# Götz Frömming

# Götz Frömming

Götz Gerald Ulrich Frömming (born 30 August 1968 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein) is a German politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag. The federal returning officer records him as Dr. Götz Gerald Ulrich Frömming of the AfD. The Bundestag lists him as a member since 2017; the 19th Bundestag met for the first time on 24 October 2017. He is married and has three children. He lives with his family in the Havelland district of Brandenburg.

His Bundestag biography, compiled from the member's own information, records an Abitur, military and civilian service, university study of German, history and philosophy, a doctorate in medieval German studies, and long work as a Gymnasium teacher of German, history and politics, with the retired rank of Studiendirektor. He states that he studied in Frankfurt and Berlin and taught in Brandenburg, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin. His dissertation, *Die Ästhetik des Leibes: Eine Studie zur Poetik des Körpers in Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring*, on the late-medieval epic by Heinrich Wittenwiler, was examined on 12 December 2012 at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and issued in 2015 by Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.

Since 2019 he has been a parliamentary managing director of the AfD Bundestag group and a member of its executive, and he sits on the Council of Elders. He was the group's education-policy spokesman from 2017 to 2021 and has been its culture-policy spokesman since 2024. In the 19th electoral term he was the AfD coordinator on the committee for education and research, and since the 20th term he has been coordinator on the committee for culture and media.

At the federal election on 23 February 2025 he won constituency 56, Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I, with 38.9 percent of the first votes (51,213), ahead of Wiebke Papenbrock of the SPD on 22.2 percent. In the same constituency the AfD received 36.6 percent of the second votes, and 78.5 percent of 169,648 eligible voters turned out. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Culture and Media, where he is the AfD *Obmann*, and a full member of the Mediation Committee. He is deputy chair of the German-Polish parliamentary group, an ordinary member of the Bundestag art advisory board (*Kunstbeirat*), a Bundestag representative of the AfD group on the German National Committee for Monument Protection, and a member of the foundation council of the Stiftung Berliner Schloss – Humboldt Forum, and he sits on the Havelland district council in Rathenow, disclosed to the Bundestag at 300 euro a month gross.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Götz Frömming was born on 30 August 1968 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein. The Bundestag states that such biographical notes rest on the members' own information. On his own account, the family moved when he was six to Haibach, near Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia, Bavaria, and he took the Abitur there in 1989. The archived Bundestag biography for the 19th electoral term names the school as the humanistic Kronberg-Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg. The school, which still teaches a humanistic branch alongside modern-language and science-and-technology tracks, was given the name Kronberg-Gymnasium Aschaffenburg on 20 October 1965 and in 1968 moved into the building on the Fasanerie that it continues to use.

After the Abitur he served six months under conscription and nine months of civilian service with a Red Cross rescue service. He places the military service in Hammelburg and in Veitshöchheim, near Würzburg, and the civilian service with the Bavarian Red Cross.

### University studies

He studied German, history and philosophy for the *Lehramt an Gymnasien*, the qualification to teach in a Gymnasium, at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Humboldt University of Berlin. The same biography records that he worked as a tutor and as a student research assistant at Humboldt's chair of philosophy and pedagogy, that the first and second state examinations for the teaching qualification were taken in Berlin, and that the practical training period, the *Referendariat*, was also served there.

In the preface to the book based on his dissertation he writes that he first met Heinrich Wittenwiler's *Der Ring* in a proseminar at Goethe University, and that the doctorate continued an unpublished state-examination thesis written at Humboldt in 1998 under Werner Röcke. The preface titles that thesis *Zur Ästhetik des Hässlichen in Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring*; a footnote gives the shorter form *Die Ästhetik des Hässlichen*.

### Doctorate

The doctorate, a Dr. phil. in German medieval studies (*Germanistische Mediävistik*), was examined orally on 12 December 2012. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology catalogues the work as a dissertation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, assigned to the Institute of German Studies: Literature, Language, Media and supervised by B. Krause; the book imprint describes it as a 2012 dissertation of the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe and names the same examination date. Frömming has said that it was written alongside his work as a teacher, and the published preface, dated Berlin-Spandau in February 2015, thanks Burkhardt Krause in Karlsruhe as well as Röcke.

In 2015 Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier issued the study as *Die Ästhetik des Leibes: Eine Studie zur Poetik des Körpers in Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring*, volume 49 of the series *Literatur, Imagination, Realität* (ISBN 978-3-86821-575-5). The publisher lists 258 pages, while the KIT record gives an extent of 250 pages.

The publisher's description, also deposited with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, presents *Der Ring* as a verse epic of about 1400, preserved in a single manuscript, in which didactic passages are joined to a coarse, comic and at times obscene plot. It says that the study puts *Leiblichkeit*, lived bodiliness, at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre), using the philosophy of the body of Hermann Schmitz as its starting point, and that it treats the peasant bodies in the story as having an aesthetic value of their own rather than serving only as a negative example for the teaching. The argument follows the poem's three large parts: desire in the courtship (*Werbung*), bodily communication carried as far as fusion in the wedding (*Hochzeit*), and the aggressive breaking apart of bodies in the war (*Krieg*). Further chapters argue that a disparaging reading of the peasants' so-called *törpelleben* has been encouraged partly by unwarranted changes in transcription, and they use charters, some cited there for the first time, for the otherwise scarcely documented author.

In the introduction Frömming summarizes the plot as the wooing of the peasant youth Bertschi Triefnas for the ugly Mätzli Rüerenzumph, ending in a bloody war, with the didactic speeches given by the characters rather than the narrator. He notes that Ludwig Bechstein first edited the then unknown poem in 1851, and that most researchers have identified the author with an episcopal advocate living around 1400 in Konstanz.

## Teaching career

### Schools and subjects

Frömming qualified for the Gymnasium, the university-preparatory track of German secondary schooling. He studied German, history and philosophy in Frankfurt and at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he also worked as a tutor and student assistant in philosophy and education, and he took the first and second state examinations for Gymnasium teaching in Berlin. The preparatory Referendariat was likewise in Berlin; he has written that it was served at a comprehensive school.

He then taught German, history and politics. The curriculum vitae published by the AfD group in the Bundestag, matching the account on his own site, places the first post at the Barnim-Gymnasium in Brandenburg, followed by work in Baden-Württemberg as a teacher and mentor at Schule Schloss Salem, the boarding school on Lake Constance, and at the Windeck-Gymnasium in Bühl, near Baden-Baden. The archived Bundestag biography for the 19th electoral term, which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own statements, describes that southwestern period as several years as a subject teacher and mentor at Schule Schloss Salem and at a state Gymnasium near Baden-Baden, and does not name the Barnim-Gymnasium or the school in Bühl.

In the civil-service career of the Gymnasium he was, on that same biography, appointed a Beamter for life and promoted to Studienrat in 2005, to Oberstudienrat in 2010 and to Studiendirektor in 2011. Alongside school work he took a doctorate in medieval German literature at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The oral examination was held on 12 December 2012; the dissertation, *Die Ästhetik des Leibes*, a study of the body in Heinrich Wittenwiler's *Ring*, was issued in 2015 by a Trier publisher.

### Senior posts in Berlin

The archived biography places the return to Berlin after those promotions and lists two functional posts: Oberstufenkoordinator (upper-school coordinator) at the Diesterweg-Gymnasium, and Fachbereichsleiter (head of department) at the Lessing-Gymnasium. His own site describes the sequence differently, as service first as Oberstudienrat at Diesterweg and then, until 2017, as Studiendirektor and department head at Lessing, after the Studienrat appointment and the doctorate. The AfD group biography calls the Lessing role head of department for the social-science subjects.

Reporting from the 2017 federal campaign identified the same final post. On 6 September 2017 the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* described him as a teacher at the Lessing-Gymnasium in Wedding, Studiendirektor and head of department for politics, history and German, and as then on special leave. A *Vice* profile published on 31 July 2017 reported that he taught German, politics and history there, quoted pupils who called him their favourite teacher, and said he would not be in the classroom when term resumed on 1 September.

Classroom teaching ended with that leave and his entry into the Bundestag in 2017. The parliament's current biography, again supplied by him, records a long career as a Gymnasiallehrer for German, history and politics and the style Studiendirektor a. D. (außer Dienst). In the register of disclosable interests the employment before membership is given as Studiendirektor for the Land Berlin, the same formulation carried by Abgeordnetenwatch; it is not listed as paid work alongside the mandate.

## Party activity

### Entry into the AfD

Frömming’s Bundestag biography for the 19th electoral term, which the parliament states is based on members’ own disclosures, dates the start of his political activity to 2012 and places it first with the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) (Freie Wähler). The same account says that in April 2013 he attended the founding party congress of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) and then worked, in leading functions, on building the party’s state association in Berlin. The biography records no office with the Free Voters, and later reporting on his AfD posts adds nothing further about that membership.

### Berlin association and programme work

On a profile he supplied to the candidate-comparison site Wen Wählen before the 2017 federal election, Frömming listed himself as deputy state chairman and state press spokesman of the Berlin AfD, and as taking part in editing the party’s election programme. The deputy chairmanship is independently documented. After a Berlin state congress in January 2016 at which [Beatrix von Storch](/people/beatrix-von-storch) and Georg Pazderski replaced state chairman Günter Brinker, *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* reported that two members were suspected of having cast extra ballots. In the new eleven-member executive, the paper counted only treasurer Frank-Christian Hansel and deputy chair Frömming with what it called the moderate wing. The *Tagesspiegel* reported that the executive, with von Storch at its head, opened expulsion proceedings against two members on suspicion of electoral fraud, and that Frömming resigned the deputy chairmanship; state spokesman [Ronald Gläser](/people/ronald-glaser) gave the reason as personal. The reports did not name Frömming among those suspected of handling extra ballots.

During the 2017 federal campaign the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* identified him as campaign manager of the AfD in Berlin and as third on the Berlin state list. On federal programme work, the 19th-term Bundestag biography states that he led the editorial committee of the AfD’s federal programme commission. On 14 September 2024 the commission elected Bavarian state legislator [Ingo Hahn](/people/ingo-hahn) as chair and Frömming, described in the party’s account as a Bundestag member from Brandenburg, as deputy chair, after the previous chair, Albrecht Glaser, did not stand again. Deputy federal speaker and programme coordinator [Peter Boehringer](/people/peter-boehringer) said the new leadership would use the following weeks to draft the AfD programme for the 2025 Bundestag election.

### Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung

The Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung) is the political foundation the AfD recognized in 2018 as the foundation affiliated with the party. At the federal party congress in Augsburg, delegates gave that status to the foundation chaired by the former Christian Democratic Union politician Erika Steinbach, and also favoured renaming it the Gustav Stresemann Foundation if the legal conditions could be met. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported that recognition held out annual public money in the high double-digit millions, and a route for private gifts to support the party’s political work without the donors appearing as official AfD contributors. The congress resolution nonetheless restated abolition of the system of party foundations as a political end goal, on the argument that the AfD should seek parity only while other parties continued to use it.

For the 19th Bundestag term, Frömming’s statutory disclosures listed a seat on the board of the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung in Bonn—the parliament’s page spells the name “Desiderius-Eurasmus-Stiftung”—and, separately, a board seat on the Johann-Gottfried-Herder-Verein für Demokratie, also in Bonn. The 2017 candidate profile likewise named a board seat at the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation. The disclosures document the office for that term; they do not show that he founded the association.

Public money for the foundation remained in dispute. In a judgment announced on 22 February 2023, the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) held that the Bundestag had violated the AfD’s right to equal opportunity in [political competition](/drivers/political-competition) by adopting the 2019 budget law in a form that allowed global subsidies for political foundations’ civic-education work without a separate parliamentary statute, while the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation—unlike the foundations linked to the other parties then in the Bundestag—received none. The court did not order any payment; it separated the complaint about the 2022 budget and found the remaining applications inadmissible.

Under the Political Foundations Financing Act in force since 2023, funding is available only if a foundation actively supports the free democratic basic order and the idea of international understanding. Reporting in 2026 said the foundation was seeking about 18 million euros for that year from the Interior Ministry’s budget alone and had set a deadline at the end of February; the ministry said the review, including that statutory test, was still open. The same account noted that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had, the year before, publicly classified the federal AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist. The Cologne administrative court later granted the party interim relief against that upgrade, holding that the office’s evidence did not justify treating anti-constitutional activity as characteristic of the party as a whole, while still finding a strong suspicion that efforts directed against the free democratic basic order were under way inside the AfD. That decision concerned the party, not a classification of the foundation. Steinbach wrote to supporters that the foundation met every rule-of-law requirement; the Interior Ministry had not finished its funding decision.

## Elections

### Bundestag elections of 2017 and 2021

Frömming did not stand in a constituency at the Bundestag election of 24 September 2017. He was third on the Berlin state list of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), behind Beatrix von Storch and [Gottfried Curio](/people/gottfried-curio) and ahead of Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, on the list admitted in the official gazette. In Berlin the AfD received 225,170 second votes (12.0 percent) and 212,211 first votes (11.4 percent), with turnout at 75.6 percent of 2,503,070 eligible voters. The federal returning officer’s final allocation gave the party four Berlin seats, all from the state list and none from a constituency. The Berlin state returning officer’s statistical report records the four list members as von Storch (place 1), Curio (place 2), Frömming (place 3) and Malsack-Winkemann (place 4). The 19th Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 24 October 2017, the last day allowed under Article 39(2) of the Basic Law; until that sitting, those elected were not yet in office.

At the election of 26 September 2021 he was again third on the Berlin AfD list, behind von Storch and Curio, and he was also the AfD candidate in constituency 76, Berlin-Pankow. In the main count for that constituency, Stefan Gelbhaar of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) won with 46,401 first votes (25.5 percent). Klaus Mindrup of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) was second with 39,131 (21.5 percent); Udo Wolf of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) received 29,559 (16.2 percent) and Manuela Anders-Granitzki of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) 23,045 (12.7 percent). Frömming received 16,242 first votes (8.9 percent). Turnout was 78.4 percent of 235,647 eligible voters. The state report lists him as returned from list place 3, not by a constituency win; the AfD members it records for Berlin are von Storch, Curio and Frömming. Parts of the Berlin election were repeated on 11 February 2024. In the revised Pankow result the Greens remained first, with 35,919 first votes (26.8 percent); the CDU was second on 23,439 (17.5 percent), and the AfD had 19,023 (14.2 percent). The federal returning officer’s final allocation, incorporating that partial repeat, still gave the Berlin AfD three list seats and no constituency seat, on 159,025 second votes.

### Local elections in Havelland

On 26 May 2024 Frömming was the AfD candidate for Landrat of Havelland, a district in Brandenburg. Of 140,444 eligible voters, 65,694 voted (46.8 percent), producing 64,919 valid votes. Incumbent Roger Lewandowski (CDU) received 34,825 votes (53.6 percent), above both half the valid vote (32,460) and the quorum of 15 percent of the electorate (21,067). The district election committee declared him elected on 28 May 2024, so there was no runoff. Frömming finished second with 16,428 votes (25.3 percent), ahead of Harald Petzold (Die Linke) with 7,707 (11.9 percent) and Robert Pritzkow (LWN) with 5,959 (9.2 percent).

At the district-council election on 9 June 2024, 88,073 of 140,520 eligible voters took part (62.7 percent). There were 256,125 valid votes and 56 seats. The AfD received 63,132 votes and 14 seats, the CDU 62,588 votes and 14 seats, and the SPD 45,462 votes and 10 seats. In council constituency 6301, Frömming, third on the AfD slate, received 4,380 votes and was declared elected, as were Kai Berger (4,723) and Ingo Wilimzig (2,986).

### 2025 federal election

On 23 February 2025 Frömming was the AfD direct candidate in constituency 56, Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I, in Brandenburg.

The constituency election committee’s final count of 27 February 2025, which matches the federal returning officer’s figures, recorded 169,648 eligible voters and 133,142 participants (78.5 percent). Of 131,724 valid first votes, Frömming received 51,213 (38.9 percent) and was elected. Wiebke Papenbrock (SPD), the runner-up, received 29,296 (22.2 percent). [Sebastian Steineke](/people/sebastian-steineke) (CDU) had 25,868 (19.6 percent), Daniel Irrgang (Die Linke) 13,871 (10.5 percent), Georg Kamrath of the Free Voters 4,596 (3.5 percent), Martin Wandrey (Greens) 4,033 (3.1 percent) and Marie Luise Kretschmer of the Free Democratic Party 2,847 (2.2 percent). On the second vote in the same constituency the AfD led with 48,294 votes (36.6 percent), ahead of the CDU on 22,935 (17.4 percent), the SPD on 21,026 (15.9 percent) and the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) on 14,083 (10.7 percent).

## Parliamentary work

### Group offices

Frömming entered the Bundestag in 2017 for the Alternative for Germany (AfD). On 24 September 2019 the group, re-electing its executive, chose him as one of its parliamentary managing directors (*Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer*), with Roland Hartwig and [Enrico Komning](/people/enrico-komning). [Bernd Baumann](/people/bernd-baumann) was re-elected first parliamentary managing director, and [Alice Weidel](/people/alice-weidel) and [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland) were confirmed as co-chairs. The Bundestag biography — its narrative is the member's own statement, and the page was current on 27 October 2026 — still lists him as parliamentary managing director and a member of the group executive since 2019. The official membership list on that page names him an ordinary member of the Council of Elders (*Ältestenrat*), which assists the President in arranging the business of the House.

The same self-reported text describes him as the group's education-policy spokesman from 2017 to 2021 and as its culture-policy spokesman since 2024. The archived 19th-term biography already called him spokesman and *Obmann* — the group's lead member — on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, and dated the managing-director post from September 2019.

### Committees and external bodies

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) the membership list recorded him as an ordinary member and *Obmann* of the education committee, a deputy member of the Committee on Culture and Media, an ordinary member of the Mediation Committee (*Vermittlungsausschuss*) of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, and a member of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. His current biography states that the education *Obmann* role was confined to the 19th term and that he has been *Obmann* for culture and media since the 20th. A 2024 reissue of the Bundestag brochure on the Committee on Culture and Media lists him as the AfD *Obmann*. He remained on the education committee late in that term: its report of 18 November 2024 names him AfD rapporteur on the group's school-investment bill.

In the 21st Bundestag the list of 27 October 2026 names him an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Culture and Media, and *Obmann* of the latter. He is an ordinary Bundestag member of the Mediation Committee, a deputy member of the Joint Committee (*Gemeinsamer Ausschuss*), and deputy chair of the German-Polish Parliamentary Group.

The Bundestag art advisory board (*Kunstbeirat*), chaired by President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner), lists him and Nicole Hess as the AfD's ordinary members in the 21st term; it advises on the parliamentary collection, art-in-architecture and exhibitions. The German National Committee for Monument Protection, in its list of 9 September 2025, names him as a Bundestag representative of the AfD group. Disclosed offices include a seat on the Havelland district council at 300 euro a month gross; advisory membership, from 6 November 2025, of the board of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation; and membership of the board of the Foundation for the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. The disclosure also records the board of trustees of the Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany from 17 June 2025 to 18 March 2026, and deputy membership of the Federal Bauakademie Foundation's board from 25 September 2025 to 15 October 2026. In the 19th term he had been a deputy member of the House of History board.

### Initiatives and questions

He was the first signatory of the AfD motion of 15 September 2020, "Auf den Lehrer kommt es an – Nachhaltige Aufwertung des Schulwesens statt Ökonomisierung" (printed paper 19/22456). It argued that the federal-state Digitalpakt had not met schools' needs during pandemic closures, especially for younger pupils, and called for a lasting emphasis on teachers and buildings rather than what the motion called an economization of schooling.

On 9 April 2024 he was first signatory of a bill to raise the capacity of municipal education infrastructure (printed paper 20/10980). It would have created a federal municipal school-investment fund of 30 billion euro from 2025 to 2031 — 500 million euro in 2025, 4.5 billion in 2026 and 5 billion a year from 2027 to 2031 — meeting 50 percent of municipal school-building costs under Article 104c of the Basic Law. The drafters cited a backlog of 45.6 billion euro in the 2022 KfW *Kommunalpanel* and pointed to immigration since 2015, pandemic measures and Ukrainian pupils. Referred on 11 April 2024 to the education committee, with opinions from the interior, budget, culture and housing committees, the bill was recommended for rejection on 16 October 2024 by the SPD, CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens, the FDP and the groups [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) and BSW, against the AfD. The recommendation was printed on 18 November 2024 as paper 20/13825. In committee the SPD said the financing was unclear and that flat federal grants had been superseded by targeted programmes; the CDU/CSU called the bill incompatible with the Basic Law.

A motion of 14 November 2024, again with Frömming as first signatory (printed paper 20/13782), asked the Bundestag to restore "of the Germans" (*der Deutschen*) to the name of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe and to revive section 96 of the Federal Expellees Act on expellee cultural heritage. On 2 July 2025 he led a minor interpellation, "Sicherung und Pflege deutschen Kulturguts im Ausland" (printed paper 21/739), on support for German monuments in historic settlement areas. The questioners contrasted about 550 million euro which they said the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media had spent over 15 years on monuments inside Germany with a foreign-heritage line they put at about 1 million euro for 2024. The reply of 17 July 2025 (printed paper 21/916) stated that the eastern-Europe title had been 496,000 euro in each of 2015–2019 and 2021–2024, and 996,000 euro in 2020, of which 500,000 euro was tied to fortified churches in Transylvania. It added that joint work in Russia's Kaliningrad oblast, formerly north-eastern East Prussia, had stopped over the previous ten years because of Russian restrictions.

## Political positions

### Education

Frömming has argued that state schools owe parties political neutrality, a reading of civic-education rules that ministries and teachers' representatives reject. In September 2024, describing himself as parliamentary managing director and education-policy spokesman of the Alternative for Germany group in the Bundestag, he called the exclusion of the AfD from a pre-election discussion at the Marie Curie Gymnasium in Wittenberge, before the [2024 Brandenburg state election](/facts/2024-brandenburg-state-election), "scandalous and a flagrant breach of schools' duty of neutrality." Schools paid by all taxpayers, he said, may not let a head teacher's party card decide who appears; whether a party stands on the Basic Law was for the Federal Constitutional Court alone, and officials who sidelined a rival while claiming to defend the constitution were themselves acting in a manner hostile to it. Brandenburg's education minister, Steffen Freiberg of the Social Democratic Party, answered that "there is no neutrality before the Basic Law and before the values of the Basic Law." The state's domestic-intelligence service classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist organization; the school said no party had a claim to address pupils, and a social worker set out the AfD's positions. The Federal Agency for Civic Education notes that "neutrality" does not appear in the 1976 Beutelsbach Consensus, and that reading its controversy principle as required equidistance has become a combat term, including through AfD portals for reporting teachers. Maike Finnern, chair of the Education and Science Workers' Union, calls that use "a wholly abusive interpretation": teachers may not impose an opinion, and disputes must be shown from more than one side, but the consensus "expressly does not mean value neutrality."

On sex and gender he has treated gender research as politics rather than a discipline. A December 2020 motion he co-sponsored asked the federation to stop financing the field, to drop gender conditions on research grants, and to fund a stipend for "anthropological" research on sex grounded in natural science. In June 2021 the Bundestag education committee recommended rejection; the CDU/CSU, the SPD, the Free Democratic Party, Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens voted against the AfD. He was lead signatory of an October 2023 motion demanding school sex education on the basis of biological two-sex difference, with intersex and transsexual people treated as rare exceptions and without stigma, outside campaigners kept out of class, and the Federal Centre for Health Education turned away from what the text called the sexualization of children. Introducing it, he said one could sooner call astrology a science than this gender ideology, attributed to [Judith Butler](/people/judith-butler) the thesis that biological sex is constructed, and described surgery and puberty blockers as "modern human sacrifices" to a "theology of the woke"; schools, he said, should return to "value-neutral and age-appropriate" teaching. For the SPD, [Carolin Wagner](/people/carolin-wagner) called the motion "remote from education, hostile to scholarship and uncultured," said gender research was neither pseudoscience nor a lifestyle, and told the AfD that freedom of scholarship was not optional.

He has paired that argument with a call for broader capital spending. In April 2024, as first signatory, he introduced a bill for a municipal school-investment fund of €30 billion through 2031, with the federation paying half the cost of local school building: €500 million in 2025, €4.5 billion in 2026 and €5 billion a year from 2027 to 2031. The memorandum cited a KfW figure of a €45.6 billion backlog and blamed rising rolls on immigration since 2015, the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) and Ukrainian pupils. In the same week's debate on Startchancen — a €20 billion federal-state scheme for schools with many disadvantaged pupils, which the Bundestag's account called the largest education measure since the founding of the republic — he said PISA showed where ideological policy had led: "Not only are the buildings rotten; the spirit is rotten too." Supporting only about 4,000 "hotspot schools," he argued, favoured the coalition's clientele, schools with many children of migrant origin, and punished schools that still worked.

### Culture and heritage

On museums, Frömming has opposed general restitution of objects from colonial contexts and contrasted it with what he presents as neglect of German works abroad. A November 2020 motion he signed warned of a "domino effect" thinning European collections, which it said had preserved "the memory of humanity," and would allow returns only in single cases of proven loot of high symbolic importance, with the burden of proof on the claimant and loans preferred to transfer. In June 2023 he co-sponsored a motion to stop further transfers of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, citing reports that President [Muhammadu Buhari](/people/muhammadu-buhari) had vested them in the Oba of Benin as private property, a step Culture Minister [Claudia Roth](/people/claudia-roth) said the government would clarify. In September 2024 he said Foreign Minister [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) and Roth had handed the bronzes "to the descendants of slave traders," asserted that many had disappeared and the rest were in a catastrophic state, and asked why the same energy was not spent on German property such as the Berlinka collection in Kraków.

He has applied a similar standard to the classical stage. A 2022 *Der Spiegel* account of the documentary *Volksvertreter* described the former teacher of German and history as someone who liked to talk about culture and German identity, and about why "People of Color" should not be allowed to "ruin his Kleist at the taxpayer's expense."

### Migration and other domestic issues

In parliament he has treated migration as a main cause of falling attainment and has called for admissions to be reversed, a link other parties call a misreading of the studies. In the December 2023 debate on the 2022 PISA results he spoke of an "education catastrophe" worse than Georg Picht's in 1964, called pandemic school closures useless, and said a second cause was political: between 2012 and 2022 the share of pupils with a migration background had nearly doubled, to 26 percent, a legacy he also assigned to the border openings from 2015. Citing Josef Kraus, long-time president of the German Teachers' Association, he said a class "drops dramatically" once about 20 to 30 percent of pupils have a migration background, and that origin mattered: girls from Eastern Europe or boys from Japan or Korea were "as a rule not the problem," whereas pupils from Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria and Turkey "fail disproportionately" and, on his reading of PISA's socio-economic data, would not quickly become skilled workers. There would be no education turn, he said, without "a migration turn of 180 degrees."

Katrin Zschau, for the SPD, replied that poor pupils with a migration background had scored especially badly, but that blaming the whole decline on migration was "mood-making" and twisted the facts: the gap followed home language and socio-economic origin, so the task was integration, as in Canada or Singapore. Kai Gehring of the Greens called the decline story one the AfD was "in love with." In the April 2024 debate [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) said a quarter of children left primary school without adequate reading, writing and arithmetic, that leaving without any qualification was more common among children with a migration background, and that ten years of support for disadvantaged schools was a "long-distance run," not favoritism.

## Public controversies

### Grönemeyer comparison

On 12 September 2019, during the tour for his album *Tumult*, Herbert Grönemeyer told a sold-out hall in Vienna that if politicians faltered it was up to the audience “zu diktieren, wie eine Gesellschaft auszusehen hat.” He rejected racism and what he called right-wing agitation and repeated “keinen Millimeter nach rechts.” A video of the remarks spread online.

On 15 September Götz Frömming, then the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Bundestag spokesman for education and research, wrote on Twitter: “Ich war mal vor vielen Jahren auf einem Konzert von Herbert #Grönemeyer — was ist bloß aus diesem Mann geworden? Der redet ja wie im #Sportpalast.” Reports read the hashtag as a comparison with the February 1943 Sportpalast speech, in which Joseph Goebbels called for “total war.” In an April 2021 survey of Nazi allusions, the *Jüdische Allgemeine* named Frömming among AfD politicians who had likened the singer’s style and tone to that speech.

Beatrix von Storch called the remarks “die furchterregendste, übelste, totalitärste Hassrede, die ich je gehört habe,” the tone of a “neuen Terrors von links,” and wrote that anyone who supported them, “wie @HeikoMaas,” was a case for the domestic-intelligence service. Foreign minister Heiko Maas of the Social Democratic Party of Germany had shared the clip and thanked Grönemeyer and “allen anderen, die das jeden Tag tun” for standing up for a free society. Satirist Shahak Shapira asked whether the Goebbels comparison rested only on loudness, and cabaret performer Florian Schröder, who had attended another date, said Grönemeyer shouted his stage talk that way whatever the subject. Dramaturg Bernd Stegemann wrote that the tone sounded like a speaker from before 1945.

### Schools, antisemitism and party foundations

In January 2025 the *Märkische Oderzeitung* reported that Frömming had lectured twice in autumn 2024 for the Erasmus-Stiftung Brandenburg, a Falkensee association that describes itself as ideologically linked to the AfD and is separate from the party’s federal Desiderius Erasmus Foundation. Video on the foundation’s channels showed him saying, from what he called his own experience as a teacher: “Etwa 98 oder 99 Prozent aller antisemitischen Handlungen und Äußerungen an Schulen kommen nicht von Schülern deutscher Herkunft oder Muttersprache.” The paper later wrote that he offered no evidence for the share. The figure is his estimate about schools, not a published official statistic.

Brandenburg’s interior ministry funded both events under its rules for grants to party-aligned foundations. It told the paper the foundation received about €96,000 in 2022–2024 and that no other state funded it; in August 2025 it reported about €7,000 more for two projects, for a recent total above €100,000. The state’s Verfassungsschutz had classed the Brandenburg AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation since 2020 and, by August 2025, as “gesichert rechtsextrem.” The ministry said the foundation was not so classed, that it had “keine Anhaltspunkte” of a conflict with the free democratic basic order, and that checks used past activity, the application, the press and, where relevant, intelligence reports. Gideon Botsch, of the Moses Mendelssohn Center at the University of Potsdam, called the quiet grant to a foundation close to a suspected extremist party disturbing. Neither the foundation nor the AfD answered requests for comment.

The newspaper set the claim against the 2023 report of the federal RIAS network (Recherche- und Informationsstellen Antisemitismus), which it said assigned an Islamist or Islamic background to 3 percent of documented antisemitic incidents. That is not the same measure. RIAS recorded 4,782 incidents in 2023 and could not assign a clear political background to 61 percent; anti-Israel activism was the largest assigned category, at 12 percent of all incidents. It also logged 471 incidents at schools, universities, kindergartens and similar institutions, with no breakdown by pupils’ origin or mother tongue.

### Culture officials and museums

On 24 November 2025 n-tv reported that Frömming, with the AfD group, had filed a criminal complaint in Berlin against Wolfram Weimer, the non-party minister of state for culture and the media. The complaint asked prosecutors to examine suspected bribery and related offences over the Ludwig Erhard Summit at Tegernsee, run since 2014 by the Weimer Media Group of Weimer and his wife, Christiane Goetz-Weimer. Reports that began at Apollo News, called right-leaning by *Der Spiegel*, said packages costing tens of thousands of euros advertised possible “Einfluss auf die politischen Entscheidungsträger.” Frömming said payment for talks with federal ministers might be tied to hoped-for decisions and that “der Anfangsverdacht der Korruption steht im Raum”; the AfD demanded dismissal. Prosecutors confirmed four complaints, would not name the complainants, and said they would decide on an investigation. The presumption of innocence applied.

Weimer denied the allegations. He said he had left management in spring 2025, that his wife held the voting rights, and that he would place his shares with a trustee and forgo dividends only to avoid the appearance of a conflict that “tatsächlich nie bestanden hat.” Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) said the accusations had proved false, that nothing was being sold, and that conduct rules had not required him to give up the shares.

On 18 December 2025 Frömming wrote that, according to press reports, the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn was repeating a false Correctiv statement that the AfD had discussed, at a meeting in Potsdam, the “Deportation” of German citizens with a migration background. He said court rulings had already barred further spreading of that statement and that, as a member of the foundation’s Kuratorium, he had asked its president, Harald Biermann, for an explanation or a remedy; he posted the letter. The Bundestag register lists him as a member of that foundation’s Kuratorium from 17 June 2025 to 18 March 2026.

NIUS, which said it had the reply, reported that Biermann wrote the plaque did not judge Correctiv’s accuracy and only recorded a large mobilisation against right-wing extremism and racism, and that the word “Deportationen” was not used. It quoted display text on revealed AfD “Remigration” plans and on Germans with a migration history, and immigrants, as targets of far-right agitation and deportation plans. On 19 March 2026 the Bundestag did not elect the AfD Kuratorium slate, which named Frömming as a deputy; only the AfD voted for it, and the record states no reason for the other votes.

Later rulings diverged, and the Berlin decision came after his letter. In December 2025 the Hamburg regional court treated “Masterplan,” in Correctiv’s 10 January 2024 article on the 25 November 2023 Potsdam meeting where Martin Sellner spoke, as permissible opinion and dismissed the claims. On 17 March 2026 the Landgericht Berlin II, on a suit by AfD legislator Gerrit Huy, barred sentences including a master plan to expel German citizens. The non-final judgment called that claim essentially untrue and unclear, because a reader could not see that forced departure of citizens had not been planned. Correctiv appealed and said it stood by the investigation.

## Personal life

### Family and residence

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members' own information, records that Frömming is married and has three children. His website says that he lives with his family in the Havelland, in Brandenburg. The district's list of candidates for the Kreistag election of 9 June 2024 gives Schönwalde-Glien as his place of residence. In April 2024 the *Märkische Allgemeine* wrote that he was by then living in Schönwalde, a locality in that municipality. In October 2019 the *Tagesspiegel* reported that his home then lay in the Berlin borough of Pankow, whose branch of the Alternative for Germany he was seeking to join.

Schönwalde-Glien lies in the east of the district, beside Berlin, and for Bundestag elections belongs to constituency 58, Oberhavel – Havelland II, with Brieselang, Dallgow-Döberitz, Falkensee, Ketzin/Havel and Wustermark. The constituency he represents, number 56 (Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I), covers those two districts and only a northern and western part of the Havelland, including Nauen and the *Ämter* Friesack, Nennhausen and Rhinow, not Schönwalde-Glien. His council seat is likewise outside the municipality where he is listed. The 2024 election notice defines council district 1 as Rathenow, Premnitz and Milower Land, and district 3 as Schönwalde-Glien, Wustermark, Brieselang and Dallgow-Döberitz; he was elected from the slate for district 1. The Kreistag is the assembly for the whole Landkreis, and the district administration is in Rathenow.

The Bundestag register of posts that members must disclose enters the membership as Landkreis Havelland, Rathenow, at 300 euro a month gross. Abgeordnetenwatch carries the same monthly amount. That sum is the flat expense allowance in the district compensation statute adopted on 9 December 2024 and in force from 1 January 2025, replacing the statute of 14 January 2022. Attendance is paid separately, at 30 euro for each sitting of the council, a committee or another body to which the council has sent the member, and for one group meeting preparing a council sitting. The published Bundestag figure is the monthly allowance and does not itemise those fees.

### Earlier voluntary activity

The account of unpaid work before his party activity is his own, with one newspaper corroboration of the conservation role. His website describes a first political post as press spokesperson and board member of the Bund Naturschutz in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, and club handball and later badminton while he was growing up in nearby Haibach. The AfD group's Bundestag biography states honorary work with Bund Naturschutz in Bayern e.V. and service as a *Jugendleiter* (youth leader) in badminton, without naming a state association. The *Märkische Allgemeine* in April 2024 called him a former member of the Bund Naturschutz and quoted him as saying that the work grew out of concern about forest dieback (*Waldsterben*) and climate protection.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/gotz-fromming