Hannes Gnauck

Hannes Gnauck (born 8 August 1991 in Prenzlau, Brandenburg) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since 2021. He holds the direct mandate for constituency 057, Uckermark – Barnim I, won on 23 February 2025 with 38.3 percent of the first votes (53,912). On 4 July 2026 an AfD federal congress in Erfurt elected him federal treasurer on a third ballot, with 51 percent against the incumbent Carsten Hütter (44.8 percent). From October 2022 until the Young Alternative for Germany dissolved itself in the spring of 2025, he was that organisation’s last federal chairman.

The biography he filed with the Bundestag states that he is unmarried, left school in 2009 with a Mittlere Reife, trained as a Sport- und Fitnesskaufmann from 2009 to 2012, and was an employee from 2012 to 2014. From 2014 to 2021 he served as a temporary-career soldier in the Bundeswehr, including a deployment to Afghanistan. Der Spiegel reported in December 2021 that he held the rank of Oberfeldwebel and had last been posted to Panzergrenadierbrigade 41 in Neubrandenburg. The service relationship has been dormant since he entered parliament; he has told rbb24 that the contract runs from October 2014 to September 2028, and the Bundestag records a right of return to the Federal Ministry of Defence.

He has sat on the Uckermark district council and the municipal council of Uckerfelde since 2019, is a member of the AfD state executive in Brandenburg and of the federal executive, and sits on the supervisory board of Uckermärkische Dienstleistungsgesellschaft mbH in Prenzlau. In the Bundestag he is a full member of the Defence Committee and a deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a full member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and deputy chair of the German-Baltic Parliamentary Friendship Group. At the 2021 federal election he finished second in the constituency with 20.3 percent of the first votes, behind Stefan Zierke of the SPD on 29.6 percent, and entered the 20th Bundestag on the AfD state list of Brandenburg.

In December 2021 Der Spiegel reported that the Military Counterintelligence Service had classified him as an extremist, after listing him in 2020 as a right-wing-extremism suspicion case over statements about asylum seekers and foreigners and over work as an “ambassador” of the Young Alternative, and that the Bundeswehr had banned him from wearing uniform and from duty. The same report quoted a district-council speech in which he spoke of a “gesellschaftszersetzende Asylmaschinerie” and a “höllische Symbiose” of business elites, the radical left and what he called helpers of a migration lobby. On the evening of 16 May 2024 the Bundestag, against the votes of the AfD, lifted his immunity so that a judicial disciplinary case arising from his military service could go ahead. The Troop Service Court North discontinued that case on 17 June 2025 on formal grounds: reporting by rbb24, citing ARD, said the court found that the office which had opened the proceedings was no longer competent and did not decide the substance, while Gnauck described the result as a full rehabilitation. On the evening of 23 April 2026 the Bundestag again, this time unanimously, authorised a judicial disciplinary proceeding; rbb24 reported the allegation as activity for the Young Alternative as an Oberfeldwebel after the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had classified that organisation as a right-wing extremist suspicion case, a classification the office later raised, in April 2023, to a confirmed extremist endeavour. He has rejected a völkisch reading of his politics and told rbb24 that every German with a migration background and a German passport belongs to the German people.

Early life and vocational training

Schooling in Prenzlau

Hannes Gnauck was born on 8 August 1991 in Prenzlau, which became the administrative seat of the Uckermark district in northeastern Brandenburg when that district was formed on 6 December 1993. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which the parliament states rests on information supplied by members themselves, records that he is unmarried and that in 2009 he obtained the Mittlere Reife, Germany's intermediate secondary-school certificate. A February 2025 profile in the Nordkurier named the school as Prenzlau's Christa-und-Peter-Scherpf-Gymnasium and described him as an Uckermärker living in Uckerfelde.

In an October 2024 questionnaire for the Märkische Oderzeitung he said that he had spent his whole life in Prenzlau and the Uckermark. The school's own history states that on 1 August 2006 the Städtisches Gymnasium was renamed the Christa-und-Peter-Scherpf-Gymnasium, and it traces the institution to a Latin school founded in 1543. Brandenburg's education ministry describes the Realschulabschluss, or Fachoberschulreife—the qualification corresponding to the traditional Mittlere Reife—as a certificate awarded at a Gymnasium on the basis of marks at the end of year 10, distinct from the Abitur taken after the upper-secondary stage. The parliamentary biography lists the Mittlere Reife and no higher school qualification, and it dates the start of his vocational training to 2009.

Apprenticeship and employment

From 2009 to 2012 he trained as a Sport- und Fitnesskaufmann (sports and fitness clerk). Reporting has described him in the same terms, as a trained fitness clerk. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training lists the occupation as a 36-month apprenticeship in the competence area of industry and commerce, under the federal training ordinance of 4 July 2007. Trainees are prepared to help develop concepts for sports and other services, coordinate the daily operation of facilities and their equipment, advise customers and members, handle accounting, marketing and personnel tasks, and take part in organizing events. The institute states that employment is found mainly in fitness and leisure businesses, including fitness centres, and also in leisure parks, sports associations, clubs and municipal sports offices.

The Bundestag biography states that he then worked as a salaried employee (Angestellter) from 2012 to 2014, without naming an employer or a place of training. A first-person profile on the website of the AfD district association in the Uckermark says that the three-year apprenticeship was served in Eberswalde and that he afterwards spent two years in the occupation at a large sports park in Neubrandenburg, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Those place names are not in the parliamentary biography.

Military service

Enlistment, unit and rank

Gnauck joined the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, in 2014 as a Soldat auf Zeit, a temporary-career soldier engaged for a fixed term. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says is drawn from members’ own information, records “2014 bis 2021 Soldat auf Zeit mit Auslandseinsatz in Afghanistan” and lists his occupation before the mandate as service for the Federal Ministry of Defence in Berlin, annotated “Soldat auf Zeit, Rückkehrrecht” (temporary-career soldier, with a right of return). The years 2014 to 2021 in that biography describe active service before he entered parliament; they are not a statement that the engagement itself ended in 2021.

By early 2021 he held the rank of Oberfeldwebel. In February 2021 the Nordkurier reported that he had been committed since 2014 as a temporary-career soldier in that rank, and a spokesman for his Panzergrenadier brigade told the paper that he was still a soldier. Der Spiegel reported in December 2021 that he held the rank of Oberfeldwebel and had last been posted to Panzergrenadierbrigade 41 in Neubrandenburg. In the Bundestag on 25 April 2024 he identified himself as an Oberfeldwebel of Panzergrenadierbataillon 411. That battalion belongs to Brigade 41 and is stationed in Viereck, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Bundeswehr describes it as a mechanized-infantry combat battalion of five companies, able to fight both from infantry fighting vehicles and on foot. Published accounts do not assign him a different arm of service from that formation.

Deployment to Afghanistan

The Bundestag biography states that the temporary-career service included a deployment to Afghanistan. On 25 April 2024 Gnauck described himself in the chamber as an Afghanistan veteran of the 15th contingent of the Resolute Support Mission, of “CS Coy”, with service in Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and Maymana. NATO defines Resolute Support as a non-combat mission, agreed with the Afghan government to follow the end of the International Security Assistance Force in December 2014, and aimed at helping Afghan security forces and institutions develop the capacity to defend the country. It operated with a hub in Kabul and Bagram and regional spokes that included Mazar-e Sharif, and it was terminated in early September 2021. The parliamentary biography and contemporary news reports do not independently fix the months of his rotation or his tasks inside the contingent. The contingent number, the “CS Coy” designation and the three locations are his own statement to the Bundestag.

Status after election to the Bundestag

Election to the Bundestag did not discharge him. Section 5(1) of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), read with section 8, provides that the rights and duties of a temporary-career soldier who becomes a member rest for the duration of membership, and at most for the remainder of the commitment period, apart from the duty of official secrecy and the ban on accepting gifts. In a decision of 9 September 2025 the Federal Administrative Court held that this resting leaves the service relationship otherwise unchanged, so that a return to a comparable post remains possible after the mandate, and that it implements the incompatibility of a parliamentary seat with active military service allowed by Article 137 of the Basic Law. The published text anonymizes the soldier, but the appeal is from the 17 June 2025 discontinuation by the Truppendienstgericht Nord that Gnauck had made public; the judgment treats the resting in that case as dating from 26 October 2021, the start of his membership of the 20th Bundestag.

Gnauck told rbb24 that his service relationship runs from October 2014 to September 2028, that it has been dormant since his election in autumn 2021, and that he could imagine serving again. Without discussing his case, the defence ministry left a return open and said that extremism had no place in its area of responsibility. The military-counterintelligence classification, the uniform and duty restrictions imposed while he was still serving, and the later disciplinary proceedings are covered under Security assessments and disciplinary proceedings.

Local politics in Brandenburg

Municipal and district mandates

Gnauck joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2017 or 2018, while he was still a soldier. In a February 2025 interview with the Nordkurier he described the step as gradual: in 2017 and 2018 he compared party programmes, joined because of the AfD’s statements on using the Bundeswehr for alliance and territorial defence, and then became active in the district.

On 26 May 2019 he was elected to the Kreistag of the Uckermark from constituency 2 (Prenzlau). The district election committee recorded 2,105 votes for him, ahead of Monty Gutzmann (1,351), the second AfD candidate elected there. District-wide the AfD took 24,662 of 160,543 valid votes and eight of 50 seats. The same day the party won one of ten seats on the council of Uckerfelde, where he lives, with 88 votes (6 percent). His Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, states that he has sat on both bodies since 2019.

By 16 June 2020 the Nordkurier identified him as chairman of the AfD group in the Kreistag. On 19 January 2022 the Märkische Oderzeitung reported that he had resigned the chair. He said a proceeding over doubts about his loyalty to the constitution was paused, and that the resignation and the pause had the same cause. He remained a councillor.

At the elections of 9 June 2024 the AfD became the largest Kreistag group, with 16 of 50 seats on the preliminary final count reported by the Nordkurier. Gnauck received 5,900 votes, third in the district behind Mike Bischoff of the SPD (9,648) and Felix Teichner of the AfD (6,375). The council’s official list, updated on 22 October 2026, still names him as an AfD member and Klaus-Martin Bastert as group chairman. At the constituent sitting in early July 2024 the council filled a twelve-member district committee (Kreisausschuss). The AfD’s four places went to Bastert, Gnauck, Tony Riller and Teichner.

In Uckerfelde the official result that day shows the AfD list at 283 votes (15.9 percent). Gnauck was re-elected with 225 votes; Silko Seidlitzki, the list’s other candidate, was also elected, with 58.

Disclosures to the Bundestag, republished by Abgeordnetenwatch for the 2025–2029 term, add two offices: member of the supervisory board of Uckermärkische Dienstleistungsgesellschaft mbH in Prenzlau, and member of the police advisory board of Polizeidirektion Ost in Frankfurt (Oder). The district describes the company as a wholly owned subsidiary commissioned to carry out duties of the public waste-disposal authority.

Role in the Brandenburg AfD

In the Uckermark district association he has been first deputy chairman. On 7 December 2024 a members’ meeting in Prenzlau returned Felix Teichner as chairman for a fourth term, with 68 votes in favour and one against, and again elected Gnauck first deputy and Tony Riller second deputy, the Nordkurier reported. Citing the association, the paper put membership at about 300, with 89 municipal mandates.

The June 2020 Nordkurier report also described him as ambassador of the Young Alternative for Germany for Uckermark and Barnim, and as secretary on its state board in Brandenburg.

The Bundestag biography lists him as a member of the Brandenburg AfD’s state executive. The Berliner Zeitung reported that, in an August 2021 interview with the Märkische Oderzeitung, he said the Military Counterintelligence Service had urged him to leave the Young Alternative and that he had instead had himself elected to that executive. At the state congress in Prenzlau in March 2026 he was elected one of seven assessors (Beisitzer), with Oliver Calov, Benjamin Filter, Andreas Galau, Lars Hünich, Dominik Kaufner and Daniel Münschke; the Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing Deutsche Presse-Agentur, noted that Filter, Hünich and Kaufner were new. The same congress confirmed René Springer as state chairman with 82.3 percent.

Elections to the Bundestag

2021 federal election

At the 2021 German federal election, held on 26 September 2021, Hannes Gnauck was the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate for the direct mandate in constituency 57, Uckermark – Barnim I, and was fifth on the party's state list in Brandenburg.-erringt-direktmandat-1145721) The direct seat went to Stefan Zierke of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.-erringt-direktmandat-1145721) Of 129,150 valid first votes, Zierke received 38,247 (29.6 percent). Gnauck was second with 26,163 votes (20.3 percent), and Jens Koeppen of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who had won the direct mandate in 2017, was third with 22,991 (17.8 percent).-erringt-direktmandat-1145721) Local reporting described an early count in which Zierke and Gnauck exchanged the lead, with Koeppen well back in third; by about 20:00 Zierke had widened his lead over Gnauck by eight percentage points.-erringt-direktmandat-1145721) Gnauck said that evening that fifth place on the state list might still be enough for a seat.-erringt-direktmandat-1145721) Die Linke took 12,316 first votes (9.5 percent), the Free Democratic Party 10,964 (8.5 percent) and Alliance 90/The Greens 7,528 (5.8 percent).

Turnout was 71.6 percent, with 130,965 ballots cast by 182,836 eligible voters. On the second vote the SPD led the constituency with 40,543 votes (31.4 percent), ahead of the AfD with 25,748 (19.9 percent) and the CDU with 19,818 (15.3 percent). Against 2017, the SPD's second-vote share rose by 14.5 points, while the CDU fell by 12.9 points and Die Linke by 9.7; the AfD share was 0.9 points lower. Gnauck did not win the constituency, but he entered the Bundestag through the AfD state list and served in the 20th Bundestag.

2025 federal election

Gnauck stood again in constituency 57 at the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025 and was elected on the first vote. The final count gave him 53,912 first votes, 38.3 percent, 18.1 percentage points above the AfD share in the constituency in 2021. Zierke, again the SPD candidate, finished second with 27,211 votes (19.4 percent, down 10.3 points). Ulrike Mauersberger of the CDU was third with 25,664 votes (18.3 percent), Isabelle Czok-Alm of Die Linke fourth with 17,198 (12.2 percent) and Michael Kellner of Alliance 90/The Greens fifth with 5,459 (3.9 percent). The Free Voters received 5,177 first votes (3.7 percent), the FDP 3,322 (2.4 percent) and Die PARTEI 2,640 (1.9 percent).

Of 180,128 people eligible to vote, 142,115 cast a ballot, a turnout of 78.9 percent, and 140,583 first votes were valid. The AfD also led the second vote, with 50,766 (36.0 percent, up 16.1 points from 2021), ahead of the CDU on 22,698 (16.1 percent), the SPD on 19,510 (13.8 percent, down 17.5 points), the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance on 17,499 (12.4 percent) and Die Linke on 15,479 (11.0 percent). Alliance 90/The Greens took 6,831 second votes (4.8 percent) and the FDP 3,745 (2.7 percent).

Constituency

For both the 2021 and 2025 elections, constituency 57 (Uckermark – Barnim I) comprised the whole Uckermark district and part of Barnim. From Barnim it included the independent municipalities of Eberswalde, Schorfheide and Wandlitz; Amt Biesenthal-Barnim (Biesenthal, Breydin, Marienwerder, Melchow, Rüdnitz and Sydower Fließ); Amt Britz-Chorin-Oderberg (Britz, Chorin, Hohenfinow, Liepe, Lunow-Stolzenhagen, Niederfinow, Oderberg and Parsteinsee); and Amt Joachimsthal (Schorfheide) (Althüttendorf, Friedrichswalde, Joachimsthal and Ziethen). The remaining municipalities of Barnim were assigned to constituency 59.

The Bundestag directory records Gnauck's seat as the constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 057, Uckermark – Barnim I, and lists two constituency offices: Rosenstraße 13 in Angermünde and Steinstr. 30 in Prenzlau.

Parliamentary work

Defence Committee

Since taking his seat in the Bundestag in 2021, Hannes Gnauck of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been a full member of the Defence Committee, which oversees the Bundeswehr and meets partly in closed session.

On 10 December 2021 Der Spiegel reported that the AfD group had named him as one of its four members. The designated chair, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the Free Democratic Party, called the nomination a scandal: sending a deputy whom the Military Counterintelligence Service had classified as an extremist, she said, mocked Parliament and service personnel, because the committee handles secret files on their security. She saw no immediate legal bar if he kept to his duties, but warned that an offence such as betrayal of secrets could mean a lifting of immunity.

The committee constituted itself on 15 December 2021 and elected Strack-Zimmermann chair by 36 votes to two. Its four AfD members were Gnauck, Rüdiger Lucassen, Jan Nolte and Gerold Otten. He remained a full member in the 21st Bundestag. On 21 May 2025 the reconstituted 38-member committee elected Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU) as chair; the AfD then held nine seats, including Gnauck’s. In the 20th electoral term he was also a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the subcommittee on the United Nations, international organisations and civilian crisis prevention, according to abgeordnetenwatch.

Foreign affairs and international parliamentary bodies

For the 21st electoral term the Bundestag lists him as a deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, an ordinary member of the German delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and deputy chair of the German-Baltic Parliamentary Friendship Group. Abgeordnetenwatch records the foreign-affairs deputy seat only from 2025; in 2021–2025 his related assignment was the United Nations subcommittee.

A press release of 27 May 2026 named him, with the AfD deputies Gerold Otten and Kurt Kleinschmidt, among those expected at the Assembly’s spring session in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 29 May to 1 June. The delegation’s report, printed paper 21/8350 of 5 October 2026, listed the members actually sent and did not include him; the AfD participants named were Kleinschmidt, Jan Nolte and Otten. That report gives the session’s themes as long-term support for Ukraine, deterrence and defence, and hybrid threats, and records a visit by the travelling delegation to Panzerbrigade 45.

Debates, questions and recorded votes

On 12 May 2022, in debate on a motion by The Left titled “Kein Eintritt Deutschlands in den Ukraine-Krieg”, Gnauck said the House had on 28 April approved heavy weapons for Ukraine and that Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht had on 6 May announced Bundeswehr training of Ukrainian troops, with Parliament and the public informed only afterwards. He cited a Bundestag research-service opinion which, as he put it, found that instructing a party to a conflict, or training it on such weapons, would leave “the secured area of non-belligerency”.

On 3 June 2022 he co-authored an AfD amendment to the bill for a €100 billion Bundeswehr “special fund”. It would have barred credit-market borrowing and limited the fund to annual budget subsidies. The amendment fell by 606 votes to 74; he voted for it. The same day he voted for the change to Article 87a of the Basic Law that enabled the fund (568 to 96, with 20 abstentions) and for the statute itself (590 to 80, with seven abstentions). The AfD group divided: part voted for the statute and part against.

With Lucassen, Nolte and others he tabled printed paper 20/5153, a minor interpellation on how the 2011 suspension of conscription had affected readiness. On 22 February 2024 he voted against the coalition motion “Zehn Jahre russischer Krieg gegen die Ukraine — Die Ukraine und Europa entschlossen verteidigen” (printed paper 20/10375), which passed by 381 votes to 284, with two abstentions. Printed paper 20/13932 of 26 November 2024, signed by him with René Springer, Matthias Moosdorf and Steffen Kotré, asked about foreign soldiers on the territory of the former GDR and about foreign staff in Commander Task Force Baltic, stood up at the naval command in Rostock on 21 October 2024.

At the first reading on 5 December 2024 of a bill on personnel readiness, he said transfers to Ukraine had worsened equipment gaps. He cited 88 main battle tanks, 140 infantry fighting vehicles and 300,000 artillery rounds, and said the force could sustain national defence for little more than a few days. He favoured restoring conscription only for the defence of Germany, not, as he put it, to send young people to foreign wars; blamed the 2011 suspension on the Christian Democratic Union and Angela Merkel; and criticised Friedrich Merz, then the CDU’s chancellor candidate, for urging delivery of Taurus cruise missiles, which Gnauck said would raise the risk of direct confrontation with Russia.

Leadership of the Junge Alternative

Election as federal chairman

On 15 October 2022 the Young Alternative for Germany (Junge Alternative, JA), the youth organisation of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), elected Bundestag member Hannes Gnauck its federal chairman at a congress in Apolda, Thuringia. The Brandenburg politician, then 31, was the only candidate and received 154 of 168 valid votes, a party spokesman said. He succeeded Carlo Clemens, who did not stand again.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV) was already treating the JA as a suspected case of right-wing extremism, a status it had held since 2019. Speakers in Apolda included AfD co-chairman Tino Chrupalla and the Thuringian AfD politician Björn Höcke. Gnauck remained chairman until the organisation dissolved itself in the spring of 2025.

Intelligence classification of the youth organisation

On 26 April 2023 the BfV classified the JA as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour (gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung), in the same step as the Institut für Staatspolitik and the association Ein Prozent. President Thomas Haldenwang said there was no longer any doubt that these groupings pursued efforts hostile to the constitution. The agency said the JA propagated a völkisch conception of society, based on biologistic assumptions and an ethnically and culturally homogeneous people, and treated citizens with a migrant background as second-class Germans, which it called incompatible with the Basic Law.

The AfD and the JA sought interim relief at the administrative court in Cologne. By 15 June 2023 Chrupalla said the BfV had suspended the upgrade, deleted the press releases and was again treating the JA as a suspected case. A court spokesman confirmed a standstill assurance; the agency would not comment while the case was open.

On 5 February 2024 the Cologne court refused the application (13 L 1124/23). On a summary review it held that indications of efforts against the free democratic basic order had "condensed into certainty", so the BfV could treat the JA as a confirmed extremist endeavour. It cited a descent-based concept of the people, aimed at preserving an ethnic German people, as a breach of human dignity; agitation against foreigners, Islam and Muslims; equations of the Federal Republic with the Nazi regime and the German Democratic Republic; and contacts with the Identitarian Movement Germany. The order was not final. Federal interior minister Nancy Faeser welcomed it, and Haldenwang said it confirmed the classification.

The same confirmed status was reported for JA branches in Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, and was still under emergency challenge in January 2025, while the AfD as a whole remained a federal suspected case. After the JA dissolved at the end of March 2025, the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster closed the appeal on 10 June 2025 without ruling on the substance. It largely rejected the complaint as inadmissible and discontinued the rest; the order could not be appealed. A dissolved association in liquidation, the court said, was no longer a suitable object of a confirmed classification. The BfV had said it was not then fixing one. The AfD and the JA had not dropped the main action.

Dissolution and successor body

At the AfD federal congress in Riesa on 11 and 12 January 2025, delegates amended the statute by the two-thirds majority required for such a change. The motion replaced the largely independent JA with a youth organisation bound to the party. The statute had named the JA, an independent association, as the official youth organisation; apart from its boards, members did not have to belong to the AfD. From 1 April 2025 the youth organisation was to be a legally dependent part of the party, its name set in a youth statute, and its activity was not to contradict the party's order and principles.

Members of the Young Alternative at the AfD federal party congress in Riesa, 11–12 January 2025.

Gnauck, who also sat on the AfD federal executive, argued for dissolution because of the risk that the association would otherwise be banned. The BfV was observing the JA as a proven right-wing extremist endeavour.

On 1 February 2025 a JA congress in Apolda, with about 250 members according to the police, resolved to dissolve as of 31 March 2025. Police counted about 1,300 protesters, including unions, parties and the initiative Omas gegen Rechts, and described the operation around the town hall as orderly. Martin Kohler, chairman of the Berlin JA, said a successor could still use the name Junge Alternative. Membership was to be limited to AfD members, except for under-16s, who would have to accept the party statute and its arbitration and whose membership would end by 17 if they had not joined.

On 29 November 2025 a founding congress in Giessen, at the trade fair, adopted a statute naming the organisation Generation Deutschland and setting an age limit of 35. Each member must also belong to the AfD. Delegates elected Brandenburg state legislator Jean-Pascal Hohm, classified by the Brandenburg domestic intelligence service as a right-wing extremist, as the only candidate for chairman, with 633 of 725 votes (90.4 percent excluding abstentions). AfD co-chair Alice Weidel called the body a cadre school for the party. Road blockades delayed the opening by about two hours.

Offices in the federal AfD

Federal executive board

Gnauck joined the federal executive (Bundesvorstand) of the Alternative for Germany on 29 June 2024, during the party congress in the Grugahalle in Essen. He stood, as federal chairman of the Young Alternative for Germany, for the last Beisitzer seat, one of the non-officer places on the board. In his candidacy speech he said the AfD should offer “more social content than the SPD” and be “more protective of nature and homeland than the Greens,” and that every patriot had an interest in freeing himself “from any outside control in his own country.” Welt reported that he narrowly defeated Markus Wagner, leader of the AfD group in the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament and identified with that association’s comparatively moderate wing, on a second ballot. He became the third member from Brandenburg on the 14-member board, with Dennis Hohloch and Roman Reusch; Alice Weidel was the only woman elected. The Bundestag biography lists him as a member of the AfD federal executive.

Election as federal treasurer

Delegates met on 4 and 5 July 2026 for the 17th federal congress at the trade-fair grounds in Erfurt. Tagesschau described the AfD as a party classified in part as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”

The same weekend the congress re-elected its co-chairs without opponents. Weidel received 81.31 percent of the delegate vote and Tino Chrupalla 70.05 percent. Tagesschau reported Weidel’s share as a slight gain on 79.8 percent at the 2024 congress, and Chrupalla’s as well below the result of just under 83 percent he had received in Essen. Police counted about 31,000 demonstrators in and around Erfurt by early Saturday afternoon. Several thousand blocked the A71 and federal roads 4 and 7, but the session opened on time after most of the roughly 600 delegates arrived before dawn and were taken by bus to the hall.

The treasurer’s election was the narrowest leadership vote. Gnauck, a Bundestag member and former chairman of the since-dissolved Young Alternative, challenged Carsten Hütter, who had been federal treasurer since 2020. Neither reached a majority in the first two ballots. The agency dts reported that Hütter led the first round with 49.6 percent to Gnauck’s 46.0 percent, and that in the second both were just over 48 percent, with Gnauck one vote ahead. On the third ballot, dpa reported, Gnauck received 51 percent and Hütter 44.8 percent. In his application speech Gnauck said, “Ich bin gelernter Kaufmann, ich kann und ich will führen” (“I am a trained businessman; I can lead and I want to”). Hütter pointed to his experience and said that, under him, the AfD then had a cash balance of about 14 million euros.

Coverage treated the change as a personnel shift rather than a dispute about the accounts. The dpa report was framed as the party replacing its treasurer as well, after other offices had already been filled. A tagesschau analysis described a younger board cut to Weidel’s preferences, and wrote that the network around Sebastian Münzenmaier had advanced Gnauck against the more experienced Hütter from Saxony. Bundestag member Matthias Moosdorf said political networks were being weighted more heavily than qualified personnel. In the deputy-chair votes the same weekend, Stefan Möller, described as a close associate of Björn Höcke, received 76.54 percent; Sven Tritschler, proposed by Weidel, 50.7 percent; and Katrin Ebner-Steiner 55.7 percent.

Political positions

Migration and remigration

In a district-council debate in the Uckermark, Gnauck spoke of a “gesellschaftszersetzende Asylmaschinerie”, an “Ausbeutung unserer Sozialsysteme” and a “höllische Symbiose aus Wirtschaftseliten, radikaler Linker und Erfüllungsgehilfen der Migrationslobby”. Der Spiegel reported those formulations in December 2021.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on how the Alternative for Germany uses remigration, quoted a post of his on X: “Ich bin strikt gegen eine Obergrenze beim Thema #Migration. Jeder Fremde mehr in diesem Land ist einer zu viel. Wir brauchen eine stringente #Remigration von denen, die hier sind.” It placed the line with Ulrich Oehme’s call for immediate remigration “um unsere ethnokulturelle Identität zu schützen und zu bewahren” and Christina Baum’s demand to begin the remigration of “illegaler und nichtintegrierbarer Migranten”. The paper wrote that such remarks go beyond deporting only foreigners legally obliged to leave and sit close to the reading associated with Martin Sellner, while official papers stay framed as compatible with the law.

The party’s January 2024 position paper defines remigration as “alle Maßnahmen und Anreize zu einer rechtsstaatlichen und gesetzeskonformen Rückführung ausreisepflichtiger Ausländer in ihre Heimat”, names a large “Remigrations”-potential among people from Syria and Afghanistan once fighting has largely ended, and says the party rejects deporting German citizens with a migration background.

A domestic-intelligence assessment, as reported by rbb in May 2025, read the party’s language differently: not only people obliged to leave, but the removal of millions who, on an “ethnisch-nationalistisches Staatsvolkverständnis”, would not count as German, and not inside a rule-of-law procedure. The same account quotes Gnauck at an autumn 2024 rally on the marketplace in Zossen as saying that belonging to the German people took more than a certificate of citizenship and that a “Naturgesetz” bound Germans together. rbb also reported his claim that everyone present had more in common with him “als irgendein Syrer oder irgendein Afghane”, and that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution treated such statements as a völkisch view of society contrary to human dignity under the Basic Law. Asked by rbb, he rejected that charge and said every German with a migration background and a German passport belonged to the German people. The May report cited Brandenburg AfD leader Hans-Christoph Berndt, in the same assessment, for separating the number of German citizens from the “Deutsche” as he defined them.

European Union

Gnauck’s fullest Bundestag statement on the European Union is narrower than the party programme. On 1 December 2022, debating the EU directive on employee participation in cross-border conversions, he said the government was letting “Brüssel sich in innere deutsche Angelegenheiten einmischen”, that merely following EU acts was “keine souveräne Politik im Interesse unserer Arbeitnehmer”, and that “Brüssel ist nicht Berlin und wird es auch niemals sein.” He called worker protection a national duty for the Bundestag, not a text from Brussels, and described the AfD group as standing for “solidarischen Patriotismus” rather than “Globalismus”.

Party texts go further. At the 2023 European-election conference, Deutsche Welle reported, delegates called the EU a “failed project” that had “completely failed” on climate and immigration; the text adopted there did not demand that Germany leave. The 2025 Bundestag programme still speaks of a “Europa der Vaterländer”, rejects the EU’s “zentralistischen Bestrebungen”, and seeks a planned shift to a new “Bund europäischer Nationen” of sovereign states, cooperating only where interests coincide, and rejects eastern enlargement of the EU.

Defence, NATO and Ukraine

On 5 December 2024, in the Bundestag debate on the personnel readiness of the Bundeswehr, Gnauck called the security situation more serious than ever, naming the war in Ukraine, Indo-Pacific tensions and the NATO eastern flank, and said policy should return to “den Schutz unseres Landes”. Arms transfers, he argued, had deepened shortages: 88 main battle tanks, 140 infantry fighting vehicles, 300,000 artillery rounds, 100,000 hand grenades and 55.7 million small-arms rounds since the war began. If the forces could manage little more than a few days of territorial defence, “die Schwelle des Zumutbaren” had, he said, long been crossed. He favoured restoring conscription, suspended in 2011 under Angela Merkel, but not in order to send young people “in fremde Kriege”. He treated Friedrich Merz’s call to supply Taurus cruise missiles as raising the risk of direct confrontation with Russia, rejected Annalena Baerbock’s proposal of peacekeeping troops for Ukraine, and said that under an AfD-led government soldiers would only defend “unseres eigenen schönen Vaterlandes”, so that no family need fear a relative falling “an der Ostfront”.

The 2025 programme argues in similar terms that the forces are not defensible, citing transfers of serviceable equipment to Ukraine and the training of Ukrainian soldiers; it calls for conscription limited to German citizens, rejects NATO’s eastern enlargement, would keep NATO membership only until an independent European military alliance exists, and describes Ukraine’s future as a neutral state outside NATO and the EU.

Security assessments and disciplinary proceedings

Military counterintelligence classification

While Gnauck was a temporary-career soldier, the Military Counterintelligence Service (Militärischer Abschirmdienst, MAD) assessed him. ARD reported a 2020 classification as a suspected case of right-wing extremism and a 2021 classification as an extremist. Der Spiegel, when the Alternative for Germany named him to the defence committee in December 2021, dated a suspicion classification to 2020 and described him as an extremist; in October 2022 it dated “erkannter Extremist” (“recognized extremist”) to 2020. Gnauck has used that wording himself.

Accounts linked the assessment to statements and to work for the Young Alternative for Germany, then a suspected case of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Spiegel reported that he had been a youth-organization “ambassador” and quoted a district-council speech on a “gesellschaftszersetzende Asylmaschinerie” (an asylum machinery corroding society), exploitation of social systems, and a “hellish symbiosis” of economic elites, the radical left and helpers of the migration lobby. ARD later summarized the disciplinary background as alleged agitation against asylum seekers and foreigners in the Bundeswehr. Die Welt reported his statement to the Märkische Oderzeitung in August 2021 that the MAD had urged him to leave the Young Alternative because it was a suspected case.

From 2020 the Bundeswehr barred him from uniform and from duty; Spiegel reported that he could enter barracks only when ordered. He was an Oberfeldwebel, last posted to Panzergrenadierbrigade 41 in Neubrandenburg, and in July 2021 told Spiegel he would contest the classification in court.

rbb reported that the domestic-intelligence assessment of the AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist cited an autumn 2024 speech in Zossen: everyone present, he said, was closer to him “than any Syrian or any Afghan.” The office called that incompatible with human dignity and völkisch; he said every German with a migration background and a German passport belongs to the German people.

Immunity waivers and the troop service court

These are military disciplinary proceedings, not criminal cases, and no related criminal conviction has been reported. Immunity left the matter dormant after Gnauck entered the Bundestag in 2021. On the evening of 16 May 2024 the Bundestag, against the AfD group’s votes, approved the immunity committee’s recommendation authorizing a judicial disciplinary proceeding over alleged agitation against asylum seekers and foreigners during his service.

On 17 June 2025 the chair of the 1st chamber of Troop Service Court North discontinued the case. Gnauck posted a photograph of an order of that date; rbb reported that it stated no reasons. ARD correspondent Michael Götschenberg told rbb the court had found only that the office which opened the case was no longer competent and had not examined the allegations, which therefore could not be called refuted.

On 9 September 2025 the Federal Administrative Court quashed that discontinuation on a complaint by the military disciplinary prosecutor’s office. The decision does not name the soldier, but the dates match the case Gnauck had publicized: immunity lifted on 16 May 2024 for the 20th electoral term; a case opened on 23 July 2024; and a charge of 3 March 2025 that he did not recognize the free democratic basic order or support its preservation. The troop-service chair had treated membership from 26 October 2021 as ending subordination to the division commander, and had also relied on the waiver’s expiry when the 20th Bundestag ended on 25 March 2025. The appellate court held that the service relationship otherwise continues while rights and duties rest, so disciplinary jurisdiction did not change, and that renewed immunity was not a ground for discontinuation. It did not decide the charge.

On the evening of 23 April 2026 the Bundestag again authorized a judicial disciplinary proceeding, unanimously and without debate, adopting printed paper 21/5511 after a letter of 13 April 2026 from the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. The same sitting authorized a criminal investigation against another member; Gnauck’s authorization was limited to the disciplinary court. He described the allegation to rbb as activity, while an Oberfeldwebel, in the Young Alternative after it was a right-wing extremist suspected case. Spiegel, citing a document he posted, also reported Facebook support for the AfD in Brandenburg and for the later dissolved Der Flügel around Björn Höcke. Neither that vote nor the 2025 discontinuation was a finding on the merits.

Public response

Through the Brandenburg AfD, Gnauck said he had weeks earlier offered Bundestag president Bärbel Bas in writing to waive immunity, and that she had called the step unnecessary. He tied the May 2024 vote to the European election and to what he called a campaign against the AfD, said he had nothing to reproach himself with, and argued that lifting immunity was questionable because his service was suspended.

After the June 2025 order he spoke of a “vollständige Rehabilitierung” (“complete rehabilitation”). He told rbb that confidentiality toward the Bundeswehr barred discussion of the reasons, and that the accusation had been only membership of the AfD and the Young Alternative. Götschenberg’s account, given before the appeal, was that the allegations had not been tested. The Federal Ministry of Defence would not say whether a proceeding existed without his consent; without addressing his case, a spokeswoman said extremism had no place in the ministry’s remit. In April 2026 he expected another discontinuation, arguing that liking on Facebook what he called the largest democratic opposition, or its youth organization, should not be a disciplinary matter.