Enrico Komning

Enrico Komning (born 6 August 1968 in Stralsund) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and, since 2019, a parliamentary managing director (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) of the AfD parliamentary group. In the 2025 German federal election he won the direct mandate in constituency 16, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte I – Vorpommern-Greifswald II, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with 75,078 first votes (45.2 percent).

He finished the ten-year polytechnic secondary school with distinction in 1985 and, in 1988, a construction apprenticeship combined with the Abitur. He studied law at the University of Greifswald, passed the first state examination in 1996 and the second in 1998, and was admitted to the bar that year. Since 2000 he has practised as an independent lawyer, and since 2002 he has been owner and managing director of the firm KOMNING Rechtsanwälte. From 2001 to 2016 he sat on the administrative board of the Taxpayers’ Association in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, latterly as deputy chair. From 2010 to 2012 he belonged to the Free Democratic Party, served on its state executive, and was a city councillor and chair of the FDP/Freie Bürger group on the Neubrandenburg council. He joined the AfD in 2014.

From 2016 to 2017 he was a member of the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and deputy chair of its AfD group. He entered the Bundestag on the state party list in 2017 and again in 2021. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and of the Council of Elders, a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland and of the Joint Committee, and he has been part of the Bundestag delegation to the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference since 2017. The Bundestag states that the biographical details are the member’s own.

That biography records military service from 1988 to 1991 in the Wachregiment “Feliks Dzierzynski”, a guard regiment of the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. In November 2016 he told the Nordkurier that he had served first as a construction pioneer and later as a stoker, that the posting ended in early 1990 after about a year and a half when the regiment was dissolved, and that he did not regard the service as something he needed to justify. A Landtag review commission later reported indications of full-time employment with the Ministry for State Security, citing the federal Stasi records authority, but made no formal finding because he had already left the state parliament for the Bundestag. A recording from a 2016 internal AfD meeting, published by the Schweriner Volkszeitung and reported by Der Spiegel on 26 May 2020, captured him saying of the “parliamentary state, or whatever this democracy is called” that “we don’t want that” and “we want to abolish it.” He confirmed the sentence and said it had been taken out of context; an extract of the recording that he supplied continued that “almost everything should be decided by the people” and that only essential structural matters should remain with elected representatives. He has been a member of the Greifswald student fraternity Burschenschaft Rugia since 1991.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling in the GDR

Enrico Komning was born on 6 August 1968 in Stralsund, then in the German Democratic Republic. The biography published for the 19th Bundestag states that he grew up in Viereck OT ETS. Viereck is a municipality in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; among its districts is the Ernst-Thälmann-Siedlung, the only name that matches the abbreviation ETS. In a 2016 interview he said that his father had been a Fähnrich in the National People's Army.

The handbook of the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern records that from 1975 to 1985 he attended the Polytechnische Oberschule in Viereck. That school was the GDR’s compulsory comprehensive school: a class normally stayed together from the first year to the tenth, pupils were not generally separated by ability, and the leaving certificate was roughly equivalent to the later German intermediate school qualification (Mittlerer Schulabschluss), with teaching tied to preparation for work in production. His current Bundestag biography says he finished the ten-class school in 1985 with distinction; the 19th-term text also lists the Lessing Medal in gold, named for Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

From 1985 to 1988 he completed a Berufsausbildung mit Abitur as a Baufacharbeiter, a skilled construction worker. In the GDR that was a three-year course, taught in special classes at the vocational schools of large enterprises, which conferred both a skilled-worker title and the Abitur. The Federal Agency for Civic Education describes it as aimed above all at technical and scientific study: the Abitur papers matched those of the Erweiterte Oberschule, and places were available for about five percent of a year group.

Between the apprenticeship and university, the Landtag handbook lists military service from 1988 to 1990 and work as a mason in 1990–1991. The 19th-term Bundestag biography dates the service from September 1988 to January 1990 and the masonry employment to 1990, while the current Bundestag biography gives the service as 1988–1991 and a year as a mason in 1991. The biographies record the interval by its dates; his account of the service is taken up separately in this article.

Legal studies in Greifswald

From 1991 to 1996 he studied law at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald and passed the first state examination in law in 1996.

The law faculty building of the University of Greifswald at Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz.

The University of Greifswald’s faculty of law and economics had existed as a law faculty since the university’s foundation in 1456 and had included economics since 1914. The Soviet military administration closed it at the end of the winter semester of 1945/46. On 15 June 1990 the university senate decided to restore the faculty in the form in which it had been abolished; teaching in law and business administration resumed on 25 February 1991, the year Komning began his studies, and the faculty formally reconstituted itself on 26 October 1992. While he was a student the university still carried the name of Ernst Moritz Arndt. On 17 January 2018 the academic senate voted, by the two-thirds majority required to amend the charter, to make the official name University of Greifswald, with the change to take effect after approval by the state education ministry.

From 1996 to 1998 he completed the Referendariat, the practical legal traineeship, in the district of the Higher Regional Court in Rostock, and in 1998 passed the second state examination as a Volljurist with the qualification for judicial office (Befähigung zum Richteramt). The same handbook notes part-time work in 1997–1998 as a legal expert in a commercial law firm in Neubrandenburg. He was admitted to the bar in 1998.

Legal practice

Bar admission and the Neubrandenburg firm

Komning studied law at the University of Greifswald, then styled the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members' own disclosures, records the first state examination in 1996, the second in 1998 with qualification as a Volljurist and capacity for judicial office, admission to the bar in 1998, self-employment as a lawyer from 2000, and, from 2002, ownership and management of KOMNING Rechtsanwälte.

The firm's legal notice describes the practice as a sole proprietorship owned by Komning, with no commercial-register entry, a principal office at Prenzlauer Straße 10, 17034 Neubrandenburg, and further offices in Hamburg, Bonn and Ochsenfurt; it names the Rechtsanwaltskammer Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin as his supervisory authority, styles him a specialist in family law, and sets out separate terms for tax-advisory mandates as well as legal work. The chamber's list of specialist lawyers, dated 17 August 2021, enters him in Neubrandenburg for family law and for copyright and media law, and not under inheritance law or tax law._78.pdf) A 2008 publisher's note calls him a member of the German Bar Association and says he had run the firm since 2000, then with offices in Neubrandenburg and Rostock, earlier than the 2002 date the Bundestag biography gives for ownership.

Fields of practice

In March 2008 Komning and Jan Groschoff published Unternehmensnachfolge: Unter Berücksichtigung der Erbschafts- und Schenkungsteuerreform (Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg; ISBN 978-3-8366-5848-5), a 92-page paperback. The publisher describes it as a survey for business owners of inheritance, family and company law, succession models, the tax effects of the inheritance- and gift-tax reform then in force, and financing, and states that it grew out of a lecture series by the firm with ACTA Treuhand GmbH Steuerberatungsgesellschaft and the Bund der Steuerzahler in Neubrandenburg.

On its profile the firm dates the family-law title to 2003, after a Deutsche AnwaltAkademie course, treats a 2007 inheritance-law course as completed training rather than a further title, and dates a copyright-and-media course to 2012; it centres the practice on business clients and family-business succession, with later work in copyright, media and industrial-property law and with tax advice alongside legal representation. Abgeordnetenwatch reported that the firm had acted for Sky Deutschland Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, citing a hearing on 11 October 2017 at the Landgericht Potsdam at which KOMNING Rechtsanwälte appeared for the broadcaster. A Sky spokesperson told the group that the firm had been instructed "zur Verfolgung von Ansprüchen illegaler Ausstrahlungen im Gastronomiebereich" — pursuing claims over unauthorized showings of broadcasts in the hospitality trade — that no payments had been made after October 2017, and that the relationship was wound up in 2019 after Sky learned of political activity connected with the firm and stopped sending it work. Komning said professional secrecy barred comment on particular retainers, including when they began or ended.

He has kept the practice while a member of the Bundestag. Parliament's list of paid activities alongside the mandate records him as a lawyer at Komning Rechtsanwälte in Neubrandenburg, and itemizes the receipts there. In October 2024 he told NDR that taxes, salaries and office costs had to be deducted from those receipts, that colleagues had handled most of the files, and that he was only sporadically in the firm, which he described as income for a time after politics. He told Abgeordnetenwatch that he personally still handled only about two or three individual matters a year, usually because he knew the client, and that keeping the office was neither politically at odds with the mandate nor a conflict of interest with it.

Earlier parties and local politics

Schill Party and the Taxpayers’ Association

Komning’s Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral term records a short membership, from 2000 to 2001, in the Party for a Rule of Law Offensive (Partei Rechtsstaatlicher Offensive), on its Mecklenburg-Vorpommern executive with responsibility for legal and security policy. The party, usually called the Schill Party, was founded in Hamburg on 13 July 2000 by the judge Ronald Schill, whose severe sentences had brought him the nickname “Richter Gnadenlos,” and it campaigned on internal security. At the Hamburg state election of 23 September 2001 it took 19.4 percent, finished third, and entered government with the Christian Democratic Union under Ole von Beust and the Free Democratic Party; Schill became second mayor and interior senator until the coalition ended in 2003. It organized associations in 15 Länder, but the 2002 federal election brought it 0.8 percent nationally and 4.2 percent in Hamburg. The biography on the Bundestag site for the 21st term, like other member biographies compiled from the member’s own information, no longer mentions the Schill Party.

From 2001 to 2016 he was a member of the administrative board of the Bund der Steuerzahler in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, latterly deputy chair, and the 20th-term biography says he gave up the post because he had become a member of the Landtag. The association dates its foundation to October 1949 and describes itself as a taxpayers’ advocacy organization concerned with transparent lawmaking, efficient use of tax revenue, a fair tax burden and sound public finances; its annual Schwarzbuch collects cases it presents as waste of public money. The Federal Agency for Civic Education’s economic lexicon calls the Bund der Steuerzahler a private, non-partisan and charitable body that represents taxpayers’ interests toward the state and urges economy in public administration.

The FDP and the Neubrandenburg council

The same biographies place Komning in the FDP from 2010 to 2012, including on the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state executive. The 20th-term text also lists membership of the state committee for interior and justice, a candidacy for Landrat of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, the chairmanship of the FDP/Freie Bürger group in the Neubrandenburg city council, and a role as sachkundiger Einwohner—a non-elected resident consulted by a council group—for the district-council group FDP/FW/WLGR.

He had already stood for the FDP in Neubrandenburg before those membership dates. At the city-council election of 7 June 2009 the FDP won three of 43 seats, filled by other candidates; the final result, adopted by the municipal election committee on 11 June and published in the Stadtanzeiger, names Komning on the FDP list and on the ordered lists of substitutes, as the first FDP substitute in one of the three electoral areas and lower on the other two.

The Landrat vote on 4 September 2011 was the first for districts created that day, when six new Landkreise replaced the previous twelve rural districts and the formerly independent cities of Greifswald, Stralsund, Wismar and Neubrandenburg. In Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, 117,556 of 234,394 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 50.2 percent. Of 113,439 valid votes, Komning, a lawyer from Neubrandenburg standing for the FDP, received 4,804, or 4.2 percent, the smallest share among five candidates. Heiko Kärger of the CDU led with 43,661 votes (38.5 percent), ahead of Siegfried Konieczny of Die Linke with 28,483 (25.1 percent), Michael Löffler of the Social Democratic Party of Germany with 26,603 (23.5 percent) and Kathrin Grumbach of Alliance 90/The Greens with 9,888 (8.7 percent). With no absolute majority, the runoff on 18 September was confined to Kärger and Konieczny; Kärger won by 36,219 votes (54.5 percent) to 30,214 (45.5 percent), and turnout fell to 28.6 percent.

AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Landtag

Joining the party and the state executive

Enrico Komning joined the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) in 2014. The biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own disclosures, records that from 2015 to 2023 he was a Beisitzer — an additional member — of the AfD state executive in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and that in that office he acted as Landesjustiziar, the state association's legal adviser. The same disclosure places the executive role across both his state-parliament term and his later years in the Bundestag, ending in 2023.

The 2016–2017 Landtag term

At the election to the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 4 September 2016, the AfD stood in the state for the first time and received 167,852 second votes, 20.8 percent. That was the second-highest share, behind the SPD on 30.6 percent and ahead of the CDU on 19.0 percent; turnout was 61.9 percent of 1,328,320 eligible voters. The state returning officer's final result gave the AfD 18 of the 71 seats: three constituency seats and 15 list seats. The parliament meets in Schwerin Castle.

Komning was the AfD candidate in constituency 3, Neubrandenburg II, and held place 4 on the state list, behind Leif-Erik Holm, Matthias Manthei and Holger Arppe. He did not win the constituency. Of 15,946 valid first votes there, the SPD took 32.4 percent and Komning 3,559 votes, 22.3 percent; he entered through the list. The newly elected Landtag, the seventh legislative period, held its opening sitting on 4 October 2016. Because of building work at the castle, that sitting took place at the Mecklenburg State Theatre in Schwerin rather than in the plenary chamber; the minister-president was elected at the second sitting, on 1 November.

In the AfD group Holm was chair and Komning one of the deputy chairs, a post also recorded in his Bundestag biography. Both had won Bundestag seats in September 2017. On 27 November the Landtag group announced that they would give up their Schwerin mandates on 30 November and concentrate on Berlin, saying they had offset the overlapping salaries in full and had stayed through the transition. Horst Förster, a former local judge in Neubrandenburg, succeeded Komning, and Jens-Holger Schneider of Schwerin succeeded Holm. Four members had already left the group after the federal election, leaving it with 13. Abgeordnetenwatch records his Landtag membership as 2016–2017, within the 2016–2021 parliamentary term, and as a list mandate.

Association with Der Flügel

Der Flügel ("The Wing") was an informal grouping inside the AfD. In January 2019 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified it as a Verdachtsfall, a suspected case and therefore an object of observation. On 12 March 2020 the office raised that finding and classified the grouping, which it estimated at about 7,000 members, as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor directed against the free democratic basic order. The office pointed to Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz as its leading figures in that assessment, and cited continued breaches of human dignity and of the principles of democracy and the rule of law, together with closer ties to the wider right-wing extremist and "new right" milieu. On 20 March 2020 the AfD federal executive, by eleven votes to one with one abstention according to party sources, resolved that it expected the informal association to declare it would dissolve by 30 April 2020.

Before that upgrade, on 23 November 2019, Komning was one of the organizers of a closed meeting billed as the Königsstuhltreffen and as the first Flügel gathering in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It was held at the Strandhotel Arkona in Binz on Rügen. He issued the invitation; registrations went through his Bundestag office, and he told the Ostsee-Zeitung that the press would in principle not be admitted. Blinds and barriers screened the room. About 100 people attended, and Höcke and Kalbitz spoke. The same day the alliance "Rügen für alle – Gemeinsam gegen Rechts" held a counter-demonstration, the "Buntes GeFlügelfest," which the taz reported drew about 600 people and was the first protest march in Binz in decades.

Elections to the Bundestag

List mandates in 2017 and 2021

Komning was the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate in constituency 16, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte I – Vorpommern-Greifswald II, at the federal elections of 2017, 2021 and 2025. The constituency takes in the independent municipalities of Neubrandenburg and Feldberger Seenlandschaft in the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, and, in Vorpommern-Greifswald, Anklam, Pasewalk, Ueckermünde, Strasburg (Uckermark), Heringsdorf and the German municipalities on the island of Usedom, with the remaining municipalities of the two districts assigned to constituencies 15 and 17. Under the personalized proportional system used through 2021, each voter cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party’s state list. The candidate with the most first votes took the constituency seat, while second votes fixed each party’s strength in the Bundestag and closed state lists filled the remaining seats, so a defeated constituency candidate could still be elected if placed high enough on the list.

At the 2017 German federal election on 24 September, 156,965 of 226,039 eligible voters in the constituency cast ballots, a turnout of 69.4 percent, 5.9 points above 2013. Of 154,628 valid first votes, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) candidate Philipp Amthor won the seat with 48,269 votes (31.2 percent). The AfD finished second with 36,273 votes (23.5 percent); Komning was its constituency candidate and that share is the result recorded for him. Die Linke received 29,462 first votes (19.1 percent) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) 21,493 (13.9 percent). On second votes the CDU led with 51,789 (33.5 percent) and the AfD took 35,595 (23.0 percent). Placed second on the AfD state list in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Komning entered the 19th Bundestag through the list rather than the constituency.

The margin was much smaller at the 2021 German federal election on 26 September. Turnout was 69.7 percent, with 154,240 voters out of 221,421 eligible and 150,668 valid first votes. The SPD’s Erik von Malottki won the constituency with 37,392 votes (24.8 percent), 795 ahead of Komning’s 36,597 (24.3 percent). Amthor, standing again for the CDU, placed third with 31,182 (20.7 percent). Die Linke’s Toni Jaschinski received 16,202 (10.8 percent) and Christian Bartelt of the Free Democratic Party 11,165 (7.4 percent). Second votes put the SPD first on 40,339 (26.7 percent), the AfD on 35,102 (23.2 percent) and the CDU on 28,684 (19.0 percent). Komning was again second on the state list and sat in the 20th Bundestag on a list mandate.

The 2025 direct mandate

The federal election of 23 February 2025 was the first conducted under the electoral law amended in June 2023. A candidate of a party who leads the first-vote count in a constituency receives that seat only if it is also covered by the party’s second-vote allocation in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung). Seats not taken by such constituency winners are filled in the fixed order of the state list, and the second vote remains the vote that determines how many seats each party receives.

In constituency 16 the final count was 168,212 voters out of 215,874 eligible, a turnout of 77.9 percent, 8.3 points higher than in 2021. Of 166,076 valid first votes, Komning received 75,078 (45.2 percent), a gain of 20.9 points, and the Federal Returning Officer recorded him as the member elected for the constituency, with Amthor the runner-up on 33,049 votes (19.9 percent). The other candidates on the constituency ballot were Erik von Malottki (SPD), Amina Inèz Kanew (Die Linke), Christian Bartelt (FDP), Katharina Horn of Alliance 90/The Greens, Gerhard Helmut Friedrich (Free Voters) and the independents Danilo Dröse and Ulf Michalsky. Their parties’ first-vote totals were 22,871 for the SPD (13.8 percent), 18,009 for Die Linke (10.8 percent), 5,883 for the FDP (3.5 percent), 4,768 for the Free Voters (2.9 percent) and 3,782 for the Greens (2.3 percent); Dröse received 1,530 votes (0.9 percent) and Michalsky 1,106 (0.7 percent).

On 166,830 valid second votes the AfD led with 71,488 (42.9 percent, up 19.6 points). The CDU followed with 28,879 (17.3 percent), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht with 19,008 (11.4 percent), the SPD with 16,305 (9.8 percent) and Die Linke with 15,823 (9.5 percent). Komning was still second on the AfD state list for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but the seat he took in 2025 was the constituency mandate. His first-vote share in the district had stood at 23.5 percent in 2017 and 24.3 percent in 2021 before reaching 45.2 percent in 2025, and the valid first votes cast for the AfD candidate rose from 36,273 to 75,078.

Roles in the Bundestag

Parliamentary managing director

The archived biographies for the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025) state that Enrico Komning has been a parliamentary managing director (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group in the Bundestag since October 2019. The post is an office of the parliamentary group. The Bundestag says the groups’ parliamentary managing directors meet beforehand on how business is to be handled, and those arrangements then go into the Council of Elders. The AfD group’s page gives the same office and the same October 2019 date, and does not call him first parliamentary managing director.

Junge Freiheit reported that on 30 September 2021, when the group formed after that year’s election, it chose Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as chairs and named Bernd Baumann, Stephan Brandner, Götz Frömming and Komning as parliamentary managing directors. The biography for that term still dated the office from October 2019. After the February 2025 election the Nordkurier reported that he had been elected again, in a group the paper called twice as large, and quoted him as glad to represent eastern Germany on the executive from the small Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Landesgruppe. The biography for the 21st Bundestag, last modified in its structured data on 28 October 2026, still describes him as parliamentary managing director since 2019.

Committees, the Council of Elders and the Joint Committee

What follows is the committee record on the member’s Bundestag biographies. For the 19th term the archived page lists a full seat on the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and on its Subcommittee on Regional Economic Policy and ERP Economic Plans (Unterausschuss Regionale Wirtschaftspolitik und ERP-Wirtschaftspläne), and a deputy seat on the Committee on Food and Agriculture. For the 20th term it lists a full seat on the Economic Affairs Committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss) and again a deputy seat on food and agriculture. The current text sums this up as economic affairs and energy from 2017 to 2021, and economic affairs from 2021 to 2025.

For the 21st Bundestag the same page, dating the entries from 25 March 2025, lists him as a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and of the Council of Elders, and as a deputy on the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland. Among other bodies it lists a deputy seat on the Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss), and it names no Council of Elders commission. The Council assists the President, recommends sitting weeks and agendas, and takes up disputes among the groups; the plenary need not follow it. Places are shared by group strength, and parliamentary managing directors sit on it.

Article 53a of the Basic Law provides for the Joint Committee. The Bundestag press service calls it an emergency parliament for a state of defence—32 members of the Bundestag, barred from the federal government, plus 16 Bundesrat members—which meets only if the Bundestag cannot convene, and which had never met. A joint nomination of 25 June 2025 (Drucksache 21/595) put forward members and the same number of deputies; Komning is among the AfD names.

In the debate on equivalent living conditions on 7 November 2018 he said rural areas had been left behind and that roads, rail, energy, water, health care, education and digital networks were public services the state had to provide, with a strong Mittelstand and start-ups beside village life. On 10 October 2023 he was the first signatory of an AfD motion (Drucksache 20/8741) urging constancy in economic policy instead of technology bans, an end to what the text called the socio-ecological transformation, and the dropping of measures against combustion-engine cars, including the national carbon price on fuels.

Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference

The current biography states that since 2017 he has been on the Bundestag delegation to the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference. The conference calls itself, since 1991, a forum for dialogue among parliaments, governments and civil society around the Baltic; its meetings include Berlin on 27–29 August 2023 and the 34th session in Mariehamn on 24–26 August 2025. The biography gives him no office in the conference beyond that delegation.

Political positions

Komning’s work in the Bundestag has concentrated on economic policy. He has been a full member of the economic-affairs committee since 2017—styled Economic Affairs and Energy in the 19th electoral period and again in the 21st, and Economic Affairs from 2021 to 2025. In the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2016–17, the Bundestag’s archived biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, lists him as deputy chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group, as its spokesman on asylum and European policy, and as a member of the interior and European affairs committee.

Economy, energy and small business

On 9 November 2022 he opened debate on an AfD motion he introduced as first signatory, “The Mittelstand is systemically relevant” (printed paper 20/4305). It states that small and medium-sized firms are more than 99 percent of companies, 61 percent of net value added and 55 percent of jobs, and that bailouts favour large banks and companies. It asks the government to keep nuclear power plants running and allow feasible restarts, to cut energy taxes to the legal minimum, to reject further sanctions on Russia while diversifying supply, and to delete rules it calls ideological or reimburse firms for following them. In the debate he called the Mittelstand the backbone of the economy and a social market economy freedom for employers and employees, and he urged an energy-tax cut, suspension of VAT on gas and electricity, an end to the carbon levy, and an end to what he called a hopelessly failed energy transition.

On 30 November 2023, on a CDU/CSU motion to cut bureaucracy, he called the Union text an alibi for omitting the supply-chain law, which he called a catastrophe for the Mittelstand, and the Energy Efficiency Act and Building Energy Act, which he called green-ideological nonsense of no benefit to the economy, society or the climate. On 7 November 2018 he argued that the state must guarantee rural roads, rail, utilities, health care, education and broadband, and he proposed special economic zones, tax-free building land and abolition of the property tax. A motion he led on 23 October 2019 (printed paper 19/14345) asks for a federal–state tax reform for weak regions, including a review of returning European Union structural and farm funds to national control. The same day as the bureaucracy debate he said eastern output was still a little over 80 percent of the national average, opposed higher inheritance taxes, and contrasted a rooted Mittelstand in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, including around Neubrandenburg, with investors he called subsidy nomads.

Migration, direct democracy and civil liberties

On 12 July 2017 he opened an AfD Landtag debate, “Protect the borders — solidarity with Italy.” Citing the EU facilitation directive and section 96 of the Residence Act, he argued that carrying people already rescued by NGO ships into a member state was unlawful facilitation, and he called the voyages “Mediterranean taxis” and “pseudo-humanitarian trafficking.” He cited Frontex for a claim that more than two-thirds came for economic reasons and that ships near Libya were a pull factor, and he wanted vessels from the state to sail only if survivors were handed to the Libyan coast guard. Interior minister Lorenz Caffier replied that the external border was not a Land competence. The 2022 Mittelstand motion also asks for swift returns of rejected asylum seekers and for irregular migration to be stopped “with all nation-state means.”

A recording from an internal meeting in Demmin in December 2016—the tape is treated under Public controversy and extremism debates—has him saying he wanted far fewer people “up there,” with real decisions left to the people and more extensively than in Switzerland. He told Der Spiegel the line was taken out of context and that he had argued for direct democracy and a limit on party power; he told the Nordkurier he stood by the Basic Law. The AfD’s 2016 programme likewise calls for referendums on the Swiss model, so that citizens rather than professional politicians can vote on laws parliament has passed.

In the 30 November 2023 debate on eastern industry he asked who would start a family if a child might be “abused” in nursery and school by what he called left-green gender ideology and fantasies of early sexualisation.

Service in the Wachregiment and Stasi records

His account of the service

The Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (Wachregiment „Feliks Dzierżyński“) was the guard formation of the Ministry for State Security in the German Democratic Republic. The Federal Archives describes it as the ministry’s military-operational arm, named in 1967 for Feliks Dzerzhinsky, 11,000 strong in 1989 and based in East Berlin, guarding state and Socialist Unity Party sites. The Modrow government dissolved it in December 1989.

Erich Mielke presents an award to members of the Ministry for State Security’s Wachregiment Feliks Dzierżyński, around 1970. Enrico Komning is not in the photograph.

Komning’s Bundestag biography, based on his own statements, lists service from 1988 to 1991 „beim Wachregiment ‚Feliks Dzierzynski‘“. In November 2016, after losing to Bernhard Wildt for deputy state chair of the Alternative for Germany in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, he explained a line given only as „Wehrdienst“. He told the Nordkurier that the posting was in the regiment, subordinate to the MfS, and that he had not made that public: „Ich wollte mich nicht für etwas rechtfertigen müssen, das keiner Rechtfertigung bedarf“. He rejected the label of Stasi employee and said he had no problem with a records check. He said he volunteered for three years—his father was a Fähnrich in the National People's Army—after recruiters offered a secure post and generous time off. He said he served as a construction pioneer, then as a stoker, carried no weapon after basic training, and left after about a year and a half, not three years, when the regiment was dissolved at the start of 1990. He said the Seenplatte association knew, that the service was in his written application, and that he had backed the Landtag group’s decision to review every member.

Leif-Erik Holm, then state chair and leader of the Landtag group, said on 15 November 2016 that the group had discussed the matter and needed no further debate. He called it a normal part of a GDR biography and said work as an „informeller Mitarbeiter (IM)“ would have been of a different quality. Andreas Rösler, for the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district association, said it would still discuss the point and question Komning, because in his account the regiment service had appeared only in that application.

The Landtag review commission

Section 6(4) of the Stasi Records Act defines employees of the state security service as full-time staff—persons in an official employment or service relationship, and officers on special assignment—and as unofficial collaborators, persons who agreed to supply information. The commission’s 2017 report applies the full-time category to this regiment. Under GDR conscription law, „Dienst auf Zeit“ was a voluntary term of at least three years and, if served with the MfS, the equivalent of National People’s Army service. Soldiers and non-commissioned officers on that term were, under ministry rules, MfS members in a full-time service relationship and therefore full-time employees under section 6(4) no. 1. The report keeps that status separate from unofficial collaboration.

The review covered the chamber, not Komning alone. Under section 48 of the members’ act, the president asked 48 of the 71 members elected in 2016 to consent to a check for full-time or unofficial work for the MfS or the Office for National Security, or for authority over that service. Twenty-three, not yet 18 on 12 January 1990, were not asked; 28 consented, and the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records reported no indications for 26. An outside commission of three makes the findings; publication does not end a mandate.

The report of 20 December 2017 (Drucksache 7/1542) records indications from the commissioner of full-time MfS activity in Komning’s case, but states that no finding could be made: he had already left the Landtag for the Bundestag. The other case was Torsten Koplin of Die Linke: term service in the Berlin regiment from 1 October 1981 to 27 September 1984, then, from 21 January 1987, collaboration as „Martin“ while a Free German Youth secretary in Neubrandenburg, with two bonuses totalling 200 marks, ended on 16 November 1988. He accepted a finding of both full-time and unofficial work. Neither was held proven for the other 26. Die Welt reported the indications on 19 December 2017.

Public controversy and extremism debates

The 2016 recording

In early December 2016, at an internal meeting of Alternative for Germany politicians in Demmin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Komning was recorded discussing the parliamentary system. The tape became public in May 2020, when he was parliamentary managing director of the AfD group in the Bundestag. The Schweriner Volkszeitung reported an excerpt that Der Spiegel quoted as: “… parlamentarischer Staat, oder wie auch immer diese Demokratie heißt, … die wollen wir ja aber gar nicht. Die wollen wir doch abschaffen.” He confirmed the sentence and said it had been torn from a private argument for far-reaching direct democracy and a sharp limit on the power of parties. He rejected any charge of disloyalty to the Basic Law.

The Nordkurier printed what it presented as the uncut continuation. He continued that the theory “stimmt nur dann, wenn wir das Parteiensystem, so wie es jetzt ist, fortführen wollten. Und das wollen wir nicht,” and then: “Ja, ich will es nicht. Ich will es nicht. Ich möchte eigentlich, dass wir da oben gar nicht mehr sitzen, sondern dass vielleicht nur noch ein, zwei oder fünf oder wieviel auch immer, also ganz viel, viel weniger Leute sitzen und die nur eigentlich mehr oder weniger die Strukturen begleiten, aber dass die wirklichen Entscheidungen beim Volk bleiben. Und zwar viel mehr, als dass die Schweizer das machen. Die Schweizer bestimmen ja nur über ganz, ganz wenige Sachen mit. Ich finde, fast alles sollte das Volk bestimmen und nur ganz wesentliche, strukturelle Sachen sollten wirklich bei gewählten Abgeordneten bleiben.” The paper read that as the party program on Switzerland-style referendums and fewer professional politicians, not as abolition of democracy. Komning called the shortened tape the real scandal.

The Social Democratic Party of Germany and Die Linke read the short sentence as hostility to parliamentary democracy. SPD deputy Julian Barlen urged him to resign the Bundestag mandate. Peter Ritter of the Left said the “bourgeois veneer” had long faded.

Burschenschaft Rugia and the wider milieu

The Bundestag biography records membership since 1991 in the Greifswalder Burschenschaft Rugia. The taz in 2016 placed Rugia in the Deutsche Burschenschaft. A January 2019 assessment by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, published by netzpolitik.org, lists talks by Komning and Ralph Weber at Rugia under “connections to Burschenschaften with right-wing extremist references,” and cites Friedrich Ebert Foundation research on overlaps with the National Democratic Party of Germany. In April 2019 Der Spiegel, citing NDR, reported that the state office was reviewing Rugia and the Markomannia Aachen in Greifswald and regarded Rugia as having “rechtsextremistische Bezüge,” at the extreme-right edge of the scene; the interior ministry said checks on the Young Alternative for Germany and Der Flügel included those contacts.

In 2016 his Neubrandenburg firm took on Daniel Fiß, deputy chairman of the Identitarian Movement Germany, which was under intelligence observation and regarded in part as right-wing extremist. He confirmed the mandate, said he was not the lawyer, and said the firm would act for any client; SPD and Left deputies called that incompatible with oversight of the service. In 2018 he and Christoph Grimm invited Pegida founders Lutz Bachmann and Siegfried Däbritz to Neubrandenburg and Schwerin. Komning said he would not breach the May 2016 ban on joint appearances, but would not distance himself — “Wir brauchen nicht nur die parlamentarische Arbeit, sondern auch den Druck von der Straße” — and backed Dresden rallies rather than NPD-linked offshoots. A closed Flügel meeting he helped organize at Binz on Rügen in November 2019 is described with his Landtag years.

Use of his statements in party-ban arguments

On 2 May 2025 the federal office announced that the AfD as a whole, not Komning personally, was no longer only a suspected case but a “gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung.” The Cologne administrative court later summarized the grounds as an ethnic-ancestral concept of the people and agitation said to violate human dignity. After the AfD sued on 5 May, the office agreed to keep the suspected-case handling and not to use the confirmed-extremist label in public until the court ruled.

At its Berlin congress of 27–29 June 2025 the SPD adopted the executive motion “Wehrhafte Demokratie heißt handeln,” on preparing a ban. Under “Demokratiefeind in den Parlamenten” the text says Komning, by then parliamentary managing director, had said: “Diese Demokratie…, die wollen wir ja aber gar nicht. Die wollen wir doch abschaffen.” It offers that line, with other episodes, as contempt for parliamentary democracy, and asks the Bundestag, the Bundesrat or the federal government to collect material for an application to the Federal Constitutional Court under Article 21 of the Basic Law.

In July 2025 the Nordkurier called the congress sentence a false quotation: the ellipsis omitted the continuation, which the paper read as a case for direct democracy rather than abolition. Komning reserved all legal steps against what he called a “Diffamierungspapier” and accused the SPD of “fake news” and of an amateurishly assembled case for a ban.

On 26 February 2026 the Cologne court largely granted interim relief, 13 L 1109/25: until the main case, 13 K 3895/25, ends at first instance, the office may not classify, treat, or announce the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor. It found anti-constitutional efforts inside the party, and a strong suspicion, but not a hostile tendency defining the party as a whole, and it made no personal finding about Komning.

Outside income and private life

Disclosed law-firm earnings

Members of the Bundestag may keep a profession beside the mandate, but the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) requires the mandate to remain the centre of their activity and bars certain payments and financial advantages. Paid outside work, posts in companies, public bodies, associations and foundations, and certain shareholdings must be notified to the President. Income from a side activity is published to the cent when it exceeds €1,000 in a month or, if not, €3,000 in a calendar year; irregular receipts in one year are added together, and the figures appear on the member's biography. Notices under the code of conduct, sections 45 and following, are due within three months of taking the seat and within three months of any later change.

Komning's publication-required outside income is his work as a lawyer at KOMNING Rechtsanwälte in Neubrandenburg. Clients are listed only by number, often with a sector such as private clients, health care, construction, crafts or services, and each amount is marked gross. The biography gives the lines individually and states neither a total nor a personal profit.

For the 20th Bundestag, Abgeordnetenwatch and Der Spiegel summed disclosures on the parliament's website for all 733 members, using filings as of 30 September 2024. In the ranking published on 19 October 2024, Komning, of the Alternative for Germany, was tenth, at €1,008,481; the next entry was Sahra Wagenknecht at €847,170. The account noted that the lawyer sat on the economics committee and that the firm had reported more than 100 clients, including construction trades, the entertainment business and private clients. He replied that employees handled most clients and that he himself acted only sporadically in a few matters, which he said limited neither the substance nor the extent of his parliamentary work. The investigation said some of the highest totals were gross turnover, not personal profit: one tax adviser wrote that fees earned in his name by employees had to be included, while staff, rent, office costs and tax were still to be paid. NDR, citing that evaluation, gave the sum as €1,008,480 and reported his statement that taxes, salaries and office costs still had to come off the receipts, that staff did most of the work, and that the firm was also meant to provide income after politics.

For the 21st term, NDR reported on 22 June 2026 that a further Abgeordnetenwatch and Spiegel count put receipts he had declared through the firm since March 2025 at €344,560, fifth among 630 members. On that list Ophelia Nick was first, at about €2.7 million, mostly profit distributions from inherited company stakes; Alexander Engelhard was next, at about €1.5 million from an organic grain mill; Sebastian Maack followed at about €439,000 from 72 lettings; and Fritz Güntzler at €425,000 from two tax firms. The biography still publishes separate gross client lines for 2025 and 2026 and gives no official sum, so the June figure is a snapshot of disclosures then on file, not a closed net income.

Family and constituency offices

The Bundestag notes that the biographical details are the member's own statements. They record that he is married and has four children, and they give no private address. For the constituency Mecklenburgische Seenplatte I – Vorpommern-Greifswald II in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the page lists three constituency offices: Neubrandenburg, Woldegker Straße 27; Torgelow, Breite Straße 23; and Anklam, Lilienthalcenter, Markt 7.