Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, the national leaders of Alternative for Germany (AfD), witnessed a decisive victory in Saxony-Anhalt's elections in the far-right party’s latest step to becoming one of the country’s strongest political forces. The pair celebrated with the party’s lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund after after exit polls showed the AfD had won 44 percent of the vote. The result left the AfD short of an outright majority but comfortably ahead of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which won 17.2 percent.
No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War II and a governing path for the AfD in the eastern region remains unclear, but its anti-immigration policies platform championed by Weidel and Chrupalla will be in the spotlight during tricky coalition negotiations. Markus Böckenförde, associate professor of comparative constitutional studies at Central European University (CEU), told Newsweek that the pair can appeal to a wide range of voters. "They are smart enough to not be too easily put into any one corner of a political orientation," he said.
Born in Gütersloh, Weidel, 47, has been co-chairwoman of the AfD since June 2022. Weidel, who has a doctorate in economics, worked at the Bank of China and lived in China for six years In the late 2000s. "She is a well-established business person who has not been a politician right from the start," said Böckenförde.
She has spoken of admiration for Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and was attracted by her policies of low taxes, welfare cuts and privatization, according to German outlet DW. Speaking of Thatcher in an interview with the newspaper Bild, she said: "I'm impressed by her biography, her swimming against the tide even when things get unpleasant." Weidel joined the AfD in 2013 attracted by its Euroskeptic stance. She rose quickly through the party ranks and was elected to its federal executive committee in June 2015.
In April 2017, she was elected co-lead candidate of the party. In 2018, Weidel was reprimanded by the then parliamentary president Wolfgang Schäubl for calling refugees and asylum-seekers as, "knife-wielding men on welfare" and "headscarf girls," in the Bundestag. Although the AfD's party's manifesto touts traditional family values in which mother and father take joint responsibility for children, Weidel is in a civil partnership with a woman, Sarah Bossard with whom she has raised two adopted sons.
Bossard is a Sri Lankan-born film producer who was adopted as a child by a Swiss couple. News platform The Munich Eye reported that her work often "delves into themes that may not resonate with the conservative views espoused by the AfD." The couple live with their children in Einsiedeln, Switzerland with Weidel splitting her time between Berlin and Switzerland, while listing her official residence as her electoral district in Überlingen. "Her personal life might put her into the kind of position that requires justification, be it with regard to her partner or with regard to where she predominantly resides," said Böckenförde.
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