Daniel Zerbin

Daniel Zerbin (born 1 February 1973 in Gelsenkirchen) is a German criminologist and a politician of the Alternative for Germany. The Bundestag lists his occupation as Kriminalwissenschaftler and, on the basis of his own disclosure, records that he is Protestant and has two children.

He has been a member of the 21st Bundestag since the chamber was constituted on 25 March 2025. He was returned on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia after standing in constituency 140, Herne–Bochum II. In the final result he took 28,088 first votes (21.5 percent), behind Hendrik Bollmann of the SPD, who won the constituency with 43,832 votes (33.5 percent), and Christoph Bußmann of the CDU, with 31,032 votes (23.7 percent). Zerbin, who lives in Dorsten, stood thirteenth on the AfD list in North Rhine-Westphalia and said after the election that he would resign his seat in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia once the Bundestag had been constituted.

Before the 2022 state election he had been a professional soldier in the military police, with deployments in Afghanistan and Kosovo, a lecturer in police training, a university professor and a Thai boxer. From 2022 he chaired the science committee of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, at that time the only committee chaired by a member of the AfD. The Bundestag records a continuing paid professorship at the NBS Northern Business School in Hamburg, disclosed at 607.09 euro gross a month, together with a right of return and protection against dismissal. The school states that he has held its professorship of criminal sciences since 2017. His doctoral thesis, as cited by WDR, is Analyse religiös motivierter Selbstmordattentate am Beispiel der Anschläge der Hamburger Zelle vom 11. September 2001, a study of the Hamburg cell involved in the September 11 attacks.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Defence Committee and a deputy member of the Interior Committee, of the Subcommittee on International Order, the United Nations and International Organizations, of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly and of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and he is deputy chair of the German-British Parliamentary Group. He told WDR that he had briefly belonged to the Free Democratic Party in his youth and to the Christian Democratic Union for 18 years before joining the AfD in 2016, and he described the refugee crisis as a decisive experience. In January 2024 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that his Landtag biography had described him as a criminology lecturer for the North Rhine-Westphalia police since 2019, although the state's police university said he had not taught there since 2021; he called the entry a misunderstanding and corrected it. The same WDR profile noted that the domestic intelligence service was observing the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation, a classification Zerbin presented as a stigma on views he said had once been mainstream conservatism.

Early life, education and sport

Childhood and schooling

Daniel Zerbin was born on 1 February 1973 in Gelsenkirchen. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members’ own statements, records that he is Protestant and has two children. He grew up in Dorsten, in the Recklinghausen district of North Rhine-Westphalia, and a local biographical lexicon describes him as still living there. He took his Abitur at the Gesamtschule Wulfen and, according to that lexicon, entered the Bundeswehr in 1992 after the examination.

The district of Recklinghausen lists the school as the Integrierte Gesamtschule Wulfen, Dorsten’s comprehensive school, at Wulfener Markt 2 in Dorsten-Wulfen, in the locality of Barkenberg. A May 2022 portrait in the Halterner Zeitung called Lembeck, another locality of Dorsten, his home village, and reported that while he was lecturing at a private university in Hamburg he was usually there only at weekends.

University studies

The higher education ran alongside military service. A curriculum vitae published by the Northern Business School in Hamburg, where he later became a professor, places study of vocational and business pedagogy (Berufs- und Betriebspädagogik) and criminology in the same entry as his service from 1992 to 2006 as an officer of the German military police. The Dorsten Lexikon names the institutions and the dates: Betriebspädagogik at the Bundeswehr university, finished with a diploma in 2002, and criminology at the University of Hamburg, finished with a diploma in 2004. It does not give formal degree titles beyond the diploma, and it does not say which of the two Bundeswehr universities awarded the pedagogy qualification.

The lexicon states that his diploma thesis dealt with crimes of the Second World War. It quotes him as saying that every society has a certain potential for perpetrators, that the state is no guarantee against becoming a victim of violence, and that victims are usually those who are weak and who show weakness—remarks it connects with a later adult-education course on self-defence.

Muay Thai

Zerbin competed in Muay Thai, in Germany usually called Thaiboxen, until 2006. The Dorsten Lexikon, drawing on local reporting, a 2011 campus profile and the 2006 programme of the Dorsten Volkshochschule, states that he won a German championship three times and then stopped competing in order to have more time for other work. It says he became known in Dorsten above all through the sport, and that in 2006 he taught a Volkshochschule course there titled “Analyse und Abwehr sexueller Übergriffe” (analysis of, and defence against, sexual assaults). A short biography of the AfD group in the state parliament names 2003 as a year in which he was German champion in Thai boxing, without a weight class or any other year. Later profiles repeat the sporting past without a bout record: a 2023 Westdeutscher Rundfunk portrait introduced him as a Thai boxer, and the Dorstener Zeitung, reporting his 2022 state-parliament candidacy, called him a former combat-sport athlete.

He later held unpaid offices in the sport. Disclosures for the Bundestag mandate, also reproduced by Abgeordnetenwatch, list him as an honorary board member of Muaythai Bund NRW e.V., entered with the place Marienheide, and of Sparta Gym Marl e.V. in Dorsten; both entries were recorded on 15 July 2025. The federation’s own legal notice does not name him. It identifies René Müller as the board member who represents the association and gives an address in Dorsten.

Military service

Feldjäger career

Daniel Zerbin joined the Bundeswehr in 1992 and served until 2006 as an officer of the Feldjägertruppe, the armed forces' military police. A 2011 Hamburger Abendblatt profile identifies that service as his occupation before he taught at a police college, and states that on foreign deployments he was responsible for securing evidence at crime scenes. In 2023 WDR described him as a professional soldier in the military police. Speaking in September 2022 as an expert witness before the Bundestag inquiry into the Afghanistan mission, he said he had fourteen years' service as a Feldjäger. A Dorsten biographical entry instead says twelve years, while still dating his entry to 1992 and his departure to 2006.

During those years he studied vocational and business education at the Helmut Schmidt University, the Bundeswehr university in Hamburg, completing a Diplom in 2002, and criminology at the University of Hamburg, completing a Diplom in 2004. The curriculum vitae on his later faculty page states that in 2005–2006 he was commissioner for criminalistics at the general of the military police corps, gathering evidence for foreign missions, and that from 2008 he was a reserve officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel (Oberstleutnant), including reserve exercises in 2009–2012 as a staff officer on that staff. The Dorsten entry writes that he was already discharged in 2006 as an Oberstleutnant. That wording is difficult to reconcile with descriptions of him as a captain (Hauptmann) on the 2004–2005 Afghanistan deployment; before the Bundestag committee he confirmed several further years of reserve work on evidence preservation without naming the later rank.

Kosovo and Afghanistan

The Abendblatt profile, the WDR portrait and the Dorsten biography all report deployments in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The earliest of these, the 2011 Abendblatt piece, limits both theatres to crime-scene evidence work. None of them names a unit, a year or a location in Kosovo.

The Afghanistan posting is more specific, and the detail comes from Zerbin's own accounts. The faculty CV describes a four-month tour in 2004–2005 under the International Security Assistance Force, in the rank of captain and as chief of the military police in Fayzabad, a spelling also given as Faizabad and Feyzabad. In an August 2021 interview he said he had been in Afghanistan twice as a military policeman and that in 2004/05 he was liaison officer there to the Afghan police. He said a local police chief asked for help after a warlord beat the criminal-police chief for arresting one of the warlord's men, and that the Germans could not intervene because the warlord was needed politically. On 22 September 2022 the inquiry's chair introduced him as a Feldjäger who had served under the ISAF mandate. Zerbin told the committee that he had been in Afghanistan twice, that he had been liaison officer to the Afghan police and to the National Directorate of Security, and that a police security chief had come to his office to complain that the warlord Nasir Mohammed had beaten the criminal-police chief. His written opinion for the same inquiry states that it drew on two official stays in the country. A 2016 Welt author note says that, as a captain in Afghanistan, the former military-police officer had been assigned security questions. At the hearing he also said his duties included working up cases of suicide attacks, and he recalled arriving in November and a school where children sat on the bare floor in the snow. The second stay is not dated in these sources. They describe military-police liaison and evidence work, and they do not record a named combat engagement.

Criminological career

Security work and police teaching

By 2011 Zerbin had moved from military police service into civilian security work and police teaching. The Hamburger Abendblatt reported on 5 November 2011 that he had been a lecturer (Dozent) at the Hochschule der Polizei in Hamburg since April of that year, teaching deployment doctrine (Einsatzlehre), criminalistics and criminology to police officers and to staff training for the private security industry. The same profile recorded that he had studied vocational and business education at the Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Bundeswehr Hamburg and criminology at the University of Hamburg, and that he had earlier been responsible for exhibition security for the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz on Berlin's Museum Island. A notice issued for his 2017 professorship gave a tighter sequence: lecturer at the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Nordrhein-Westfalen from 2007 to 2010, combined with self-employment in the security trade; head of the foundation's security service in Berlin in 2010–2011; and wissenschaftlicher Angestellter (scientific employee) of the Hamburg police from 2011 to 2013.

The fifth edition (2021) of a police textbook named him as an adjunct lecturer in criminology at the Hochschule für Polizei und öffentliche Verwaltung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Münster site. The Gemeinsame Normdatei likewise affiliates him with that Hochschule and gives Münster as a place of activity. In January 2024 a spokesman for the Hochschule told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that Zerbin had not taught there since 2021.

Dissertation

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek catalogues Analyse religiös motivierter Selbstmordattentate am Beispiel der Anschläge der Hamburger Zelle vom 11.09.2001 as Zerbin's dissertation at the Helmut Schmidt University, published in 2017 by disserta Verlag in Hamburg (ISBN 978-3-95935-400-4; an online edition is ISBN 978-3-95935-401-1). The print record is 490 pages plus a 62-page appendix. Zerbin has said that the doctorate was conferred in 2016. The publisher's description presents the book as a study of religiously motivated suicide attacks, using the 11 September 2001 attacks and the Hamburg cell as the case, and says the argument draws on criminological theory and a general theory of evolution in order to look at the perpetrators and their religious and cultural setting rather than only at organizations or at pathology. A published extract discusses the medieval Assassins as an earlier instance of organized attacks framed in religious terms.

Professorship and publications

NBS Northern Business School, a private Hochschule in Hamburg run by NBS Northern Business School gemeinnützige GmbH, lists Zerbin as a full-time lecturer there from 2013 to 2017 and as professor of Kriminalwissenschaften (criminal sciences). He took up that professorship in the bachelor's programme Sicherheitsmanagement in September 2017. On 2 November 2017 he delivered his inaugural lecture, "Von Hamburg nach New York: Die Genese des Mohamed Atta". The school's report of the lecture says he set out traits associated with psychopathy, found that Mohamed Atta showed few of them and had not stood out as a student at the Technical University of Hamburg, and then treated the case through Atta's surroundings, including regular attendance at Hamburg's al-Quds mosque and an Islam working group at that university.

In 2021 he became a co-author, with Monika Pientka, a retired Kriminaldirektorin, and Norbert Wolf, a Leitender Kriminaldirektor, of the fifth edition of Kriminalwissenschaften I: Grundstudium (C.H. Beck, Munich; ISBN 978-3-406-77466-9; xxvi + 216 pages). The preface, dated June 2021, states that his joining the authors was the conspicuous change from the previous edition, and the book is written for the bachelor's course for the police service in North Rhine-Westphalia. The criminology catalogue KrimDok records a third edition (2021) of Kriminalwissenschaften 2: Hauptstudium 1 (C.H. Beck, ISBN 978-3-406-76599-5) whose title statement names Pientka and Zerbin. The school's research report for the academic year 2021/22 lists completion of the Kriminalwissenschaften textbook, participation in the federally funded project SERViTU EPOCH and in the Jean Monnet module ERUPT, and membership of CONRIS, the Kriminologische Gesellschaft and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kriminalistik. He attended that society's annual meeting in Salzburg on 30–31 October 2019. The same report states that, because he had been released for Erziehungsurlaub (parental leave) for the next three years, no research activity was planned for him in the following reporting year.

The Bundestag register of members' interests, drawn from the members' own declarations, lists his occupation as Kriminalwissenschaftler and records that, before he entered the Bundestag, he was a professor at NBS Northern Business School gemeinnützige GmbH in Hamburg, with a right of return and protection against dismissal. The same disclosure lists a continuing paid activity as professor there of 607.09 euro gross a month.

Path into the AfD

Earlier party memberships

Zerbin's biographical entry in Kürschners Volkshandbuch for the 21st German Bundestag, drawn from members' data and current as of 8 June 2026, lists him as a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) from 1998 to 2016 and of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from 2016. In a May 2023 interview for a Westdeutscher Rundfunk series on members of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, he called the CDU his political home. The profile reported that he had belonged to it for 18 years as a passive, dues-paying member before joining the AfD in 2016, and that as a young man he had briefly been in the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The Dorsten Lexikon, a local reference that cites a January 2022 Dorstener Zeitung profile, dates the FDP membership to 1991–1993 and the CDU membership to 1998–2016. The parliamentary handbook does not mention the FDP. The handbook span, 1998 to 2016, matches both that lexicon entry and Zerbin's statement to WDR that the CDU membership lasted 18 years. A January 2025 Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung article on his Bundestag candidacy in Herne–Bochum II was headlined as a path from the FDP through the CDU to the AfD.

Joining the AfD and local roles

Zerbin told WDR that the refugee crisis of 2015 was, for him, a Schlüsselerlebnis—a decisive experience. He said the CDU had lost sight of presenting Christianity as a better alternative to Islam, which he found regrettable, and that Islam had to be questioned critically. The broadcaster linked that remark to his doctoral thesis on religiously motivated suicide attacks, written around the Hamburg cell responsible for the attacks of 11 September 2001. He counted himself on what he called the conservative wing of the AfD and, according to WDR, believed that wing was not very different from what the CDU had argued in the 1980s and 1990s. The profile described the AfD as a party observed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case, and reported his answer that he felt stigmatized: what was now called right-wing, right-wing radical or right-wing extremist had, he said, still been mainstream a few years earlier. He said he knew Björn Höcke but did not have much to do with him.

The handbook gives his early AfD offices as deputy speaker of the Kreisverband Recklinghausen in 2016–17, assessor (Beisitzer) of that association in 2017–18, and speaker of the Bezirksverband Münster from 2021. In early 2022 the Dorsten Lexikon described him as speaker, or chairman, of that Bezirk and as a member of the AfD Stadtverband Dorsten, not as its chair. In January 2023 he told WDR that he had personally invited the speakers to the Bezirk's New Year reception in Münster's historic town hall, a list that included Höcke, because the association wanted to "depict the entire spectrum of opinion in the AfD." Later party material named someone else in the speaker's role. In November 2023 the AfD Kreisverband Steinfurt reported that Florian Elixmann had been elected speaker of the Münster Bezirk, and an invitation to the reception of 16 February 2024, quoted by Belltower.News, called Elixmann chairman of the Bezirksverband. The June 2026 handbook entry still described Zerbin as speaker of the Bezirk since 2021.

Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia

2022 election and mandate

At the 2022 North Rhine-Westphalia state election on 15 May 2022, Daniel Zerbin stood for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in constituency 71, Recklinghausen III, and in eleventh place on the party's state list. The constituency, in the Recklinghausen district of North Rhine-Westphalia, covered the towns of Dorsten and Haltern am See, the Ahsen and Bauernschaft Ostleven districts of Datteln, and the Polsum district of Marl. The state returning officer's list of successful list candidates records him as a professor living in Dorsten. He received 3,382 first votes, 6.0 percent of the 56,020 valid first votes. The direct mandate went to Josef Hovenjürgen of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), from Haltern am See, with 24,909 votes (44.5 percent). Turnout was 59.7 percent of 94,652 people eligible to vote. On second votes in the constituency the AfD took 3,160 votes, or 5.6 percent, compared with 7.6 percent on the same territory in 2017, while its first-vote share rose from 3.1 to 6.0 percent.

Across the state the AfD won 388,768 second votes (5.4 percent) and 12 of the 195 seats in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, every one of them from the state list. The Social Democratic Party of Germany won 56 seats, Alliance 90/The Greens 39 and the Free Democratic Party 12; the CDU, with 76 seats, took all of its members in constituencies. The returning officer's table of list members returned on the AfD list runs from place 1 through place 12, so Zerbin's eleventh place was among those elected. State returning officer Wolfgang Schellen said after the state electoral committee's final count that the distribution announced on election night, including six overhang and eight compensatory seats, was unchanged.

The new Landtag met in Düsseldorf for its constitutive sitting on 1 June 2022. The AfD nominated Zerbin for second vice-president. In the secret ballot he received 13 of 193 votes cast; Berivan Aymaz of the Greens received 170, and 10 members abstained. Before that vote the AfD had asked to change the rules of procedure so that the presidium would have a fourth vice-president. The other groups rejected the motion, as they had rejected a similar proposal in 2017, and the AfD was again left outside the presidium. The Recklinghäuser Zeitung described the ballot as his first vote as a member, after entering through list place 11 rather than the constituency, which Hovenjürgen held.

Chair of the science committee

The AfD group in the Landtag described Zerbin as its spokesman on science policy and as a deputy member of the interior committee and of the committee for Europe and international affairs.

He also chaired the Landtag's science committee, the Wissenschaftsausschuss. In a portrait published on 10 May 2023, Westdeutscher Rundfunk wrote that he had been a member since the 2022 election and that the science committee was the only committee then headed by an AfD member. The same report said that members of other parties passed him in the corridors without a greeting, and quoted him as saying that the other groups took care to keep the AfD separate. WDR described the AfD as a party observed by the domestic intelligence service as a suspected right-wing extremist case. In the same interview Zerbin said he felt stigmatised, and compared the conservative wing of the AfD, where he placed himself, with positions of the CDU in the 1980s and 1990s.

Resignation and succession

Zerbin gave up the Landtag seat after his election to the Bundestag. The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025. The state returning officer announced on 26 March 2025 that Prof. Dr. Daniel Zerbin had resigned his Landtag mandate with effect from the end of that day, and that Thomas Röckemann would follow him from the AfD state list from 27 March 2025. The notice, published in the Ministerialblatt für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen (2025, p. 620), referred to the returning officer's announcement of 30 May 2022 on the Landtag election.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that Röckemann, a 60-year-old lawyer from Minden, was sworn in on 27 March 2025. He had already entered the Landtag for the AfD in the previous legislative period, and had chaired the state party from the end of 2017 until October 2019. The Bundestag's register of members lists Zerbin's occupation immediately before the federal mandate as membership of the Landtag in Düsseldorf.

Elections of 2025

Bundestag constituency and list

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025, Zerbin was the constituency candidate of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in constituency 140, Herne – Bochum II, and was elected from place 13 on the party’s state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The constituency comprises the whole independent city of Herne and, in Bochum, the boroughs Bochum-Nord and Bochum-Ost. The Federal Returning Officer’s final result lists 170,434 people eligible to vote, 132,167 voters and a turnout of 77.5 percent, 6.8 points above 2021. Of 130,681 valid first votes, Hendrik Bollmann of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) won the direct seat with 43,832 votes (33.5 percent, down 9.9 points). Christoph Bußmann of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was the leading unsuccessful constituency candidate, with 31,032 votes (23.7 percent, up 4.0 points). The AfD first-vote total, cast for Zerbin, was 28,088 (21.5 percent, up 11.7 points). Alliance 90/The Greens received 11,111 (8.5 percent), Die Linke 10,878 (8.3 percent) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 2,948 (2.3 percent).

On second votes in the constituency the order was SPD 33,909 (25.9 percent), CDU 29,840 (22.8 percent) and AfD 27,453 (20.9 percent, up 11.2 points), followed by Die Linke with 12,576 (9.6 percent), the Greens with 11,719 (8.9 percent) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance with 6,110 (4.7 percent). Across North Rhine-Westphalia the AfD’s second-vote share was 16.8 percent, and the state returning officer allocated the party 26 of the state’s Bundestag seats. Zerbin did not take the constituency seat; both the Federal Returning Officer and the Bundestag record his mandate as coming from state-list place 13.

Herne mayoral race

On 14 September 2025, the day of the North Rhine-Westphalia municipal elections, Zerbin stood for the AfD for Oberbürgermeister of Herne. The city’s gazette of admitted nominations, dated 1 August 2025, lists him as a criminologist born in 1973 in Gelsenkirchen, resident in the 48157 district of Münster, and as candidate number 4. The final result, from all 109 districts and confirmed unanimously by the election committee on 16 September, gave the incumbent, Frank Dudda (SPD), 28,319 of 54,995 valid votes, or 51.49 percent. That was more than half, so Dudda was elected in the first round, without a runoff, to a third term. Zerbin finished second with 11,737 votes (21.34 percent). Bettina Szelag (CDU) received 8,427 (15.32 percent), Sabine von der Beck (Greens) 3,765 (6.85 percent), Bernd Blech (Unabhängige Bürger) 1,131 (2.06 percent), Lars Wind (Pirate Party) 935 (1.70 percent) and Thomas Bloch (FDP) 681 (1.24 percent). Turnout was 48.34 percent: 55,680 voters out of 115,184 eligible, of whom 20,110 voted by post. In 2020 Dudda had been returned with 63.4 percent.

On 5 August 2025 a questioner identified as Kai M. asked Zerbin, on the platform Abgeordnetenwatch, how someone who was not from Herne and had no connections with the city could make municipal policy for it. Zerbin replied on 20 March 2026 that, in his view, Herne needed a political new start and that a person coming from outside could contribute to putting the city back on a successful course.

Münster council list

The same election chose the council of Münster. On 10 September 2025 the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Zerbin, by then a Bundestag member, was campaigning on two tracks and was under criticism for standing as AfD mayoral candidate in Herne and, at the same time, as an AfD candidate for the Münster council. The paper’s publicly displayed headline and summary state that dual candidacy and the criticism of it; they do not name the critics.

In Münster the election committee established the final council result on 18 September 2025. The AfD received 7,301 votes, 4.52 percent, and 3 of 66 seats. Those three seats were filled from reserve-list places 1 to 3, by Helmut Birke, Holger Lucius and Hans-Jürgen Scholte. Zerbin is not among the councillors recorded as elected. Turnout was 64.81 percent, with 162,219 voters out of 250,306 eligible. The Greens were the largest group, with 51,092 votes (31.63 percent) and 21 seats, just ahead of the CDU on 50,589 (31.32 percent) and 20 seats. The SPD won 9 seats, Die Linke 6, Volt 3, the FDP 2, and Die PARTEI and the Ecological Democratic Party one each.

Bundestag membership

Committees and interparliamentary bodies

Prof. Dr. Daniel Zerbin has sat in the 21st Bundestag since its constituent meeting on 25 March 2025. He is a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), returned on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list, and was the party's candidate in constituency 140, Herne – Bochum II; the biography, drawn from members' own disclosures, lists him as a criminologist.

He is an ordinary member of the Defence Committee, which scrutinises the Defence Ministry and the Bundeswehr and takes part in the defence budget and procurement. He is a deputy member of the Interior Committee, whose remit runs from migration and asylum to civil protection, and a deputy member of the Subcommittee on International Order, the United Nations and International Organizations, a Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the United Nations and other multilateral bodies.

He is also a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, the 100-member joint body of the Bundestag and the Assemblée nationale meant to meet at least twice a year, and a deputy member of the German delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, founded in 1889 and now grouping parliamentarians from 181 countries. He is a deputy chair of the German-British Parliamentary Group, one of the cross-party friendship groups reconstituted each term for contacts with legislators abroad. From 2 to 6 February 2026 he travelled with a Defence Committee delegation under its chair, Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU), and Ulrich Thoden (Die Linke) to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for the transfer of the battle group in Kaunas under Panzerbrigade 45 and talks with the German brigade and Baltic governments.

Plenary activity

His recorded speeches have concentrated on armed deployments, the defence estimates and internal security, often referring to his service as a military-police officer.

On 6 November 2025, in the first reading of the bill implementing Directive (EU) 2022/2557 on the resilience of critical facilities, he quoted Helmut Schmidt — "In a crisis one recognises character" — said uniform crisis management was right in principle, and attacked the political handling of the July 2021 Ahr valley flood.

On Afghan admissions he spoke twice. On 11 September 2025 he said that, as a captain of the German military police, he had worked with Afghan local staff who had been fed, given German medical care and well paid, and he cited a 2022 hearing for the claim that the Taliban had neither imprisoned nor killed any local employee. On 3 December 2025, debating Green motions including "Keep our word, protect lives — issue visas to Afghan nationals who have an admission pledge" (Drucksache 21/3031), he called it a "brazen lie" that former Bundeswehr local staff were especially endangered or had mostly stood for democracy and the rule of law. He referred to postings in Kunduz and Fayzabad and quoted the Swiss journalist Franz Marty, heard by the Afghanistan inquiry committee on 22 September 2022, as reporting no sign of a country-wide operation specifically targeting local staff after the Taliban takeover. Zerbin voted no in the roll-call; the result was 130 yes and 440 no, and the motion failed.

On 17 December 2025 he spoke on the request to continue the armed deployment "securing stabilisation, preventing a resurgence of IS, promoting reconciliation in Iraq" (Drucksache 21/3206). After thanking soldiers, he said the government wanted up to 500 German troops in Iraq from 1 February 2026 to 31 January 2027, at 109 million euro, and that the effort would probably succeed no better than the democratisation of Afghanistan. He called the conflict religious as well as political and said the AfD would reject risking lives and tax money "in the Iraqi sand".

On 15 April 2026, on the AfD motion to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech at universities (Drucksache 21/5318), he said he had taught for almost 20 years and chaired North Rhine-Westphalia's science committee, and that Jewish students had told him they no longer dared attend university because extremist ideas had spread.

On 9 September 2026, in the first reading of Einzelplan 14 of the 2027 budget, he contrasted the sinking of the cruiser Moskva on 14 April 2022, after two Ukrainian Neptune missiles he valued at about one million euro each, with what he called an SPD-led defence ministry's spending for "yesterday's war". He put the chance of a Russian attack on NATO in 2029 as low, because it would be "pure suicide" for Russia, and said billions in the 2027 budget were being wasted on a war that would not happen with the AfD.

Constituency presence

The address published for him is the members' office at Platz der Republik 1 in Berlin, not one in the constituency, which covers Herne and part of Bochum. On 10 August 2025 the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, profiling him as the AfD candidate for mayor of Herne, described him as a Bundestag member from Dorsten and presented the article as an account of his demands and of why he had no constituency office in Herne. The Westfälische Nachrichten reported on 22 June 2026 that he had lived for a little more than a year in Münster, outside that constituency.

Political positions

Security, crime and migration

In the Bundestag topical hour of 15 October 2025, Daniel Zerbin, for the Alternative for Germany, put "unkontrollierte Migration aus dem Nahen Osten" and "ausufernde Gewaltkriminalität" beside deindustrialisation and the risk of war with Russia, and said "Bambi-Land ist abgebrannt." Drones over Germany and "Messermorde," he said, were new and the work of a self-righteous political class. Claudia Roth of Alliance 90/The Greens called "primitiv" his remark that nobody would die for gender asterisks and marriage for all.

On 22 July 2026 he co-signed an AfD bill letting criminal courts, in cases of dangerous bodily injury, order pre-trial detention without the usual grounds and withdraw a residence permit and order expulsion, with no later administrative-court case. The memorandum called knife attacks a failure of internal security, cited a 41.8 per cent share of non-German suspects in the 2024 police statistics, and set about 221,000 people obliged to leave at the end of 2024 against 20,084 deportations that year.

On 3 December 2025, on Green motions about visas for Afghan nationals, including former Bundeswehr local staff, he called it a "dreiste Lüge" that they had been especially endangered and had mostly served democracy and the rule of law, drawing on his posting as a military-police captain in Kunduz and Faizabad. He quoted Swiss journalist Franz Marty, who told the Afghanistan inquiry on 22 September 2022 that he saw no large-scale Taliban hunt for local staff, and said that violence was being imported "massenhaft in unsere Heimat." Green deputy Schahina Gambir called the speech "Irre"; SPD deputy Johannes Fechner demanded proof, and Lars Castellucci called protecting the staff responsibility, not "Sozialromantik."

Defence and deployments

In the same debate he said the citizen was the country's best defender and that the AfD stood for conscription as the guarantee of sovereignty. On Ukraine and NATO he wrote in August 2026 that closer Ukrainian integration was analytically tied to the escalation with Russia but was no legal or moral excuse for the attack, and that Germany should arm so as not to be blackmailed.

On 17 December 2025 he opposed renewing the Bundeswehr mission in Iraq: up to 500 soldiers and 109 million euro from February 2026 to January 2027, beside 418.2 million euro the Foreign Office spent on civilian stabilisation in 2024. He likened any German role to the failed democratisation of Afghanistan, said the Gulf was for regional states rather than German taxpayers, and told the House "lehnen wir diesen Antrag ab" rather than put money "in den irakischen Sand." CDU deputy Jürgen Hardt called the speech an "autodidaktisches Seminar."

On 9 September 2026, at the first reading of the 2027 defence estimates, he set the sinking of the cruiser Moskva in April 2022, which he put above 750 million dollars, against two missiles of about one million euro, and called that ratio "der Krieg von heute" beside an SPD-led ministry fighting "der Krieg von gestern." Debt-financed billions, he said, would buy scrap rather than readiness; a Russian attack on NATO in 2029 would be "reiner Suizid"; and the money was for "einen Krieg, den es auf jeden Fall mit der AfD nicht geben wird," with the CDU led by the SPD toward bankruptcy. On 15 October 2026 Zerbin voted to extend UNMISS in South Sudan and EUNAVFOR Aspides in the Red Sea.

Universities and academic freedom

In a May 2023 WDR interview, as chair of the science committee of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, Zerbin said that, in the name of gender equity, dissenters were cancelled at universities and that without the right theses "kann man keine Karriere mehr machen."

On 17 October 2023 the AfD group tabled Drucksache 18/6376 to amend the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Education Act so that universities would, in their basic regulations, protect teaching and research against deliberate disruption, especially political attacks, and could adopt a sanctions list, with expulsion only as a last resort. Citing Article 5(3) of the Basic Law, it pointed to disrupted events involving a biologist at Humboldt University, Thomas de Maizière, Bernd Lucke and Christian Lindner at Ruhr University Bochum, and to police protection for a professor of Islamic religious education in Münster.

After a hearing on 19 June 2024 the committee, with Zerbin as rapporteur, recommended rejection. The report records the AfD as saying the bill would promote academic freedom and that experts had backed parts of it; the CDU as citing partial unconstitutionality; the SPD as joining the CDU; and the Free Democratic Party as saying existing rules were enough. On 4 September 2024 the CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP outvoted the AfD. At second reading on 12 September, CDU deputy Annika Fohn said the problem did not exist, the Act already allowed sanctions, experts had opposed the change, and university discipline could bind only members.

Reception and controversies

Professional fallout

In January 2024 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that Daniel Zerbin’s biography on the website of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia still described him as a criminology lecturer “for the police of North Rhine-Westphalia” since 2019. A spokesman for the Hochschule für Polizei und öffentliche Verwaltung NRW said Zerbin “has not taught at the HSPV NRW for several years (2021).” The Landtag said members supply their own curricula vitae, posted unchecked; because Zerbin entered only in 2022, the paper concluded the entry had been wrong from the start. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) group said that in 2022 the university had told him courses were already staffed but that he would remain in the “pool of lecturers,” which he took as a pause. The university’s position was that an ended contract means a person is no longer a lecturer. Zerbin said he would check the entry; by the next morning it stated that the appointment had ended three years earlier.

The Dorstener Zeitung reported on 1 March 2024 that the police university had separated from him and that the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter (BDK) “cannot get rid of” him, his membership being dormant. The Dorsten Lexikon, listing that paper’s 2 March 2024 report among its sources, quotes Zerbin as saying he was, on his own initiative and in the association’s interest, letting the membership rest “for the next few years” to protect the BDK from “conceivable malicious media portrayals.” BDK federal chairman Dirk Peglow is quoted there as saying exclusion had been considered, but “the procedure is complicated and would probably not have been successful,” so it was not pursued “at the present time” and a dormant membership was agreed; Zerbin’s public statements would still be “registered and evaluated very closely.”

In May 2023 Zerbin gave his own account of other consequences: a publisher had cancelled the author contract for two criminological textbooks, his police teaching post had not been renewed, the BDK had been trying to expel him since he took his Landtag seat, and he had lost many friends. The university dates the end of the HSPV teaching to 2021; the book-contract cancellation is reported only as his statement.

Media portrayal and criticism

A Westdeutscher Rundfunk portrait by Thomas Drescher, published on 10 May 2023 in the series “Abgeordnet – Wer sitzt eigentlich im NRW-Landtag?”, presented Zerbin as isolated: colleagues from other parties, he said, walked past without greeting and took care to “separate themselves from us.” He placed himself on what he called the AfD’s conservative wing and said that “what today counts as right-wing, right-wing radical or right-wing extremist was, a few years ago, not a problem at all, but mainstream.” He said he knew Björn Höcke but did not have much to do with him; the report added that knowing Höcke well is not always an advantage. He also said AfD members were pushed toward “these dictatorships, the Third Reich and so on,” and that he had accused other parties of using “the same means and methods, namely demarcation and downgrading.” Drescher wrote that the group’s press spokesman breathed heavily at that comparison, and described the position as an informal “Alfred Dregger memorial club,” in a hard-to-define proximity to people who “would rather abolish” freedom. The Dorsten Lexikon later wrote that Zerbin maintained good contact with the Thuringian party leader and quoted him: “Björn Höcke is not the problem that Germany currently has.”

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s classification of the federal AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist endeavour was upheld by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster; on 20 May 2025 the Federal Administrative Court rejected complaints against the refusal of a further appeal, so the judgments of 13 May 2024 became final. In May 2025 the office said it was upgrading the federal party to a “confirmed extremist endeavour.” On 26 February 2026 the Administrative Court of Cologne, in interim proceedings, barred the office from classifying, treating or publicly describing the party that way until the main case is decided. The court found sufficient certainty of efforts inside the AfD against the free democratic basic order, but not that those efforts gave the party as a whole an unconstitutional tendency. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said it therefore remained an observation case. Some state associations have been classified more strictly: tagesschau reported in November 2023 that Thuringia’s office had in March 2021 classified the association led by Höcke as confirmed right-wing extremist, and that Saxony-Anhalt’s office had just done the same, while the federal party was then still only a suspected case.

In September 2025 the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Zerbin, by then a member of the Bundestag, was under criticism for standing at once as AfD candidate for mayor of Herne and as a council candidate in Münster.