Alice Weidel | Echoes from the past

“Mr. Merz, your time has run out,” declared Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Germany’s far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in a speech in the Bundestag after the party’s resounding victory in the regional elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Winning the mandate by securing 43% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has effectively consolidated its position as a front-runner in the next federal elections to be held in 2029.

The AfD, which espouses hard borders, mass detention facilities, deportation of ‘illegal’ immigrants, remigration, traditional families, Euro-scepticism, German nationalism, and a broader free-market economic policy, has found itself a leader who herself is a walking contradiction when it comes to the values that her party espouses. Ms. Weidel, before entering politics (she joined the AfD a few months after its formation in 2013), was an economist and banker. Born in 1979 in Gütersloh, West Germany, Ms. Weidel majored in economics and business before joining Goldman Sachs as an analyst. She also worked for the Bank of China, a state-owned Chinese multinational bank, in the late 2000s, living in China for almost six years; she is fluent in Mandarin. Ms. Weidel’s doctoral thesis was on the Chinese pension system.

Ms. Weidel is also the first lesbian to lead the AfD. She is in a registered civil partnership with Sarah Bossard, a German national of Sri Lankan origin, and the couple has adopted two children. Yet, Ms.Weidel and the AfD oppose same-sex marriage in Germany, instead emphasising Christian values and the ‘traditional family’.

Moreover, even though the AfD has said only ‘illegal’ immigrants and criminals should be deported, many leaders of the AfD, including Ms. Weidel, have made statements that denounce immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries, as a whole. In a 2018 speech in the German Parliament, she remarked that “Burqas, girls in headscarves, knife-wielding men on government benefits and other good-for-nothing people are not going to ensure our prosperity, our economic growth and our social welfare system.” Even in her latest victory speech, where she warned Chancellor Friedrich Merz of his coalition government’s end, Ms. Weidel claimed that Germany had the largest number of refugees in the world, and that most of them were from “Muslim tribal cultures”.

Sense of continuity

Yet Ms. Weidel’s ideology, with all its contradictions, does have a sense of continuity when one looks at her heritage. Her grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a supporter and member of the Nazi Party and a judge of the regime. He actively campaigned for the National Socialists even before it assumed power. He became a military judge at the Warsaw commandant’s office in July 1941, after which he was appointed as the Chief Staff Judge by a direct order from Adolf Hitler himself.

After the fall of Nazi Germany, however, he washed his hands of the regime’s crimes, claiming that he did not know anything about the concentration camps. Ms. Weidel has also distanced herself from her grandfather’s legacy. As per Politico, Ms. Weidel said she had no knowledge of her grandfather’s Nazi past. “Due to family discord, there was no contact with the grandfather,” a spokesperson for Ms. Weidel said.

However, Ms. Weidel has often been dismissive about Germany’s chequered past. She once said there was a ‘cult of guilt/shame’ associated with remembering the past. She has remarked that the country’s Nazi past is often “politically instrumentalised” against her party.

In 2023, Ms. Weidel, despite denouncing Germany’s support for Ukraine in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, refused to attend an event organised by the Russian embassy to commemorate the defeat of the Nazi regime by stating that she did not want to “celebrate the defeat of one’s own country”.

Despite such contradictions, Ms. Weidel enjoys popularity within the AfD and among its supporters. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and co-leader of the AfD with Tino Chrupalla since 2022. She was elected by the party to be its first Chancellor nominee for the 2025 federal elections. And judging by the AfD’s growing record of electoral victories, it can be assumed that she is gaining favour with the wider German electorate.