that she had in no way intended these terms as a provocation against all women who wear a headscarf.

In the same speech, Weidel also spoke of an "increase in the population through immigrant criminals with multiple identities" and a "strategy of generational replacement through unregulated immigration" and accused the government of wanting to "select and assemble the people themselves". This was interpreted as a reference to the "Great Replacement" theory.

Hitler's political views

On 9 January 2025, in a live broadcast with Elon Musk on X Spaces, both Weidel and Musk claimed that "Hitler was a communist." Mainstream historians tend to reject the classification of Hitler and the National Socialists as "left" and "socialist", and the Tagesschau claims that Hitler himself declared in 1928 that the Nazi Party was not socialist. However Hitler claimed to be a socialist in his second book, also written in 1928, stating "I am a socialist. I see no class and no social estate before me, but that community of the folk, made up of people who are linked by blood .., and several historians and economists such as Henry Ashby Turner, Peter Temin, Götz Aly, George Reisman, and Ludwig von Mises have noted the presence of socialist elements in national socialist ideology and the nazi regime.

In February 2025, Weidel argued that the Holocaust is being used in Germany for political instrumentalization.

Personal life

Since 2009, Weidel has been in a lesbian relationship with Sarah Bossard, a Sri Lankan-born film producer who was adopted as a child by a Swiss couple. Since 2019 the pair have lived with their two adopted sons in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Weidel works in Berlin and says her official residence is in her electoral district in Überlingen, on the German side of the German-Swiss border, allowing her to avoid Swiss taxation.

In terms of religion, Weidel identifies herself as an agnostic.

On her father's side, Weidel's family came from Neustadt and Leobschütz in Upper Silesia, in what is now Poland. Her grandfather Hans Weidel was a Nazi judge, appointed directly by Adolf Hitler. He joined the NSDAP at the end of 1932 and the SS in January 1933. Weidel's father was born 1939 in Upper Silesia and fled with his mother and sister to Verl (in East Westphalia) in February 1945. He founded a sales agency for office furniture in 1972 and worked as a sales representative for furniture, furnishings and antiques.TOP (Trade Opportunities Program) Bulletin, hg. v. U.S. Department of Commerce und dem U.S. Foreign Service-U.S. Department of State, 21 August 1978, S. 24 f.

Selected publications

* ''Das Rentensystem der Volksrepublik China. Reformoptionen aus ordnungstheoretischer Sicht zur Erhöhung der Risikoresistenz'' (''Schriften zur Nationalökonomie.'' Band 60). Verlag P.C.O., Bayreuth 2011, .

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Weidel, Alice
1979 births
Living people
People from Gütersloh
Members of the Bundestag for Baden-Württemberg
Leaders of political parties in Germany
21st-century German women politicians
LGBTQ conservatism
LGBTQ members of the Bundestag
German lesbian politicians
German anti-communists
Far-right politics in Germany
University of Bayreuth alumni
Members of the Bundestag 2017–2021
Members of the Bundestag for the Alternative for Germany
Female members of the Bundestag
Critics of multiculturalism
Members of the Bundestag 2021–2025
Women opposition leaders
21st-century German LGBTQ people
Politicians from North Rhine-Westphalia
Goldman Sachs people