# Birgit Bessin

# Birgit Bessin

Birgit Irene Bessin (born 26 March 1978 in Worms) is a German politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since March 2025. She holds the direct mandate for constituency 65, Elbe-Elster – Oberspreewald-Lausitz, in Brandenburg. The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025, after the 20th Bundestag had been dissolved. In that constituency she received 43.0 percent of the first votes (57,194), with Knut Friedrich Alexander Abraham of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) second on 18.3 percent; the AfD also led the second-vote count, with 40.9 percent, and turnout was 79.5 percent.

After the Abitur in 1997 she studied law at the Free University of Berlin from 1997 to 2007, then business law at the Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg from 2007 to 2013, and completed a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). She was self-employed in 2011 and 2012 and employed from 2012 to 2014. She joined the AfD on 22 April 2013. Since May 2014 she has been a member of the district council of Teltow-Fläming, and since June 2019 chair of its AfD group; since May 2024 she has also sat on the city council of Trebbin.

From October 2014 until 9 April 2025 she was a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg. She sat on the Landtag presidium and was parliamentary managing director of the AfD group from October 2014 to December 2017, then deputy chair of the group until spring 2022. From February 2022 to September 2024 she chaired the Landtag inquiry into the causes, consequences and responsibility for the cost and schedule overruns at Berlin Brandenburg Airport. On 9 April 2022 a state party congress in Prenzlau elected her chair of the AfD in Brandenburg, with 178 votes against 147 for René Springer; the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* described the then 44-year-old deputy chair as a confidante of Andreas Kalbitz and a member of the party's right-nationalist grouping, the Flügel. She remained state chair until April 2024. At the Brandenburg state election of 22 September 2024 she won the direct mandate in Oberspreewald-Lausitz I with 44.3 percent of the first votes.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, the Committee on Health, and the enquete commission on the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic). She is also a substitute member of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. She is a full member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe). On 17 May 2023, during a Landtag ceremony marking the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia, whistling and shouts kept her from delivering a speech that the Landtag administration had allotted to her on a rotating basis.

## Early life and education

Birgit Bessin was born on 26 March 1978 in Worms, in Rhineland-Palatinate, then part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bundestag biography gives her name as Birgit Bessin. The German National Library authority record also lists the variant Birgit Irene Bessin, with Worms as the place of birth and 1978 as the year. The Landtag of Brandenburg and a February 2025 profile in the *Ärzte Zeitung* state that she is married and has one child; they do not name a spouse, a child or parents. Schooling, university study and employment before her parliamentary career are known from curricula published by the two parliaments. The Bundestag states that its biographical entries rest on the members' own information.

### Schooling

According to the Bundestag biography, Bessin took the Abitur in 1997, the year in which she turned 19. The entry does not name a school or the state in which she sat the examination, and neither the Landtag curriculum nor the *Ärzte Zeitung* profile supplies that information. A birthplace in Worms is therefore not evidence of where she went to school. Under the rules of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder (Kultusministerkonferenz), the *gymnasiale Oberstufe* ends with the Abitur examination, and the certificate attests the *Allgemeine Hochschulreife*, the general qualification for entry to higher education. That upper-secondary stage is entered with a *Mittlerer Schulabschluss* carrying the right to attend it, and the time in school to the *Allgemeine Hochschulreife* is twelve or thirteen years.

### University studies and early work

From 1997 to 2007 the Bundestag and Landtag curricula list study of law (*Rechtswissenschaften*) at the Free University of Berlin. Neither text records an examination result or a degree for that period. Under the German Judiciary Act, the qualification for judicial office is acquired by completing a university course in law with the first examination—a university specialization examination together with a state examination in the compulsory subjects—and then a preparatory service ending in the second state examination. The degree the curricula do record belongs to a different course.

From 2007 to 2013 they list study of *Wirtschaftsrecht* (business law) at the Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). The Euro-FH is a private distance-learning institution in the Klett Group. It began teaching in 2003, when the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg recognized it, at first for a limited term, as a university of applied sciences (*Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften*); since 2013 that recognition has been unlimited. It offers only distance programmes, aimed primarily at people who are already employed, with subject areas that include business. In a statement adopted on 7 July 2023, the Wissenschaftsrat, reviewing the institution at Hamburg's request, found that it met the council's requirements of a higher-education institution and reaccredited it for five years in the first instance, subject to one condition. The Landtag lists Bessin's occupation as *Wirtschaftsjuristin*, the description also used by the *Ärzte Zeitung*.

The Landtag curriculum places paid work alongside the later years of study: clerical work, later financial accounting, from 2006 to 2010; registration as seeking work in 2010–2011; self-employment in 2011–2012; and financial accounting from 2012 to 2014, at first at a graphic-design firm. The shorter Bundestag text confirms self-employment in 2011–2012 and an employment relationship in 2012–2014, without naming the field or the employer.

## Local offices

### Teltow-Fläming district council

The Kreistag is the elected assembly of the rural district of Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg. A Landkreis carries public tasks beyond the capacity of its towns and Ämter, and the municipal constitution applies the rules for a town council to the Kreistag. The assembly has 56 seats in five constituencies. Voters may cast up to three votes, so valid votes can reach three times the number of voters.

Birgit Bessin, of the Alternative for Germany, has sat in the Kreistag since the election of 25 May 2014. In constituency 3 she was the AfD candidate elected with 2,105 votes; the party won three seats in the district. On 26 May 2019 the AfD took 37,899 votes, 15.7 percent, and nine seats. The corrected result lists her in constituency 5 with 1,863 votes, behind Max Theilemann (2,491) on a list that won two seats there. On 24 June 2019 the new Kreistag appointed her to the Kreisausschuss, with Daniel von Lützow as substitute. The biography she gave the Bundestag states that she has chaired the AfD faction since June 2019.

At the election of 9 June 2024 the AfD received 64,089 votes, 23.6 percent, and 13 seats, more than any other single list. Turnout was 63.7 percent (93,370 of 146,508 eligible voters). In constituency 7204 she was returned with 6,847 votes, ahead of the other AfD candidates there. The district called the constituent meeting for 8 July 2024 in the council chamber at Luckenwalde. Its information system records her as AfD faction chair from 24 June 2024, in a group of 13 voting members.

The mandate is compensated by an expense allowance. The district statute in force from 1 January 2026, replacing that of 16 December 2019, sets 320 euros a month for each member and a further 320 euros for a faction chair, plus a session fee of 30 euros; if several supplements are due, only the higher is paid. In the Bundestag’s publication of members’ own reports, Bessin states a monthly gross allowance of 660 euros for the seat and the faction chair.

### Trebbin and company posts

On 9 June 2024 Bessin was also elected to the Stadtverordnetenversammlung of Trebbin, the name Brandenburg law gives the municipal assembly in a town. Its members serve five years. Of 8,265 eligible voters, 5,733 voted (69.4 percent), casting 16,780 valid votes. The AfD received 3,724 votes, 22.2 percent, and four of 18 seats, just ahead of the CDU (3,703 votes, 22.1 percent, four seats). Frischer Wind took three seats, the SPD, the Unabhängige Freie Wähler and the Neue Liste two each, and [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) one. Bessin received 1,424 personal votes, the most on the AfD list and among those elected. Her Bundestag biography dates the mandate from May 2024, although the election was on 9 June, and the disclosure names the membership without an allowance.

The same disclosure lists her as an unpaid member of the supervisory board of TREWO Städtische Wohnungsbau- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Trebbin’s municipal housing company. The firm, registered at the Amtsgericht Potsdam, is managed by Alexandra Schwabe; mayor Ronny Haase chairs the supervisory board. TREWO states that it lets about 400 dwellings, 25 commercial units, 73 garages and 65 parking spaces. The disclosure also records a participation, with no income stated, in vedaccon eGbR in Trebbin from 1 July 2025.

## Party career in AfD Brandenburg

### Joining the party and early posts

Birgit Bessin joined the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) on 22 April 2013, according to the biography she supplied to the Bundestag; the parliament notes that such entries rest on members' own statements. From autumn 2013 until spring 2015 she sat on the state executive of the AfD in Brandenburg. From December 2013 until November 2017 she chaired the Teltow-Fläming district association, and from July 2016 until April 2022 she was a deputy state chair. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) report in October 2020, when she was preparing a bid to lead the Landtag group, likewise dated that deputy chairmanship to July 2016. She again sat on the Teltow-Fläming district executive from June 2022 until March 2025.

### The Erfurt Resolution and Der Flügel

In March 2015 Björn Höcke was among the initiators of the Erfurt Resolution, which *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* called the founding document of Der Flügel, an informal inner-party grouping it described as völkisch-nationalist and which, the magazine added, kept no membership lists. The text rejected adaptation to what it called the "established political business" and said the AfD had to remain a "resistance movement": a "fundamental, patriotic and democratic alternative to the established parties" and a "movement of our people" against "social experiments" such as gender mainstreaming and multiculturalism.

Later reporting tied Bessin to that paper. In 2020 dpa called her one of its first signatories, of what the agency termed the right-wing nationalist Flügel around Höcke. On her election as state chair, dpa wrote that she, like Andreas Kalbitz, had signed the resolution, and the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* wrote that she was regarded as a confidante of Kalbitz and had been a member of that wing. *Der Tagesspiegel* placed her in the Kalbitz camp. The newspaper *nd* counted her with the by then formally dissolved völkisch wing and with Kalbitz's line; Christoph Schulze of the Moses Mendelssohn Centre in Potsdam, quoted there, said she was known at [the base](/organizations/the-base) from regulars' tables and demonstrations and stood for openly radical, pointed, even shrill tones.

The state chair had been empty since the summer of 2020, when the AfD federal arbitration court declared Kalbitz's membership void. *nd* reported that the deputy chairs Bessin and Daniel Freiherr von Lützow then led the association, and that both were regarded as Kalbitz confidants. dpa reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had treated Der Flügel as a right-wing extremist endeavour since March 2020, and that the Brandenburg office had listed the state party as a suspected case of right-wing extremism since June 2020, a classification the association was contesting in court. At the March 2024 congress Bessin said, "We are not a right-wing extremist party. We stand on the ground of the Basic Law."

### State chair, 2022–2024

On 9 April 2022 a members' congress in Prenzlau, in the Uckermark, elected her state chair over two rivals. Of more than 330 members present she received 178 votes, about 53.3 percent, against 147 (44.01 percent) for Bundestag member René Springer and eight for Alexander Nikulka of the Oder-Spree district association. She told the congress she had run the state party as acting chair since Kalbitz left, had kept contact with the district associations, and wanted to concentrate on party work and recruiting. "I am a team player and absolutely motivated," she said. A board report she presented put membership at 1,386 at the end of March, down from a 2020 peak of 1,650, a fall she attributed to internal disputes; Teltow-Fläming had dropped from 212 to 134, while the Uckermark association had grown from 70 to 114.

Springer, formerly office manager to honorary chair [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland), was then elected first deputy in a runoff, with 51.1 percent against [Steffen Kotré](/people/steffen-kotre). Andreas Galau became second deputy with 50.6 percent, ahead of Landtag group leader Christoph Berndt, who had backed Springer for the chair. Springer had argued for taking office: "We have to pose the question of power in this country, we have to become the strongest force and we have to take on governmental responsibility." Political scientist Gideon Botsch told dpa that Bessin was "a clear Flügel woman," that "the Flügel always prevails in a conflict," and that both she and Springer stood for what he called the state association's far-right course—a label Springer rejected. Botsch said the attempt by Springer, Berndt and Dennis Hohloch to unify and professionalize the state party had been rebuffed.

She did not stand again. At the congress in Jüterbog on 16 March 2024 she said, "I am no longer standing for the state executive," to avoid a power struggle with Springer and so the party would leave the congress united for the campaign, in which she said it had to be a factor at the local elections. Springer, the sole candidate, received 368 votes in favour, 74 against and six abstentions, about 82 percent; the party quoted 83 percent after excluding abstentions. *Die Tageszeitung* read the result as Berndt's camp displacing the Kalbitz-aligned line, which the paper associated with fundamental opposition, in favour of a Berndt–Springer strategy of appearing fit to govern, and reported that von Lützow and Berndt were elected deputies. Bessin's Bundestag biography dates the chairmanship from April 2022 to April 2024.

## Landtag of Brandenburg

### Entry, presidium and faction offices

Birgit Bessin was a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg, the state parliament of Brandenburg, from October 2014 until the end of 9 April 2025. The Landtag's member page, which states that its biographical entries rest on the member's own information, records the mandate she held at the end of that period as a direct seat for constituency 38, Oberspreewald-Lausitz I. The Bundestag biography gives the same overall span, October 2014 to April 2025, and the Bundestag's register of functions lists her Landtag membership, entered under the Land of Brandenburg in Potsdam, as ending on 9 April 2025.

From October 2014 to December 2017 she was a member of the Landtag presidium and parliamentary managing director of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group. From October 2017 until spring 2022 she was deputy chair of the AfD parliamentary group. In the eighth electoral term, the Landtag's list of committee places as of 17 January 2025 — issued as most committees finished constituting themselves — named her an ordinary member of the Committee on Health and Social Affairs. She was a substitute member of the Budget and Finance Committee and of the special committee on structural development in Lusatia.

### BER airport inquiry

On 23 February 2022 the Landtag established Untersuchungsausschuss 7/2 to clarify "the causes, the consequences and the responsibility for the cost and schedule overruns of the opened Berlin Brandenburg Airport '[Willy Brandt](/people/willy-brandt)' (BER)". The decision followed a motion by 22 members of the AfD group. Article 72(1) of the state constitution obliges the Landtag to appoint an investigative committee when one fifth of its members request one; the house then had 88 members. The committee was given eleven members with a vote. Bessin was elected chair without a vote under section 4(3) of the state's Untersuchungsausschussgesetz, and Helmut Barthel of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) was elected deputy chair.

The committee constituted itself in a closed sitting on 6 May 2022. The Landtag's notice that day said the inquiry was to examine the processes that had made completion about five billion euros more expensive and substantially late, and in particular to answer 167 individual questions.

Bessin presented a partial report, Drucksache 7/9792, in the plenary of 20–21 June 2024. She said the remit had set 183 questions in six subject areas and that only four areas had been finished: flight paths and noise protection, finances, technology and construction defects, and the shareholders' supervisory duty. She reported 65 orders taking evidence, more than 1,500 physical file binders, nearly 43,000 digital files, and 38 witness examinations across 14 sittings lasting almost 74 hours. For the majority, she attributed the overruns chiefly to planning errors, failures of project steering and control, construction delays, technical problems including the fire-protection installation, and extensive changes to the building plans. The recommendations she read out included putting construction and project specialists on supervisory boards, reflecting administrative hierarchies in the company's organs, and preferring careful analysis to quick fixes. She added that the AfD group and the BVB/Freie Wähler group had attached dissenting opinions because they did not share the majority's assessment.

Barthel, for the SPD, said the governing side had not expected fundamentally new knowledge: a report commissioned from the expert Dr. Ludwig had found that earlier inquiries had already answered more than two thirds of the questions. He described about 20 sittings and said 1.485 million euros had been entered in the 2023/2024 budget for the committee. In his account the evidence confirmed known causes, among them inadequate information from the airport company's management to the supervisory board and the shareholders, but produced "no significant new findings" and no single line of individual responsibility. [Saskia Ludwig](/people/saskia-ludwig), for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said culpable failure by the state government had not been shown, while treating the opposition's right to force the inquiry as not in dispute. Matthias Stefke of BVB/Freie Wähler argued that the files undermined three widely repeated accounts: that Minister-President Manfred Stolpe had been outvoted in Bonn in 1996 over the Schönefeld site, that a 15-degree bend in the flight paths had come as a surprise, and that the abandoned opening in 2012 had been sudden. The plenary adopted the committee's recommended resolution with abstentions and with no votes against, and took note of the partial report. Both parliamentary biographies date Bessin's chairmanship from February 2022 to September 2024.

### End of the state mandate

Bessin took her seat in the Bundestag in March 2025, while the Landtag mandate continued until she gave it up. At the opening of the Landtag's 12th sitting, a special session on 10 April 2025, the president told the house that Bessin, by then a member of the Bundestag, had relinquished her Landtag mandate with effect from the end of 9 April 2025. The state returning officer had notified the parliament that Marlon Deter became a member with effect from 10 April 2025 and joined the AfD group. Deter's Landtag page states that he succeeded Bessin from place 12 on the AfD state list; immediately before entering he had been a staff member of the AfD Landtag group, from November 2024 to April 2025.

## Elections

### State elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024

Birgit Bessin entered the Landtag of Brandenburg at the state elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024, the first two times from the state list of [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) and in 2024 by a direct mandate in a different part of Brandenburg. On 14 September 2014 she was the AfD candidate in constituency 23, Teltow-Fläming I, the northern end of the district of Teltow-Fläming. The constituency then comprised Ludwigsfelde, Trebbin, Am Mellensee, Großbeeren and Nuthe-Urstromtal, where the approved state list gave her address. She stood fifth on that list.

She did not win the seat. Of 20,962 valid first votes she received 2,680 (12.79 percent). Helmut Barthel of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) won with 6,936 votes (33.09 percent); Danny Eichelbaum of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) took 4,805 (22.92 percent) and Norbert Müller of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 3,604 (17.19 percent). Turnout was 46.55 percent of 46,041 people eligible to vote, and the AfD list received 2,682 second votes (12.75 percent) in the constituency. The AfD won no direct mandate in the state. The state electoral committee, meeting on 26 September 2014, filled all 11 of its seats from the state list, including Bessin's.

At the election of 1 September 2019 she stood instead in the neighbouring constituency 24, Teltow-Fläming II, in the south of the same district. Under the Landtag election statute that seat covers Luckenwalde, Jüterbog, Niedergörsdorf and Amt Dahme/Mark; the 2014 description of the same constituency also listed the then separate municipality of Niederer Fläming. Bessin received 5,875 first votes (24.26 percent of 24,220 valid ballots), ahead of Felix Menzel (CDU, 3,354 votes, 13.85 percent) and Felix Thier (Die Linke, 2,772, 11.45 percent), but behind Erik Stohn of the SPD, who won with 7,899 votes (32.61 percent). Turnout was 60.95 percent of 40,344 eligible voters. The AfD's second-vote share in the constituency was 25.40 percent (6,159 votes). Bessin was fourth on the AfD state list and again took a list seat rather than the constituency.

She did not contest Oberspreewald-Lausitz I before 2024. In 2019 that constituency, number 38, had no AfD direct candidate: Ingo Senftleben (CDU) won it with 5,160 first votes (26.31 percent), while the AfD list already polled 7,319 second votes (35.73 percent). On 22 September 2024 Bessin was the AfD candidate there. The seat covers Lauchhammer, Schipkau, Schwarzheide, Amt Ortrand and Amt Ruhland, in the south of the district of Oberspreewald-Lausitz. The final result, certified on 7 October 2024, gave her 10,427 first votes (44.3 percent of 23,562 valid votes). Martin Höntsch (SPD) was second with 6,092 (25.9 percent) and Lucas Magister (CDU) third with 3,729 (15.8 percent). Turnout was 72.2 percent of 33,094 eligible voters. The state returning officer recorded a 44.3-point rise in the AfD first-vote share because the party had nominated nobody in the constituency in 2019; its second-vote share rose 5.9 points, to 41.7 percent (9,863 votes), with Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) at 14.1 percent of the list vote. The direct mandate was what seated her.

### 2025 federal election

The election to the 21st [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) was held on 23 February 2025, after the federal president dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December 2024 and moved the poll forward from the date originally set for September. Bessin stood in constituency 65, Elbe-Elster – Oberspreewald-Lausitz. Under the annex to the Federal Elections Act that constituency is the whole of the districts of Elbe-Elster and Oberspreewald-Lausitz, a larger area than the Landtag seat she had just won and one that does not include Teltow-Fläming. The constituency electoral committee admitted seven candidates on 24 January 2025. Besides Bessin, whose notice of candidacy gave her residence as Trebbin, they were Hannes Walter (SPD) and Knut Abraham (CDU), both already members of the Bundestag, Johannes Sven Hänig of the Free Democratic Party, Jenifer Howel of Alliance 90/The Greens, Klaus-Günter Karich of Die Linke and Sandra Raddatz of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters).

In the final count Bessin received 57,194 first votes, 43.0 percent of 133,078 valid ballots, 18.3 points above the AfD's first-vote share in the constituency in 2021. Abraham was the runner-up with 24,331 votes (18.3 percent). Walter's SPD candidacy took 22,087 votes (16.6 percent), 9.3 points lower than the SPD share in 2021. Karich received 15,935 (12.0 percent), Raddatz 7,005 (5.3 percent), Hänig 3,822 (2.9 percent) and Howel 2,704 (2.0 percent). Of 169,170 eligible voters, 134,488 voted, a turnout of 79.5 percent, up 5.4 points from 2021. Second votes also placed the AfD first, with 54,660 (40.9 percent), ahead of the CDU on 16.5 percent, the SPD on 12.5 percent and the BSW on 11.7 percent. Bessin therefore held the constituency in her own right. The new Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 25 March 2025.

## Bundestag and the Council of Europe

### Committees

Birgit Bessin, of the Alternative for Germany, has been a member of the Bundestag since March 2025. The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on Tuesday, 25 March 2025. She holds the direct mandate for constituency 65, Elbe-Elster – Oberspreewald-Lausitz, in Brandenburg. The federal returning officer defines that constituency as the districts of Elbe-Elster and Oberspreewald-Lausitz.

On the biography current as of 28 October 2026, she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. She is a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Committee on Health.

She is also a substitute member of the study commission “Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse”, listed by the Bundestag as the Enquete-Kommission „Corona“. The chamber established the commission on 10 July 2025 (Drucksache 21/562), and it was constituted on 8 September 2025. The commission’s published membership list places her among the AfD substitutes, with Thomas Dietz and [Pierre Lamely](/people/pierre-lamely).

A picture list of deputy members of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, dated 11 September 2025 and linked from the agency’s page on the board, names Bessin for the AfD in the 21st electoral term. She does not appear on the agency’s list of full members bearing the same date. The agency states that the board, made up of members of the Bundestag, oversees its work.

In the plenary she has spoken for the AfD on subjects within and beside those briefs. On 9 October 2025 she spoke in the second and third reading of the government bill on a nationwide training scheme for nursing assistants, and on the AfD motion “Dem deutschen Volke – Unsere Zukunft gestalten und durch geeignete Familienpolitik sichern” (Drucksache 21/2034). On 4 December 2025 she spoke on a motion from Alliance 90/The Greens, “Gewaltschutz ganzheitlich denken – [Istanbul Convention](/facts/istanbul-convention) vollständig umsetzen” (Drucksache 21/2803). On 19 March 2026 she spoke in the agreed debate on International Women’s Day and in the debate on an AfD motion on attempted and completed killings committed in the name of family honour. On 10 September 2026 she spoke on Einzelplan 17, the budget of the Federal Ministry of Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. On 8 October 2026, at first reading, she spoke on an AfD bill she had co-sponsored to amend Book VIII of the Social Code, “Rückbesinnung auf biologische Geschlechter in der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe” (Drucksache 21/8372).

### Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

On 5 June 2025 the Bundestag agreed a joint nomination by the CDU/CSU, the AfD, the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Left for Germany’s representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The nomination, Drucksache 21/339 of 4 June 2025, lists Bessin as a full member for the AfD and [Johann Martel](/people/johann-martel) as her substitute. The Bundestag’s page on the delegation likewise lists her among the full members.

Assembly documents record her in the political group ECPA, European Conservatives, Patriots & Affiliates. A note of changes in committee membership dated 26 June 2025 already lists her as a full member of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, with [Martina Kempf](/people/martina-kempf) as alternate. Meeting in Strasbourg from 23 to 26 June 2025, the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination approved her joining the Sub-Committee on Gender Equality as a full member, with Inge Gräßle as her alternate. The Assembly’s nomination of members to its general committees, dated 26 January 2026, lists her as a full member of the Social Affairs committee, again with Kempf as alternate, and of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, with Johann Martel as alternate.

### Constituency offices

The Bundestag gives her parliamentary office as Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin. It lists four constituency offices: Straße der Einheit 28 in Ortrand; Schmiedestraße 9/11 in Senftenberg; August-Bebel-Straße 11 in Finsterwalde; and Hainsche Straße 3 in Bad Liebenwerda. A further address, Baruther Straße 28 in Trebbin, is given as a citizens’ office, Bürgerbüro Birgit Bessin MdB, rather than as a Wahlkreisbüro. Constituency 65, as delimited for the 2025 federal election, consists of the districts of Elbe-Elster and Oberspreewald-Lausitz; the returning officer’s Brandenburg list places Teltow-Fläming in constituencies 60, 61 and 62.

## Political positions

### Family, education and gender

In the Landtag of Brandenburg, Bessin argued for the Alternative for Germany that family policy should treat a mother-father-child household as normal rather than outdated. In January 2020, on “Commitment to the family as a cornerstone of society,” she said the party was not prescribing how people must live, denied wanting women “at the stove,” and said the AfD had “no problems at all with same-sex couples.” She cited earlier demands for free Kita places, a choice to keep small children at home, pay during a child’s illness, an interest-free family loan, and support for single parents.

She has applied the same frame to schools and youth services. In June 2023 she opposed “sensitizing” family centers to rainbow families and trans children, and she called puberty blockers and a self-directed legal sex change from age 14 “state-funded child endangerment.” On 21–22 March 2024, speaking to “Against the denial of biology,” she said a newborn’s sex is recognizable, that there are two sexes, and that medical help for intersex people should not be generalized. She blamed irreversible treatment of minors on a denial of biological sex and backed the initiative “Genderfrei jetzt” against gendered neologisms. In June 2024, on the Queeres Brandenburg action plan and a Left motion for “Education under the rainbow” in schools, she called the plan “a left-ideological attack on the traditional family,” while saying people could “live as they wish and love whom they wish.” In January 2025 she said legal sex in Germany could be changed “by a speech act” but biology could not, and she asked the state to keep athletes born male out of women’s sport and out of women’s changing rooms, showers and toilets.

In the Bundestag on 9 October 2025 she opened an AfD motion filed in her name, “For the German people—shaping our future and securing it through suitable family policy” (Drucksache 21/2034). She began with the title of [Thilo Sarrazin](/people/thilo-sarrazin)’s *Deutschland schafft sich ab* and said low births plus mass migration had been made more likely by what she called a “united front of family destroyers.” The motion sought a KfW loan of up to €10,000 per child for German citizens only, waived for mothers of at least three; tax relief aimed, from the third child, at no income tax up to €85,000 gross; 7 percent VAT on baby food and children’s goods; and full parental allowance until age three, optionally for caring grandparents. It asked for a commitment to the “traditional family of man, woman and child(ren)” and to “biological two-sexedness,” said other living arrangements should not be discriminated against, and rejected labels such as “parent 1” and “parent 2.” It also sought counseling recentered on unborn life and a ministry renamed to add “population development,” citing Article 6 of the Basic Law. In the debate, CDU speaker [Anne König](/people/anne-konig) and Green speaker [Anja Reinalter](/people/anja-reinalter) rejected that model as dependence for women and as exclusion. Bessin also signed the 9 September 2025 motion to repeal the Self-Determination Act (Drucksache 21/1547) on the grounds that a gender-entry change without assessment endangered minors, women’s refuges and women’s sport.

### Migration and asylum

At the AfD congress in Jüterbog on 23 April 2023 she announced posters against what she called green, left and conservative asylum policy and said, “We do not need any new asylum accommodation being set up,” because municipalities were overloaded. On 20–21 June 2024, on the state plan under the Istanbul Convention, she cited 2023 police figures on group rape and a share of non-German suspects near 50 percent. She said the social ministry had put women with a migration background at about half of Brandenburg shelter residents, and nearly 70 percent nationwide, and she called ending “uncontrolled migration” better prevention than more places. The convention, she added, hid a “gender ideology” aimed at marriage, family and parental rights.

On 22 January 2025 she backed asset checks on foreign Bürgergeld applicants and an end to Ukrainians’ immediate access, which she called a “magnet for immigration into our social systems.” She stated that 2.7 million of 5.6 million recipients held a foreign passport and called checks that could not reach assets abroad discrimination against natives. The October 2025 family motion said post-reunification population growth came only from net immigration and that about 2.6 million foreign Bürgergeld recipients worsened the pension balance. Opposing a higher minimum parental allowance the next day, she said the draft ignored “mass migration into our social systems” and that she did not want the benefit to reach extended families from Lebanon, Syria or Afghanistan who had not paid German taxes.

### Other parliamentary themes

At Jüterbog in April 2023 the state party warned that wider German involvement could turn the war in Ukraine into a European and global war and sought the earliest end to the fighting; Bessin called separately for sanctions on Russia to be lifted. On 10 October 2025 she blamed higher prices on “energy-transition policy” and “green inflation,” and she called for nuclear investment, an end to the carbon levy and the broadcasting fee, and lower taxes on energy and on children’s goods. Germany, she said, should stop being “vice world champion” in taxes and charges. In June 2023 she treated COVID-19 pandemic measures as a burden governments had placed on children and low-income families and had not repaired.

## Reception and controversies

### Movement networks

In January 2015, as parliamentary managing director of the Alternative for Germany group in the Landtag of Brandenburg, Bessin emailed party members in Brandenburg about a call with Pegida initiator Lutz Bachmann. Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg reported that she wrote of interest in developing Pegida in the state and of an offer to organize a bus to Dresden on 19 January 2015 “to strengthen the movement there first”; she confirmed the contact to rbb. State chair Alexander Gauland said he did not believe the account and that the AfD was neither Pegida’s parliamentary nor its political arm; inside the state party, a draft resolution called for neutrality toward the demonstrations.

She later appeared with Zukunft Heimat, a southern Brandenburg association. The *Märkische Allgemeine* reported that in September 2017 she shared a platform in Jüterbog with its chair, Hans-Christoph Berndt. *Bild* reported that on a demonstration in Cottbus on 21 January 2018, organized by the association and the AfD, she spoke beside Berndt, and that the association’s partners included a regional Pegida offshoot. On 15 June 2020 the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution said it had, since January, observed Zukunft Heimat as a proven right-wing extremist endeavor and cited it as a structural link between the state AfD and other extremist efforts. Reporting her election as state chair on 9 April 2022, the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* called her a confidante of Andreas Kalbitz and, like him, a signatory of the Erfurt Resolution of the right-national Der Flügel around Björn Höcke. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had treated that dissolved network as right-wing extremist since March 2020; the AfD contested the party’s suspicion classification.

### Protest and staffing disputes

In March 2016 the *Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten* and *Bild* reported that Bessin had employed Alexander Salomon, a law student from Cottbus and former member of the [National Democratic Party](/organizations/national-democratic-party) of Germany, on a mini-job paid from her publicly funded staff budget. *Bild*, citing him, said he worked about six hours a week for half a year. The NPD told the *Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten* he had belonged for nearly two years; he had told the AfD it was half a year. A spokesperson denied the job; the paper said the denial was false, and that Kalbitz, who also employed him, had known of the NPD past. Gauland said there was no ban on employing former NPD members and called Salomon a young man who had “made quite a mess politically in his youth.” Jan Redmann of the Christian Democratic Union told *Bild* the party was speaking “with a forked tongue.”

On 17 May 2023, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, Bessin was scheduled to speak in the Potsdam Landtag courtyard at the raising of a rainbow flag, under a rotation of factions. Sebastian Walter of Die Linke said a party that “agitates against all minorities” should not speak for the Landtag; Berndt called that an attempt to demonize the AfD. *nd* reported about 250 people there. President Ulrike Liedtke of the Social Democratic Party asked them to listen; she and social-affairs minister Ursula Nonnemacher of Alliance 90/The Greens raised the flag, which stuck at half-mast. Behind a “Regenbogenkombinat Brandenburg” banner, protesters whistled, booed and chanted “Hau ab,” and Bessin stood silent. A dpa report in *Der Tagesspiegel* counted about one hundred protesters and said the whistling filled her five minutes; she called it “ein starkes Stück” (“a bit rich”). Kristy Augustin (CDU) said Bessin’s Landtag remarks did not fit the flag, and Kris Fritz-Stehr of the Lesbian and Gay Federation objected to the AfD word “Genderwahn.” *nd* reported that, apart from the shouting, the event stayed peaceful.

### Intelligence services and commentary

On 15 June 2020 Interior Minister Michael Stübgen and office chief Jörg Müller announced that the entire Brandenburg AfD would be watched as a suspected case of right-wing extremism. Stübgen said the association had radicalized around an ethno-cultural idea of the people and that, in Brandenburg, “the wing is long since the whole bird.” Müller cited breaches of human dignity and of democracy and the rule of law, a Flügel share of about 40 percent of some 1,600 members, and links to the Identitarian movement, *Compact*, Zukunft Heimat, and people tied to the NPD or the banned Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend. The state party went to court against the classification. After Bessin was elected state chair, Gideon Botsch told dpa she was “a clear Wing woman” and that she and René Springer stood for what he called a right-wing extremist course. Springer rejected the label and said the Moses Mendelssohn Center, where Botsch works, used public money against an opposition party.

On 14 April 2025 the office upgraded the association from suspected case to a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor. Interior Minister Katrin Lange (SPD) announced it on 7 May, said she had heard only on 5 May, and dismissed Müller over the delay; he said he had nothing to answer for, while AfD deputies called the step an attempt to destroy the party. The association sued on 20 May; Springer called the case a signal against political persecution. The office then withheld the new label and again called the party a suspected case while an interim application was pending. On 24 July 2025 the AfD dropped that application, not the main suit. Tagesschau reported a leaked 142-page memorandum, which it treated as authentic, built on 622 items—mostly public remarks by leading members—about human dignity, an ethnic idea of the people, and democracy and the rule of law. The examples in that account named other AfD politicians, not Bessin; the findings concern the state association, which disputes them.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/birgit-bessin