Alice Weidel, Germany’s most vilified—and powerful—female politician
LAST WEEKEND thousands of Germans took to the streets—again—to protest against the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. On February 8th at least 250,000 rallied at the Theresienwiese in Munich, the site of Oktoberfest. On the same day, a march organised by Omas gegen Rechts (Grandmothers against the Right), attracted 24,000 people in Hanover. Two days later 10,000 protested in the university town of Freiburg, as the AfD held a meeting nearby.
The anger is a reaction to the AfD’s alarming popularity. In parliamentary elections on February 23rd it is expected to win 21% of the vote, double its share in the election in 2021. It will probably come second to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union. The AfD will not enter government. No other party will join a coalition with a party that many Germans regard as an heir to the Nazis. But the AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel, intends to become Germany’s chancellor in the election after that, which is due 2029. In the meantime it is reshaping German politics.
Ms Weidel’s charisma alone does not explain the AfD’s rise—indeed she is an uninspiring speaker. The 12-year-old party, like others on the hard right in Europe, has benefited from widespread anger about immigration and a stagnant economy. But the 46-year-old economist, who gives rabble-rousing speeches demurely dressed in blue blazers, white shirts and pearl earrings, is a big reason for the party’s recent success. At its convention in January in Riesa, a small town in eastern Germany, supporters held up blue heart-shaped cardboard signs acclaiming her Kanzlerin der Herzen, chancellor of hearts.
Ms Weidel is a politician of paradox. Unlike Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally, and Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s hard-right prime minister, she has not tempered her party’s radicalism to win over more moderate voters. She uses the loaded term “remigration” to talk about her plans to deport immigrants on a large scale. She brands energy-generating turbines “windmills of shame”. Her economic proposals are extreme. The AfD’s manifesto calls for big tax cuts, steep increases in public spending and Germany’s departure from both the European Union and the single currency. “Prosperity and millions of jobs would be lost” if Germany carried out these policies, says Marcel Fratzscher, head of the German Institute for Economic Research.
The AfD’s core supporters are white men without college degrees. Ms Weidel is nothing like them, which may be one reason the party has prospered. She has a civil partnership with another woman, a Sri Lankan-born film producer, with whom she lives in Switzerland. They have two children. The advocate of economic extremism studied economics at the University of Bayreuth and worked for Goldman Sachs. She worked at the Bank of China for six years and learned Mandarin in the late 2000s. She later wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Bayreuth on the future of the Chinese pension system.
Ms Weidel (“Lille” to her friends and family) grew up in Gütersloh as the youngest of three children. In 2013 she joined the AfD, which started out as a single-issue party in opposition to the euro, because of her own scepticism about the single currency. As the party became more radical and xenophobic many moderate members left. Ms Weidel stayed. Analysts have wondered whether ambition or conviction weighed more in her decision. The AfD may have offered better prospects to a woman than more mainstream parties, where women were already well established.
Whatever the case, Ms Weidel soon learned to speak the language of the radical right. As a member of the Bundestag she made headlines in 2018 when she declared in a parliamentary speech that “burkas, headscarf girls and subsidised knifemen and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth and, above all, the welfare state.” That drew a reprimand from the Bundestag’s president. Ms Weidel used to praise Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s pro-market prime minister of the 1980s, for “swimming against the tide”. Now she extols Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic and xenophobic leader, whom she visited in Budapest on February 11th.
Ms Weidel is betting that Germany is becoming ready for this sort of politics. In neighbouring Austria the hard-right Freedom Party began joining governments long ago. In Germany, she thinks, resistance is crumbling. A few weeks ago Friedrich Merz, the probable next chancellor, pushed through parliament a non-binding motion calling for tougher migration measures with the support of the AfD. “The firewall has fallen!” Ms Weidel wrote on X. “That is good news for our country!”
“Alice für Deutschland!” chanted the party faithful in Riesa. It was a provocative pun. “Alles für Deutschland”, now banned, was a slogan of the SA, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. To the AfD Ms Weidel is already a rock star. Her career, and Germany’s future, may depend on how the country comes to regard her mix of modernity and madness. ■