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Alternative für Deutschland wurde in 2013 von ehemaligen Politiker aus der CDU (die Partei Merkels) gegründet. Ursprünglich war Alternative für Deutschland ein Partei gegen sowohl den Euro als Währung als auch Rettungspakete aus der Europäischen Union für Länder wie Griechenland. Merkel hat die konservative Partei mehr ins Zentrum verschoben, deshalb die Gründer von Alternative für Deutschland die neue Partei gegründeten.

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Ähnlich wie PEGIDA ist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gegen die sogenannte „Islamisierung Europas.” AfD fordert Merkels einladenden Regel gegenüber Migranten heraus. Sie wollen die Grenzen der EU schließen und „negative Einwanderung” erreichen. Auch wollen sie strikte Grenzsicherheit in Deutschland, und das ist extrem, weil es gegen die Freizügigkeit zwischen EU-Ländern ist.

Islamophobie hat das Wachstum von AfD inspiriert. Anfänglich war Islam nicht ein großes Thema für AfD, aber nachdem 1,3 Millionen Flüchtlinge aus Naher Osten zu Deutschland gekommen sind, hat Alternative für Deutschland sich mehr auf Einwanderung konzentriert. AfD hat gesagt, dass „Islam nicht zu Deutschland gehört.” Beispiele von Gesetze die AfD will sind Burkas zu verbieten und Imame durch einen Genehmigungsverfahren zu überprüfen.

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Wie du vielleicht schon weißt, hat Deutschland eine komplizierte Geschichte mit Nationalstolz. Alternative für Deutschland hat kein Problem mit Nationalstolz und macht oft entzündliche Bemerkungen. Zum Beispiel hat Parteiführer Alexander Gauland gesagt, dass Deutschen „stolz” auf die Deutsche Soldaten in Erster und Zweiter Weltkriege sind sollen. AfD benutzen  auch Wörter und Sätze aus der Nazizeit wie „völkisch.” Parteiführer  Björn Höcke im östlichen Thüringen hat eine „180-Grad-Wende” in Deutschlands Umgang mit der Nazizeit gefordert. Auch hat Gauland gesagt, dass die Nazizeit „ein Vogelschiss” in der deutschen Geschichte ist.

Diese Aussagen sind offensiv zu viele Leute, aber gemäßigtere Parteimitglieder „klären” diese Aussagen häufig. Alternative für Deutschland ist insgesamt ganz rechts, aber Leute von sogar der Mitte-Links sind AfD beigetreten. Der Populismus der AfD locken Leute an die mit dem Establishment unzufrieden sind.

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Alternative für Deutschland hat 88 von 709 Sitze im Bundesrat. Das ist überraschend, weil die Partei sehr jung ist. Es ist beliebter in Ostdeutschland als in Westdeutschland und hat um 35.000 Mitglieder.

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Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CSU)

Color: Black

Chairpeople: Armin Laschet (CDU), Markus Söder(CSU)

Parliamentary leader: Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU)

Membership: 405,816

Voters: The CDU/CSU are popular with people over the age of 60, churchgoers, and those living in rural rather than urban areas. The CDU has also traditionally done well among small business owners and people with lower or medium education levels.

2019 European election result: 28.9%

2017 Bundestag election result: 33% (246/709 seats)

History: The CDU was founded in West Germany in 1950 in the aftermath of World War II as a gathering pool for all of Germany's Christian conservative voters. It became the most dominant political force in the postwar era, unifying Germany and leading the government for 47 of those 67 years, alongside its Bavaria sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

CDU Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who governed from 1949 to 1963, is the closest the Federal Republic has to a founding father. It was Adenauer and his economy minister (and successor as chancellor), Ludwig Erhard, who presided over West Germany's "economic miracle." The party's reputation as Germany's rock of moral and economic stability continued under another long-term CDU chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who drove German reunification in 1990 - a key historic moment important in understanding today's politics.

Platform: Angela Merkel was party leader from 2000 to 2018 and has been chancellor since 2005. She stood for both a continuation and a break from the CDU's traditional values. German voters trusted her to steward the economy safely. She maintained certain conservative social values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage (though she voted against it herself, she ushered in gay marriage at the end of the last legislative period by sanctioning a conscience vote in the Bundestag). However, her relatively liberal stance on immigration turned much of the CDU base against her.

While Chancellor Angela Merkel has become a near-mythological political figure outside of Europe, her popularity at home, however, has waxed and waned in recent years. Merkel announced in October 2018 she would not put herself up for renewed terms as CDU chairwoman or as chancellor. Annegret Kamp-Karrenbauer, known by many as AKK, took over the reins after a tight inner-party vote. She stepped down and was succeeded by Armin Laschet in 2021.

The CDU/CSU experienced a historic loss in the 2019 European election, as some voters apparently punished the bloc for its failure to prioritize climate and environmental policy, while others drifted to the right-wing nationalist AfD.

Preferred coalition partners: FDP, SPD, Greens

Social Democratic Party (SPD)

Color: Red

Chairpeople: Saskia Esken, Norbert Walter-Borjans

Parliamentary leader: Rolf Mützenich

2019 European election result: 15.8%

2017 Bundestag election result: 20.5% (153/709 seats)

Membership: 419,340

Voters: The SPD has traditionally been the party of the working classes and the trade unions. The SPD's most fertile ground in Germany remains in the densely populated industrial regions of western Germany, particularly the Ruhr region in North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony.

History: The SPD was founded in 1875, making it Germany's oldest political party. In the tumultuous first decades of the 20th century, the party acted as an umbrella organization for a number of leftist movements, trade unionists, and communists. But with the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919, the SPD became the permanent home of the social justice reformers, rather than the revolutionaries - though that didn't stop its politicians from being sent to concentration camps during the Third Reich.

The SPD's first chancellor, Willy Brandt, governed West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He earned an international reputation for reconciliation with Eastern Europe during his time as foreign minister in a CDU-led coalition government. He was succeeded by Helmut Schmidt, an SPD icon until his death in 2015. Both remain hugely respected figures in German politics. Altogether, the party has been part of the German government for 34 of the 67 years of the Federal Republic and led governing coalitions for 21 of those. Though its reach has eroded significantly in the past few years, it was still behind some of Merkel's most significant social reform policies during her third government, which has just ended.

Platform: The SPD's best suit has always been social policy. It stands for a strong social infrastructure. In 2015, the SPD was instrumental in introducing a national minimum wage in Germany - currently €9.35 ($11.26) an hour.

Nevertheless, the Agenda 2010 labor market reforms introduced by SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the early 2000s lost the party some traditional support, and it's no accident that Martin Schulz's candidacy in the 2017 general election was marked by a "correction" of the policy, and a new emphasis on social justice and tax redistribution - though that failed to help him. The September 2017 election saw the worst result for the SPD in the party's history, and its support has dwindled further.

Even so, the SPD agreed to continue as junior partner in government with the CDU/CSU bloc, though it led to painful concessions that alienated traditional voters. As both chairperson and parliamentary leader, Andrea Nahles, the first woman to lead the party, struggled to turn around the SPD's bad luck at the polls and win back voter confidence. She ultimately failed and resigned after the party's disastrous showing in European elections in May 2019 - its worst-ever result in a national election in the postwar era, leaving it in third place behind the Greens.

Preferred coalition partners: Greens, CDU - the Left, but only at the state level

Green Party

Color: Green

Chairpeople: Annalena Baerbock, Robert Habeck

Parliamentary leaders: Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Anton Hofreiter

2019 European election result: 20.5%

2017 Bundestag election result: 8.9% (67/709 seats)

Membership: 101,560

Voters: The Greens rely heavily on the well-educated, urban demographic for their voter base - party strongholds tend to be major cities in western Germany, especially where universities are located. Green voters have become more affluent over the years, and the Greens struggle to attract voters from lower-income classes. The waxing and waning of support for the Greens tends to mirror the popularity of the larger parties, the CDU and SPD. On that score, the Greens saw a massive uptick in support in the 2019 European election, especially from young voters driven by concerns about climate change not assuaged by other parties.

History: The Green party is probably the most successful counter-culture movement in Germany's postwar political history. The party, whose official name translates as Alliance '90/The Greens, grew out of an assortment of social protest movements of the 1980s that eventually unified.

Their supporters marched for everything from ending nuclear power to gay rights - while maintaining the key plank of environmental protection. Their success lies in the fact that all of these causes have been incorporated into mainstream politics since the alliance was officially founded in 1993 (the Green party itself was founded in 1980).

The party became truly prominent in German politics between 1998 and 2005, its time as junior coalition partner to Gerhard Schröder's SPD, and supplied his government with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Platform: Political pundits tend to divide the Greens between the " Realos" and the " Fundis" -- the "realists," who are willing to compromise party aims to have a say in government, and the more left-wing "fundamentalists," who are closer to the party's counter-culture roots.

The Realos have slowly taken control of the party, to the extent that it is now leading a coalition with the conservative CDU in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg. While environmentalism remains a core cause (agriculture reform was a key Green achievement in the early 2000s), it has also pushed a leftist agenda on tax and social policy.

Preferred coalition partner: SPD, CDU

Left party

Color: Red (TV coverage often uses magenta to distinguish it from the SPD)

Chairpeople: Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, Janine Wissler

Parliamentary leaders: Amira Mohamed Ali Dietmar Bartsch

2019 European election result: 5.5%

2017 Bundestag election result: 9.2% (69/709 seats)

Membership: 61,500

Voters: The Left party's stronghold remains the "new German states" in the former East, where its voters tend to be former communists who supported the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and protest voters who want to express their disenchantment with traditional parties. However, many of these have switched to the populist nationalism of the AfD in the past couple years.

History: Though it was only founded in 2007, the Left party has a much longer history, and is still considered a direct descendant of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) that ruled the East German GDR until reunification with the West in 1990.

The Left party was formed out of a merger of the SED successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and Labor and Social Justice - The Electoral Alternative (WASG), a western German movement of trade unionists and disgruntled SPD members alienated by the welfare cuts introduced by Gerhard Schröder. The most prominent of these defectors was Schröder's first finance minister and SPD chairman, Oskar Lafontaine, who later led the Left party and is still a prominent figure guiding the party from his Saarland base.

Partly because of its association with the East German dictatorship, the Left remains a pariah for the other mainstream parties and has never been part of a federal government coalition - though it has some government experience at state level.

Platform: The Left is the only major German party that rejects military missions abroad. It also wants NATO to be dissolved and the minimum wage to be raised dramatically. Some political scientists still see the Left as a radical party that ultimately seeks to overturn the capitalist economic order, but the party itself actually only advocates stronger market regulation, stronger rental caps, and more social investment.

Preferred coalition partners: SPD, Greens

Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Color: Light blue

Chairpeople: Jörg Meuthen, Tino Chrupalla

Parliamentary leaders: Alexander Gauland, Alice Weidel

Membership: 35,000

Voters: The AfD has poached voters from all the other major parties except the Greens, and has simultaneously succeeded in mobilizing many non-voters. The AfD scores best among middle income earners - though that is by no means its exclusive voter base, and draws voters from across social classes. It is especially successful in Germany's East. Its membership, meanwhile, has one significant feature - only 17% are women.

2019 European election result: 11%

2017 Bundestag election result: 12.6% (92/709 seats)

History: The right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to prominence in the eight years of its existence. Founded just five months before the 2013 election as a euroskeptic party, the AfD very nearly entered the Bundestag. Since then, Germans have elected the AfD to every state parliament in regional elections as well as the European parliament.

The AfD was originally created by a group of neo-liberal academics as a protest against the single European currency. They were angered specifically by Merkel's decision to bail out Greece in 2010 following Europe's financial crisis. But a power struggle in 2015 ended with the ouster of party leader Bernd Lucke, who was replaced by Frauke Petry.

Petry, along with other prominent figures, set a much more overtly nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam agenda, a policy that scored some success during the refugee crisis of 2015. Eventually Petry also left the party, seemingly in protest at the far-right extremist turn the party took in the run-up to the 2017 election.

Since then, parliamentary leaders Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel have become leading figures in the AfD, particularly with their diligent attendance at parliamentary sessions - the AfD is currently the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.

Much discussion has flared up over prominent figures at the extreme end of the party. Most notably Björn Höcke, AfD leader in the state of Thuringia, whose uses of Nazi-era rhetoric, or statements minimizing the Nazi era, made headlines. He is one of the figureheads of what was known as the "Wing," the name of the AfD's hardcore section that the party itself banned last year when domestic intelligence announced plans to keep tabs on it.

Platform: The AfD wants to seal the EU's borders, institute rigorous identity checks along Germany's borders, and set up holding camps abroad to prevent migrants from heading to Germany at all. The party wants to immediately deport anyone whose application for political asylum is rejected and to encourage foreigners to return to their home countries.

The party insists on the primacy of "traditional" German culture and rejects Islam as a part of German society. It also questions the notion that climate change is man-made and wants to reverse Germany's ongoing transition to renewable energy sources.

Preferred coalition partners: Ruled out by all other parties, but closest in policy to the CSU

Free Democratic Party (FDP)

Color: Yellow

Chairperson: Christian Lindner

Parliamentary leader: Christian Lindner

2019 European election result: 5.4%

2017 Bundestag election result: 10.7% (80/709 seats)

Membership: 65,500

Voters: As the party of neo-liberal free enterprise, it's no surprise that the FDP has found the most voters among the self-employed, especially business owners and professionals like dentists and lawyers - and the fewest among workers.

History: The Free Democrats were a permanent fixture in the German parliament from the early days of the Federal Republic. However, the party suffered major election losses in 2013, failing to clear the 5% hurdle to enter the lower house. It has struggled for relevance ever since, but then experienced a resurgence under new leader Christian Lindner, and reentered parliament with some 80 Bundestag members.

Founded in December 1948, the FDP was kingmaker to both the CDU and the SPD in its time. Though it never led a German government, it participated in government for a total of 41 years, longer than any other party. Consequently, it provided the bigger parties with many cabinet ministers, some of whom, such as Helmut Kohl's long-term foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, became major postwar historical figures.

Platform: The FDP's program is founded on the principles of individual freedom and civil rights. While it has always campaigned for more tax cuts, it opposes leaving the financial markets unbridled. It is also a pro-European party.

Preferred coalition partner: CDU

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Germany's political parties - what you need to know | DW | 01.03.2021

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Color: Black Chairpeople: Armin Laschet (CDU), Markus Söder(CSU) Parliamentary leader: Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU) Membership: 405,816 Voters: The CDU/CSU are popular with people over the age of 60, churchgoers, and those living in rural rather than urban areas. The CDU has also traditionally done well among small business owners and people with lower or medium education levels.

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The nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown rapidly since it was formed in 2013 and is now the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag (national parliament), with 89 seats.

Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, it has shifted its focus to immigration and Islam and is increasingly seen as far-right in tone.

Is it far-right?

Yes. It may not have started out as a far-right party but it soon embraced far-right policies and many of its leaders have espoused far-right rhetoric.

AfD co-chairman Alexander Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an "invasion of foreigners" and the party openly focuses on Islam and migration, seeing Islam as alien to German society. Some of the party's rhetoric has been tinged with Nazi overtones.

The AfD sits in the same political family as France's far-right National Front and Austria's far-right Freedom Party - as well as the populist, anti-Islam Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders. Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK's anti-EU party Ukip, took part in their 2017 election campaign.

The party's leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, once described Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and called for a "180-degree turnaround" in Germany's handling of its Nazi past. Picking up the same theme, Alexander Gauland trivialised the Nazi era as "just a speck of bird's muck in more than 1,000 years of successful Germany history".

The AfD has managed to attract voters from the centre right and even the centre left but in the words of Verena Hartmann, a moderate MP who left the party in January 2020 because it was becoming to extreme: "Those who resist this extreme right-wing movement are mercilessly pushed out of the party."

In the words of Matthias Quent, a German expert on the far right based in Thuringia: "Not everyone in the AfD is ideologically far right, but anyone in the party or even voting for the party is supporting a party that has a far-right objective."

Who to watch

The AfD has only existed for seven years and its leadership has gone through regular, turbulent changes. Its best-known figures are co-leader Alexander Gauland, parliament group leader Alice Weidel and Björn Höcke, the party's most significant figure in its eastern heartland.

Alice Weidel is a 41-year-old economist who divides her time between Berlin and Switzerland, where she lives with a woman adopted as a child from Sri Lanka and their two children.

She is one of a small number of women in prominent positions in the AfD and argues that her presence as one of its top candidates proves the party is not homophobic.

Alexander Gauland, a 78-year old lawyer, has been with AfD from its Eurosceptic start and his political career began decades earlier with the centre right.

As AfD moved to the right so did he, making a number of remarks condemned as racist. In 2016 he talked about footballer Jérôme Boateng, who was born in Berlin to a Ghanaian father. "[Germans] like him as a football player. But they don't want to have a Boateng as their neighbour."

Björn Höcke, AfD's party leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, has been behind some of its biggest controversies. He is also seen as an inspiration to many of the MPs elected to the Bundestag in 2017 and heads a stridently nationalist group called Flügel. He helped AfD in Thuringia push the centre right into third place in state elections in October 2019.

When he criticised the idea of a Holocaust memorial in the heart of German capital, the party moved to expel him but apparently changed its mind.

Mr Höcke helped trigger a national crisis in February 2020 by helping a liberal candidate become state premier in Thuringia. Not since World War Two had the far right played kingmaker in German politics.

Jörg Meuthen, co-leader of the party with Alexander Gauland, is seen as a relative moderate. After the election result he insisted the AfD did not accept racism or xenophobia, but in the same breath complained that "in some German cities, I struggle to find Germans on the streets".

Fighting mass immigration

The AfD's big success came in challenging Angela Merkel's decision to let in around 1.3 million undocumented migrants and refugees, mainly from the Middle East, from 2015.

They tapped into anxieties over the influence of Islam, calling for a commission to investigate the chancellor's "breaches of the law" in allowing them in.

The party made the influx the focus of its party platform. There were contacts with the anti-immigration Pegida movement, which staged weekly marches against what it called "the Islamisation of the West".

Pegida took hold mainly in eastern cities such as Dresden, and it is in the ex-communist east that the AfD has had its biggest successes, attracting more men than any other party. Odd perhaps, in that the biggest concentrations of immigrants are not in those areas.

AfD adopted some of Pegida's anti-establishment rhetoric, such as the slogan "Lügenpresse" ("lying press"), which was used by the Nazis.

Germany must reintroduce permanent border controls and the EU's external borders must be "completely shut", the AfD says. That position contradicts Schengen - the EU's free movement zone, covering most of Europe, where border checks are generally minimal.

One of its former leaders, Frauke Petry, once said German police should "if necessary" shoot at migrants seeking to enter the country illegally. And she was seen as an AfD moderate.

Challenging Islam as 'not German'

AfD adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy in May 2016 and its 2017 election manifesto had a section on why "Islam does not belong to Germany". "Burkas? We like bikinis," read one of its most garish posters.

The party would ban foreign funding of mosques in Germany, ban the burka (full-body veil) and the Muslim call to prayer, and put all imams through a state vetting procedure.

"Moderate" Muslims who accepted integration were "valued members of society", its argued, while suggesting that multiculturalism did not work.

An estimated three million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, most of them Muslims.

Using nationalist rhetoric

AfD has also built its success on challenging taboos and flirting with racism.

Alexander Gauland drew criticism for declaring that Germans should be "proud" of their soldiers in both world wars. While SS units were notorious for German atrocities in World War Two, the regular armed forces also committed many war crimes.

Frauke Petry once tried to end the taboo on the Nazi-era term völkisch, which comes from the German word for people but was hijacked by the Nazis to define those they saw as belonging to the German race.

Against the euro

AfD has come a long way since it was launched in early 2013 to challenge eurozone bailouts in Greece and elsewhere, and reject the EU's arguments for keeping the euro.

It still promises to abandon the euro and reintroduce the Deutschmark.

But its first leader, Bernd Lucke, left the party in 2015, arguing that it was becoming increasingly xenophobic.

Its anti-euro policy echoes the Euroscepticism of other populist parties in Europe.

If the EU fails to reform and continues centralising, the AfD says, the party will seek to pull Germany out of the EU.

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Germany's AfD: How right-wing is nationalist Alternative for Germany?

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The nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown rapidly since it was formed in 2013 and is now the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag (national parliament), with 89 seats. Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, it has shifted its focus to immigration and Islam and is increasingly seen as far-right in tone.

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A protest in Frankfurt on Sunday against the right-wing Alternative for Germany. The party won 94 out of 709 seats in Parliament. Credit... Andreas Arnold/DPA, via Associated Press

BERLIN - As Chancellor Angela Merkel won her fourth term in power on Sunday, nearly 6 million Germans - 12.6 percent of those who voted - cast their ballots for an upstart, populist party that has denounced her: Alternative for Germany. Here's a guide to the far-right party that could reshape German politics.

Alternative for Germany - widely known by its German initials AfD - was founded in the spring of 2013 by a group of elite conservatives, many of whom had been raised in the Christian Democratic Union, the center-right party that Ms. Merkel leads. They were frustrated with what they saw as a shift to the center on a range of policies, but especially with Ms. Merkel's decision to commit German taxpayer money to a bailout of Greece.

In 2015, after nearly 1 million migrants arrived in Germany seeking asylum, Alternative for Germany shifted its focus to domestic security and immigration. Its tone became increasingly nationalistic, populistic and - its critics said - racist.

Members have called for Germany to rethink its national culture of atonement and remembrance of Nazi crimes. At AfD's election party on Sunday night, some in the crowd sang the national anthem - a display of a sort rarely seen in a country weaned in the decades since World War II to be wary of overt displays of nationalism. The Central Council of Jews in Germany said the party's entry into Parliament had confirmed its worst fears about a resurgence of the far right.

Alexander Gauland, one of the party's lead candidates, insisted on Monday there was nothing in the party's platform that should cause worry for Jews.

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Leaders of Alternative for Germany arrived for a news conference in Berlin on Monday. From right, Frauke Petry, Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland. Credit... Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Frauke Petry, 42, has been the party's leader and its face abroad.

She is widely considered a relatively moderate force in the party, but she recently split with many of its members over their attempt to expel a member in the eastern state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who was seen as challenging Germany's national atonement for the Holocaust and for its Nazi crimes.

On Monday Ms. Petry appeared to continue her spat with other party leaders, announcing that she would not join AfD's caucus in Parliament.

The party's leading candidates in the election, who are now expected to take charge of that caucus, were Mr. Gauland, 76, a former newspaper publisher who had run the office a Christian Democrat governor in Hesse, and Alice Weidel, 38, an economist who worked for Goldman Sachs as a banker.

Despite their nationalist rhetoric, the leaders are diverse in ways that have gotten notice. Ms. Petry was, like Ms. Merkel, trained as a scientist, and is fluent in English. Ms. Weidel is fluent in Mandarin and is raising children with her female partner.

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Escaping violence in Libya, Abode struggles to belong in a German town that has become a flashpoint of anti-immigrant anger. Credit Credit... Andrew Mitchell Ellis

Alternative for Germany promised to restore law and order and a sense of national pride - a theme that causes deep unease among many Germans. After the results of the vote were broadcast, demonstrations decrying the party's nationalist rhetoric and accusing it of flirting with Nazism broke out in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Cologne.

"There's no right to Nazi propaganda!" protesters shouted outside AfD's election-night party.

Ms. Weidel said the party would "initiate a parliamentary investigative committee against Angela Merkel," challenging the legal basis of her migration policies, and "very decidedly take up the breaches of law by this lady."

The party also promised to increase border security, to push back against further European Union integration and to oppose the use of German taxpayer money to bail out foreign banks. It wants to revamp the pensions system, cutting a government program that rewards private pensions savers.

The party has flirted with anti-Islamic sentiment, rejecting inclusive language used by Ms. Merkel and past presidents and saying that a religion that does not respect the constitution and laws of the country is not compatible with German democracy.

Supporters of AfD demonstrated against Chancellor Angela Merkel during a campaign rally in Heppenheim, Germany, last week. Credit... Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Of the nearly 6 million votes Alternative for Germany won on Sunday, preliminary results show 1.2 million came from voters who had stayed home in previous elections. But another million had been pulled away from the chancellor's bloc - including many from the Christian Social Union, a sister party of her Christian Democratic Union that has been the dominant political force in the southern state of Bavaria for decades.

But AfD also drew from the political left, with support from nearly 500,000 voters who had previously supported the center-left Social Democrats and 400,000 who had voted for the Left Party. AfD appealed to people's sense that lawmakers had failed to listen to individual concerns of loss of orientation in an increasingly globalized world.

Shirley Borchardt, 30, was one of those who abandoned the Left Party after nine years. She said it had not done enough to stand up to Ms. Merkel.

"I want to finally be a part of something new, to see us become a force in the Bundestag that is able to break up the uniform mushiness of the represented parties," she said.

Alternative for Germany emerged as the third-largest party in Parliament, with 94 out of 709 seats. It is unlikely to lead the opposition: That influential role will go to the second-place Social Democratic Party, which formed a coalition with Ms. Merkel's group after the last national elections but has said that it will not do so this time.

How strong AfD will be will depend in large part on whether it can hold its caucus together. Hours after its historic victory, becoming the first party to the right of the chancellor's center-right bloc to make it into Parliament, cracks were beginning to show.

Ms. Petry, who secured a seat in Parliament through a direct vote in her eastern state of Saxony - candidates can be elected either as individuals or from a party list - took to the country's main breakfast TV show to challenge comments Mr. Gauland had made during the election party about "hunting" the chancellor. Then, at a news conference alongside Mr. Gauland and Ms. Weidel, she announced her decision not to join AfD's parliamentary caucus, and stormed out without taking questions.

Such theatrics lay plain that the young party will need to get its house in order if it wants to even begin to be a constructive opposition force.

Exit poll results on a screen at the Christian Democratic Union headquarters in Berlin on Sunday. Credit... Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Paradoxically, AfD's entrance into Parliament has set the stage for a centrist government that will make overtures to the right but will remain staunchly pro-European, said Timo Lochocki, a trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

"They can influence rhetoric," Mr. Lochocki said of the AfD, but whether the party remains a force capable of exerting influence will depend largely on whether the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats are able to win back voters on such emotional issues as immigration and the common European currency, the euro, as they have pledged to do.

AfD had demonstrated that disgruntlement about immigration and the euro were potent issues for perhaps 5 to 10 percent of voters, Mr. Lochocki said - issues that it would want to keep alive.

He added that elections had historically been focused on economics, but a split had emerged because of the refugee crisis. "These cleavages never decided elections because migration was not an issue," he said. "But now it is."

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Alternative for Germany: Who Are They, and What Do They Want? (Published 2017)

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BERLIN - As Chancellor Angela Merkel won her fourth term in power on Sunday, nearly 6 million Germans - 12.6 percent of those who voted - cast their ballots for an upstart, populist party that has denounced her: Alternative for Germany. Here's a guide to the far-right party that could reshape German politics.

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Alternative für Deutschland ist Teil einer größeren globalen Bewegung des Rechtspopulismus. In Europa ist Rechtspopulismus gewachsen. In Großbritannien hat Nigel Farage die Anti-Europäische Union Partei Ukip gegründet. Frankreichs nationale Front ist populärer geworden. Donald Trumps Republikanische Partei sprechen auch Populisten an.
Alternative für Deutschland ist ein starkes Beispiel dafür, wie gefährlich Rechtspopulismus sein kann. Es ist besorgniserregend, dass AfD Nazi Sprache verwendet und offen anti-muslimische Politik unterstützt. Auch ängstlich ist wie schnell sie gewachsen hat. Wir müssen Intoleranz bekämpfen.

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erreichen = zu reach
die Freizügigkeit = Freedom of Movement
verbieten = to ban
unzufrieden = dissatisfied
besorgniserregend = worrying

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Jefferson Chase | Rina Goldenberg

October 28, 2019

DW looks at the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It was founded in 2013 by euroskeptics, but began campaigning on an anti-immigration platform in 2015.

From 2013 to 2017 the populist far-right AfD was rising in voter support

When it was formed in 2013, the AfD's main thrust was its opposition to bailouts of indebted European Union member states like Greece. But over time, it has become, first and foremost, an anti-immigration party.

The AfD has completely rejected former Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming policy toward refugees, particularly from the Arab world, which saw more than 1.5 million migrants arrive in Germany since 2015. The party wants to change Germany's constitution to get rid of the right to an individual hearing in asylum cases and would seek to immediately deport all those whose applications to remain in Germany are rejected, regardless of whether the countries to which deportees are sent back are safe or not. It also advocates for foreigners who commit crimes in Germany being sentenced to prisons outside the country and treating minors as young as 12 as adults for certain offenses.

The AfD wants to seal the EU's borders, institute rigorous identity checks along Germany's national borders and set up holding camps abroad to prevent migrants from leaving for Germany in the first place. The party's lead candidate in the 2021 elections, Alice Weidel, has said the party wants to achieve "negative immigration" to Germany. It also argues that Germany is being "Islamified" and portrays itself as a bulwark for traditional Christian values.

Leadership battles

The party is generally regarded as being split between "moderate" and "far-right" wings, the latter of which has gained ground since 2015, with shades of racist nationalism and anti-Semitism.

From 2017 to 2019, the far-right faction was represented by co-chair Alexander Gauland. Born in 1941, Gauland was a lawyer and journalist and had been a member of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) for 40 years. He was also co-leader of the party's group in the Bundestag together with Alice Weidel, an economist who lives at least part-time in Switzerland with her female partner, who comes from Sri Lanka, and their two children. Over the years, Weidel has increasingly gained support form the nationalist wing of the party.

In May of 2021, ahead of the general election, AfD members gave a resounding victory to Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as co-candidates for chancellor, which was seen as a victory for the party's radical fringe, who support the pair. Party co-leader Jörg Meuthen was pushed aside. The member of the European Parliament had been promoting more moderate lead candidates - a plan that failed miserably.

Meuthen, formerly one of the party's most familiar faces, left the AfD in January 2022.

In the general election on September 26, 2021, the AfD lost two percentage points from its 2017 result, winning just over 10% of the nationwide vote. With the CDU out of power, the AfD was no longer the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, robbing it of a high-profile role in parliamentary debates and potentially making it less visible in Germany's politics.

Germany split on AfD support

The AfD is most successful in Germany's eastern states in the former GDR. In the state of Saxony, for example, the AfD is polling at 26%.

In Germany's most populous western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, however, it has only 7% support.

Far-right AfD still holds appeal in the east

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Right-wing populism or a new home for neo-Nazism?

The AfD appeals both to the right-wing extremist fringe and to people dissatisfied with the status quo who may or may not have previously participated in the electoral system. Studies have suggested that the AfD has siphoned off supporters from all of Germany's established mainstream parties, and in 2021 it boasted more than 32,000 members. Many commentators saw the rise of the party as part of the same populist international trend that saw voters in the UK approve the Brexit referendum and Americans elect Donald Trump as president of the United States.

The official AfD platform says that the party supports direct democracy, separation of state powers, and the rule of law and order. But throughout its short history, critics have accused individual members, like the leader of the party's wing in the state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, of promoting neo-Nazi ideas and using neo-Nazi language. Detractors say that the party follows a strategy of targeted breaks with anti-Nazi taboos in an attempt to appeal to right-wing extremists.

The AfD is often accused of pursuing a strategy whereby one of the far-right members breaks a social taboo with an outlandish, offensive statement only for a moderate member to qualify his or her colleague's remarks.

The rise of the AfD has, in any case, coincided with the decline of far-right parties like the NPD into virtual insignificance.

Family, Pegida, and the press

The AfD also sees itself as a defender of the traditional nuclear family model. It is anti-abortion and, despite Weidel's prominent role, hostile to what it calls "alternative" lifestyles. It favors a series of measures that would increase state financial support for what it perceives as "traditional families" and is, in this respect, not fiscally conservative.

Like former President Donald Trump or populist leaders in eastern Europe, the leaders of the AfD display a conspicuous hostility toward the mainstream media. The AfD favors doing away with the licensing fees that underwrite Germany's public television and radio stations, and journalists are regularly excluded from party events. Reporters who call the press hotline at the party's headquarters to request information often get a pre-recorded message telling them to "try again later."
While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

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AfD: From anti-EU to anti-immigration - DW - 10/28/2019

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DW looks at the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It was founded in 2013 by euroskeptics, but began campaigning on an anti-immigration platform in 2015.