Carolin Bachmann

Carolin Bachmann (born 3 September 1988 in Freiberg, Saxony) is a German politician of Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag for Mittelsachsen. The biography published by the Bundestag, which rests on information supplied by the member, records her as unmarried and the mother of one child.

She won the direct mandate for Mittelsachsen at the 2021 German federal election, when the constituency was numbered 161. The Federal Returning Officer’s final table gives the AfD 48,725 first votes (33.4 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union 34,638 (23.8 percent), with turnout of 76.2 percent among 193,828 eligible voters. She sat in the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025). At the 2025 German federal election, held on 23 February, the same district was numbered 160, a shift that followed the transfer of one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria. Bachmann was again elected, with 66,688 first votes (45.4 percent), ahead of Johann Haupt of the CDU on 39,665 (27.0 percent); turnout was 78.9 percent.

The Bundestag biography states that she trained as an investment-fund clerk at an investment bank in Frankfurt and completed a Bachelor of Arts in business administration. It describes subsequent work in client service and institutional sales for a large asset-management company, in-house consulting and organisational development, and financing and sales at a mid-sized firm. Before her mandate she was an adviser to Rolf Weigand, then a member of the Saxon Landtag, in Dresden.

In the 20th Bundestag she was a full member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government, served as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin), and was a deputy member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy and of the Health Committee. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the housing committee and a deputy member of the Finance Committee and of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and she holds the direct mandate for constituency 160. On 27 November 2025 the Bundestag elected her to the board of trustees of the Federal Foundation for Building Culture, succeeding the former FDP member Rainer Semet; the member’s published disclosure dates that seat from 1 January 2026.

After the 2025 count, the Chemnitz daily Freie Presse reported that three musicians from the label NDS Records had shared a photograph of themselves with Bachmann taken at her election gathering that day in Niederbobritzsch, and that a local group had circulated the picture with the claim that she was posing with neo-Nazis.

Early life and education

Childhood in Saxony

Carolin Bachmann was born on 3 September 1988 in Freiberg, in the Free State of Saxony. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, records that she is unmarried and has one child. Notices of admitted constituency nominations for Mittelsachsen give the same year and place of birth and list her residence as Mulda/Sa., postcode 09619: in 2021 at Hauptstraße 68, and again in the district for the 2025 federal election.

On her website she writes that she grew up in the Ore Mountains, in Mulda and in Dorfchemnitz. In an August 2021 profile, the Freie Presse described the then 32-year-old Alternative for Germany candidate as coming from Mulda. A photograph in that article, taken at Kriebstein Castle, carried a caption identifying the castle as a place in Mittelsachsen that she had known from childhood and had come to know again after returning to the region in 2014.

Vocational training and degree

In her own account she began an apprenticeship in Frankfurt am Main in 2005, the year she turned 17, as an Investmentfondskauffrau (investment-fund clerk) at DekaBank, and she lists two further certificates from the Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie in Frankfurt — Immobilienökonom in 2008 and Betriebswirt in 2010 — plus a 2012 Bachelor of Arts in business administration from the Hessische Berufsakademie there. The AfD association in Mittelsachsen states that the apprenticeship ran from 2005 to 2008 and repeats the later certificates. The Bundestag biography, again from her own information, summarizes the training without naming the employer or the schools: an investment-fund clerkship at an investment bank in Frankfurt am Main, followed by a Bachelor of Arts in business administration.

DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale, which gives a Frankfurt address, presents itself as the securities house (Wertpapierhaus) of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, the German savings-bank group. The occupation has been state-recognized since a federal training ordinance of 21 May 2003; the apprenticeship lasts three years and includes fund accounting, the investment process, custody of fund units, and marketing and sales. A Betriebswirt (VWA) or Betriebswirtin (VWA) is not a university degree. The German Qualifications Framework classifies that title as a non-formal qualification at level 6, the same level as a bachelor's degree, which the framework treats as comparable demands rather than the same kind of credential, and the academies' federal association states that the classification does not cover the shorter, four-semester courses leading to an Ökonom (VWA) title.

Professional career

Before she became a member of the Bundestag, Carolin Bachmann's published career runs through client work in the investment-fund business, internal consulting, a later commercial post, and staff work for a member of the Landtag of Saxony. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on the member's own information, gives no employer names or dates. It records work as a customer adviser at a large capital-management company and in institutional large-client sales; in-house consulting and organizational development; and financing and sales at a medium-sized company.

Banking and consulting

The archived biography for the 20th electoral term heads her entry with the occupational title Investmentfondskauffrau and describes the training as an apprenticeship at an investment bank in Frankfurt am Main. A portrait in the Ärzte Zeitung of 24 February 2025, part of a series on members with a connection to health policy, names the institution: she completed that qualification at DekaBank in Frankfurt am Main in 2008. Her website supplies a chronology of the years that followed. It lists, for 2008, employment at DekaBank and work as a customer adviser in a master and service capital-management company (Master- und Service KAG); for 2010, sales support for institutional clients and a post as lean-management navigator on an organizational-development project; for 2012, a human-resources project on restructuring personnel costs; and, for 2014, parental leave. The Bundestag text does not repeat those titles. It describes the private-sector work before the mandate only in the broader terms already noted: customer advice and institutional sales, in-house consulting and organizational development, and financing and sales at a medium-sized company.

Renewable energy and parliamentary staff

That biography does not name the medium-sized company, and it does not place the firm in any particular industry. Her website's 2016 entry is financing and marketing at a medium-sized company in renewable energy in Freiberg, still without a company name. The 2020 entry on the same page is personal adviser and scientific staff member—persönliche Referentin und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin—in the Saxon Landtag in Dresden. On 29 September 2026 a question on abgeordnetenwatch.de asked her to identify the Freiberg renewable-energy firm in which, on that account, she had worked in sales and related functions from 2016 to 2020, noting that public biographies did not give the name. The page marked the question as awaiting an answer.

Under the heading for occupational activity before membership in the Bundestag, the disclosures attached to the 20th-term biography consist of a single line: Referentin of Dr. Rolf Weigand, MdL, Dresden. The Ärzte Zeitung reported that from 2020 she worked for Weigand and identified him as a Landtag member of the Alternative for Germany. The Landtag lists Dr. Rolf Weigand as a former member for the periods January 2018 to October 2019 and October 2019 to October 2024. The archived Bundestag profile records her own membership as beginning on 26 October 2021. The disclosure classifies the Weigand post as activity before that membership. The current biography does not reprint the line. Its note on publication-required information directs readers to the archive for disclosures from earlier electoral terms, beginning with the 18th.

Political beginnings

Joining the AfD

Carolin Bachmann has placed her entry into the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2018. On her own website she writes that she had followed the party in the media and voted for it since 2013, and that conversations that year with representatives of its district association in Mittelsachsen completed what she describes as a long-standing agreement with its positions by her joining. She has given a more specific account of the motive. Asked on Abgeordnetenwatch which issues had led her into the party, she replied on 27 June 2022 that the decisive point had been the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the subsequent rescue of the euro, which she linked to what she called a dramatic expansion of the money supply that was still going on.

The Mittelsachsen district association was the organisation through which that membership became a candidacy. The board published by the association, which states that the members' assembly elected it on 28 January 2023, names Lars Kuppi as district chairman, together with Romy Penz, Ronny Mildner, Holger Zielinski and several assessors (Beisitzer), and does not include Bachmann. Before she took a seat in the Bundestag, her official biography for the 20th legislative period recorded her occupation as Referentin to Dr Rolf Weigand, an AfD member of the Landtag of Saxony, in Dresden.

Constituency organization

On 17 October 2020 the district association nominated her as its direct candidate for Bundestag constituency 161, Mittelsachsen, for the 2021 federal election. The Sächsische Zeitung described the then 32-year-old as a bookkeeper from Mulda. At an assembly in Niederbobritzsch, in the municipality of Bobritzsch-Hilbersdorf, she stood against the sitting AfD member of the Bundestag, Heiko Hessenkemper, the AfD district councillor Jörg Bretschneider, and Thomas Goebel, a town councillor in Frankenberg. Bretschneider and Goebel dropped out in a first round in which Bachmann and Hessenkemper each received 21 of 64 votes. In the runoff she took 56.3 percent. The Freie Presse reported the figures from the association; the Sächsische Zeitung likewise attributed the runoff percentage to an AfD Mittelsachsen press statement, relayed by the association's spokesman, Rolf Weigand.

Bachmann said she would commit herself fully to the campaign and give her generation a public face. In the wording carried by the Freie Presse, she said it was time "that we—my generation and I—finally take responsibility," a debt she said was owed not only to their children but to parents and grandparents who had built the country and, in 1989, won a life in freedom.

After she entered parliament she set up fixed constituency offices in the district. The Freie Presse reported that on Friday, 4 March 2022, she opened her first Wahlkreisbüro at Rochlitzer Straße 73 in Mittweida, and that she described the rooms as a place to hear local concerns and carry them to Berlin. The Bundestag's current biography lists that address as the AfD Bürgerbüro Mittweida and a second office, the AfD Bürgerbüro Freiberg, at Burgstraße 25.

She later added a municipal mandate in the same district. At the Kreistag election of 9 June 2024, the district administration reported turnout of 68.5 percent, an AfD vote share of 30.3 percent and 30 of the 98 seats for the party, and published Bachmann among the AfD members returned.

Bundestag elections

2021 election

The election to the 20th Bundestag was held on 26 September 2021 in Saxony's constituency 161, Mittelsachsen. Of 193,828 eligible voters, 147,733 cast a ballot, a turnout of 76.2 percent, 1.5 percentage points higher than in 2017. Valid first votes numbered 145,728 and valid second votes 145,992.

Carolin Bachmann, the candidate of Alternative for Germany (AfD), received 48,725 first votes, 33.4 percent and 1.9 points above the AfD share in the constituency in 2017. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) candidate was Veronika Bellmann, who had held the constituency seat since 2002; the CDU total was 34,638 votes, 23.8 percent, down 8.7 points, leaving a gap of 14,087 votes. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) took 25,727 first votes (17.7 percent, up 5.7 points), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 14,420 (9.9 percent, up 4.1), Die Linke 12,164 (8.3 percent, down 5.6) and Alliance 90/The Greens 5,398 (3.7 percent, up 0.6). dieBasis received 3,397 first votes (2.3 percent) and the Ecological Democratic Party 1,259 (0.9 percent).

On the second vote the AfD still led, with 43,821 ballots and 30.0 percent, 1.2 points below 2017. The SPD was second, on 27,000 votes and 18.5 percent (up 8.8 points), ahead of the CDU on 25,603 and 17.5 percent (down 10.1). The FDP received 16,897 second votes (11.6 percent), Die Linke 11,687 (8.0 percent) and the Greens 6,822 (4.7 percent).

Under the law used in 2021, the candidate with a relative majority of first votes received a seat even where that created an overhang mandate, which was then balanced by compensatory seats for other parties. Bachmann's plurality was therefore enough for a constituency seat in the 20th Bundestag. After overhang and compensation that Bundestag had 736 members, against a statutory regular size of 598.

2025 election

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. The constituency, still named Mittelsachsen, was numbered 160 rather than 161. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk reported that one constituency had been moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria because of population change, shifting the numbers of former constituencies 72 to 255, while Saxony kept 16 constituencies. Constituency 160 comprises municipalities of the district of Mittelsachsen, including Freiberg, Döbeln, Flöha, Frankenberg/Sa. and Mittweida, plus the joint administrations of Lichtenberg-Weißenborn, Mittweida and Sayda/Dorfchemnitz; the district's remaining municipalities lie in constituency 162.

Seven direct candidates stood. Bachmann, again for the AfD, received 66,688 first votes, 45.4 percent of 147,028 valid first votes and 11.9 points above 2021. The Federal Returning Officer lists Johann Haupt of the CDU as runner-up, with 39,665 votes and 27.0 percent, up 3.2 points, a margin of 27,023 votes. Ralf Walper of the SPD received 13,321 votes (9.1 percent, down 8.6 points), just ahead of Nicole Weichhold of Die Linke on 13,234 (9.0 percent, up 0.7). Mark Sontowski of the Free Voters, a party with no constituency candidate there in 2021, received 6,156 first votes (4.2 percent). Philipp Hartewig of the FDP received 4,284 (2.9 percent, down 7.0) and Sebastian Walter of the Greens 3,680 (2.5 percent, down 1.2). Turnout was 78.9 percent: 148,354 of 188,107 eligible voters, 2.6 points higher than in 2021, with 1,326 invalid first votes (0.9 percent).

Of 147,487 valid second votes, the AfD received 64,094 (43.5 percent, up 13.4 points) and the CDU 30,403 (20.6 percent, up 3.1). Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which fielded no constituency candidate, took 13,924 second votes (9.4 percent). Die Linke received 11,800 (8.0 percent, unchanged), the SPD 11,145 (7.6 percent, down 10.9), the Greens 5,172 (3.5 percent, down 1.2) and the FDP 4,676 (3.2 percent, down 8.4).

The 2025 election was the first held under the reform that entered into force in June 2023, after the Bundestag passed the amending statute on 17 March 2023. The house is fixed at 630 seats, allocated only by second votes, and overhang and compensatory mandates no longer arise. A first-vote leader is seated only if the seat is covered by that party's second-vote quota in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung): leaders are ranked by their share of the first vote, and those with the weakest shares receive no seat once the quota is exhausted, leaving the constituency vacant. An independent who leads on first votes still takes a seat without that cover. On 30 July 2024 the Federal Constitutional Court held the coverage procedure compatible with the Basic Law. It found the five-percent threshold unconstitutional in its then form, but ordered that, until a new rule was made, a party below five percent would be omitted from the allocation only if its candidates had not finished first in at least three constituencies.

Nationwide, 23 candidates who led a constituency did not enter the 21st Bundestag, among them four AfD candidates. In Saxony the AfD led in 15 constituencies and Die Linke in one, Leipzig II, where Sören Pellmann was elected with 36.8 percent. The only Saxon constituency left without a member elected from it was Leipzig I (constituency 151): the AfD plurality there was 25.0 percent, and the Federal Returning Officer recorded the seat as unfilled for lack of second-vote coverage. Bachmann's 45.4 percent fell inside the covered group. The Returning Officer lists her among those elected in a Saxon constituency, and the AfD appears with no names on the Saxon state-list allocation, so its 14 Saxon members are the constituency leaders whose shares were covered.

Parliamentary offices

In the Bundestag's 20th legislative period (2021–2025) and its 21st, Carolin Bachmann sat in the parliamentary group of Alternative for Germany (AfD). The archived biography for the 20th period records a direct mandate for constituency 161, Mittelsachsen; the biography for the 21st records a direct mandate for constituency 160, Mittelsachsen, in Saxony. The offices below are the committee seats, the parliamentary-secretary function and the external board seat documented in Bundestag records. Neither biography lists a group spokesperson role.

Twentieth legislative period

When the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government (Ausschuss für Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung, Bauwesen und Kommunen) held its constitutive meeting on 15 December 2021, it had 34 full members. Bachmann was one of four from the AfD, with Roger Beckamp, Marc Bernhard and Sebastian Münzenmaier; Sandra Weeser of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was elected chair. The archived biography for the period still lists Bachmann as a full member of that committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy (Ausschuss für Klimaschutz und Energie) and of the Health Committee (Gesundheitsausschuss).

The same biography records her as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin). On 27 January 2022 the Bundestag elected its secretaries under § 3 of its rules of procedure. The proposals of all groups, printed as Drucksache 20/503 of 26 January 2022, named Bachmann among seven AfD nominees. The House adopted them with the votes of Die Linke, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Alliance 90/The Greens, the FDP, the CDU/CSU and the AfD, with no votes against and no abstentions. Secretaries are chosen at the start of a legislative period. Two of them, one from a majority group and one from an opposition group, form the sitting presidium (Sitzungsvorstand) with the presiding officer; they keep the list of speakers, take ballot papers at roll-call votes and elections, and count members entering the chamber in a Hammelsprung division.

Twenty-first legislative period

The biography for the 21st period lists Bachmann as a full member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government. It lists her as a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (Ausschuss für Umwelt, Klimaschutz, Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit) and of the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss). It does not list her as a parliamentary secretary.

On 22 May 2025, without debate, the Bundestag elected its secretaries from proposals of the CDU/CSU, the AfD, the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke, printed as Drucksache 21/215 (neu) of 20 May 2025 and recorded as adopted. The groups named 21, 15, 12, nine and seven secretaries respectively, and Bachmann was among the AfD names. In that account, two secretaries sit with the presiding officer; they receive motions and requests to speak, read out papers, keep speakers' lists, supervise corrections to the plenary record and establish the result of votes.

On 5 March 2026, opening the 62nd sitting, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner put an AfD proposal to elect Maximilian Kneller as secretary in succession to Bachmann. She noted no audible or visible objection and declared Kneller elected.

External bodies

The Bundesstiftung Baukultur is a federal foundation under public law with its seat in Potsdam, created by a statute of 17 December 2006. Its statutory purpose is to present the quality, sustainability and capacity of planning and building in Germany, at home and abroad, and to strengthen awareness of Baukultur and of the built environment. The Stiftungsrat has 13 members, appointed for four years, with reappointment allowed; if a member leaves early, a successor may be named for the rest of that term. Five members are sent by the Bundestag and five by the Konvent der Baukultur, and one each by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

On 27 November 2025 the Bundestag adopted a joint CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD proposal, Drucksache 21/2881, for seats on the Stiftungsrat. Those three groups voted in favour; Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke abstained. The printed proposal names Bachmann for the remainder of the term as successor to the former FDP member Rainer Semet, Mechthild Heil as successor to Christian Hirte, and Philipp Rottwilm as successor to Dirk-Ulrich Mende. A separate Greens proposal was adopted with the votes of the CDU/CSU, the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke, the AfD abstaining; it elected Kassem Taher Saleh to succeed Anja Liebert. Under functions in public-law bodies, Bachmann's Bundestag biography records membership of the Stiftungsrat of the Bundesstiftung Baukultur in Potsdam from 1 January 2026. Retrieved on 26 October 2026, that entry still gave no end date.

On 9 July 2026 the Bundestag voted again on membership of the same council. Unlike the November proposals, the July printed motions do not describe the candidates as successors for the remainder of a term. The AfD motion of 7 July 2026, Drucksache 21/6888, which named Bachmann, was rejected by the votes of all other groups. By a show of hands the House unanimously accepted a CDU/CSU and SPD proposal, Drucksache 21/6887, naming Mechthild Heil, Michael Kießling and Philipp Rottwilm. Against the AfD, it accepted the Greens' proposal naming Mayra Vriesema. The sitting is not minuted as a separate vote to remove Bachmann from a seat she already held. The foundation's published list of the Stiftungsrat names Heil, Kießling, Rottwilm and Vriesema and does not name Bachmann.

Political positions

In the Bundestag, Carolin Bachmann has argued for the Alternative for Germany that housing, municipal finance and energy rules belong with immigration policy, and she has offered “remigration” as the common remedy.

Housing and municipalities

On 10 September 2024, in the 2025 housing-budget debate, Bachmann said Germany lacked 800,000 homes and that the shortage fell on “the natives,” while “illegal migrants” moved into luxury hotels. She blamed Minister Klara Geywitz for missing a repeated target of 400,000 new homes a year, and she traced urban overcrowding, dirt and “Überfremdung” to “mass immigration of the poor,” including new blocks for refugees in Berlin-Pankow. Urging city dwellers to move away was, she said, “the expulsion of the Germans in their own country.” She treated €2 billion for social housing and €2.4 billion for housing benefit as spending on poor immigrants, and she said “Housing First” missed natives because, on her figure, 86 percent of homeless people were foreigners. She proposed abolishing the building ministry and making it a “Remigrationsministerium,” with the staff used for “Massenremigration,” relief of the municipalities and the “Säuberung unserer Städte.”

Hanna Steinmüller of Alliance 90/The Greens said the speech was detached from reality and that “your racism poisons the social debate.” Daniel Föst of the Free Democratic Party called a ministry that took people abroad on trucks a “dystopia”; Bachmann replied that the trucks were his image and that her proposal followed only from the failure to house natives. SPD speaker Bernhard Daldrup asked whether cleansing the cities would next be ethnic; Bachmann said she meant graffiti, excrement and dirt.

In March 2023 a motion she led asked the government to drop serial housing as an answer to refugee arrivals and to align migration policy with Article 16a of the Basic Law. A June 2024 motion she signed sought a municipal veto where housing was scarce, no preference for migrants over German citizens in subsidized housing, repeal of the Buildings Energy Act and of compulsory heat planning, and abolition of the property tax. On 8 October 2026 two further motions she had signed were debated. One would allow a single ten-year tax deduction of owner-occupied building or purchase costs, capped at €200,000, and would abolish the property tax. The other asked for “Einheimischenmodelle” under section 11 of the Building Code, so that municipalities could prefer buyers with a lasting local tie on objective, non-discriminatory criteria, which the text tied to the 8 May 2013 judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union. She called out “German land for German families,” said the party did not oppose foreign skilled workers but did oppose “illegal social assistance,” and added that Jews were natives and that no one was to be expelled. Steinmüller replied that one in five skilled construction workers had no German passport. SPD speaker Philipp Rottwilm said the AfD wanted a Germany without other cultures, religions or origins, and Katalin Gennburg of Die Linke compared the motion to the “Aryanization of housing.” CDU/CSU and SPD speakers said their groups would reject both motions.

Migration

A June 2024 motion she signed counted about 16.7 million arrivals and 11.6 million people who had “returned—that is, remigrated” between 2010 and 2021, a net inflow above five million, and pointed to a fall in refugee numbers from over one million to under 400,000 between 1997 and 2011 as evidence that remigration “on a considerable scale” could be resumed. A September 2025 resolution on the housing budget, also signed by her, said cohesion “depends essentially on the ethnic-cultural composition of a society” and called for “extensive remigration programmes” to restore a composition “conducive for all Germans and other natives,” aiming at a society that would hold together without such programmes, “as is being sought in Denmark.” An April 2026 motion she signed said the government was still failing to “initiate a remigration,” and asked that a Land accept foreigners from a federal admission programme under section 23(2) of the Residence Act only with its consent, and that refugees not be sent to municipalities whose housing market had been declared tight under section 556d of the Civil Code.

Energy and climate

Bachmann presents the Energiewende as the reason building is expensive and rural land is being built over. In May 2025 she signed a motion to repeal the Buildings Energy Act, called there a de facto ban on new oil and gas heating, and to abolish the CO2 price on heating oil and gas. On 5 December 2025 she was first signatory of a motion describing wind and solar as an “epidemic” across homeland and habitat, traced to Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck, and of a second motion to repeal the Renewable Energy Act, the Onshore Wind Act and the Federal Climate Action Act and to remove climate duties from planning and building law.

On 8 May 2026 she spoke for an AfD bill abolishing the Wind Energy Area Requirement Act and for a moratorium she led. She said other parties had shut 17 working nuclear plants, had let the Nord Stream 2 pipelines be blown up and wanted to hand a gas plant at Lubmin to Ukraine, and that Germany was becoming one “wind industrial park.” She put existing turbines at about 30,000 and said the two-percent land target implied at least 90,000 more, which she called “100 percent destruction of the landscape.” The moratorium would halt unfinished permits until the wind zones required by that law were drawn, and in any event by 31 December 2027, and would give the host municipality a veto. SPD speaker Helmut Kleebank said scrapping the area law was no energy policy and that a moratorium would bring chaos; Green speaker Alaa Alhamwi said the right used concern for the landscape as ideology rather than as care for nature.

On 24 September 2026, debating Green and Left motions to entrench climate adaptation and heat protection in the Basic Law as a joint task (Drucksachen 21/8116 and 21/8117), Bachmann called the project “socialism under the cloak of your climate noise,” bound up with “ungoverned mass immigration and the Islamization connected with it.” The CDU, she said, had shared that course from Angela Merkel’s energy policy to climate neutrality in the Basic Law. Every added resident, she said, needs housing, energy and infrastructure, and therefore “if you want to do something for the climate, then deport; because remigration is good for the climate in every respect.” She said climate change is real—ice ages, warm periods, volcanoes, changes in the sun—but stated that Germany accounts for 1.8 percent of global man-made CO2 and that about 0.04 percent CO2 is measured in the atmosphere, so deindustrialization in Germany would not fundamentally change the world climate. SPD speaker Hendrik Bollmann said cities were obviously getting hotter, separated that practical problem from limiting climate change itself, and said his group would reject both amendments.

Public controversies

Conduct in parliament

At the constitutive sitting of the 20th Bundestag on 26 October 2021, the parliamentary groups had agreed that only members who were vaccinated against COVID-19, recently recovered or recently tested could enter the lower part of the plenary in the Reichstag building. Those who showed proof received a black-red-gold wristband, and distancing rules in the chamber were dropped so that all 736 members could sit there.

The German press agency reported, and MDR Sachsen repeated that evening, that 23 members, all of the Alternative for Germany, did not accept the rule and followed the sitting from a reserved part of the visitors' gallery. Among the members from Saxony whom MDR named were Karsten Hilse, Carolin Bachmann, Barbara Lenk and Mike Moncsek. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel complied and sat in the chamber. Co-leader Tino Chrupalla was absent and in quarantine after a coronavirus infection. The AfD tried during the sitting to overturn the arrangement and failed against the other groups. Members on the gallery could still take part in the votes for the new presidium, but the ballots there were written rather than electronic, which delayed the count. A t-online profile published on 6 December 2021, on AfD members who were using the gallery in the early sittings, identified Bachmann as one of five newly elected Saxon deputies sitting there. The reports of 26 October did not quote an explanation from Bachmann herself.

Local incidents

On Tuesday, 6 February 2024, Bachmann and Mike Moncsek staffed an AfD information stand on the Obermarkt in Freiberg. A video that Bachmann had shared online, and that Focus reported two days later, shows her confronting three young people with a microphone. Focus described them as apparently underage and wrote that loud music from their speakers, with lyrics touching on fascism, appeared to be the occasion. In the clip, as captioned by the Freie Presse, she said, “Ich bin gar keiner, ist hier ein Fascho irgendwo?” (“I’m not one at all—is there a Fascho somewhere here?”). Focus quoted her telling them, “Beschreib mal, was ein Fascho ist, ich weiß es nicht und ich bin keiner” (“Go on, describe what a Fascho is; I don’t know, and I’m not one”), and wrote that she repeatedly held the microphone up to their faces while the situation was visibly uncomfortable for them and they stayed silent. The same report said she threatened to have them removed from the square, although as a private person she had no authority to order that, and that the video did not show why she and Moncsek were there. The Freie Presse, which tied the scene to the information stand, wrote that the attempt to speak with the three masked youths had failed and that the clip raised questions.

On 23 February 2025, the day of the federal election, Bachmann was returned in constituency 160, Mittelsachsen, with 45.4 percent of the first votes, and celebrated that day in Niederbobritzsch, in Bobritzsch-Hilbersdorf. Three artists belonging to the music label NDS Records (“Neuer Deutscher Standard”) then shared, on Instagram from the account proto.nds, a photograph in which she stands second from the left.

The Freie Presse reported that the local group Junges Netzwerk Freiberg circulated the picture under the charge that she was “posing openly with neo-Nazis,” and that the photograph was said to be from the election-night party. The paper wrote that she herself had, that night, thanked people for coming in a time-limited post. A report of 15 May 2025, recounting her answer to the Freie Presse, said she had replied that one could not and would not carry out a political suitability check of guests at demonstrations and events.

Saxony’s domestic intelligence service, the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz, treats NDS Records as a right-wing extremist distributor and label. In the 2025 annual report the firm is listed in Steinigtwolmsdorf, district of Bautzen, and as active since 2021, selling its own recordings and branded clothing. The report states that its musicians, working mainly in rap and hip-hop, were or are part of the milieu of the Identitarian Movement Germany, and that the music contains in part violence-oriented and racist elements and is at times directed against political opponents and against the constitutional system of the Federal Republic. It names Proto, formerly Prototyp, as managing director after his move to Saxony in 2020, and Kavalier as part of the closest circle; both, it says, have a background in the Identitarian movement. Runa, who left the label in 2022, recorded again with Proto in 2025. In the chapter on the Saxon AfD, the same report says that contacts with the right-wing extremist music scene continued, “for example to the label NDS Records,” that at least three NDS protagonists had been guests at a campaign event of the state party or at the election party of a member of the Bundestag, and that several party functionaries had also posed, in February, in a music video of the label. It placed those contacts among ties to organizations and persons it called proven extremists, and wrote that no distancing by the state association was discernible in the reporting year. That passage does not name Bachmann.

Reception

Welt reported that Janosch Dahmen of Alliance 90/The Greens called the AfD, over the members on the gallery, the “parliamentary arm of the Querdenken movement” and described the refusal as irresponsible. Focus headlined the Freiberg video as Bachmann putting heavy pressure on youths with a microphone while they stayed silent; the Freie Presse presented the same clip as a failed conversation that had drawn wider notice through that report. Coverage of the 2025 photograph turned on what the Freie Presse called the question of her connection to the right-wing scene. The Junges Netzwerk Freiberg used the term neo-Nazis for the people in the picture, while the 2025 intelligence report treated an election party attended by NDS protagonists as one instance of the Saxon AfD’s continuing contact with a label it classifies as right-wing extremist, without naming her in that finding.

Personal life

Carolin Bachmann was born on 3 September 1988 in Freiberg, Saxony. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament's editors note is drawn from the member's own statements (Selbstauskünfte), records her as unmarried (ledig) and as the mother of one child. That entry gives neither the child's name, age, nor sex, and it does not mention a spouse, another partner, or a religious affiliation.

Her place of residence is set out in the electoral record rather than in that biography. Section 34 of the Bundeswahlordnung requires a constituency nomination to state the candidate's name, occupation, date and place of birth, and the address of the principal residence (Anschrift (Hauptwohnung)). Section 38 limits the public notice of admitted nominations to the place of that principal residence and the year of birth, rather than the street address or the full birth date, unless a blocking entry in the population register substitutes a contact locality.

On 31 January 2025 Peter Schubert, district returning officer for Mittelsachsen, published the admitted nominations for constituency 160 and listed Bachmann, described as a member of the Bundestag, as born in 1988 in Freiberg and resident in 09619 Mulda/Sa. The notice of 4 August 2021, for constituency 161 at the preceding Bundestag election, also printed a street address—Hauptstraße 68, 09619 Mulda/Sa.—and gave her occupation then as wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin.

The Mittelsachsen association of the Alternative for Germany states that she lives in Mulda/Dorfchemnitz, is unmarried, and is the mother of one child. On her own website she writes that she was born in Freiberg in 1988, grew up in the Ore Mountains in Mulda and Dorfchemnitz, and is the mother of one child; the same page places Elternzeit (parental leave) against the year 2014 and gives no birth date for the child and no other family particulars. A Freie Presse profile of 16 August 2021 by Jan Leißner called the then 32-year-old candidate "die aus Mulda stammende" and reported that she had returned to the home region in 2014.

Marital status and children lie outside that statutory file. Section 45 of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) requires notice to the President of the Bundestag of the last occupation before the mandate and of paid outside activities and specified offices during it; section 47 requires those notifications to be published on the Bundestag website. The line "ledig; ein Kind" is therefore only a voluntary self-report, printed with the editors' caveat. The addresses on the same page are constituency offices in Mittweida, at Rochlitzer Straße 73, and in Freiberg, at Burgstraße 25, not a private dwelling.