# Gottfried Curio

# Gottfried Curio

Gottfried Justus Immanuel Curio (born 2 September 1960 in Berlin) is a German physicist and a politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and serves as the AfD parliamentary group's spokesman on interior policy and its coordinator on the Interior Committee. In the 2025 federal election he won constituency 84, Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf, with 43,729 first votes (29.5 percent); Mario Czaja of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) received 43,262 first votes (29.2 percent).

Curio took the Abitur at a classical-language Gymnasium in Berlin and held a scholarship from the Studienstiftung. He completed a diploma in mathematics at the University of Bonn and a doctorate and habilitation in physics at Humboldt University of Berlin. The Bundestag publishes that biography as the member's own account. In 1997 he wrote the review *N=2 String-String Duality and Holomorphic Couplings* (report HUB-EP-97/45), published in *Fortschritte der Physik* in 1998, on N=2 duality between the heterotic string and the type IIA string in string theory.

He worked in research and teaching in theoretical physics at Humboldt University and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where the Bundestag biography records a temporary professorship covering a chair for several years. The same account lists further research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and work supported by the German Research Foundation. He also completed studies in music, worked as a composer, répétiteur at the Berlin University of the Arts and leader of music-theatre ensembles, trained in church music and worked for years as a church musician, and studied history, philosophy and religious studies.

Curio has been an AfD member since 2014; the published biography lists no earlier party membership. Since 2015 he has been a delegate to the party's federal congresses, and since 2016 he has chaired its Steglitz-Zehlendorf district association and sat on the Berlin state committees for asylum and integration and for education. From 2016 to 2017 he was a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin.

In a Bundestag debate on dual citizenship, which *Die Welt* reported on 3 February 2018, Curio said that a dual passport which had "degenerated into the rule" ("ein zur Regel entarteter Doppelpass") undermined the state and democracy, and he called federal integration commissioner [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) a "prime example of failed integration." Green parliamentary business manager [Britta Haßelmann](/people/britta-hasselmann) accused Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble of permitting defamation and incitement because he did not rebuke the speech. FDP deputy Jürgen Martens called the AfD motion deeply xenophobic and described Curio's remarks as defamatory and *völkisch*.

## Early life and education

### Schooling in West Berlin

Gottfried Curio was born on 2 September 1960 in Berlin. Little has been published about his parents or childhood. In 2019 the Berlin daily *taz* reported that he grew up in the city, and that a fuller curriculum vitae was difficult to obtain even from colleagues in his later party; the educational outline on record comes chiefly from the biographies he supplied to parliament.

He completed the Abitur at the Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, which the biography published by the Berlin [House of Representatives](/organizations/house-of-representatives) describes as a humanist school with a classical-language course. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own information, records only the Abitur at a classical humanist Gymnasium in Berlin and does not name the school. *taz* identified the Graues Kloster and called it Berlin's oldest Gymnasium, a reference to the sixteenth-century foundation whose name the later school carries.

The Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster was founded in 1574 in the buildings of a Franciscan monastery dissolved during the Reformation, on Klosterstraße in Mitte, and it remained a humanist school oriented to the classical languages until the authorities of the German Democratic Republic closed it in the late 1950s. Bombing in the Second World War had already destroyed the monastery complex. In West Berlin the Protestant Church opened an Evangelisches Gymnasium in Tempelhof in 1949; from 1954 that school was based in Wilmersdorf, and in 1963 it took the name Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster as the successor institution. The district administration lists it as a state-recognized humanist Gymnasium at Salzbrunner Straße 41, 14193 Berlin. Curio's Berlin biography lists English, Latin and Ancient Greek among the languages he knows. The parliamentary biographies do not give the year of his Abitur.

### Mathematics and physics studies

He was a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. He studied mathematics and physics at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, the University of Bonn.

The Berlin parliamentary biography states that the Diplom was taken at Bonn in both subjects, in the formula "Diplom (Mathematik; Physik)". Abgeordnetenwatch, using data registered for members of the Bundestag, lists his professional qualification as Diplom-Mathematiker and Diplom-Physiker. The Bundestag biography is narrower on the physics side. It records a completed study of mathematics, with the Diplom, at Bonn, and it associates physics with the later doctorate and habilitation at the Humboldt University of Berlin, not with a Diplom. None of these notices gives a year for the Diplom or the title of a diploma thesis.

### Music and further studies

The Berlin biography also records a completed study of music, in composition, at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, and a completed study of church music, without naming the church-music school. The Bundestag biography likewise reports completed studies in music and in church music. It lists work as a composer, as a répétiteur (*Korrepetitor*) at the Universität der Künste Berlin, and as director of music-theatre ensembles, together with long service as a church musician.

The Berlin text is more specific about those activities, which it classes as secondary occupations: répétiteur work at the Hochschule der Künste and with numerous independent groups; direction of music-theatre ensembles at music schools of the Berlin Volkshochschulen; many years as a church musician; and freelance composition. Neither account gives dates, teachers, or a list of compositions. Reviewing what could be checked beyond those self-descriptions, *taz* noted that the completed music study was known from the Bundestag website and that much of his life outside parliament remained undocumented.

Both biographies add studies in history, philosophy and religious studies. In their wording these are "Studien", not the completed degree courses (*abgeschlossene Studien*) recorded for music and church music, and no institution or date is given.

## Scientific career

### Doctoral research

Curio’s published work in theoretical high-energy physics begins at the Institute of Physics of Humboldt University of Berlin. A September 1995 preprint, acknowledging support from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), tested string theory duality in gravitational as well as vector couplings. For a rank-three model tied to the Calabi–Yau space \(WP_{1,1,2,2,6}(12)\), it checked analytically a relation previously tested only order by order, and appeared in *Physics Letters B*. With Gabriel Lopes Cardoso, Dieter Lüst and Thomas Mohaupt he related some instanton numbers of a Calabi–Yau with Hodge numbers \(h^{1,1}=3\) and \(h^{2,1}=243\) to coefficients of modular forms.

The German National Library catalogues his dissertation as *N=2 string-string duality and holomorphic couplings*, a 1997 Humboldt University thesis of 90 sheets. Issued as preprint HUB-EP-97/45 and published in *Fortschritte der Physik* 46 (1998), pp. 75–146, it reviews \(N=2\) duality between the heterotic string and the type IIA string. It computes the heterotic prepotential and the gravitational coupling \(F_1\) for the ST, STU and STUV models—the last with a Wilson line—and matches them to the instanton expansion of the dual Calabi–Yau manifold, with remarks on BPS spectral sums.

### Institute for Advanced Study and habilitation

For 1997–98 and 1998–99 the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, listed Curio as a member in mathematical physics, jointly appointed in mathematics and natural sciences. The 1997–98 report names Humboldt University as his institution; the 1998–99 report lists the Institute. Preprints from the stay use the School of Natural Sciences address, and some acknowledge partial support from National Science Foundation grant DMS-9627351.

With Ron Donagi he matched moduli of an \(N=1\) heterotic compactification on an elliptic Calabi–Yau, and of the dual F-theory model, to cohomology of spectral and cameral covers, identifying a heterotic Prym with an F-theory intermediate Jacobian. He computed the net number of chiral generations—half the third Chern class—from spectral-cover data for an \(SU(n)\) bundle, related it to a discrete modulus analogous to F-theory four-flux, and described three-generation models with unbroken \(SU(5)\), \(SO(10)\) or \(E_6\). With Björn Andreas and Albrecht Klemm he constructed supersymmetric three-generation models with the Standard Model gauge group on a non-simply-connected elliptic Calabi–Yau with a bi-section, so that a free involution and Wilson lines can break \(SU(5)\). A paper with Andreas on four-flux and discrete twist in heterotic/F-theory duality gives a Humboldt address for correspondence after 1 July 1999.

Later Berlin papers concern fluxes and superpotentials. With Klemm, Lüst and Stefan Theisen he showed that \(H\)-flux on a type II Calabi–Yau compactification lifts the continuous vacuum degeneracy and generically breaks \(N=2\) supersymmetry, while aligned fluxes can leave supersymmetric states at special loci in moduli space. Related papers asked which heterotic fluxes on a \(K3\) times a torus still match type II duality, and wrote a heterotic flux action, through order \(\alpha'^2\), as a sum of squares. He studied the membrane-instanton superpotential for M-theory on a cone of \(G_2\) holonomy, and with Melanie Becker and Axel Krause described how metastable de Sitter vacua might arise when membrane instantons oppose hidden-sector gaugino condensation.

Curio’s Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, states that both the doctorate and the habilitation in physics were taken at Humboldt University. The DFG later lists him as *Privatdozent* Dr. Gottfried Curio. The National Library records the dissertation and its journal version, but no separate habilitation monograph under his name.

### Teaching posts and later research

From December 2004 his preprints give the Department of Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and later the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics. There he constructed three-generation heterotic bundles with Standard Model gauge group and matter on a non-simply-connected elliptic Calabi–Yau, and with Andreas built extension bundles that meet anomaly cancellation without five-branes. A 2007 note, which places him at Humboldt’s Institute of Mathematics and cites support from DFG Sonderforschungsbereich 647 and the Max Planck Institute for Physics, uses a bundle deformation to remove an extra \(U(1)\).

The Munich group’s teaching archive lists him for quantum chromodynamics with tutorials in summer 2008, a QCD and Standard Model course in summer 2009, and quantum mechanics in winter 2009/10. The university told *taz* in 2019 that he was a scientific staff member from 2004 to 2013 and an acting professor for four semesters of that period. His parliamentary biography calls it a temporary professorship substituting for a chair.

From 2010 to 2015 the DFG funded project 160606338, “Heterotic string compactifications and their applications in particle physics and cosmology” (German: “Heterotische Stringkompaktifizierungen und ihre Anwendungen in Teilchenphysik und Kosmologie”), with Curio as applicant at the LMU chair for theoretical particle physics and Lüst, at the Arnold Sommerfeld Center, as the other participant. Its scope covers flux geometries, Calabi–Yau spaces and vector bundles, F-theory and M-theory dualities, the effective superpotential, and string extensions of the Standard Model. Papers citing DFG grant CU 191/1-1 treat the heterotic world-sheet-instanton superpotential, a mismatch in the Higgs count for spectral \(SU(5)\) and \(SO(10)\) bundles, and discrete twists that change the number of generations while cutting bundle moduli—in the March 2012 preprint LMU-ASC 17/12, removing them entirely. That preprint is his last in the arXiv high-energy-theory listing; it appeared in the *Journal of High Energy Physics*.

## Entry into the Alternative for Germany

### Joining the party and local office

Curio joined the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) in 2014. In the biography he supplied to the Bundestag, he states that he had not previously belonged to any other party, that he was a delegate to AfD federal congresses from 2015, and that in 2016 he became chairman of the party's district association in Berlin's southwestern borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The same account lists him as a member of the Berlin AfD's specialist committees on asylum and integration and on education. The Berlin parliament's profile records the 2014 membership, the delegate role and the Steglitz-Zehlendorf chairmanship in the same terms.

The Berlin AfD adopted its state list for the 2016 Abgeordnetenhaus election at a state nominating convention on 23 and 24 April 2016. On the list the state party published afterwards, Georg Pazderski stood in first place and Curio in tenth.

### Berlin House of Representatives

At the election to the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin on 18 September 2016, the AfD won 14.2 percent of the second votes, according to the final figures carried by the ARD election archive and attributed there to the state returning officer. It was the party's first entry into the chamber. *Die Welt*, reporting the result the following morning, gave the AfD 25 of 160 seats, behind the SPD (21.6 percent and 38 seats), the CDU (31), [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) (27) and [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) (27), and ahead of the FDP (12). Turnout was 66.9 percent.

Curio sat from 27 October 2016 until 24 October 2017, when Tommy Tabor replaced him. On his own website he states that, in that first AfD group, he was the speaker for migration and integration policy. In the Committee for Integration, Labour and Social Affairs on 15 June 2017, during a debate on antisemitism requested by the CDU, he argued that the political source of antisemitic incidents was what he called a government whitewashing of the "import of Muslim hatred of Jews." The Green deputy Canan Bayram interrupted to say that what he was saying was almost of criminal-law interest, and later disputed the generalization.

On 6 July 2017 he opened the AfD group's plenary priority on its motion "Integration — into which society?" (Drucksache 18/0415). He said that integration needed a receiving culture strong enough to integrate, and that "a total cultural pluralism hinders integration." Speakers for the SPD, CDU, The Left, the FDP and the Greens answered critically. The SPD's Maja Lasić addressed him directly and treated the speech as material for the coming federal campaign.

### 2019 federal spokesperson candidacy

On 30 November 2019 the AfD federal congress, meeting in the Volkswagen Halle in Braunschweig, filled the spokesperson post that [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland) was leaving. Gauland, then 78, did not stand and had proposed Tino Chrupalla as his successor. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported 592 delegates. In a separate ballot the same day, co-spokesperson [Jörg Meuthen](/people/jorg-meuthen) was re-elected with 69.18 percent of the vote, ahead of the Bundestag member [Nicole Höchst](/people/nicole-hochst) on 24.8 percent and Wolfgang Gedeon on 3.8 percent. Many delegates walked out during Gedeon's speech; a party expulsion procedure over allegations of antisemitism was already running against him in Baden-Württemberg.

For Gauland's seat the first round was contested by Chrupalla, Curio and Dana Guth, the AfD state chair in Lower Saxony. Chrupalla took about 44 percent, short of an absolute majority, and Guth was eliminated. In the runoff Chrupalla defeated Curio by 54.51 percent to about 41 percent. Curio told delegates that Germany should spend its money on support for families rather than on "illegal migration." *Der Spiegel* described him as a physicist and musician whose Bundestag speeches had built a large YouTube following inside the party, and judged this candidacy speech weaker than those performances.

Chrupalla, a 44-year-old master painter from Saxony and a Bundestag deputy, argued for a leadership pair of an academic from the west, Meuthen, and a non-academic from the east. He said the "bourgeois centre" would be reached by reason and convincing content, and that drastic language often had the opposite effect, especially among women. He was not a member of Der Flügel, the nationalist network around the Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke, but *Der Spiegel* reported that he had publicly sought its proximity that summer and that the runoff turned in part on its support. At the congress Höcke called him an organizational talent who understood that the party still had to use the street as a "resonance chamber."

## Bundestag elections and parliamentary roles

### List mandates in 2017 and 2021

Curio entered the Bundestag at the federal election of 24 September 2017 on the Berlin state list of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), not as a constituency candidate. The list admitted in the Berlin *Amtsblatt* placed [Beatrix von Storch](/people/beatrix-von-storch) first and Dr. Gottfried Curio second; the AfD nominee in the then constituency 85, Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf, was Jeannette Auricht. Berlin cast 225,170 second votes for the AfD, 12.0 percent. The state returning officer's final report lists four AfD members, all elected on the list: von Storch, Curio, [Götz Frömming](/people/gotz-fromming) and Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, in places 1 to 4. The archived biography for the 19th electoral term records the mandate as won over the state list.

On 26 September 2021 he again stood only on the list. The list published on 9 August 2021 ranked von Storch, Curio and Frömming in the first three places, and Curio was not a constituency nominee. In Marzahn-Hellersdorf the AfD candidate was Thomas Braun; Mario Czaja of the CDU won the seat with 39,543 first votes (29.4 percent), ahead of [Petra Pau](/people/petra-pau) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke). The same report shows the AfD's three Berlin seats as list seats for places 1 to 3, so second place returned Curio. The biography for the 20th term calls the seat a list mandate and states that he won it again when parts of the Berlin election were repeated on 11 February 2024 in 455 polling districts and the composition of that Bundestag was redetermined. In the combined final result the AfD took 159,025 second votes in Berlin, 9.4 percent. In constituency 85 the CDU still led on first votes, with 38,914 (29.7 percent), against 20,980 (16.0 percent) for the AfD; the partial repeat did not change the order of the constituency candidates.

### Direct mandate in 2025

For the election to the 21st Bundestag on 23 February 2025, Curio was both second on the Berlin AfD list, again behind von Storch, and the party's candidate in constituency 84, Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf. The constituency number changed from 85 after Saxony-Anhalt lost a constituency and Bavaria gained one; rbb24 describes the seat as coextensive with the borough of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. The final result names the winner as Gottfried Justus Immanuel Curio.

He received 43,729 first votes, 29.5 percent of 148,205 valid first votes, against 43,262 (29.2 percent) for Czaja, a margin of 467 votes. On the same party table, Die Linke took 24,895 first votes (16.8 percent), the SPD 12,926 (8.7 percent), the BSW 12,754 (8.6 percent) and the Greens 6,093 (4.1 percent); the admitted nominees for those lists were [Katalin Gennburg](/people/katalin-gennburg), Ben Schneider, Oliver Ruhnert and Maren Tepper. Turnout was 76.3 percent, 149,493 of 195,867 eligible voters. Against 2021, the AfD's first-vote share in the constituency rose by 13.5 points and the CDU's fell by 0.5. Second votes in the constituency also put the AfD first, with 46,285 (31.2 percent). In Berlin as a whole the party received 296,990 second votes, 15.2 percent.

From this election a party candidate wins a constituency seat only with a first-vote plurality and only if that seat is covered by the party's second-vote allocation in the Land, the rule known as *Zweitstimmendeckung*. The Bundestag records Curio's seat as a constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 084. In the final tables for Berlin's twelve constituencies he is the only AfD candidate so elected; in constituencies 83 and 85 the AfD nominees, Michael Gleichmann and von Storch, finished second.

### Committee work and group offices

In the 19th term the Bundestag biography lists Curio as a full member and *Obmann* of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland (*Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat*) and as a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. When the interior committee constituted itself on 21 February 2018, with 45 members and [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) of the CDU/CSU in the chair, the Bundestag named him the AfD *Obmann* among six AfD members. The biography for the 20th term again lists him as a full member and *Obmann* of that committee and describes him as the AfD group's interior-policy spokesman (*innenpolitischer Sprecher*). The current biography uses both of those group titles. For the 21st term it lists a full membership of the Interior Committee and a deputy membership of the Joint Committee (*Gemeinsamer Ausschuss*). The Bundesrat publishes him among the AfD's deputy members of that body; under the committee's rules of procedure the President of the Bundestag is its chair.

## Interior, migration and citizenship policy

### Borders, asylum and deportation

As interior-policy spokesman of the Alternative for Germany group and its lead member on the Bundestag Interior Committee, Curio has treated asylum mainly as a question of entry controls and removal. Drucksache 19/41, which he introduced in November 2017, called for checks along the whole land border and for turning back people who arrived from a neighbouring safe third country even if they claimed persecution. The Interior Committee recommended rejection in February 2018. The Christian Democratic Union and [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria), the Social Democratic Party, the Free Democratic Party, Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens were recorded against the AfD.

Drucksache 19/182, which he co-sponsored, would have abolished family reunification for people with subsidiary protection. From 1 August 2018 the coalition instead set a humanitarian quota of 1,000 people a month. In 2025 the CDU/CSU–SPD cabinet under Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) suspended that route until 23 July 2027, leaving other hardship admissions open.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees registered 229,751 first asylum applications in 2024, down 30.2 percent from 2023, and 113,236 in 2025, a further fall of 50.7 percent. The government told the Bundestag that 20,084 people were deported in 2024 and 22,787 in 2025, while 33,717 planned removals in 2024 did not take place.

From 7 May 2025 Interior Minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) ordered tighter controls inside the Schengen Area and refusal of entry to some asylum seekers who had passed through a safe third country, with exceptions for vulnerable people. On 2 June 2025 the Berlin Administrative Court held, in unappealable interim orders, that three Somali applicants turned back at Frankfurt (Oder) had to enter a Dublin Regulation procedure. It found that European Union law overrode the national rule and that no emergency under Article 72 TFEU had been shown. Dobrindt called the orders individual cases and kept the practice. Curio's motion of 6 October 2026, Drucksache 21/8387, said spot checks were not the promised change. It sought systematic refusal of entry, a wider stop to family reunification, benefits in kind rather than cash, and revocation of Syrian protection titles under section 73 of the Asylum Act. It also said first-quarter 2026 removals were 22 percent below a year earlier.

### Citizenship law

Curio has argued that citizenship should require an exclusive commitment to Germany, not routine dual nationality or birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents. Drucksache 19/86, which he introduced in November 2017, would have restored the option model abolished in 2014, so that such children would again have had to choose one nationality between the ages of 18 and 23. On 2 February 2018 he told the Bundestag that citizenship was not a "welcome gift," and that a dual passport "degenerated into the rule" — "ein zur Regel entarteter Doppelpass" — undermined state and democracy. Anton Hofreiter of the Greens interrupted to call the adjective Nazi language. Christian Democrat Marian Wendt said the Union needed no instruction from the AfD on the subject.

Statute then moved the other way. From 27 June 2024 the [Federal Ministry of the Interior](/organizations/federal-ministry-of-the-interior) allowed naturalisation after five years instead of eight, after three for special integration, and without giving up another nationality. A child born in Germany to foreign parents could acquire citizenship if one parent had five years' lawful residence and a permanent right to stay. Racist or antisemitic conduct was a new bar. The Federal Statistical Office counted 291,955 naturalisations in 2024, up 46 percent and the highest since 2000. Syrians were the largest group, at 83,150; average prior residence was 11.8 years. An act of 29 October 2025 deleted the three-year track from the next day. Five years, and more than one nationality, remained.

Drucksache 21/223, in May 2025, called that inadequate. It asked for naturalisation only by discretion after ten years of lawful residence, excluding asylum and humanitarian stays; for no birthright citizenship unless a parent is German; for renunciation of any previous nationality as the rule; and for a pause in naturalising recognised Syrian refugees while revocation ran. It said dual nationality would record offences by dual nationals as German crime and would open a channel for foreign political influence. The October 2026 motion called loss of the three-year track symbolic and cited about 332,000 naturalisations in 2025.

### Internal security

Curio has read police figures on non-German suspects as evidence that migration policy is a safety failure, and has tied that reading to deportation of foreign offenders. In the debate of 23 March 2018 on a statement by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, he warned that "mass immigration also means knife immigration" and said removal would save lives.

The Federal Criminal Police Office counts a narrower group than all foreigners. In its 2024 report on crime in the context of immigration, 172,203 suspects in general crime were asylum applicants, recognised refugees, tolerated persons or people staying unlawfully: 8.8 percent of about 1.97 million suspects, and 3.6 percent fewer than in 2023. Ukrainians, about a third of the refugees covered, were under-represented among those suspects; Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian nationals were heavily over-represented, while Syrians and Afghans were roughly in line with their share. That is not a rate against German nationals. The counts are suspects, not convictions, and the annual drop was affected by the partial legalisation of cannabis. The October 2026 motion used another ratio: relative to population, it said, Syrian and Afghan nationals were in 2025 more than ten times as often suspects in violent offences as German nationals.

## Positions on Islam and integration

### Speeches and parliamentary initiatives

On 24 November 2016 Curio, integration-policy spokesman of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, spoke for a motion (Drucksache 18/0017) to ban full-face veiling in public. He called the burqa and niqab not religious practice but “the symbol of the suppression of female self-determination” and a “negation of human dignity” under the Basic Law. He asked whether Berlin should accept “dehumanizing gender apartheid”—“a black sack, a sack that speaks”—and whether the person underneath might wear “an explosives belt.” The niqab, he said, was “the flag of the Salafists” and the burqa “breathes the spirit of the sharia”; tolerating them would concede an “ideological-cultural land grab.” He cited a Forsa figure of 60 percent for a total ban.

On 22 February 2018 he repeated the argument in the Bundestag on a motion he co-signed (Drucksache 19/829). It asked the government for a public ban, called the garments “like a uniform of Salafism and Islamism,” and cited a judgment of the [European Court of Human Rights](/organizations/justice-ecthr) of 11 July 2017 that “living together” could justify a prohibition. Curio called the burqa “the confession of failure of Islamic culture,” told Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to “tear down this barrier,” and again cited 60 percent. An ARD Deutschlandtrend in August 2016 had found 51 percent for a general ban and 30 percent for a partial one.

On 11 October 2018 he led “Incompatibility of Islam, sharia and the rule of law” (Drucksache 19/4840), which sought measures against “unlawful contents and calls” in the Quran. He called Islam a “social order and a violence-prone ideology” and a tolerant Islam “Western wishful thinking,” citing Quranic lines on violence, women, and unbelievers. A Lower Saxony pupil survey, he said, found 27 percent rating sharia above German law. If Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) said Islam belonged to Germany, then “Islam belongs to Merkel, but Merkel no longer belongs to Germany.”

The AfD’s 2016 program rejects the minaret as an “Islamic symbol of domination” and the muezzin’s call, and demands a public ban on full-face veils. Commenting on the Islam Conference of 10 November 2020, he demanded “no headscarves for minors, no full-face veiling in public, no more muezzin calls and imported imams.” On 13 February 2020 he said the 12th integration report ignored “the anti-integrative effect of Islam in Germany,” including Salafist activity, mosque sermons, and what he called Quranic incitement.

### Responses from other parties and religious organizations

In Berlin, Ülker Radziwill of the Social Democratic Party said religious dress was protected, called full veiling “misogynistic,” and called the motion a “racist image.” Sebastian Schlüsselburg of Die Linke called it unconstitutional and told Curio that “women are not sacks.” Canan Bayram of Alliance 90/The Greens called burqa and niqab instruments of oppression but not lawfully bannable: “Thank you for the offer of protection, but no thank you.” Burkard Dregger of the Christian Democratic Union saw an integration obstacle, not an existential threat; Paul Fresdorf of the Free Democratic Party called the text a “shop-window motion.” Both were referred to committee.

In the Bundestag, Stephan Mayer of the CDU and the Christian Social Union agreed that burqa and niqab “do not belong in Germany,” but called a general ban “flagrantly unconstitutional,” pointing to limits set in 2017. Bayram said Curio had reused the Berlin speech. Christine Buchholz (Die Linke) said the claim about unveiled women was unevidenced.

Every other group opposed the sharia motion; it was referred to the legal-affairs committee. Jürgen Martens (FDP) called the speech “Islamophobic demagogy” and a de facto Quran ban—“a firebomb in the middle of our society.” [Karl-Heinz Brunner](/people/karl-heinz-brunner) (SPD) called it inciting and *völkisch*. [Filiz Polat](/people/filiz-polat) (Greens) said it put a whole faith under suspicion, questioned freedom of religion, and was “full of incitement and racism”; only acts, not beliefs, could be forbidden. Alexander Hoffmann (CDU/CSU) said a large share of more than four million Muslims in Germany “have nothing whatsoever to do with sharia law.”

Muslim associations had already answered the 2016 program behind those demands. Burhan Kesici of the Islamic Council said the AfD was “playing with people’s fears” and that a burqa was a woman’s choice, not “social pressure.” Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said the AfD, not Islam, conflicted with the Basic Law, and was the first party since Hitler’s Germany to be “existentially threatening a religious community.” Spokesman Steffen Seibert recalled constitutional protection of religious practice and Merkel’s line that Islam belonged to Germany. A March 2018 *watson* check of another Curio speech found imams had condemned Islamist attacks, that his Quran sentence fused differently translated passages, and that liberal Muslim groups, including a mosque co-founded by Seyran Ateş, already existed.

## Controversies and constitutional-protection assessments

### Plenary language and the Özoğuz debate

On 2 February 2018, in the first reading of an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) bill to amend the nationality law (Drucksache 19/86), Curio told the Bundestag that citizenship should mark an exclusive commitment to Germany, not speed integration. He said ending the option obligation in 2014 had made dual citizenship permanent, and that “Ein zur Regel entarteter Doppelpass untergräbt Staat und Demokratie.” He asked which state held dual citizens’ loyalty—“Niemand kann zwei Herren dienen”—and whether “Klein-Anatolien,” which he identified with Berlin-Neukölln, should soon shape German policy, invoking appeals by [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan](/people/recep-tayyip-erdogan).

He named no one. He called “eine sogenannte Integrationsbeauftragte, selbst ein Musterbeispiel misslungener Integration,” paraphrasing her as having found no German culture to integrate into and as saying coexistence must be renegotiated daily—“den Bock zum Gärtner machen.” *Die Welt* identified her as federal integration commissioner Aydan Özoğuz of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany).

[Claudia Roth](/people/claudia-roth) interrupted that the House was now speaking of “Entartung.” Anton Hofreiter, also of Alliance 90/The Greens, shouted that this was “NS-Sprache” and that Curio should be ashamed. Alexander Gauland told Hofreiter to be quiet: this was parliament, “nicht auf einer Maikundgebung.” Curio took no question. President Wolfgang Schäuble of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany issued no reprimand and called the next speaker; Green member [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge) said the responsibility was his.

SPD member Sebastian Hartmann asked the House to stand with the Hamburg-born state minister just described that way. CDU member Marian Wendt said the Union favored an option obligation but called the bill’s language exclusionary. Green member Filiz Polat said “entarteter Doppelpass” defamed dual citizens, including members, and asked the presidium to draw a line. The next day Green manager Britta Haßelmann, in remarks to the *Berliner Zeitung* carried by *Die Welt*, called the speech “Diffamierung und Hetze” against people with more than one nationality and an insult to Özoğuz, and said the president had offered “keine Zurückweisung, keine Rüge, nichts.” *Welt* also recorded Free Democratic Party (Germany) member Jürgen Martens calling the motion deeply xenophobic. The bill went to the interior committee. Gauland, answering Polat, rejected the “Nazikeule” and said the AfD was democratically elected.

### Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution

On 15 January 2019 Thomas Haldenwang, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said the AfD as a whole would be handled as a “Prüffall”: there were initial indications of activity against the free democratic basic order, not yet enough for intelligence methods. The underlying assessment, which netzpolitik.org published on 28 January 2019, classed the Young Alternative for Germany and Der Flügel as suspected cases.

That text quotes Curio from public material. It says he imputed to the Global Compact for Migration an “Umsiedlungs- und Ersetzungsmigration,” that a signatory’s hand should “verdorren,” and that “Angela Merkel und den Linksgrünen” meant to create “still und heimlich ihr neues Volk.” A speech of 2 October 2018 in Kirchhain is summarized as a warning of “Übernahme respektive Auslöschung des deutschen Staates durch muslimische Migranten.” In the quotation he invokes a “Geburten-Dschihad,” citing Erdoğan’s “Macht nicht drei Kinder, sondern fünf, denn ihr seid die Zukunft Europas,” calls that “die Sprache der feindlichen Übernahme,” and says “Diese Gefährder wollen den Staat auslöschen.” A 2017 line, taken from a citation by Antifa Berlin, reads: “Ein Geburten-Dschihad ist im Gang. Ich fordere die Wiederherstellung des Staatsbürgerschaftsrechts nach Abstammung.”

It calls that “Geburten-Dschihad” claim “besonders perfide” and defamatory, but “nicht geeignet, den Einzelnen einen untergeordneten Status zuzuschreiben und ihn damit in seiner Menschwürde zu verletzen.” Its conclusion treats assertions of a “schleichenden Genozid,” or a “Bevölkerungsaustausch,” as a degradation by origin or religion incompatible with human dignity under the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany.

On 26 February 2019 the Cologne Administrative Court (13 L 202/19) forbade the office, by interim order, to say the party was being processed as a Prüffall, on pain of a fine of up to 10,000 euros. It held that section 16(1) of the Federal Constitutional Protection Act covers public information about suspected cases, not a preliminary Prüffall, and that the label affected Article 21 rights even if accurate. It did not rule on the internal classification. The AfD had argued that there was no legal basis, that the label stigmatized it before elections, and that it had not been heard.

### The 2020 Ides of March speech

On 4 February 2020 Curio spoke at an AfD campaign opening in the Schäfflerhalle in Moosburg an der Isar, Bavaria. The *Münchner Merkur* reported more than 200 supporters inside and, outside, a “Fest für Toleranz und Menschlichkeit” of more than 400 people, with speakers from other parties saying “Moosburg ist bunt.” Bavarian municipal elections were held on 15 March 2020.

On 12 March *Der Spiegel* attributed to Curio’s recent political Ash Wednesday speech the lines: “Mut und Glück auf, Deutschland. Mut und Glück auf, du Land der Bayern. Setze ein Zeichen für die Beendigung der Herrschaft des Unrechts, setze ein Zeichen an den Iden des März, setzt das Erwachen in Gange, befreit das Land!” It noted that the Ides of March have, since antiquity, meant the days around the murder of [Julius Caesar](/people/julius-caesar). In a 2022 study for the German Institute for Human Rights, jurist Hendrik Cremer quoted that passage from the Spiegel report and wrote that Curio thereby “ganz direkt zum politischen Mord aufruft.” The sentence names nobody. On another reading, the date it names was the Sunday of the municipal elections for which the Moosburg rally had opened the AfD campaign.

## Public profile and reception

### Media presence

Curio has been more visible through prepared speeches than through interviews. In November 2019 Die Tageszeitung reported that his Bundestag office was often unreachable and that, after three weeks of inquiries, it answered that he had nothing to say; other journalists and colleagues in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group likewise described him as hard to contact.

What traveled were the speeches. A March 2018 *taz* article wrote that supporters reposted AfD clips under sensational titles, and that searches for the Deniz Yücel debate returned copies of a Curio speech billed as a "glänzende Rede." At the Thuringia AfD's campaign opening in September 2019 he was introduced as "unser YouTube-Star." He announced a bid for federal co-chair that November in a YouTube video, saying he wanted to set out the party's positions "deutlich und effektiv"; Der Tagesspiegel reported the same film on his Facebook page, warning of a "Selbstauflösung" of the German nation-state. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung headlined its report "Youtube-Star der AfD." *Tagesspiegel* added that the speeches cast immigration as a major threat and drew strong approval from AfD members online. His YouTube channel listed about 90,500 subscribers and 505 videos as of October 2026.

### Assessments by journalists and researchers

Journalists have described him as an eloquent hardliner on migration. Reconstructing his first Bundestag speech, in late November 2017, *taz* wrote that shifts in volume, questions and gesture led listeners in other groups to take him for perhaps the caucus's best speaker. It reported that he was said to rehearse before a mirror, and that colleagues compared the delivery, only partly in jest, to that of Joseph Goebbels. The same profile called him a "Scharfmacher," citing lines such as "Geburten-Dschihad" and "Masseneinwanderung ist Messereinwanderung," and noted that he was not known to belong to a current such as the Flügel.

The Bundestag group was less persuaded. When its leadership was re-elected in September 2019 he ran unsuccessfully for two posts; *taz* quoted one member, after a lost bid for deputy chair, that "Gute Reden halten heißt ja noch nicht gut arbeiten." At the congress in Braunschweig on 30 November 2019, Tino Chrupalla beat him in a runoff for the seat Alexander Gauland was leaving, 54.5 percent to about 41 percent. Chrupalla said the bourgeois center was reached by reason, not drastic language; Curio said spending should go to families rather than illegal migration. Reuters had called him a dark-horse candidate and "an eloquent speaker who knows how to fire up a crowd." He did not become co-chair. The Bundestag biography has continued to list him as interior-policy spokesman and the group's lead member on the Interior Committee.

In March 2018 [Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt) reported that much of a Bundestag speech on full-face veils repeated an address from the Berlin House of Representatives; his office said the motion was the same. In September 2018 n-tv described another speech as using National Socialist fighting terms, including "gleichgeschaltet" and "Lebensraum," the latter for what he said was being taken from Germans in Chemnitz and elsewhere.

Studies of AfD rhetoric have cited him as an example rather than as a sole subject. A 2018 history thesis at Utrecht University quoted his dual-citizenship line "Staatsvolk ist Wahlvolk" as an instance of what the author, following Tariq Modood, called cultural racism. Rebecca Kittel, writing in 2025 for the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, found AfD speeches the most grammatically complex of any group in the 2017–2021 Bundestag, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union, but did not name Curio.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/gottfried-curio