Erhard Brucker

Erhard Josef Brucker (born 28 October 1972 in Mainburg) is a German businessman and politician of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, in its 21st electoral term, after standing in constituency 228 (Passau) and entering through place 22 on the Bavarian AfD state list. In parliament he is a full member of the Committee on Tourism and a deputy member of the Committee on Internal Affairs. He has sat on the city council of Regensburg for the AfD since 2020 and, on the biography he supplied to the Bundestag, has run Tauch- und Wassersport Dreizack GmbH, a diving and watersports firm, since 2000.

Brucker was born in Mainburg, in the Hallertau region of Lower Bavaria, and took his Abitur at the Gabelsberger-Gymnasium there. He then served in the Bundeswehr, first with Panzergrenadierbataillon 223 in Regen and later with a reconnaissance unit of the 1st Mountain Division in Bad Reichenhall. From 1994 he studied law at the University of Regensburg and qualified as a specialist sports instructor for diving. The parliamentary biography he provided lists him as a board member of the Bavarian Junge Union from 1994 to 1997, as a member of the federal executive of the small party Die Freiheit from 2010 until that party dissolved in 2016, and as an AfD member since 2018, including as district chair in Regensburg and, from 2019, as a member of the Bavarian state executive. Press accounts also describe him as a speaker for Pegida and a supporter of the anti-Islam group Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa.

In the 2025 Bundestag election he received 33,776 first votes in Passau, 23.5 percent, and finished second behind Johann Georg Koller of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, who won the constituency with 58,538 votes (40.8 percent). The AfD's second-vote share in the constituency was 25.5 percent (36,668 votes); turnout was 81.8 percent of 176,118 eligible voters. Before the election he told the Passauer Neue Presse that he lived in Regensburg for professional reasons, that he was a native of Lower Bavaria, and that he intended to move to the Passau area if elected. In the same interview he called himself a "pragmatic patriot," named Geert Wilders as a political model, and listed remigration, opposition to what he called "woke" policy on family and sexuality, and the abolition of carbon pricing among his aims.

Statements attributed to him — among them references to "Muslim hordes," a "calculated Islamization of our homeland," and Islam as an "infectious disease" — have been cited in reporting on administrative-court proceedings that upheld observation of the Bavarian AfD by the state office for the protection of the constitution. On 26 September 2025, according to the Berlin police as reported by the Münchner Merkur, state-protection investigators opened an inquiry after two federal police officers said Brucker had racially insulted a visually impaired man from Eritrea at Berlin Hauptbahnhof; Brucker told Bild that he had not used the words attributed to him and that they were not his style. The same reporting said the Bundestag administration had refused or withdrawn a building pass, on security grounds, for a member of his staff, the anti-Islam activist Michael Stürzenberger.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling in Mainburg

Erhard Josef Brucker was born on 28 October 1972 in Mainburg. A candidate questionnaire in the Passauer Neue Presse gives the same birth date. The federal returning officer’s list of those elected in 2025 records the full name Erhard Josef Brucker. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members’ own information, gives the birthplace as 84048 Mainburg, the town’s postal address. The municipal website calls Mainburg the “heart of the Hallertau.” In a January 2025 interview with the Passauer Neue Presse, Brucker said he had been born in Mainburg in the Hallertau of Lower Bavaria and described himself as a native of Lower Bavaria (“gebürtiger Niederbayer”).

The same Bundestag biography states that he took the Abitur at the Gabelsberger-Gymnasium in Mainburg. The Bavarian Ministry of Education lists that school, at Ebrantshauser Straße 70 in Mainburg, as a state Gymnasium, with natural-science and technology, language, and economics tracks running through year 13, the stage at which the Abitur is awarded. No published account gives the year of his examination or names a primary school or any earlier secondary school. In the Passau interview he said that people in the Upper Palatinate could tell, after a single sentence, that he was from Lower Bavaria.

Military service

Brucker told the Passauer Neue Presse that after the Abitur he served in the Bundeswehr, then began a course of study and later founded his own company, and that those experiences had shown him the importance of personal responsibility. The Bundestag biography gives the postings as Panzergrenadierbataillon 223 in Regen, then Stabskompanie 23 and a reconnaissance unit of the 1st Mountain Division (1. Gebirgsdivision) in Bad Reichenhall. Those unit names appear only in that self-reported text. The armored-infantry battalion the Bundeswehr stations in Regen is Panzergrenadierbataillon 112, a combat battalion of Panzerbrigade 12 that has carried the number 112 since 1959. Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 “Bayern,” the army’s mountain brigade, is based in Bad Reichenhall, where its staff and signals company is also stationed. Public accounts do not state his rank, the dates of the postings, or how long he served.

Legal studies and student life

The Bundestag biography states that from 1994 he studied law (Rechtswissenschaften) and qualified as a specialist sports instructor for diving (Fachsportlehrer Tauchen). It does not name a university. Neither that biography nor the Passau profile records a completed law degree, a state examination in law, or work as a lawyer; the Bundestag lists his occupation as entrepreneur (Unternehmer). In a candidate questionnaire the Passauer Neue Presse published on 22 January 2025, Brucker described himself as an Alter Herr—an alumni member—of a Christian student fraternity (Studentenverbindung/Burschenschaft). The questionnaire does not name the corporation or say when he joined. He has said that he lives in Regensburg because of his work.

Business career

Tauch- und Wassersport Dreizack

Brucker's Bundestag biography, drawn from his own information, states that he qualified as a Fachsportlehrer for diving from 1994 and names Tauch- und Wassersport Dreizack GmbH in Regensburg as his occupation since 2000. The company was formed by a partnership agreement of 21 September 2011 and entered at the Amtsgericht Regensburg on 28 September 2011 under HRB 12754, with its seat in Regensburg and share capital of 25,500 euros. The registered object was a diving and watersports centre with a shop, instructor training, specialist courses and diving work, holiday trips (especially diving trips), online equipment shops, and technical servicing. A Taucher.net listing gave Prüfeninger Straße 73, 93049 Regensburg, as the address and named Brucker as base manager.

The managing directors at registration were Erhard Brucker, of Regensburg, and Michael Schütz, of Pemfling. North Data's register timeline ends Schütz's term on 24 October 2017 and Brucker's as managing director on 2 October 2025. An entry of that date recorded the dissolution and appointed Brucker liquidator, with a sole liquidator representing the company alone. North Data's timeline records deletion on 1 October 2026 and marks the company extinct. Disclosures on the Bundestag biography, revised on the site on 29 September 2026, still listed him as managing director before the mandate and under remunerated activities alongside it, and as holding a participation, with no separate published pay figure for those roles. Abgeordnetenwatch recorded the same categories on 4 March 2026.

In a January 2025 portrait in the Passauer Neue Presse, Brucker said he lived in Regensburg for professional reasons and ran a diving and watersports business. He said diving had taken him for long periods to Asia and to South and Central America, that he spoke five foreign languages, and that he had long been married to a Philippine national. He said he held permanent residence in the Philippines and owned property there, and that the strict conditions for that status, which he described as requiring immigrants to make a positive contribution, had shaped his view of migration policy.

Other professional roles

The Bundestag disclosures also list a seat on the supervisory board of Stadtwerke Regensburg GmbH, remunerated at 433.33 euros gross a month. The City of Regensburg's participation reports identify the municipal company as das Stadtwerk Regensburg GmbH, wholly owned by the city, with offices at Greflingerstraße 26; the company's imprint gives the register number HRB 1611 at the Amtsgericht Regensburg. The report covering 2023, issued in February 2025, names Erhard Brucker on that board from 1 May 2023, and the report issued in October 2025 still lists him. Both state that the same persons sit on the supervisory boards of the subsidiaries for baths and arenas, mobility, services, and vehicles and technology. The company's own supervisory-board page later named Dr Thomas Burger, the city's Oberbürgermeister, as chair and did not include Brucker among the members shown.

Political activity before the AfD

Junge Union

Brucker's biography on the Bundestag website, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, lists him as a board member of the Bavarian Junge Union from 1994 to 1997. The Federal Agency for Civic Education describes the Junge Union as the youth organization of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, founded in 1946.

Die Freiheit

On 10 September 2010, three days after his expulsion from the CDU group in Berlin's state parliament, René Stadtkewitz—whom Der Spiegel described as a critic of Islam—announced a new party, Die Freiheit ("Freedom"), which he said should give frustrated non-voters a political home. Brucker's Bundestag biography states that from 2010 to 2016 he belonged to Die Freiheit and was, latterly, a member of its federal executive. The Munich newspaper Merkur has reported that he sat on the state executive of what it called a right-wing extremist splinter party, dissolved in 2016, and wrote that he had moved in the far-right milieu for more than 15 years.

Bavarian authorities treated the state association as an intelligence matter. Bayerischer Rundfunk reported that the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution had observed it since spring 2013, and that the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court, in judgments of 22 October 2015, found sufficient factual indications—not a mere suspicion—of efforts against the free democratic basic order. The court held that the association pursued "verfassungsschutzrelevante Islamfeindlichkeit" (hostility to Islam relevant to constitutional protection): blanket defamatory statements against Muslims, a general failure to distinguish Islam as a religion from Islamism as a political ideology, and a general disparagement of the Quran. On 23 March 2016 the Federal Administrative Court declined to admit a further appeal. Interior minister Joachim Herrmann said that anyone who sweepingly vilified all Muslims as enemies of the rule of law had a problem with freedom of religion, and that the association's activity aimed at blanket defamation of Muslim fellow citizens rather than only at information about political Islam. The state's 2015 report also covered the circle around the association's chairman, Michael Stürzenberger.

The Bavarian office defines that category separately from right-wing extremism: equating Islam as a world religion with Islamism and Islamist terrorism, depicting it as totalitarian, and seeking to withhold rights such as religious freedom from Muslims. It says the category lacks typical far-right elements such as racism, antisemitism or a Volksgemeinschaft ideology, and that criticism of political Islam within political debate is not itself observed.

Pegida, Pax Europa and the counter-jihad milieu

Merkur reported that Brucker appeared as a speaker and activist for Pegida and supported the Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (Citizens' Movement Pax Europa), which the paper described as hostile to Islam. Pegida—Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident)—grew out of a Facebook group whose first demonstration, an "evening stroll" in Dresden on 20 October 2014, drew about 350 people. Weekly Monday marches followed; the Federal Agency for Civic Education records about 25,000 participants on 12 January 2015, after which numbers fell, while smaller offshoots formed elsewhere from November 2014.

Pegida was registered as an association in December 2014. After a dispute over racist remarks and a photograph of chairman Lutz Bachmann posing as Hitler, some founders left in January 2015; Bachmann later returned as a speaker. Offshoots in several states have been under domestic-intelligence observation since 2015. On 7 May 2021 the Saxon office classified Pegida itself as a proven extremist endeavour, citing a shift toward extremist convictions, the role of known right-wing extremists as organizers, speakers and networkers, and regular statements hostile to minorities, Muslims and Jews, together with contempt for parliamentarism. Its president described Pegida as a hinge between extremists and non-extremists.

The Bavarian office places Pax Europa's Bavarian branch in the same hostility-to-Islam category, citing indications of efforts aimed at abolishing religious freedom for Muslims, and states that the federal association is not under its observation.

Before Pegida existed, Brucker had already appeared in the wider counter-jihad network. In a PI-News post dated 6 August 2012, Stürzenberger wrote that seven German participants had attended what he called the first worldwide "Counter-Jihad" gathering in Stockholm, where he said Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League spoke; the post credits photographs to Brucker among others. Merkur likewise reported that Brucker attended with Stürzenberger, less than a year after the attacks by Anders Behring Breivik, and noted that Breivik's manifesto referred to the English Defence League. Brucker's biography states that he joined the Alternative for Germany in 2018.

Roles in the Bavarian AfD

District and state offices

Brucker's Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, says he has belonged to the Alternative for Germany since 2018, lists him as chairman and as deputy chairman of the Regensburg district association, and says he has sat on the state executive in Bavaria since 2019. Local reporting puts his admission later. In February 2020 Regensburg Digital quoted the extremism specialist Jan Nowak, at an event held by the Initiative gegen Rechts, as saying that Brucker had applied in 2017 but was accepted only at the beginning of 2019, and that he was then elected quickly onto both the district and state boards. Merkur has also dated his membership from 2019.

Erhard Brucker at an AfD rally on Domplatz in Regensburg in November 2019, with Katrin Ebner-Steiner.

By September 2019 he was first chairman of the Regensburg district association, after a new district board had been chosen some months earlier. He was still the chairman at an extraordinary members' meeting in Beratzhausen on 28 February 2021, called in connection with a new board election. By September 2021 the same outlet described him as the former chairman and as deputy to the new district chairman, Dieter Arnold. The Bundestag biography records both offices and does not date the change.

Nowak already placed Brucker on the Bavarian state executive in February 2020. At the state congress in Greding in October 2021, which elected Stephan Protschka state chairman, the Bavarian AfD listed Brucker as one of the Beisitzer, or assessors, with Michael Stauch, Georg Hock, Benjamin Nolte and Elena Roon. Merkur later reported that the Munich administrative court quoted the speech in which he had successfully applied for that assessor's seat.

He did not stand again as an assessor at the board election at the start of 2024. Merkur reported that a delegate accused him there of having threatened a beating, and that the Munich administrative court recorded his subsequent co-option onto the executive as a mediator. That congress, again in Greding, re-elected Protschka on 13 January 2024. In November 2024 Merkur wrote that Brucker was still on the executive in the mediator role but no longer appeared among the elected assessors on the association's website. The executive list on the Bavarian AfD website does not name him among the officers or assessors, while the Bundestag biography still describes him as a state-executive member since 2019.

Der Flügel and national contacts

Der Flügel was an informal nationalist current in the AfD around the Thuringia party leader Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz. It was not an official party body and kept no membership lists. On 12 March 2020 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified it as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor against the free democratic basic order, pointing among other things to the central role of Höcke and Kalbitz. At the press conference reported by tagesschau, the office's president, Thomas Haldenwang, called Höcke and Kalbitz right-wing extremists. Merkur has described the platform as only ostensibly dissolved in 2020. Writing on Protschka's 2024 re-election, Welt said he was not officially counted among representatives of the by then dissolved Flügel, but stood close to that current.

Before the March 2020 classification, Nowak told the Regensburg audience that the Flügel's structure in Bavaria was not always clear, so that some figures could not be firmly called members rather than sympathizers. He named Ebner-Steiner as the best-known face of the current in the Bavarian Landtag group, and Brucker as an actor close to the Flügel who was then on the state executive. In October 2024 Merkur stated more definitely that, during his time on that executive, Brucker had been one of the organizational contacts in Bavaria for the Flügel around Höcke. In October 2025 the same reporter wrote that Brucker maintained close contacts with the Bavarian party leadership and with Höcke.

Merkur, drawing on a late-2021 Bayerischer Rundfunk investigation and on the Munich administrative court's later reasons, also reported that Brucker had been in a closed Telegram group, "Alternative Nachrichtengruppe Bayern," together with many other leading figures of the Bavarian AfD. Protschka was described as one of the administrators, and the court noted that Brucker had not distanced himself from a contribution in the group.

Regensburg city council

Election and council record

On 15 March 2020 voters in Regensburg chose a 50-member city council. Under the rules used in Bavaria, each elector had 50 votes and could cumulate or split them. Turnout was 52.5 percent, 60,653 of 115,502 eligible voters. The committee adopted the result on 7 April 2020: the Alternative for Germany took 122,239 of 2,749,673 valid votes, 4.4 percent, and two seats.

Brucker led the AfD list. A preliminary city result archived on 17 March 2020 gave the party 122,186 votes and placed him first among its candidates, with 8,678, ahead of Thomas Straub on 8,190. Later statistics, which do not print names, assign 8,691 votes to AfD list place 1, still ranked first; the places below follow the same order. The biography he supplied to the Bundestag calls him a Regensburg AfD councillor since 2020; the parliament says such biographies rest on members' own information. He was not admitted as a candidate for 8 March 2026. The notice of 26 January 2026 puts Straub first on the AfD list, and Charivari reported that the new council would constitute itself on the afternoon of 13 May 2026.

The 2023 participation report names him on the supervisory board of das Stadtwerk Regensburg GmbH from 1 May 2023, replacing Straub. The city owned the company, and the same people sat on the boards of its subsidiaries. The 2024 report still lists him, but the company's board page, consulted in 2026, names Dr. Thomas Burger as chair and omits Brucker. A Bundestag disclosure listed gross monthly payments of 986.51 euro for the council seat and 433.33 euro for the supervisory board.

On 14 December 2023 he spoke on the 2024 budget. In the text the city published, he called a Regensburg Stadtbahn a "Multi-Millionengrab", said costs had moved from 456 million euro toward about 800 million, and wrote that he sat on the Stadtbahn committee without having heard whether a line could be run economically.

Disputes and litigation

On 13 March 2020, at an AfD meeting in Passau, he referred to Gertrud Maltz-Schwarzfischer, the Social Democratic Party of Germany politician elected lord mayor on 29 March, as "eine furchtbare Dame, die auch sich mit der Antifa gemeinsam macht" ("a terrible lady who also makes common cause with Antifa"). Regensburg Digital reported that he advised colleagues to behave "strategically" and "tactically", to seek allies with "Resthirnaktivität" ("residual brain activity"), and to collect information on opponents.

He afterwards sought the post of Verwaltungsbeirat to the office for integration and migration. Maltz-Schwarzfischer said she would "den Teufel tun" and nominate the AfD; a majority refused, and the party received no such post. He and Straub sued. On 9 December 2020 the third chamber of the Verwaltungsgericht Regensburg held his action, brought individually rather than for the AfD group, inadmissible. As reported from the order, these posts are filled by the full council according to knowledge, experience and interests, and neither a minority nor one member has a general claim to every body.

He also sued to stop a colleague calling him an alcoholic. At an extraordinary meeting in Beratzhausen on 28 February 2021, about 50 people heard Sebastian Durden, third on the 2020 list, use the word before board elections. Brucker sought an injunction for defamation. In September 2021 the Landgericht Regensburg, Judge Gerhard Lindner presiding, dismissed the claim, lifted an earlier injunction, and treated the remark as a value judgment with a factual core. The reported reasons preferred expression: Durden was warning members at a closed meeting, and the words rested on "Beobachtungen, die ein Alkoholproblem nahelegen" ("observations that suggest an alcohol problem"). Brucker denied a dependency, said he drank "mal ein Bier, wie jeder andere Bayer auch", and admitted "ein Gläschen zu viel" before a flight to his wife. An appeal to the Oberlandesgericht Nürnberg was then still open.

At an AfD state congress in Greding in early 2024, a member from Würzburg alleged that Brucker had threatened a beating if internal quarrels were made public, quoting him as 1.90 metres tall, weighing 140 kilograms and having "eine harte Durchschlagskraft". Brucker declined to comment; the reports mention no criminal investigation. After a referendum stopped the Stadtbahn, a text on the Compact platform quoted him claiming regular applause from the gallery. Regensburg Digital, citing the Mittelbayerische Zeitung, reported that the initiative Gleisfrei rejected thanks he offered at the committee's last meeting.

2025 Bundestag election

Candidacy in Passau

Constituency 228 (Passau), in Lower Bavaria, comprises the independent city of Passau and most of Landkreis Passau, including Vilshofen an der Donau, Pocking, Hauzenberg, Bad Griesbach im Rottal and Bad Füssing. The district's remaining municipalities belong to constituency 226 (Deggendorf).

On the evening of 11 October 2024 the Passau district association of Alternative for Germany (AfD) nominated Erhard Brucker as its direct candidate for the 2025 German federal election. The meeting was held in Eging am See. The association's chairman, Bavarian state legislator Ralf Stadler, said in a statement reported by the Passauer Neue Presse that Brucker, a native of Lower Bavaria, had been chosen by an overwhelming majority. He was then a city councillor living in Regensburg.

Brucker told the same newspaper in January 2025 that he lived in Regensburg for work and that Lower Bavaria was still his "root". Born in Mainburg, in the Hallertau, he said that if he entered the Bundestag he would move to Passau, and that the constituency was neither a springboard nor a stopover. He thanked the Passau association for the chance to return, and said he wanted to press for infrastructure, economic prospects and the region. The Regensburg AfD instead put forward Carina Schießl, from Landkreis Schwandorf, in the Regensburg constituency. Brucker later described Passau as the "better constituency".

Results and entry via the state list

The election was held on 23 February 2025. In Passau, 144,115 of 176,118 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 81.8 percent, 4.9 percentage points above 2021. Of 143,520 valid first votes, Johann Georg Koller of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) won the seat with 58,538 votes (40.8 percent, up 10.1 points). Brucker, listed as Erhard Josef Brucker, was second with 33,776 votes (23.5 percent, up 11.6 points); the Federal Returning Officer recorded him as the runner-up (Erstunterlegen). Other first-vote shares were the Social Democratic Party of Germany 14.0 percent (20,121), the Free Voters 6.4 percent (9,198), Alliance 90/The Greens 5.2 percent (7,425), Die Linke 2.9 percent (4,161), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht 2.7 percent (3,804) and the Free Democratic Party 2.1 percent (3,072).

Of 143,712 valid second votes, the CSU led with 55,447 (38.6 percent, up 6.1 points) and the AfD followed with 36,668 (25.5 percent, up 13.7 points). The SPD took 9.7 percent (13,904), the Greens 6.8 percent (9,821), the Free Voters 6.4 percent (9,154), Die Linke 4.0 percent (5,681), the BSW 3.4 percent (4,906) and the FDP 3.3 percent (4,706).

The 2025 contest used personalized proportional representation for a Bundestag of 630 seats. Second votes are converted into seats by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method, first among parties and then among each party's state lists. A party candidate gains a constituency seat only with a plurality of first votes and only if that seat is covered by the party's second-vote allocation in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung); constituency winners are ranked by their share of the valid first votes. Seats that remain are assigned from the closed state list in the order fixed by the party, and anyone already elected in a constituency is passed over.

In Bavaria the AfD polled 1,515,731 second votes, 19.0 percent. That entitled its state list to 22 seats. The party won no constituency plurality in Bavaria, so all 22 were list seats; the CSU, by contrast, took 44 seats, all of them constituencies, while three of its 47 constituency pluralities went uncovered. The Federal Returning Officer and the Bavarian state returning officer list Brucker, born in 1972 and resident in Regensburg, as elected from place 22 of the AfD state list, the last of those 22 seats. The Passauer Neue Presse reported the result on 24 February under his quoted line "That is exactly how it was intended" („Genauso war es gedacht“), noting that he entered as the 22nd of the 22 Bavarian AfD members.

Work in the Bundestag

Mandate, offices and staff

Erhard Brucker has sat in the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, the date given for the start of his seat in the 21st legislative term. He was returned for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the state list of Bavaria after standing in constituency 228, Passau. The biography, marked as his own account, lists offices at Platz der Republik 1 in Berlin and at Zimmerstraße 1 in Regensburg. It also records that he remained managing director of Tauch- und Wassersport Dreizack GmbH, a Regensburg city councillor, and a supervisory-board member of Stadtwerke Regensburg GmbH. The AfD group's page lists him as deputy leader of its tourism working group, under Sebastian Münzenmaier.

On 26 November 2025, in the 43rd sitting during the 2026 budget's second reading, Vice-President Omid Nouripour (Alliance 90/The Greens) called him to order over an earlier altercation, without quoting the words.

Committee on Tourism

The biography lists Brucker as a full member of the Committee on Tourism. The 14-member committee is the Bundestag's forum for tourism policy, from labour and digitalisation to travellers' rights. At its constitutive sitting on 21 May 2025 Anja Karliczek (CDU/CSU) was elected chair; the AfD's full members were Brucker, Münzenmaier and Dario Seifert. The press office named him on a delegation to Albania from 28 September to 2 October 2026, led by Karliczek, for talks in Tirana, Durrës, Krujë and Dajti on tourism, infrastructure and accession to the European Union.

Bundestag Tourism Committee delegation meeting Albanian officials during its autumn 2026 visit.

A hearing on 12 November 2025 on holiday-home platforms and the EU short-term rental regulation heard conflicting evidence on whether such lets raise rents. In the second reading on 23 April 2026 of the data-exchange bill for short-term rentals, Brucker said it would add reporting duties for small private landlords and open the way to dispossessing them. He accepted that platforms such as Airbnb had raised rents in tourist centres, cited Regensburg's ban on misusing housing, and said municipalities rather than the EU should decide. After his time expired he said more housing would be created by "remigration". The AfD voted against; the bill passed with the CDU/CSU, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Greens and Die Linke.

He signed AfD motions of 8 July 2025 to reverse the 2024 rise in the air-travel tax and of 9 June 2026 to abolish it. At the first reading on 7 May 2026 of a government amending bill, he called the tax the dismantling of Germany as a location rather than climate policy. He cited a Ryanair cut at Berlin Brandenburg—seven aircraft, half the winter schedule, and passengers from 4.5 million to 2.2 million—and charges of €7,600 on a Berlin–Palma flight against €4,400 from Warsaw. He demanded abolition, including so that deportation flights would be cheaper. The bill went to committee. A question of 19 May 2026, led by Münzenmaier and co-signed by Brucker, asked about those costs and their effect on tourism and hotels.

Debating the National Tourism Strategy on 11 June 2026, he welcomed value-added tax of 7 percent on restaurant food but not its exclusion from drinks. He opposed recruitment from Bangladesh and Uzbekistan and a 2045 climate-neutrality target, said more than 115,000 people in Germany seeking work in tourism, hotels or food production were unemployed, and cited expert criticism of a €70 million cut in joint federal-state (GRW) tourism funds. Questions sought aid figures for tourism infrastructure in Bavaria, with Brucker the first signatory (Drucksache 21/7335, 27 July 2026), and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (21/5814). One of 12 October 2026, led by Marcel Queckemeyer and co-signed by Brucker, asked about permanent residence in holiday-home zones and what the questioners called their "tourist drying-out".

Interior Committee

He is listed as a deputy, not a full, member of the Interior Committee. Its 42 full members cover, on the Bundestag's account, immigration and asylum, civil protection, scrutiny of the Interior Ministry, and the preparation of bills. At its constitution on 21 May 2025 the AfD's nominee for chair, Jochen Haug, was rejected; Brucker was not among the AfD's ten full members. Josef Oster (CDU) became deputy chair on 25 June 2025 after Haug again failed.

Published questions in his name concern a Passau incident of 7 June 2025 which the questions described as a 48-year-old Iraqi man driving into a group and injuring at least five people, including his wife and daughter. Written question 7, answered on 19 June 2025 by Parliamentary State Secretary Daniela Ludwig (Drucksache 21/512), asked whether federal security authorities knew the driver and what residence status he held. The answer withheld the information, citing the general right of personality. He then led a minor interpellation of 10 October 2025 (Drucksache 21/2156) on prior convictions, the suspect's circle, any discussion in the joint counter-terrorism or counter-extremism centres, and the victims' health. The Interior Ministry replied on 23 October 2025 (Drucksache 21/2389) that Bavaria was investigating, refused personal data in open or classified form, said the suspect had been discussed in neither centre, and reported nothing on the victims beyond the press.

Public statements and observation

Statements on Islam, migration and identity

In a Passauer Neue Presse portrait of 23 January 2025, Erhard Brucker called himself a "pragmatic patriot" and named Geert Wilders as a model for steadfastness. Work abroad, five foreign languages, marriage to a Philippine citizen, and residence and property in the Philippines had, he said, shaped his view of migration: that status required strict conditions so newcomers contributed, "the exact opposite" of Germany's established parties. Charges that he was an outlier even in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) were baseless, he said, and the labels absurd; anyone calling him a racist should look at his life story, which "speaks for itself."

"Islamization" was his main subject. Around Passau it was not yet as visible as in large cities, but immigration from Islamic countries, those immigrants' birth rates, and what he called the autochthonous trend made a change "for the worse" a matter of time. Prayer was acceptable; stopping an assembly line for it was not, and objectors could look for work in one of "57 Muslim countries" ("muselmanischen"). He named three aims: remigration of people living at German expense, of those who had become criminal, or of those unwilling to integrate; an end to "woke nonsense" in family policy and sexuality; and abolition of carbon-dioxide pricing in favor of nuclear power. His slogan was "Germany/Bavaria first."

On 17 October 2021, seeking a Bavarian executive seat, he called "political Islam" a totalitarian ideology "in the sheep's clothing of a religion," spoke of a "Muslim invasion wave" and of "the conscious and boldly calculated Islamization of our homeland," and said "the German" should work rather than afford children "in order to finance some Muslims." Bavaria must not "fall prey to the Muslim hordes"; he wanted a "native population" and remigration. In the Telegram group "Alternative Nachrichtengruppe Bayern," a post of 19 August 2020 attributed to him called Islam a "clerical-fascist system" disguised as a religion, and one reported by Bayerischer Rundfunk on 1 December 2021 called it "a contagious disease which leads to brain softening, intolerance, homophobia, misogyny, etc."

Verfassungsschutz reports and court rulings

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in a follow-up assessment of 22 February 2021, names Brucker as a state-executive assessor and Regensburg district chair. Netzpolitik.org published the text; the Interior Ministry confirmed the text was genuine. It says that on 1 July 2019 he shared Hans-Thomas Tillschneider's line, "only there for our citizens—not for just any residents," and treats the share as agreement. His comment of 1 May 2020 said Islamization was "in full swing" and that, apart from the AfD and movements such as Pegida and "BPE," others looked away or promoted a "pseudo-religion." The office groups that with inflammatory Islamization rhetoric and reads it as support for the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa, which it classifies as right-wing extremist.

On 21 June 2022 the Bavarian office made the whole AfD an observation object, citing that assessment, a not-yet-final Cologne judgment of 8 March 2022, an ethnic conception of the people incompatible with human dignity under Article 1(1) of the Basic Law, and statements classed as hostility to Islam. It announced the step on 8 September 2022. Interim relief failed in Munich on 17 April 2023 (M 30 E 22.4913). On 14 September 2023 the Higher Administrative Court (10 CE 23.796) upheld observation for actual indications against the free democratic basic order, but barred until the main judgment the headline "Crises an ideal breeding ground for extremist scenes—AfD added as an object of observation," which readers would take as a confirmed extremist label. The order was final; the party paid the costs.

On 1 July 2024 the 30th chamber in Munich dismissed the action (M 30 K 22.4912); the September 2022 wording had been settled. It found a threat scenario around migrants and Muslims, ethnic-biological exclusion of citizens with a migration background contrary to human dignity, and contempt for institutions beyond ordinary opposition. Observation and factual publicity were proportionate. The judgment was not yet final.

The published reasons abbreviate the speaker as "Er. Br.," a state-board member and councillor in Regensburg. The Passauer Neue Presse reported that the judgment names Brucker on "political Islam"; the Münchner Merkur identifies him. The chamber held that the speech and the disease metaphor were meant to arouse fear of Muslims and, despite the "political Islam" opening, disparaged them as a threat solely for their faith. His explanation of 8 May 2023, that the phrases only concerned uncontrolled immigration and political Islam, was not credible: it diverged from the words, partly matched another functionary's wording, wrongly said the video was unavailable, and left the group posts standing. The party had not distanced itself promptly in public. He was elected with 69.8 percent and remained at least a co-opted board member.

On 16 June 2026 the Higher Administrative Court refused leave to appeal (10 ZB 24.2079). The legal conditions were already settled by the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Administrative Court, including the latter's decision of 20 May 2025 (6 B 23.24). Attributable remarks on remigration, defamation of migrants or Muslims, overthrow fantasies, and agitation against the free democratic basic order exceeded permissible criticism. The refusal is final.

Controversies since entering parliament

After Erhard Brucker entered the Bundestag in 2025, coverage focused on an alleged racist insult at a Berlin station, a parliamentary pass withheld from a prospective member of his staff, and an email to a Bundeswehr officer after he was refused a seminar place.

Alleged insult at Berlin Hauptbahnhof

On 26 September 2025 two officers of the Federal Police reported that Brucker, a member of Alternative for Germany, had racially insulted a visually impaired man they were checking at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. B.Z. wrote that the check, of a 57-year-old man from Sierra Leone, took place near the DB Lounge, and that the officers said Brucker told him, “Geh aus dem Weg, du Scheiß-Bimbo,” wording German reports treated as a racist slur. The Merkur, which said a Berlin police spokeswoman had confirmed a state-protection investigation, described the man as Eritrean; the Mittelbayerische Zeitung, like B.Z., reported Sierra Leone. The accounts agree that, when the officers spoke to him, he showed a Bundestag identity card and said he had to leave.

Brucker denied the wording. He told B.Z. that he had insulted nobody that Friday and had only said, in Bavarian, to a man who appeared to be under the influence of drugs, “Mei, jetzt geh halt einmal auf d’Seiten da,” and that the statements attributed to him were not his and were “in keiner Weise” his style. B.Z. reported that state-protection investigators were inquiring into suspected insult (Beleidigung) and had secured station video; the Merkur likewise reported an investigation confirmed by the Berlin police. As of those early-October 2025 reports the inquiry was open, and no charge, discontinuance, or judgment appeared in later coverage consulted here.

Parliamentary access for staff

On 17 September 2025 the Bundestag administration said it had refused house passes (Hausausweise) and IT access for several employees of members. The refusals followed security-critical findings in the mandatory reliability check. In every refused case, the administration said, it had appeared possible that a pass could be misused “zu verfassungsfeindlichen Zwecken,” risking the parliament’s functioning, security, integrity, or trustworthiness, and a pass required that there be no justified doubt about reliability. Julia Klöckner, president of the Bundestag, said there could be no compromise on internal or external security and that the number and seriousness of the findings made refusal unavoidable. The statement named no employees and no group.

An AfD spokesman told tagesschau.de that passes had been refused to three employees of AfD members and that IT access, including the intranet, had been cancelled for one further employee; other groups said they knew of no cases of their own. Tagesschau reported that checks of pass-holders had been repeated annually since 2023. Die Tageszeitung added that in March 2025, still under president Bärbel Bas, the administration had said it would apply the checks more strictly against extremist influence. The paper reported, on its own information, that a pass had been withdrawn from Michael Stürzenberger, who was to work for Brucker. Brucker neither confirmed nor denied that and said he did not wish to speak to the paper. The group said hiring personal staff was each member’s responsibility and that it would support the employees, within its means, in clarifying the cases.

By January 2026 the administration had, tagesschau.de reported, refused seven passes in the legislative term; the AfD said those concerned worked for its members or the group. Shortly before Christmas, Klöckner had asked the groups to amend the members’ law so that someone denied a pass as unreliable would also not be paid from parliamentary funds. AfD parliamentary manager Bernd Baumann called that a deep interference with the free mandate. These accounts did not record a court ruling on Stürzenberger’s pass.

Correspondence with the Bundeswehr

On 3 June 2026 Die Zeit reported that Brucker had been refused a place on a Bundeswehr information seminar and had emailed the colonel who conveyed the refusal. The paper, which said it held the letter, quoted him writing that in the not too distant future his party, “die einzige demokratische Alternative für Deutschland,” would enter government responsibility, and that once it had, “werde ich mich noch mal vertrauensvoll an Sie wenden” (“I will contact you again in a trusting manner”). Zeit described the message as an indirect written threat. The article also noted a November 2024 judgment of the Munich administrative court allowing Bavaria’s state office for the protection of the constitution to keep observing the Bavarian AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case. The court, Zeit reported, quoted speeches by Brucker, including the 2021 address with which he sought and obtained a seat (Beisitzer) on the state executive. Zeit reported no criminal or disciplinary consequence of the email, and none was stated in the sources opened here.