# Anna Rathert

# Anna Rathert

Anna Rathert (carried on her party's state slate as Dr. Anna Leonore Labitzke Rathert) is a German lawyer and a politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). She has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, in its 21st electoral term, returned on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia after standing in constituency 120, Recklinghausen I.

The Bundestag biography, which rests on the member's own disclosures, records that she was born on 29 April 1977 in Münster, belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran church, is married and has three children. She attended the Hittorf-Gymnasium in Recklinghausen from 1987 to 1996, including an exchange year in 1993–94 at The Lakeside School in Seattle, and spent 1996–97 on a general course of study at the University of Rouen. From 1997 to 2003 she studied law at the University of Münster, with an Erasmus semester in 1999–2000 at the University of Naples Federico II, where she sat examinations in public international law and European law.

She passed the first state law examination before the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf in 2003 and the second in 2009, after a legal traineeship in Münster that included placements at the German embassy in Paris and the Office of the Federal President in Berlin, and she received a doctorate in 2010. She has practised as a lawyer since 2009, worked in 2014–15 as an accredited assistant in the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament), and from 2022 until she took her seat was a lawyer in the legal department of the AfD parliamentary group. She joined the AfD in April 2013. From 2020 to 2022 she was a judge on the party's North Rhine-Westphalia arbitration court, latterly as vice-president; since 2022 she has been spokesperson of the Recklinghausen city association, and since 2023 deputy spokesperson of the district association.

For the federal election of 23 February 2025 the AfD placed her eleventh on its North Rhine-Westphalia list. In Recklinghausen I the party received 25,912 first votes (20.2 percent, 11.0 points higher than in 2021) and 25,875 second votes (20.2 percent); the constituency seat went to [Frank Schwabe](/people/frank-schwabe) of the Social Democratic Party, with 33.1 percent, ahead of Michael Breilmann of the Christian Democratic Union on 28.8 percent. In the Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs), and of that committee's subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy; a deputy member of the Children's Commission; and deputy chair of the German–Portuguese Parliamentary Group. Since 3 November 2025 she has also sat on Recklinghausen city council, an office the Bundestag records with a gross monthly payment of €551.80. In February 2026 she was among the AfD politicians invited to the Munich Security Conference. She told *Der Tagesspiegel*, as reported by *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)*, that she did not know the conference's reason for inviting her and that she meant to listen and observe.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and family background

Anna Rathert was born Anna Leonore Labitzke on 29 April 1977 in Münster, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Integrated Authority File of the German National Library enters her under the preferred name Labitzke, with the variant forms Rathert and Labitzke-Rathert, Anna Leonore, gives Münster as her place of birth, and records Recklinghausen as a place of activity.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on the member's own statements, lists her as evangelical Lutheran, married, and the mother of three children. In a candidacy speech that the North Rhine-Westphalia association of the Alternative for Germany posted on 11 January 2025, she called herself a lawyer and the mother of two sons and a daughter, and asked delegates for their votes. Earlier that month the state party had met for several days at an event centre in Marl, in the Recklinghausen district, where about 500 delegates heard candidacy speeches and chose the Bundestag list.

In that speech she said she was the daughter of a woman who had been imprisoned in the Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen, and that she had grown up knowing that resistance required courage and could carry high personal risk. The site, kept as the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, was from 1951 the central remand prison of the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic; the memorial states that about 11,000 people were held there until 1989. The published parliamentary biography does not repeat that account and gives no information on her parents' occupations or on when the family came to Recklinghausen.

### Schooling

The same self-reported biography places her school years at the Hittorf-Gymnasium in Recklinghausen from 1987 to 1996. The city lists the school as a Gymnasium at Kemnastraße 38 in Recklinghausen, Germany.

Those dates include a year abroad. In the 1993–94 school year she attended The Lakeside School in Seattle, while remaining within the span of her Recklinghausen enrolment. Lakeside describes itself as an independent school for grades 5 through 12.

After the Gymnasium she spent 1996–97 on a *studium generale* at the Université de Rouen, in Rouen in Normandy, a year of general university study placed in the biography immediately before her law course. The biography does not name the subjects of that year. The AfD Bundestag group's shorter profile likewise summarises her schooling as time in Recklinghausen and Seattle, followed by law studies in Münster with stays in Rouen and Naples, without adding further detail.

### Legal studies

From 1997 to 2003 Rathert studied law (*Rechtswissenschaften*) at the University of Münster. During that course, in the 1999–2000 academic year, she spent an exchange semester under the Erasmus Programme at the University of Naples Federico II in Naples and took examinations in public international law and European law.

The Münster law faculty describes the path to the classical legal professions as a university course ending in a first examination, followed by a two-year practical preparatory service, the *Referendariat*, and a second state examination; only both stages confer full qualification for judicial office and the other regulated legal professions. Rathert's biography records that she passed the first state law examination (*erstes juristisches Staatsexamen*) in 2003 at the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf.

## Professional career

### Referendariat, examinations and doctorate

The German National Library's name authority for the author of her dissertation uses the preferred form Anna Labitzke, born in 1977, and records the variant names Anna Rathert and Anna Leonore Labitzke-Rathert, the degree Dr. jur., and a dissertation in the faculty of law at the University of Münster. The national bibliography catalogues the book as that university's doctoral thesis of 2010.

The biography published by the Bundestag states that its biographical particulars come from the member's own information. On that account, Rathert passed the first state examination in law in 2003 at the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) in Düsseldorf. From 2006 to 2008 she completed the Referendariat, the practical training required between the two state examinations, in Münster, with stages at the German embassy in Paris and at the Office of the Federal President in Berlin. She passed the second state examination in 2009, again at the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, and the biography dates the doctorate to 2010.

The thesis was issued in 2011 in Hamburg by Verlag Dr. Kovač under the name Anna Labitzke, as *Die Beschränkung von Auslandsinvestitionen in deutsche Rüstungsunternehmen*, a study of compatibility with European and constitutional law and of compensation questions in foreign-trade law. The national bibliography gives a first edition of XXII and 374 pages, volume 266 of *Schriftenreihe Studien zur Rechtswissenschaft*, ISBN 978-3-8300-5743-7.

The table of contents is organised around the eleventh act amending the Foreign Trade and Payments Act (*Außenwirtschaftsgesetz*) and the Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance. The federal government's bill of 18 February 2004, introduced under that title, stated its object as a power to restrict acquisitions, by buyers resident abroad, of arms companies and of companies making cryptographic products. A later government bill described the Foreign Trade and Payments Act as last amended by Article 1 of the Act of 28 December 2004 (*Bundesgesetzblatt* I, p. 2198). The publisher's summary says the book asks whether that screening power, or an actual prohibition of a foreign direct investment in a German arms company, can be an unjustified interference with basic rights, in circumstances where the amending act itself laid down no compensation. It also treats the statute's new term "essential security interests" (*wesentliche Sicherheitsinteressen*), whether the list in Article 346(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union covers both dual-use goods and war weapons, and how freedom of capital movement and freedom of establishment relate to the special defence rule in Article 346(2)(b). Later chapters examine compatibility with European Union law and with the Basic Law.

### Legal practice and parliamentary staff work

The Bundestag biography states that Rathert has worked as a lawyer (*Rechtsanwältin*) since 2009. For 2014 to 2015 it lists her as an accredited parliamentary assistant in the European Parliament; the entry does not name the member she assisted. The same text records periods of child-rearing (*Kindererziehungszeiten*) in 2013–2014, 2015–2018 and 2019–2022. From 2022 to 2025 it lists her as a lawyer in the legal department of the Bundestag group of the Alternative for Germany.

Apart from that narrative, the page publishes the occupations notified for the time before membership of the Bundestag: lawyer for the AfD parliamentary group in Berlin, and lawyer in Recklinghausen.

### Disclosed outside income

The Members of the Bundestag Act requires a member to notify paid work done independently or as an employee alongside the mandate, and notifiable particulars are published on the Bundestag website. The amount must be stated when income exceeds 1,000 euro in a month or, if it does not, 3,000 euro in a calendar year; the figure is in principle the gross sum, or profit before tax where the income is turnover. Returns are due within three months of taking up the seat or of any later change, and are posted once the administration has checked that publication is required.

For paid activity alongside the mandate, Rathert's published entry is a legal practice in Recklinghausen, with no figure attached. A separate item, under functions in public-law corporations, records membership of the Recklinghausen city council from 3 November 2025 and a gross amount of 551.80 euro a month.

## Party career in the AfD

### Entry and the state arbitration court

Rathert joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in April 2013. That date, and the later party posts in the same text, come from the biography published by the Bundestag, which states that its biographical details rest on the member's own information. The party had been officially founded on 6 February 2013, and its founding congress in Berlin opened on 13 April 2013. The political-career paragraph of her Bundestag biography lists no office between that entry and 2020. The same text records periods spent raising children in 2013–2014, 2015–2018 and 2019–2022.

From 2020 to 2022 she reports serving as a Landesschiedsrichterin on the Landesschiedsgericht of the AfD in North Rhine-Westphalia, most recently as vice-president. Under the Political Parties Act, a party must keep arbitration courts at least for the national organisation and for its highest-level regional branches, to conciliate and decide disputes between the party or a territorial branch and individual members, and disputes over the interpretation and application of the statutes. Members are elected for at most four years. They are independent and not bound by instructions, and they may not belong to an executive of the party or of a branch, stand in an employment relationship to either, or receive regular income from them. The procedural rules must guarantee a hearing, a fair process and the right to challenge a court member for bias. Expulsion is regulated separately: a member may be removed only for an intentional breach of the statutes, or a serious breach of the party's principles or order that causes it grave harm, and the decision lies with the arbitration court named in those rules, with a right of appeal to a higher court. In its survey of party organisation, the Federal Agency for Civic Education describes these courts as the bodies that also rule on challenges to internal elections and impose disciplinary measures.

### District and city association offices

The court service she reports runs through 2022. From that year the biography places her on party executives, offices the Act bars a sitting member of an arbitration court from holding. From 2022 to 2023 she was a Beisitzerin, an ordinary member of the executive, of the AfD Kreisverband for the Recklinghausen district, and since 2023 one of its deputy spokespersons. A board notice on the Kreisverband website, dated 15 April 2025, named Udo Pöpperling as spokesperson and Carsten Hempel, Rathert and Simone Paulsen as deputy spokespersons, with Claudia Eschweiler as treasurer and Jürgen Vogel, Frank Fehrenkämper and Karsten Bergmann as Beisitzer. German parties are divided into territorial branches whose size the statutes set, so that members can take part in the party's decision-making, and each branch must have an assembly of members or delegates and an executive. The district consists of ten towns. The Kreisverband website links to the AfD state association in North Rhine-Westphalia and to the Stadtverbände of the district association.

The Bundestag biography also describes her as spokesperson of the AfD Stadtverband for the city of Recklinghausen since 2022. The city association's website states that a Stadtparteitag on 4 November 2023 confirmed her in that post and confirmed Ronald Grudt as deputy spokesperson, and that Wilfried Rauscher, Dieter Varenholz and Manfred Sperber joined as ordinary members. The same page reports that a Stadtparteitag on 9 May 2026 elected a new executive—Manfred Sperber as spokesperson, Dieter Varenholz as deputy, and Miriam Werdelmann, Sigrid Bienek and Markus Müller as ordinary members—and does not name Rathert among them. The parliamentary text still said she had been city spokesperson "since 2022" when the Bundestag page was modified on 29 September 2026.

## Election to the Bundestag

### List place and constituency candidacy

For the 2025 German federal election, Rathert was the Alternative for Germany candidate in constituency 120 and held place 11 on the party’s state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state returning officer’s register names Dr. Anna Leonore Labitzke Rathert, a lawyer living in Recklinghausen, at that list place; the federal returning officer’s list of those elected records the same place for the Land and notes the parallel candidacy in Wahlkreis 120. The AfD’s state organization published the list in that order, with Kay Gottschalk first and Rathert eleventh, and the state election committee admitted the AfD list among 18 of 24 submitted state lists.

Constituency 120, Recklinghausen I, comprises Recklinghausen, Waltrop and Castrop-Rauxel; the district’s other municipalities lie in constituencies 121, Recklinghausen II, and 124. On 10 December 2024 the *Ruhr Nachrichten* reported that she was the AfD direct candidate for that seat. The official register also names Frank Schwabe of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (list place 23), Michael Breilmann of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (place 18), Regina Heike Weyer of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), Mathias Leo Richter of the Free Democratic Party (place 15), Erich Karl Burmeister of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), Emily Böker of Die PARTEI, Andreas Grün of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) and Alexander-Renee Schroeter of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany. A *Recklinghäuser Zeitung* commentary of 6 January 2025 reported that she addressed an AfD nomination congress in Marl-Sinsen, in Marl, before about 500 delegates. The Bundestag biography records the constituency candidacy and the list election.

### The 2025 campaign

On 6 February 2025 seven direct candidates met in Castrop-Rauxel for a “Wahlarena” staged by the *Recklinghäuser Zeitung*, *Ruhr Nachrichten* and the *Waltroper Zeitung*.

The *Recklinghäuser Zeitung* called the evening a clash over migration and cutting bureaucracy, and wrote that it was controversial beyond migration alone. Photo captions place Schwabe, Breilmann, Weyer, Richter, Burmeister, Grün and Rathert in the studio. A commentary the next day by Fabian Hollenhorst described Rathert as calm, level-headed and friendly, stated her list place as 11, and argued that she showed party colleagues another face, with an “us against them” consensus.

On 16 February a profile by Ralf Wiethaup quoted her line “Die AfD muss es richten” (“The AfD has to sort it out”) and, in a subheading, her description of [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) as “doch nur eine Raubkopie” (“only a pirate copy”). The paper said the “overall package” of the candidacy was not uncontroversial.

### Result in Recklinghausen I

Polling was on 23 February 2025. Of 161,611 eligible voters, 129,034 cast ballots, a turnout of 79.8 percent, 6.2 points above 2021. Of 128,043 valid first votes, Schwabe won the direct mandate with 42,356 (33.1 percent, down 7.9 points). Breilmann was second with 36,875 (28.8 percent, up 3.2). The AfD, whose constituency candidate was Rathert, received 25,912 (20.2 percent, up 11.0). The Greens took 8,686 (6.8 percent, down 3.9), Die Linke 7,544 (5.9 percent, up 2.9) and the FDP 3,278 (2.6 percent, down 4.5).

Of 128,311 valid second votes, the CDU led the constituency with 35,131 (27.4 percent, up 4.2 points), ahead of the SPD on 29,886 (23.3 percent, down 12.0) and the AfD on 25,875 (20.2 percent, up 11.1). The Greens received 12,446 (9.7 percent, down 2.9), Die Linke 9,622 (7.5 percent, up 4.0), the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 5,656 (4.4 percent) and the FDP 4,581 (3.6 percent, down 6.4).

Rathert therefore missed the constituency seat. The federal returning officer lists her mandate as place 11 for North Rhine-Westphalia, and the state’s file of those elected from state lists has the same line. On election night the *Ruhr Nachrichten* wrote that Schwabe had again carried the seat, that Breilmann still had reason to worry, and that Rathert was in. The 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025, the opening of the term in which she has held that list seat.

## Roles in the 21st Bundestag

### Committees

In the 21st Bundestag, where Dr. Anna Rathert’s membership began on 25 March 2025, the parliament’s biography lists her as an ordinary member (*Ordentliches Mitglied*) of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and that committee’s Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy. She is not listed as a substitute on the education committee. She sits for the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

On 15 May 2025 the Bundestag created 24 standing committees, with 38 seats on the education and family committee and 42 on foreign affairs. The groups name the ordinary members and their substitutes. As preparatory decision-making bodies, committees recommend decisions to the plenary on business referred to them; a substitute may move a motion only while standing in for an absent member of the same group.

The education and family committee was constituted on 21 May 2025, with [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) elected chair. The 38 seats went 13 to the CDU/CSU, nine to the AfD, seven to the SPD, five to Alliance 90/The Greens and four to Die Linke. It deals with family support, children and young people, equality, education and life in old age, and it normally meets in private. Rathert was not among the AfD members named at that sitting; the biography, last modified on 29 September 2026, records her as an ordinary member.

The foreign affairs committee is required by the Basic Law. Article 45a obliges the Bundestag to appoint a committee on foreign affairs and a defence committee. The Bundestag describes it as following government foreign policy before major decisions, and its 42 members deliberate in the lead on, among other matters, whether the federal government may deploy soldiers of Germany abroad. It was constituted on 21 May 2025 and elected Armin Laschet (CDU/CSU) chair. Rathert was one of the ten AfD ordinary members named that day.

On 16 October 2025 the committee constituted the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy, with nine ordinary members and substitutes. Rathert and Alexander Wolf were the AfD’s two ordinary members. [Ellen Demuth](/people/ellen-demuth) (CDU/CSU) was elected deputy chair; Wolf, nominated by the AfD for the chair, did not receive the required majority. The subcommittee deals with the intermediary organisations of foreign cultural and educational policy, which the Bundestag calls the third pillar of German foreign policy, including the [Goethe-Institut](/organizations/goethe-institut) and the German Academic Exchange Service.

### The Children's Commission

Rathert is a substitute member (*Stellvertretendes Mitglied*) of the Commission for the Interests of Children (Kinderkommission — Kommission zur Wahrnehmung der Belange der Kinder), a subcommittee of the education and family committee. Founded in 1988, it speaks for children and young people, with one member from each group, usually also on the family committee. The parent committee reappointed it on 25 June 2025, and it was constituted on 10 July 2025 with one ordinary member and one substitute per group. [Michael Hose](/people/michael-hose) (CDU/CSU) was the first chair and [Angela Rudzka](/people/angela-rudzka) the AfD’s ordinary member; Hose’s activity report names Rathert as the AfD substitute.

It holds expert discussions, informs the public and argues for a greater say for children and young people, but separation of powers bars it from individual cases such as contact disputes or youth-welfare decisions. Decisions and public statements need a double two-thirds quorum: two-thirds of the commission must agree, and those members must represent two-thirds of the parent committee. The chair rotates by group size. A schedule adopted on 16 October 2025 gave Hose 8 September 2025 to 10 May 2026 and Rudzka the following turn, from 11 May 2026.

### German–Portuguese Parliamentary Group

The biography records Rathert under the Bundestag’s label *Stellvertretender Vorsitz* of the German–Portuguese Parliamentary Group (Deutsch-Portugiesische Parlamentariergruppe). That label denotes a deputy chair; the chair (*Vorsitz*) is [Catarina dos Santos-Wintz](/people/catarina-dos-santos-wintz) (CDU/CSU). The board published for the 21st term also includes [Sebastian Fiedler](/people/sebastian-fiedler) (SPD), [Simone Fischer](/people/simone-fischer) (Alliance 90/The Greens) and [Christian Görke](/people/christian-gorke) (Die Linke). Each parliamentary group that does not hold the chair may name one deputy, so the post is not unique.

The groups are cross-party bodies for relations with other parliaments. In June 2025 the Council of Elders provided for 47 groups covering relations with 180 countries, including Portugal; a member may belong to at most three. Unlike committees, the groups do not adopt statutes or formal resolutions. The Bundestag describes the work as parliamentary diplomacy beside government foreign policy — dialogue, conferences and delegation visits — a practice that began with the first groups in 1957–1961.

## Domestic policy positions

### Education and federalism

In the 34th sitting of the 21st Bundestag, on 16 October 2025, Rathert spoke for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Die Linke’s motion to abolish the cooperation ban in education (printed paper 21/1594, 10 September 2025). The motion called education in Germany underfunded, cited up to €67.8 billion for school repairs and up to €140 billion in higher education, and said the infrastructure fund and the Startchancen programme would not suffice. It asked for an amendment of the Basic Law ending the *Kooperationsverbot* and making education a joint task under Article 91b. The motion was referred to committee.

Rathert said Articles 30 and 70 leave education to the Länder, so that after 1945 no central power would again direct the schools. A joint task of federation, Länder and municipalities was, she said, centralization “by the back door”; dilapidated schools, which she conceded, did not justify breaking the constitution. She called German federalism a competition of ideas “from Bavaria to Schleswig-Holstein and from Niesky to Recklinghausen,” and said Article 79(3), the eternity clause, leaves schooling “immovably” with the Länder. The AfD rejected the motion to preserve Germany “in its original cultural diversity” and to protect children from what she called ideological encroachments by the left. Nicole Gohlke (Die Linke) interrupted that Rathert wanted to abolish human dignity. [Stephan Albani](/people/stephan-albani) of the CDU/CSU likewise refused a constitutional amendment.

### Family and social policy

On 10 October 2025, in the 32nd sitting, she answered Die Linke’s motion on the parental-allowance minimum (printed paper 21/2038). Basic *Elterngeld* runs for up to 14 months and *ElterngeldPlus* for up to 28; the floors of €300 and €150 were unchanged since 2007 despite a 46.3 per cent price rise by July 2025. The motion sought €440 and €220, price indexation, a partial means-test disregard and more staff. Konrad Körner (CDU/CSU) said indexation was unaffordable and that *Elterngeld* replaces wages rather than social assistance; the coalition opposed the motion, which went to committee. Rathert said Germans were suffering “not only economically, but also spiritually,” and objected to Die Linke calling Germany rich while urging that “ever more strangers” be brought in, when there was not enough “for our own people.” She demanded three years at 100 per cent of net pay, not one year at 65 per cent, as a step toward a single family wage, cheaper energy and tax relief for marriage and children.

On 13 January 2026 she signed an AfD motion (printed paper 21/3593) asking for maternity cover for the self-employed and for *Elterngeld* at full replacement until a child’s third birthday.

On 7 May 2026, in the 77th sitting, she spoke on Die Linke’s bill (printed paper 21/5570) for paid leave while a child is ill. [Mandy Eißing](/people/mandy-eissing) wanted a week of full employer pay, six weeks in palliative cases and then insurer sick pay. [Sandra Carstensen](/people/sandra-carstensen) (CDU/CSU) said firms should not bear that uncosted risk and offered a weekly working-time cap. Rathert called it “a political confession of failure” that parents must reckon whether they can stay at a sick child’s side. The loss of income was real, she said, but more state and redistribution were the wrong answer; she blamed the CDU/CSU, in office for 17 of the previous 21 years, for prices and taxes that make one income inadequate. [Jan Dieren](/people/jan-dieren) (SPD) said her family picture might belong to an earlier century. Johannes Wagner of Alliance 90/The Greens backed the bill.

### Migration

On 12 June 2026 the 84th sitting took, at second and third reading, the coalition bill on abusive recognition of paternity (printed papers 21/4081 and 21/6393) and an AfD bill (printed paper 21/4264). Consent of the foreigners’ authority would be required where residence status differs. Cornell Babendererde (CDU/CSU) cited 47 recognitions linked to one man. Hakan Demir (SPD) limited checks to unmarried couples — a German or settled man and a mother seeking asylum or obliged to leave — spoke of about 65,000 cases a year, and excepted a genetic test, later marriage or about a year together. [Filiz Polat](/people/filiz-polat) (Greens) contrasted about 73 established cases with those procedures; [Clara Bünger](/people/clara-bunger) (Die Linke) called the bill discriminatory and contrary to the UN [Convention on the Rights of the Child](/facts/convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child), while Interior state secretary [Daniela Ludwig](/people/daniela-ludwig) called the paid acknowledgements “smuggling by new means.”

Rathert wanted the AfD rules: an early check, no recognition until it finished, and proof, by DNA if required, from the man. She described €10,000 paid to acknowledge a child never seen, securing a residence title, a false official parentage and benefits, and called this an attack on dignity and on knowing one’s origin, and a symptom of “uncontrolled mass migration” of hundreds of thousands a year. The coalition bill passed, with the CDU/CSU and the SPD for, the Greens and Die Linke against, and the AfD abstaining; Rathert is among the abstentions on the roll call. Only the AfD voted for its own bill, which was rejected.

On 22 September 2026 she signed printed paper 21/8120, which blames “mass immigration” for the latest Programme for International Student Assessment fall in reading, mathematics and science. It cites 504, 454 and 405 points for pupils with no, second-generation and first-generation migration background, and calls that the widest such gap among 36 European countries in the comparison. With the Länder it asks for origin statistics, no ordinary primary entry without sufficient German, compulsory preparatory classes, grouping by attainment, and the return of people it describes as not integrable or obliged to leave.

## Foreign and security policy

### Committee work and plenary interventions

In the 21st Bundestag, Rathert is an ordinary member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and of its Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy, set up on 16 October 2025. The subcommittee covers foreign cultural and educational policy, including the Goethe-Institut and the German Academic Exchange Service. In the chamber she argued for an interest-led policy, including on 6 November 2025 on a Greens motion for the 25th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325.

On Drucksache 21/2555 she called feminist foreign policy a pose, not a strategy. She criticised former foreign minister [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock)’s presentation, said Baerbock had been refused handshakes in Arab states, and attributed to her the line that Germany was waging “war against Russia.” She said she meant Baerbock’s record, not women as such.

On 15 October 2025, on an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) motion to publish payments to international organisations and NGOs (Drucksache 21/2209), she called meeting foreign expectations people-pleasing and said recipients, sums and agendas should be disclosed. On 17 April 2026, on a Greens motion against the Russian shadow fleet (Drucksache 21/5330), she granted that old, poorly insured tankers threatened coasts, but called further sanctions the work of “arsonists” and the fleet a result of blocked legal trade, and asked for diplomacy instead.

On 7 October 2026, in an AfD debate on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s trip to Kyiv, she objected to travel on the Day of German Unity and to sums she gave as €1 billion in arms and €350 million for energy. She put support for Ukraine at €102 billion, said it prolonged the dying, and argued the money was needed for schools, hospitals and railways.

### Munich Security Conference and transatlantic contacts

On 29 January 2026, on a Greens motion to “rethink transatlantic relations” (Drucksache 21/3618), Rathert called the text a cry for help against a [Donald Trump](/people/mig-donald-trump) administration that, she said, practised “America first.” That course was a voters’ choice, she argued; Germany hid in international “protection and support systems” from an “old fear of a strong Germany,” and Washington respected strength, not lectures.

The 62nd Munich Security Conference, 13–15 February 2026 at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, was chaired by Wolfgang Ischinger. Rathert attended for the Foreign Affairs Committee, with AfD defence politicians [Rüdiger Lucassen](/people/rudiger-lucassen) and Heinrich Koch. The invitations, after two years in which the AfD had not been asked, were contested. She told *Der Tagesspiegel* she did not know the reason—“The MSC decides that itself”—and that she would listen, observe and try to meet military representatives.

On 15 February she told dpa she had met aides to Secretary of State [Marco Rubio](/people/marco-rubio) in passing, in talks she called “very constructive, very pleasant, very positive,” though not Rubio himself or Republican members of Congress. She announced an AfD delegation of three or four for 4–5 March in Washington, at “The Alliance of Sovereign Nations,” which she said she had started with Representative [Anna Paulina Luna](/people/anna-paulina-luna). On 30 March she led Drucksache 21/5084, asking what the government drew from Rubio’s speech of 14 February and from Merz’s remark that America’s claim to lead was “challenged, perhaps already gambled away.”

### Human rights debates

On 7 November 2025, in a Greens debate on Sudan, Rathert called the war one of the cruellest and least noticed, citing mass death, displacement, hunger and rape. Christians, she said, were persecuted “because they are Christians,” while both sides—the army under al-Burhan, allegedly backed by the [Muslim Brotherhood](/organizations/muslim-brotherhood), and Hemeti’s gold-financed Rapid Support Forces—committed massacres in a proxy war. She wanted aid kept from warlords, no German arms or dual-use goods and no new refugee crisis, and she called a Quad of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others “sober diplomacy.” A short intervention asked when policymakers, including at the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations), would examine what she said kept producing such wars.

On Human Rights Day, 4 December 2025, she said rights required “intellectual honesty,” not pathos, citing Islamist violence in Afghanistan and Sudan and, as she said Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg had reported, threats to a gay Berlin teacher by Muslim pupils. She invoked the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which she said placed rights under sharia in 57 states, and accused other parties of importing those conflicts by migration.

On 9 October 2026 the House debated the 85th anniversary of the massacre at Babyn Yar (Drucksachen 21/8152 and 21/8365). [Maren Kaminski](/people/maren-kaminski) ([The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia)) recalled the murder of 33,771 Jews and said members again sat in the House who had called that barbarism a “Vogelschiss” or themselves “the friendly face of National Socialism.” Rathert asked how Kaminski felt accusing her—a mother who had breastfed three children for nearly ten years—of supporting such crimes. Kaminski said the words had been spoken and never disowned; Rathert called that shameless.

## Local politics in Recklinghausen

### 2025 municipal election

On 14 September 2025 voters in Recklinghausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, elected a council of 52 members, down from 56 in 2020. Turnout was 52.9 percent (47,149 of 89,058 people entitled to vote), against 47.9 percent in 2020, and 46,860 votes were valid. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led with 31.7 percent (14,854 votes) and 17 seats, up from 25.1 percent and 14 seats. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was second with 28.7 percent (13,446 votes) and 15 seats, down from 37.0 percent and 21 seats.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 18.5 percent (8,663 votes) and 10 seats, from 6.6 percent and four seats in 2020. Alliance 90/The Greens won 10.7 percent and six seats, Die Linke 4.8 percent and two, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 2.4 percent and one, and Die PARTEI 1.7 percent and one. The state returning officer counted one woman and nine men among the AfD councillors, and the city named Dr. Anna Labitzke Rathert as one of the ten.

The city called the constitutive sitting for Monday, 3 November 2025, in the town hall's large council chamber, and reported that day that it had been held. After the councillors were sworn in, the longest-serving member, Benno Portmann (CDU), opened the meeting and administered the oath to the new mayor, Axel Tschersich (SPD), winner of the 28 September runoff with 68.5 percent against Anja Rex (CDU). The council chose Claudia Schweppe (SPD) and Marita Bergmaier (CDU) as honorary deputy mayors and left committee places to a sitting on 17 November.

### Council mandate

Rathert's Bundestag biography, drawn from the disclosures required of members, lists a Recklinghausen council seat from 3 November 2025 at a monthly gross payment of €551.80, alongside her seat in the 21st Bundestag, won on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list after she stood in constituency 120, Recklinghausen I. That amount is the full monthly flat rate (*Vollpauschale*) which section 2(1) no. 7 of the state compensation ordinance, in force from 1 January 2026, sets for councillors in municipalities of 100,001 to 150,000 inhabitants. The state statistical office recorded 115,344 inhabitants on 31 December 2024, inside that band; the ordinance uses the population figure underlying the election and keeps the rate for the council term. It defines the payment as a lump-sum reimbursement of expenses from the honorary municipal office and as compensation for time and work, while allowing a council to pay a lower partial flat rate plus an attendance fee of €28.20 instead. The published entry gives only the single monthly gross figure.

Section 44a of the Members of the Bundestag Act (*Abgeordnetengesetz*) puts exercise of the Bundestag mandate at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of a member's activity but leaves activities of a professional or other kind generally permissible beside it. Paid representation of outside interests before the Bundestag or the federal government is forbidden; honorary activities are exempt where the proportionate expense allowance does not exceed 10 percent a month of the members' compensation under section 11(1), as are political offices. Notices under the code of conduct in sections 45 onwards are due within three months of taking up membership or of a later change, and are published after a check that publication is required.

## Reception

### Media portrayals and campaign rhetoric

Papers around Recklinghausen treated Rathert’s 2025 campaign manner and her language at party events as two registers. On 6 January 2025 Thomas Brysch, in a *Dorstener Zeitung* commentary, wrote that at an Alternative for Germany candidate-selection congress in Marl-Sinsen she had brought a hall of about 500 delegates “zum Kochen.” The standfirst said the district association was sending toward the Bundestag a candidate who, in that commentary, did not fall short of [Matthias Helferich](/people/matthias-helferich), whom the piece called a right-wing extremist.

The *Recklinghäuser Zeitung* drew a similar contrast more mildly. On 7 February 2025 Fabian Hollenhorst’s commentary was headed “Die ‚nette Rechte‘ der AfD” and said she did not show voters her “wahres Gesicht.” Its standfirst described her in the paper’s election arena as “ruhig, besonnen, freundlich,” and said she preferred to show party colleagues another face; a subheading read “‚Wir gegen die‘ ist der Konsens.” On 16 February a profile by Ralf Wiethaup was headlined that she had “keine Scheu vor kräftigen Aussagen.” It quoted “Die AfD muss es richten,” said that ambition could hardly be held against her, and added that “das Gesamtpaket Dr. Anna Rathert” was not uncontroversial. A quoted subheading carried a description of Friedrich Merz as “doch nur eine Raubkopie.”

### Debate over the security-conference invitations

The choice of Rathert for the February 2026 Munich Security Conference, with Rüdiger Lucassen and Heinrich Koch but not foreign-policy spokesman Markus Frohnmaier, drew irritation inside the AfD as well as criticism outside it. Lucassen, himself invited, told *Der Tagesspiegel*, in an account *Welt* published on 5 February 2026, “Ich kann mir diese beiden Einladungen nicht erklären,” and asked why Frohnmaier had not been invited. His own invitation, he said, had come early, after contact with conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger. Rathert told the same paper she did not know the reason—“Die MSC entscheidet das selbst”—that it was her first time, and that she would “viel zuhören und beobachten” and hoped to meet military representatives, since “als Zivilist hat man ja normalerweise keinen Zugang zu solchen Personen.”

[Sara Nanni](/people/sara-nanni), security-policy spokeswoman of Alliance 90/The Greens, told *Tagesspiegel* that side events had been held in a “vertrauter Atmosphäre” because participants were “alle pro Nato eingestellt,” and that people would now have to “den Raum mehr scannen” and would ask security-relevant questions only if the answers would not “in Russland landen.” She suspected pressure from Washington after [JD Vance](/people/jd-vance)’s speech at the previous conference, called the AfD a “willfähriger Unterstützer US-amerikanischer Interessen,” and objected to inviting what she termed “eine rechtsextreme Oppositionspartei,” which she called regrettable given German history. Falko Droßmann, defence-policy spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said the conference chose its guests but, given its reach, bore responsibility for the signal: the AfD undermined trust in alliances, unsettled partners, courted authoritarian regimes and thus became “selbst zu einem sicherheitspolitischen Risiko.”

On 29 December 2025 [Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann](/people/marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann) of the Free Democratic Party told *Welt* that yielding to the AfD because it might someday govern was “töricht” and “gefährlich,” and that Moscow could then be spared espionage if an AfD politician sat in the smaller rounds. She said the list was Ischinger’s, and that she did not want to allege that Vance was choosing the guests. *Spiegel* reported the next day that Stephan Kramer, head of Thuringia’s office for the protection of the constitution, called the invitations “problematisch.” On 13 February 2026 the *Recklinghäuser Zeitung* reported that Rathert rejected the charge that AfD participation was a security risk.

### Parliamentary call to order

On 12 November 2025, in the 39th sitting of the 21st Bundestag, Vice-President [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) called Rathert to order during an *Aktuelle Stunde* the AfD had requested on possible copyright infringements and conflicts of interest of the federal commissioner for culture and the media. Rathert had a question to Johannes Volkmann of the CDU/CSU. She said she had seen him, in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and before official American guests of the Bundestag, “Lügen über uns auskippen”; an SPD interjection called “Lügen” unparliamentary. She asked whether he was showing “das wahre Gesicht” of his grandfather, or whether that grandfather would turn in his grave, and referred to a psychologist at a closed meeting and to “Projektion.”

Lindholz interrupted: “Im Übrigen erteile ich Ihnen einen Ordnungsruf dafür, dass Sie den Kollegen der Lüge bezichtigen, und zwar direkt und persönlich,” and warned that laughing would bring another. Rathert then asked whether Volkmann had discussed projection with the psychologist; the protocol records no remark from her on the call to order itself.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/anna-rathert