Gerold Otten

Gerold Joachim Otten (born 7 December 1955 in Lübberstedt, Lower Saxony) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since October 2017. He has sat for Bavaria on the AfD state list rather than as a directly elected constituency member. At the federal election of 23 February 2025 the federal returning officer recorded him, born in 1955, in eighth place on the Bavarian AfD list and as a candidate in München-Land (constituency 220).

Biographies he has filed with the Bundestag, which the parliament publishes as members' own statements, give a technical school-leaving certificate (Fachhochschulreife Technik), study of electrical engineering, and qualifications as a technical business administrator and professional trainer through the chamber of industry and commerce. The same filings state that he joined the Bundeswehr on 1 July 1975 as a career officer of the German Air Force under the BO 41 engagement, with its special age limit of 41, served for 22 years, and logged about 2,000 flying hours on F-4 Phantom and Panavia Tornado combat aircraft. They describe him as a colonel of the reserve and credit him with about 20 years in the aerospace industry at Airbus Defence and Space, where the 19th-Bundestag biography lists him as a sales director (Vertriebsleiter).

His current Bundestag biography dates AfD membership to March 2013 and names him head of the party's federal expert committee on foreign and security policy and a member of its federal programme commission. The biography he filed for the 19th Bundestag adds that he chaired the München-Land district association in 2016 and was deputy chairman of the Bavarian state association from November 2017, and it lists him as a full member of the Defence Committee, a deputy member of the Budget Committee, a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and deputy chairman of the aerospace parliamentary group. For the 21st Bundestag, from 25 March 2025, the parliament lists him as a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a full member and group spokesperson (Obmann) on the subcommittee on arms control, non-proliferation and international disarmament, and a deputy member of the Defence Committee. In München-Land in 2025 the AfD took 11.2 percent of the first votes, compared with 5.0 percent at the previous election in the official constituency comparison, while the direct mandate went to Florian Hahn of the CSU with 43.1 percent.

The AfD group has repeatedly nominated Otten for vice-president of the Bundestag. Der Spiegel reported that on 19 January 2023 he received 99 votes in favour, 571 against and 20 abstentions, and that since the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017 it had remained the only group never seated in the parliamentary presidium because its candidates had missed the required majority. On 7 May 2020, when the Bundestag elected Eva Högl parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces with 389 votes, Otten, the AfD's opposing nominee, received 92.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Gerold Otten was born on 7 December 1955 in Lübberstedt, a municipality in the Samtgemeinde Hambergen, in the district of Osterholz in Lower Saxony. Bundestag biographies, which the parliament states are drawn from members' own information, describe him as married with one child. Kürschners Volkshandbuch for the 21st Bundestag records the same birth date, birthplace, and family status. His own website describes the child as an adult son.

In a September 2017 profile in the Münchner Merkur, Otten said that he had grown up in a small hamlet near Bremen, in a home he described as thoroughly loyal to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). His father, he said, had worked as a works engineer (Betriebsingenieur) at a shipyard in Bremerhaven, had joined a trade union early, and had been mayor of Lübberstedt for 25 years. In a 2021 interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung he again said that he came from a social-democratic household, and that his father had been the municipality's SPD mayor for more than 20 years. The Merkur profile reported that his grandmother, a Social Democrat, had had a difficult position in the 1930s, and that his mother, then over 80, was still active in the Arbeiterwohlfahrt. The same profile recorded that a brother went to sea.

Schooling and qualifications

Otten told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he completed a technical apprenticeship with the Deutsche Bundesbahn, that at 16 he was working at a bench there, and that he afterwards studied electrical engineering. The biography archived from the 19th Bundestag lists a technical Fachhochschulreife, the entrance qualification for a university of applied sciences, together with study of electrical engineering, the chamber qualification Technischer Betriebswirt (IHK), and a Professional Trainer certificate from an IHK. Those lines name neither a school nor a higher-education institution, and they do not record a completed academic degree; the parliament marks the text as the member's own account. The shorter entry in Kürschners Volkshandbuch for the 21st Bundestag gives that chamber qualification in English as "Master Professional of Technical Management (CCI)." Geprüfter Technischer Betriebswirt is the title of a nationally regulated advanced vocational examination conducted by the chambers of industry and commerce. He has said that from the ages of 13 or 14 he wanted to join the military and fly; he later became a career officer in the German Air Force.

Military service

Entry and training

Otten entered the Bundeswehr on 1 July 1975 and, in biographies the Bundestag publishes from members’ own statements, is recorded as having served 22 years as a career officer (Berufsoffizier) of the German Air Force in the BO 41 category. Section 45 of the Soldiers Act sets a special age limit—completion of the 41st year of life—for officers used in jet combat aircraft either as pilots (Flugzeugführer) or as weapon-systems officers (Waffensystemoffiziere); the limit is the 40th year if they are no longer fit for flying. In a 2025 interview he said he had chosen the Luftwaffe because he wanted to fly, and he recalled basic training in the summer of 1975 as long marches with heavy packs, eight or nine men to a room, and close camaraderie. The parliamentary biographies place a technical Fachhochschulreife and studies in electrical engineering with that service, without naming the institution.

Flying career and instruction

A profile published with the 2025 interview states that he served as a Waffensystemoffizier, the second crew member rather than the pilot in command, on the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and the Tornado. Bundestag texts describe fliegerischer Dienst with about 2,000 flight hours, elsewhere given as “2000+”, on Phantom and Panavia Tornado combat aircraft. In the Luftwaffe Tornado the weapon-systems officer sits behind the pilot, operates reconnaissance and jamming systems, identifies threats and can employ the aircraft’s sensors and weapons, while the pilot flies and concentrates on reaching the operating area. Contemporary local reporting did not always use that distinction: in January 2017 the Münchner Merkur called him a former combat pilot.

He has said that in 1990 he was at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in September 2017 that he went to England as an instructor in 1994 and in 1997 took a post at MBB in Ottobrunn. The 2025 profile places those last three active years at the Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment at RAF Cottesmore, as a flight instructor for German, British and Italian Tornado crews. Britain, Germany and Italy opened the unit at Cottesmore on 29 January 1981 for joint Tornado conversion training; it closed in March 1999. The profile states that he ended active service in March 1997 as a Major, with 2,000 flight hours. Born on 7 December 1955, he turned 41 in December 1996. Section 44 of the Soldiers Act allows a career soldier who has reached the special age limit to be retired at the end of a calendar month.

Reserve service

The same profile says he remained an active reservist and was later discharged as Oberst der Reserve. In September 2017 the Süddeutsche Zeitung described him as an Oberst der Reserve at the Luftwaffe officer school in Fürstenfeldbruck; a portrait in the paper a week earlier had called him a Leutnant der Reserve at that school. His website and the archived biography for the 20th Bundestag term both give “Oberst der Reserve a.D.”, while the current parliamentary biography records “Oberst d. R.” without the retirement suffix. For the 19th electoral term he also listed membership of the Verband der Besatzungen strahlgetriebener Kampfflugzeuge der Deutschen Bundeswehr, an association of jet-combat-aircraft crews, and of the Deutscher BundeswehrVerband.

Work in the aerospace industry

DASA and Airbus

Gerold Otten’s years in industry are known from local election profiles and from the biography published by the German Bundestag. In a portrait dated 6 September 2017, the Münchner Merkur wrote that during his last three years with the Bundeswehr in the 1990s, at a Royal Air Force Tornado training centre which the paper spelled “Cottismor”, he came into contact with DASA and then moved to Ottobrunn, south-east of Munich. He had lived there for nearly 20 years and had moved to nearby Solalinden about a year and a half before the interview.

The Bundestag biography states “20 Jahre Tätigkeit in der Luft- und Raumfahrtindustrie (Airbus Defence & Space)”. That line is the member’s own summary, and the name in parentheses is the last identity of the employer, not the name used for the whole spell. In the European Commission’s file, DASA is DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG, then 93 per cent owned by DaimlerChrysler. The deal notified in 2000 contributed DASA, excluding its MTU aero-engine subsidiary, together with France’s Aérospatiale-Matra and Spain’s Construcciones Aeronáuticas (CASA), to a new Dutch company, the European Aeronautic, Space and Defence Company (EADS). The Commission cleared the concentration on 11 May 2000, and in July 2000 the BBC reported that shares in the newly merged group had begun trading in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

On 31 July 2013 Deutsche Welle reported that EADS would gather its divisions under the Airbus name and combine its defence business, the space unit Astrium and Airbus Military into Airbus Defense & Space, expected to be based in Ottobrunn. The Guardian said that reorganisation was due to be complete by the end of 2014. In December 2013 Deutsche Welle reported plans to merge Airbus Military, Cassidian and Astrium into that division, to adopt the Airbus name the following year, and to move the Cassidian headquarters from Unterschleißheim to Ottobrunn. On the Merkur account Otten was already at the Ottobrunn site after the DASA move; the 2013–14 changes renamed and regrouped the business there rather than marking his arrival.

Under “Berufliche Tätigkeit vor der Mitgliedschaft im Deutschen Bundestag”, the biography lists Airbus Defence and Space, Ottobrunn, and the function Vertriebsleiter. The disclosure places the post before membership, not among activities carried on during the mandate.

Eurofighter sales

The Eurofighter title is in the press, not in that parliamentary line. On 29 January 2017, reporting his nomination as AfD candidate in München-Land, the Münchner Merkur wrote that he worked at Airbus as “Eurofighter Sales Director”. Asked at the meeting, because of that job, about arms exports to Saudi Arabia, he said he personally had a large problem with the country, that Saudis supported international terrorism and the Islamic State in Syria, and that Germany should not export weapons there.

The 6 September 2017 profile stated that he was responsible for the international sales of the Eurofighter (“für den internationalen Vertrieb des Eurofighters zuständig”). Neither report names particular campaigns, further customer countries, or the year the sales title began, and the Bundestag text does not repeat the Eurofighter designation. What those sources record is a sales responsibility, current in 2017, for the Eurofighter at Airbus in Ottobrunn—described in English as “Eurofighter Sales Director” and in the parliamentary disclosure as Vertriebsleiter—after an industry spell his biography gives as about 20 years and which the Merkur traces from contact with DASA.

Party activity

Free Democratic Party

Otten joined the Free Democratic Party in 1989, under the impression of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a profile published on 4 September 2017, the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted him as saying that Hans-Dietrich Genscher had attracted him as a political figure, and it gave neither an FDP office nor a year in which he left.

AfD in Bavaria

Alternative for Germany was founded on 6 February 2013 in Oberursel. The biography on the website of the Bundestag, which the parliament notes is drawn from the member’s own statements, says that Otten joined in March 2013.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung of 4 September 2017 called him a co-founder of the district association for Munich (district), the Kreisverband München-Land, which it said then had 125 members and which he led together with Torsten Probst. On 25 January 2017 the paper reported that he had chaired the association since the previous year, succeeding Ulrich Riediger of Grünwald, and that he was the only candidate then announced for the constituency München-Land. The September profile also placed him eighth on the state list in Bavaria.

The biography for the 19th electoral term listed him, from November 2017, as deputy chairman of the Bavarian state association. At the state congress in Greding on 25–26 November 2017, the Münchner Merkur described a “moderate camp” around Otten that had left the chair to Martin Sichert on an informal understanding that Otten would become first deputy. Edeltraud Schwarz then forced him into a runoff and outpolled him, but missed the absolute majority; the congress changed the procedure and filled the deputy posts as a bloc, with both supporters of Der Flügel and members the paper called more moderate. On 5 January 2018 the Merkur described Otten as the new deputy state leader after Petr Bystron had left the chair. On 14 September 2019 a further Greding congress elected Corinna Miazga as state chair and Hansjörg Müller as first deputy. Otten’s current Bundestag biography still lists party offices, but not the district chairmanship or the Bavarian deputy chairmanship.

In September 2022 a spokesman for the Bavarian interior ministry said the state’s domestic intelligence service would observe the AfD in Bavaria as a whole, citing indications of efforts to impair or abolish core elements of the Basic Law; members of the Landtag group were excluded. In July 2024 the Munich administrative court dismissed the state association’s lawsuit and held that observation as a suspected right-wing extremist case, and public notice of it, were lawful. At federal level, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said on 2 May 2025 that it assessed the whole party as a proven right-wing extremist endeavour, then on 8 May gave a standstill undertaking not to repeat that public label pending an urgent court case. In February 2026 the Cologne administrative court provisionally barred the upgrade and left the suspected-case classification in place.

Federal party roles

On 25 January 2017 the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Otten had belonged to the inner circle around Bernd Lucke, by then no longer in the party, and had served under him as the federal party’s defence expert. The 4 September 2017 profile said that, already in Lucke’s time, Otten had formulated the party’s defence-policy cornerstones (verteidigungspolitische Eckpunkte). The 19th-term biography called him a founding member and deputy chairman of the federal expert committee on foreign and security policy, development aid and foreign trade. The current biography lists him as head (Leiter) of the federal expert committee “Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik” and as a member of the federal programme commission.

In the party statute filed with the federal returning officer, as amended on 5 July 2026, the federal expert committees draft proposed programmatic statements in their fields, help state associations with state programmes when asked, and support the federal programme commission. That commission, in consultation with the committees, prepares proposals for the party programme, for specialist programmes, and for the Bundestag and European election programmes; each expert committee sends one representative to it.

Bundestag elections

Elections to the Bundestag use personalized proportional representation. Each voter has a first vote (Erststimme) for a candidate in a single-member constituency and a second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party's closed state list (Landesliste); the second vote sets the party's number of seats, and voters cannot reorder the list. The two-vote system has been used since 1953. Through 2021 the leading constituency candidate took that seat and further members came from the state lists. From 2025 a constituency lead yields a seat only if the party's second votes in the Land cover it, inside a Bundestag fixed at 630 members. A candidate who loses the district can still be elected, in list order, if the party wins enough seats in the Land.

Gerold Otten stood for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in München-Land in 2017, 2021 and 2025. The constituency is the district of Munich (Landkreis München). It was numbered 221 for the elections of 24 September 2017 and 26 September 2021, and 220 for the election of 23 February 2025. He lost the direct seat each time and entered the 19th, 20th and 21st Bundestage from the AfD list in Bavaria.

2017 election

On 24 September 2017 Otten was the AfD direct candidate in constituency 221. He received 16,458 first votes, 8.4 percent, and finished fifth. Florian Hahn of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) won with 85,347 votes (43.5 percent). Bela Bach of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second on 16.3 percent, Anton Hofreiter of Alliance 90/The Greens third on 13.7 percent, and Jimmy Schulz of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) fourth on 9.3 percent. Second votes for the AfD list in the constituency were a separate total, 18,470 (9.4 percent), above Otten's 8.4 percent of first votes. In Bavaria the AfD took 12.4 percent of second votes (916,300). He was eighth on the Bavarian AfD list. The Münchner Merkur reported the next day that 14 AfD candidates from Bavaria would sit in the 19th Bundestag, Otten among them.

2021 election

On 26 September 2021 Otten again contested constituency 221. The final result gives him 9,816 first votes, 5.0 percent, fifth place, 3.4 points below 2017. Hahn held the seat with 77,523 votes (39.1 percent). Hofreiter was second with 40,475 votes (20.4 percent), ahead of Korbinian Rüger (SPD, 15.2 percent) and Axel Schmidt (FDP, 9.2 percent). AfD second votes in the constituency were 10,489 (5.3 percent), distinct from Otten's first votes. Statewide the party took 9.0 percent of second votes. While counting continued, he told the Merkur that he was ninth on the Bavarian list and, on projections of 13 or 14 AfD members from Bavaria, expected to return. He called the district result weaker than in 2017 and blamed a late polarizing campaign by the CSU and the SPD. He sat in the 20th Bundestag.

2025 election

On 23 February 2025 the same district was constituency 220. The returning officer's result booklet lists Gerold Joachim Otten, born in 1955, as the AfD candidate there and eighth on the Bavarian list.

He received 22,924 first votes, 11.2 percent, up 6.2 points on 2021, and finished fourth. Hahn, recorded as Florian Peter Hahn, won with 88,204 votes (43.1 percent). The Merkur described that win as his fifth consecutive direct mandate in the district. Hofreiter was second on 19.6 percent, and the SPD's first votes were third at 27,306 (13.3 percent). AfD second votes in the constituency were a separate 24,076 (11.7 percent). In Bavaria the party took 19.0 percent of second votes (1,515,731). Hahn won the constituency; the returning officer lists Otten among those elected to the 21st Bundestag from place 8 on the Bavarian AfD list, with a parallel candidacy in constituency 220. The Bundestag records him as a member since 2017 and assigns him that district.

Otten called the result mixed, saying he had expected 21.2 percent and putting the AfD's national share at 20.1 percent, which he linked to high turnout. In answers the Merkur published on 7 February 2025 he opposed suspending the debt brake, favoured supporting a ceasefire in Ukraine over expectations of a Ukrainian military victory or a decisive role for Taurus missiles, called for conscription to be restored, and said asylum under Article 16a of the Basic Law should remain while rejected applicants should leave.

Parliamentary work

Committees and group roles

Gerold Otten has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, elected on the state list of Bavaria.

For the 19th period (2017–2021) the archived biography lists him as a full member of the Defence Committee and of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, and as a deputy member of the Budget Committee. In that period the Defence Committee also sat, under Article 45a (2), as its first committee of inquiry into consultancy contracts (“Beraterverträge”). The report states that full and deputy members of the standing committee automatically held the same status on the inquiry, while a subcommittee of nine full and nine deputy members did the investigative work: for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Rüdiger Lucassen was full member and spokesperson and Otten the deputy. The recommendation of 16 September 2020, printed paper 19/22400, nevertheless names Otten among the rapporteurs. In the free-text biography, which the Bundestag said rested on members’ own information, he also called himself deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Group on Aerospace, a post absent from the structured list of offices.

The biography archived for the 20th period lists him as a full member of the Defence Committee and of the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, as the AfD group’s Obmann on that subcommittee, and as a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. It does not list a Budget Committee seat.

From 25 March 2025, the date given for his membership of the 21st Bundestag, the live profile lists a full seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee and on the Subcommittee on Arms and Proliferation Control, Non-Proliferation and International Disarmament, the Obmann role on that subcommittee, and a deputy seat on the Defence Committee. The subcommittee is published on the Bundestag site under the Foreign Affairs Committee. On 25 June 2025 the AfD group proposed him as a full member, not a substitute, of the Joint Committee (printed paper 21/595). The biography, last modified on 29 September 2026, lists him as a full member of that body.

International parliamentary bodies

Delegation reports place Otten in the Bundestag delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly from the 19th period onward. He attended the 64th annual session in Halifax from 16 to 19 November 2018, reported on 28 January 2020 as printed paper 19/16840. At the 65th annual session in London from 11 to 14 October 2019, the report of 3 December 2020 (printed paper 19/24927) records that he, Roland Hartwig of the AfD and Tobias Pflüger of Die Linke voted against the resolutions on NATO’s defence and deterrence posture after the INF Treaty and on recent developments in Afghanistan, and that he and Hartwig were among those voting against Ulla Schmidt’s resolution reaffirming NATO’s founding principles and values. He is also named for the spring session in Vilnius from 27 to 30 May 2022 (printed paper 20/4201, 26 October 2022) and for the 71st annual session in Ljubljana from 10 to 13 October 2025 (printed paper 21/5050, 31 March 2026). The current biography lists him as a full member of the assembly.

The same profile lists him as a full member of the Interparliamentary Conference for the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy, and as deputy chair of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Southern Africa. Neither office appears on the archived lists for the 19th or 20th period.

Debates and initiatives

On 19 April 2018, in the 26th sitting of the 19th Bundestag, Otten spoke for the AfD on the annual reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces for 2017 (printed paper 19/700) and 2016 (printed papers 18/10900 and 19/847). He criticised defence ministers of the Angela Merkel years, including Ursula von der Leyen, described the Bundeswehr as run down, and called for a further change of course which he named “Trendwende Respekt”, arguing that soldiering was not an ordinary job. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of the Free Democratic Party, in a short intervention, cited Article 12a of the Basic Law against a claim he attributed to Otten, that efforts to make service more attractive implied a right to resign in a state of defence.

On 20 September 2019 he co-sponsored, with Lucassen as first signatory, an AfD motion printed on 25 September as paper 19/13527 on the procurement of armed unmanned aircraft. It asked for an armed-drone capability, including effectors on the Eurodrone, rules of use, and a limit to Bundestag-mandated missions, rejected fully autonomous firing decisions, and said a further extended legal and ethical review of the sort foreseen in the coalition agreement was unnecessary. The Defence Committee recommended rejection on 16 October 2019. Printed paper 19/14499 of 25 October 2019 records the votes of the CDU/CSU, the Social Democratic Party, the FDP, Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens against the AfD, and names Otten as the AfD rapporteur.

On 13 June 2025 Otten was the first signatory of a minor interpellation, printed paper 21/478, on German participation in the maritime task force of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The questioners wrote that, in their view, the mandate did not allow boarding of suspicious ships outside Lebanon’s 12-nautical-mile zone and that the deployment should end. The government’s answer of 30 June 2025, printed paper 21/725, stated that weapons seizures by the maritime task force were outside the mandate, and that smuggling into Lebanon used land, air and sea, with the sea route more important than the land route.

Policy positions

Defence and the Bundeswehr

In the Bundestag debate of 19 April 2018 on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces' report, Otten said the defence ministers of the Merkel years suggested incompetence, irresponsibility and activism, and that Ursula von der Leyen continued that style. A personnel "turnaround," he argued, had swollen administration without restoring readiness, and measures such as base childcare and what he called "Schwangerschaftsbekleidung und Handtaschen" ignored a profession that meant risking life. He demanded a "Trendwende Respekt" and said soldiers had to identify with "Treue, Tapferkeit und Ehre," whereas the Traditionserlass she had just issued told the Bundeswehr to rely mainly on traditions since 1956 and forced tradition "in ein enges politisches Korsett." He traced the decree to distrust after cases such as Franco A. were treated as typical, and said she had accused the troops wholesale of an attitude problem rather than standing in front of them.

Tobias Lindner of Alliance 90/The Greens defended replacing the 1982 decree. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of the Free Democratic Party called Otten's picture of a right to resign in a defence case contrary to Article 12a of the Basic Law; Otten replied that competing with civilian employers recruited people who treated soldiering as a job.

The Alternative for Germany basic programme of 2016 calls for basic military service for all male German citizens aged 18 to 25, substitute service for conscientious objectors, and voluntary service for women. After the federal programme commission dropped that demand from the draft 2025 election programme, Otten told Die Welt in November 2024 that he would keep working so the AfD did not abandon "die Wiedereinsetzung der Wehrpflicht." At the Riesa congress in January 2025 delegates put reactivation, including substitute service, back into the programme, against co-chair Tino Chrupalla; a clause tying it to a future "peace-promoting, patriotic government" failed. On 7 February 2025 he told the Münchner Merkur, as an AfD position, that equipment was not enough: "Daher fordern wir auch die Wiedereinsetzung der Wehrpflicht," and that defending the nation had to become a civic matter of course again.

Foreign policy and arms control

Otten signed the AfD motion of 27 February 2022 condemning Russia's attack on Ukraine as a war of aggression contrary to international law. The group text blamed estrangement between NATO and Russia and breaches of the Minsk agreements, and demanded a ceasefire, a United Nations or OSCE force, renewal of the 2008 veto of Ukrainian NATO membership, and arms-control talks: "Reden statt schießen." On 7 February 2025 he said Germany could help a ceasefire by supporting an initiative then held out by Donald Trump and pressing Moscow and Kyiv. The idea that Ukraine could defeat Russia militarily was, he said, "ebenso absurd wie die Hoffnung auf die strategische Wirkung von Taurus als vermeintlichen 'Gamechanger'"; escalation for those illusions would be a fatal miscalculation.

On 14 October 2026, on what he called the largest European Union sanctions package against Russia, with more than 1,600 new listings, Otten said the measures would not end the fighting but would cement "einen sinnlosen Wirtschaftskrieg" whose victims were German citizens and industry. The AfD group, he said, wanted that sanctions policy ended, negotiations resumed, and national interests put first.

Introducing an AfD motion on 27 April 2023, he said Germany waived offset, the duty on a foreign supplier to reinvest part of the price, and contrasted Australia's Rheinmetall Boxer order, which required local production, with Germany's F-35 purchase, of which "nicht ein Cent des Kaufpreises" returned. Sara Nanni of the Greens called that claim fundamentally wrong; Johannes Arlt of the SPD said offsets could raise costs by an estimated 2 to 20 per cent and preferred reciprocity to a general duty. Otten cited Article 346 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and argued that buying more than 100 Boxers in Australia for about €1.8 billion sent the work abroad, whereas a 60 per cent offset would have returned more than €1 billion. An AfD motion of 31 March 2023, which he also signed, sought a Bundestag veto on war-weapons exports to conflict zones and said such deliveries, including those to Ukraine, prolonged war.

Migration and internal security

In the same February 2025 Merkur interview Otten stated the AfD position: end the mixing of asylum and migration and what he called a misreading of the Refugee Convention — "Recht auf Asyl statt Recht im Asyl" — while standing without reservation for asylum under Article 16a. Rejected applicants "müssen aber umgehend das Land verlassen." Legal immigrants were welcome, but numbers had to follow German requirements of qualification, language and labour-market need, and the first task was to raise the domestic workforce.

On 5 November 2019 he told n-tv that if new movements toward Germany developed, "letztendlich müssen wir sehen, wie wir die Grenze schützen," and that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could reopen the route at any time. Soldiers would support border forces under the interior ministry; he expected a constitutional dispute. The AfD paper he was describing, as n-tv reported it, also envisaged a 50,000-strong reservist corps and a Bundeswehr able, short of a defence case, to answer terrorist, cyber and drone attacks, on the claim that internal and external security could no longer be separated.

Energy and climate

On 10 February 2025 Otten told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that climate had changed at all times, that the human share was "wissenschaftlich ungeklärt," and that no "Energiewende" costing thousands of billions of euros could rest on that. There was, he said, no reason to restrict or ban "die notwendige und sinnvolle Nutzung fossiler Energien, also Kohle, Erdgas, Erdöl," and trying to steer the climate by cutting CO₂ threatened German prosperity and diverted money needed against poverty, disease and hunger. Days earlier he had told the Merkur that "Klimaschutz" was misleading, that remaking society around it was a dystopia, and that the task was adaptation to natural warming. That follows the 2016 AfD programme, which calls IPCC models hypothetical, denies that CO₂ is a pollutant, and pledges to drop decarbonisation and any charge on emissions. On gas supply he co-signed the AfD motion of 20 May 2026 for an inquiry into the 26 September 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines.

Candidacies for parliamentary offices

Vice-president of the Bundestag

Since 1994 the rules of procedure of the Bundestag have provided that each parliamentary group is represented in the Presidium by at least one vice-president. The place is filled by secret ballot, and under Article 40 of the Basic Law election requires the votes of a majority of members. On 22 March 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court dismissed an organ-dispute application by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group and held that this “basic mandate” is only a right to propose a member: the vote is free, and the seat stays vacant if no nominee wins a majority.

Since the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017 it has been the only group whose nominees have not been elected, because members of the other groups have in the main refused to vote for them. Earlier nominees included Albrecht Glaser, opposed in particular over remarks on the religious freedom of Muslims, and Mariana Harder-Kühnel, against whom members cited positions of other AfD politicians, including Björn Höcke, rather than a personal charge. The SPD member Karl Lauterbach said that political convictions could not be separated from the people with whom one made politics.

The group then nominated Otten, who on 11 April 2019 received 210 votes in favour, 393 against and 31 abstentions, short of the majority of 355 then required. A second ballot on 16 May produced 205 yes votes, 399 no and 26 abstentions, and a third on 6 June 211 yes, 426 no and 30 abstentions; the Bundestag again recorded 355 as the majority required. The Green member Sven Kindler said he could not vote for Otten because Otten had taken part in an AfD march in Chemnitz in 2018. Otten said most members still would not grant the group its place in the Presidium and called the result exclusion in disregard of the rules of procedure. Alice Weidel, then chair of the AfD group, wrote that the other groups continued to refuse an office to which the group was democratically entitled.

Nominated again on 19 January 2023, he received 99 yes votes, 571 no and 20 abstentions and missed the required majority of 369.

At the constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025 the Bundestag set five vice-presidents. In a secret ballot requiring 316 votes, a majority of the 630 members, it elected Andrea Lindholz of the CSU with 425 yes votes, Josephine Ortleb of the SPD with 434, Omid Nouripour of Alliance 90/The Greens with 432, and Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke with 318. Otten failed three ballots: 185 yes to 411 no, with 10 abstentions; then 190 to 401, with 13 abstentions, the second ballot again requiring 316 votes; then 184 to 403, with 15 abstentions. In the third ballot the rules required only more yes votes than no votes. The 184 yes votes were 32 more than the AfD group’s 152 members. The same day the house rejected an AfD motion to amend the rules so as to secure the post. Before the sitting Friedrich Merz said he would not recommend that the CDU/CSU group elect an AfD member to what he called a state office, and he restated CDU decisions against cooperation with the AfD. Afterwards Otten, asked whether the will of the more than ten million voters the AfD represented was being disregarded, called the outcome undemocratic and an exclusion of those voters with the group, for want of respect for the rules of procedure.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces

Under Article 45b of the Basic Law, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces is an auxiliary organ of the Bundestag for oversight of the Bundeswehr, charged with soldiers’ basic rights and the principles of Innere Führung and with an annual report to the Bundestag. The commissioner is neither a member of parliament nor a civil servant, and soldiers may petition the office directly, outside the chain of command.

On 7 May 2020 the Bundestag elected Eva Högl of the SPD, nominated jointly by the CDU/CSU and the SPD, to succeed Hans-Peter Bartels. She received 389 votes, with 171 abstentions and four invalid ballots, above the required majority of 355. The AfD nominated Otten, who received 92 votes.

Public reception

Chemnitz march of 2018

On 1 September 2018 Otten joined a march in Chemnitz after 35-year-old Daniel Hillig was killed on 26 August at a city festival; Der Spiegel reported that a Syrian man and an Iraqi man were suspected. Björn Höcke, Andreas Kalbitz and Jörg Urban had called a silent procession in dark clothes, without placards, and had written that they wanted no extremists or violent offenders "in unseren Reihen". watson reported that Otten, a Bavarian member of the Bundestag for the Alternative for Germany, walked at the front beside Höcke, Kalbitz and Pegida deputy Siegfried Däbritz.

The city put the joint AfD and Pegida march, which Pro Chemnitz demonstrators also joined, at about 4,500 people, against about 4,000 at a rally opposing xenophobia; Spiegel reported that the procession was halted and then broken off, and that police were investigating an attack, at the edge of the demonstrations, on an MDR camera crew. The WDR programme Monitor of 6 September 2018, titled "Schulterschluss mit Rechtsextremen", described AfD and Pegida figures leading a march that also included neo-Nazis, hooligans, people from the banned Nationale Sozialisten Chemnitz, and activists of the Identitarian Movement Germany, which it said was watched by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Michael Nattke of Kulturbüro Sachsen called those present a "Who is Who" of the neo-Nazi scene and a "Schulterschluss" from people outside that scene through "klare Neonazis" to the AfD; the presenters said they had been attacked themselves.

When the AfD nominated Otten for Bundestag vice-president on 11 April 2019, the march was cited against him. He received 210 votes in favour, 393 against and 31 abstentions, and watson reported that Green MP Sven Kindler would not vote for him. Drawing on the Bayerischer Rundfunk, watson quoted Otten: "In der Rückschau hätte ich das anders organisiert. Da hätte man sicherlich anders vorgehen können, ganz klar" ("In hindsight I would have organized it differently. One could certainly have gone about it differently, quite clearly"). watson added that BR wrote he was not distancing himself from the völkisch wing, and described the march as a "Schulterschluss" of the AfD with violent far-right participants.

Party currents and political assessments

In a February 2025 profile headlined "Stramm rechts", the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Otten was "im Auftreten und vom Tonfall her deutlich gemäßigter als viele andere in der AfD" — markedly more moderate in manner and tone than many others in the party — while representing the party line just as consistently. In August 2021 the paper reported that he would not assign himself to any current, felt obliged to the whole party, and kept "gute Kontakte in alle Bereiche — auch in den sogenannten Flügel hinein". He said he also shared positions of Der Flügel and that, although it no longer existed formally, "die Personen sind natürlich aber noch da". The SZ noted his place beside Höcke in Chemnitz and a "sehr vertrauensvolles Verhältnis" with Bavarian AfD group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner, whom it placed in that wing. In 2020 the domestic intelligence service classified Der Flügel as an "erwiesen extremistische Bestrebung", and its president, Thomas Haldenwang, called Höcke and Kalbitz right-wing extremists.

Industry background and conflicts of interest

The Bundestag biography, based on his own information, records about 20 years at Airbus Defence and Space after his career as a Bundeswehr officer. The only related disclosure under the code of conduct is prior employment as Vertriebsleiter at Airbus Defence and Space in Ottobrunn, not a paid side activity. abgeordnetenwatch.de lists the same prior post and no remunerated outside job. In September 2017 the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that he was then on the sales team for the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the Münchner Merkur wrote that he handled the jet's international sales.

He has sat on the Defence Committee since 2017 — a full member in the 19th and 20th electoral periods, a deputy in the 21st — and has been the AfD's Obmann on the subcommittee for arms and proliferation control, non-proliferation and international disarmament in the 20th and 21st periods. In the 21st Bundestag he is also a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The filings do not record pay from Airbus after he took his seat, and coverage of his defence roles and of the 2019 nomination has not reported a formal conflict-of-interest finding; watson's account of the objections centred on Chemnitz rather than on the industry disclosure.