The lawmakers elected to the German parliament since 1945 will take their seats on Tuesday as a new Bundestag is inaugurated to navigate Germany through its most significant crisis in decades.
The Alternative for Germany secured second place in the February 23 election, marking the best performance by a far-right party since World War II. This result has been influenced by years of economic stagnation and uncertainty stemming from Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
As the new parliament convenes, the far-right group will not only have doubled its representation to 152 seats but will also include lawmakers who hold more extreme views than previously seen. One new member, Maximilian Krah, a former European Parliament member, caused controversy after he compared the murderous SS of Adolf Hitler to contemporary politics in a newspaper interview, leading to a public rebuke from French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Krah's return to politics—he had been excluded from the party's benches in the European Parliament—underscores the party's increasing confidence as it closes the gap with the conservative party that won the election.
Mathias Helferich, a close ally of Björn Höcke, leader of the party's far-right faction, entered parliament in 2021 but was expelled after leaked messages in which he referred to himself as "the friendly face of the Nazis." He later claimed this was intended as a joke, and he has since been readmitted.
Originally founded in 2013 as a libertarian party opposing the euro, the AfD has shifted its focus to opposing Muslim immigration, adopting a pro-Russia stance regarding the war in Ukraine, and calling for the abolition of the European Union. Many new members have military backgrounds, with several closely aligned with Höcke, while one is a secondary school history teacher.
Economic uncertainty—Germany has faced two consecutive years of recession—along with concerns about the war and Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House, has also benefited other outsider parties. The Left party, the successor to the East German Communists, achieved its best electoral performance in years.
Though the AfD's formal powers will be limited—just shy of the 25% of seats needed to establish parliamentary committees for inquiries—it still maintains influence with 24% of the seats in the 630-member parliament. This presence allows it to set the tone of debate, especially as the broad "firewall" against political cooperation with the far-right begins to erode.
A recent court ruling indicated that the parliamentary football team could no longer exclude AfD legislators from its ranks. While many lawmakers refuse to acknowledge members of the party they view as undemocratic and anti-constitutional, a new generation of activist legislators is advocating for a different approach. Ferat Kocak, the first Left lawmaker elected from the former West Germany, expressed this sentiment: "My differences with them are political, not personal. I was in a lift with one of them the other day and I said, 'Salam alaykum.'"