Alice Weidel
Alice Elisabeth Weidel is a German far-right politician who has been serving as of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany 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 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, West Germany. She grew up in Harsewinkel, where she graduated from a Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands 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.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 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 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" 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." Weidel has also criticised Russian violations of NATO airspace and suggested that Putin had not made adequate concessions in negotiations with the United States, warning that this could undermine U.S. President Donald Trump's faith in the negotiations. Weidel also denounced plans by a group of her AfD colleagues to attend an international conference in Sochi in November 2024, stating, "I myself would not travel there, nor would I recommend it to anyone" and agreed to change the party's procedures for approving travel.