# Karsten Hilse

# Karsten Hilse

Karsten Hilse (born 12 December 1964 in Hoyerswerda) is a German politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Bautzen I in Saxony. He has held that direct mandate since the federal election of September 2017. In constituency 156 that year the AfD took 33.2 percent of the first votes (52,770), ahead of the CDU on 30.6 percent, and turnout was 75.4 percent. He defended the seat in 2021 with 33.4 percent of the first votes; Roland Ermer of the CDU was second with 26.0 percent, and the official turnout was 77.0 percent. At the election of 23 February 2025, with the seat renumbered as constituency 155, Hilse received 48.3 percent of the first votes (77,339) and Steffen Roschek of the CDU 24.1 percent; turnout was 80.6 percent.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own disclosures, records a ten-class polytechnic secondary school, training as an electrician, and service in the National People's Army, including qualification as a weapons master. He has been a police officer since 1986: with the East German Volkspolizei from 1986 to 1990, and from 1990 with the Saxony state police as an operations trainer. The same disclosure lists his occupation before entering parliament as a police officer of the Görlitz police directorate, with a right to return to that post. He joined the AfD in January 2016 and has been on the board of its Bautzen district association since November 2016. The AfD parliamentary group lists him as its spokesperson on climate policy, as chairman of the Bautzen district association from 2017 to 2022, and as a member of the Saxony state executive since 2019.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues, and he chairs the German–Spanish Parliamentary Group.

In an early 2018 Bundestag speech he called human-caused climate change an "Irrlehre". Covering his visit to the December 2018 UN climate conference in Katowice, *Die Tageszeitung* wrote that for a year in the Bundestag he had presented himself as the most radical denier of human-caused climate change, and quoted him saying that Michael Limburg, a vice-president of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), worked a quarter-time post in his Bundestag office and that he trusted him. In the same interview he said that the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change](/organizations/intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change) does not itself conduct research, and Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, former director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the paper that exchanges with EIKE had been fruitless because its representatives did not want to understand the science.

On 18 November 2020, at the edge of a demonstration in Berlin's government district against rules adopted during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), Hilse resisted police officers who wanted to identify him because he was not wearing a face mask, and the court later found that he had not produced a medical certificate it accepted as valid. On 13 January 2022 the Bundestag lifted his immunity so that a criminal investigation could proceed, over the votes of the AfD group. The Amtsgericht Tiergarten issued a penalty order of 20 daily rates of €150, or €3,000, for resistance to enforcement officers; Hilse accepted it, the order became final on 4 March 2022, and he said he did not regard his conduct as criminally relevant. *Welt* reported that the penalty did not leave him with a criminal record.

## Early life and police career

### Childhood, education and military service

Karsten Hilse was born on 12 December 1964 in Hoyerswerda, in the German Democratic Republic. A 2018 profile in *Die Zeit* reported that he grew up in Wohnkomplex II, a prefabricated-housing estate the article described as having a village-like sense of security, and that he was the son of committed functionaries of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

He completed a ten-class polytechnic secondary school (Polytechnische Oberschule) and trained as an electrical fitter (Elektromonteur). An MDR profile of candidates for the 2017 Bundestag election likewise listed a tenth-grade POS as his schooling. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own disclosures, records that he then served in the National People's Army, attended a military technical school and trained as a Waffenmeister, an armourer. Abgeordnetenwatch lists Waffenmeister as his occupational qualification.

The MDR profile gave his residence as Lohsa and his marital status as married; in the same questionnaire he referred to his wife. The *Sächsische Zeitung* wrote in January 2018 that he had grown up in Hoyerswerda and was living in Lohsa, in the district of Bautzen in Saxony. In a biographical statement dated 9 January 2017 he wrote that he had three children and had been living in a partnership for nearly eight years.

### Police service

According to the Bundestag biography, Hilse has been a police officer since 1986: from 1986 to 1990 in the Volkspolizei, and from 1990 as an officer of the Saxony state police, listed there as an Einsatztrainer (operations trainer). In the January 2017 statement he described thirty years in the police, first as a traffic officer in the GDR and, after reunification, on patrol. The *Sächsische Zeitung* reported in January 2018 that until his election to parliament he had worked as a patrol officer. A separate Bundestag disclosure of work before the mandate names Polizei Sachsen, in Dresden, and records him as an officer of Polizeidirektion Görlitz with a right to return to that post (Rückkehrrecht).

During the Hoyerswerda riots of September 1991, *Die Zeit* reported, Hilse, then a 27-year-old Polizeimeister, was on duty at a hostel for contract workers at Albert-Schweitzer-Straße 21 in the Neustadt. The paper described him moving with a shield through a crowd of about 200 attackers and onlookers, under orders to push them back and open a corridor to the building, and wrote that he worked five days in 16-hour shifts, with eight hours of sleep between them, while stones and petrol bombs were thrown at officers and the house. Interviewed for that article, he called the violence a culture shock (*Kulturschock*): a willingness to use force that the police, until then treated as state authority, had known mainly from football hooligans, not from disorder in a residential area directed at both foreigners and uniformed officers. He also described it as in part a consequence of the sudden freedom of opinion after the end of the GDR. In the 2018 *Zeit* profile he said that he would act in the same way again.

### Other activities before politics

Alongside police service, *Die Zeit* reported in 2018 that Hilse was named Mr. Brandenburg in 1994, worked for a time as a model, and came close to the title Mr. Ostdeutschland. The same profile stated that Quentin Tarantino hired him as a uniformed extra for the film *Inglourious Basterds*.

## Entry into the AfD

### Motives and local organizing

Hilse joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in January 2016, after the party was already represented in Saxony. At the 2014 state election it had entered the Landtag of Saxony with 9.7 percent of the list vote. In July 2015, at a federal congress in Essen, the Saxon politician [Frauke Petry](/people/frauke-petry) defeated co-founder [Bernd Lucke](/people/bernd-lucke) for the leadership, a result Tagesschau described as a shift to the right. In a 9 January 2017 application for the AfD's Saxon candidate list, Hilse, then a police officer living in Lohsa, wrote that he had long voted for the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) because of what he called its conservative values, and that its course had changed sharply over the previous ten to fifteen years. He said he had supported the AfD at the ballot box since 2013, decided at the start of 2015 to do more than vote, and submitted a membership application immediately after the Essen congress. He dated his formal membership to January 2016, the same month given in his Bundestag biography, which is based on members' own information.

In that application he also wrote that, before the membership was formal, he had approached prospective members and collected donations, and that the Hoyerswerda local group was founded on 1 March 2016 because of organizing he had begun. By September 2016 *Die Zeit* described him, still a serving police officer, as the head of that group. On a walk in the town he said he rejected violence as a means of political dispute. He did not deny that rejection of Islam and fear of cultural loss were problems the national party emphasized, but said they hardly mattered in Hoyerswerda and turned to the regional energy economy: "We have other worries here." Asked about deputy federal leader [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland)'s remark on the footballer Jérôme Boateng, he said he personally liked Boateng and would not campaign that way. He also said he would not call demonstrations against refugee shelters, as leading AfD politicians did, because such a rally would draw extremists; he had considered a local protest on regional topics and then set the idea aside.

### District and state party offices

Hilse wrote that the Bautzen district executive co-opted him in July 2016 and that he was elected to the board that November. The Bundestag biography likewise lists him as a member of the Kreisverband Bautzen executive from November 2016. The AfD group in the Bundestag states that he chaired the district association from 2017 to 2022. On 3 February 2018 the German press agency, reporting the first Saxon state congress after Petry had left the party, identified him as the Bautzen district chairman. Several hundred members met in Hoyerswerda to elect a new state executive before the 2019 state election. Welcoming them, Hilse said that executive should again make the AfD the strongest party in Saxony at the state election, and added, "We have the power to overthrow the cartel of the old parties."

The Bundestag group's profile dates his seat as a Beisitzer, an ordinary member of the Saxon state executive, from 2019. At the state congress in Weinböhla on 29 February 2020, delegates elected him to that post on a 13-person board and confirmed Jörg Urban as state chairman with 87.5 percent of the vote. The other assessors were Sebastian Wippel, Andreas Harlaß, Nicole Klinger, Daniel Zabel and [Matthias Moosdorf](/people/matthias-moosdorf). The state party told the agency it then had about 2,700 members. The Bautzen district association's website later listed Frank Peschel as chairman and Hilse as deputy chairman.

## Bundestag elections

### Constituency of Bautzen I

Bautzen I is a Bundestag constituency in eastern Saxony. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer numbered it 155 and assigned it the greater part of the district of Bautzen, including the towns of Bautzen, Hoyerswerda and Kamenz, together with municipalities such as Bischofswerda, Pulsnitz, Königsbrück, Lohsa, Wittichenau, Lauta and Weißenberg and several administrative associations.

Five other municipalities of the same district—Arnsdorf, Großröhrsdorf, Ottendorf-Okrilla, Radeberg and Wachau—are placed in the neighbouring constituency Dresden II – Bautzen II, numbered 159 in 2025. On 31 December 2023 Bautzen I comprised 52 municipalities, covered 2,224.9 square kilometres and had 247,500 inhabitants, a density of 111.2 people per square kilometre; about 4.0 percent of the population were foreign nationals. At the 2017 and 2021 elections the same territory was constituency 156. The municipality list published for that number in 2021 is the list used for constituency 155 in 2025, with the district's remaining municipalities then assigned to constituency 160. Karsten Hilse of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the seat at all three elections.

### 2017 election

The election to the 19th Bundestag was held on Sunday, 24 September 2017. Hilse, recorded as a civil servant born in 1964, was the AfD candidate in constituency 156 and was placed eighth on the party's state list in Saxony. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) candidate was Roland Ermer, a master baker, 14th on the Saxon CDU list. [Caren Lay](/people/caren-lay) stood for [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), Uta Strewe for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Torsten Herbst for the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

In the final result Hilse received 52,770 first votes, 33.2 percent of the 158,876 valid first votes. Ermer was second with 48,579 votes (30.6 percent), 18.6 percentage points below the CDU share in the constituency in 2013. Lay followed with 24,221 votes (15.2 percent), Strewe with 15,836 (10.0 percent) and Herbst with 9,247 (5.8 percent). Turnout was 75.4 percent, with 161,319 of 213,990 eligible voters casting a ballot, 6.0 points higher than in 2013. On second votes the AfD led with 52,041 (32.8 percent), ahead of the CDU on 42,995 (27.1 percent), Die Linke on 14.2 percent and the SPD on 9.1 percent. The 19th Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 24 October 2017.

### 2021 election

The election to the 20th Bundestag was held on 26 September 2021. Hilse again stood for the AfD in constituency 156, this time fourth on the Saxon AfD list, and Ermer again for the CDU, ninth on that party's state list. The constituency nominations also included Lay for Die Linke (third on its state list), Susanne [Kathrin Michel](/people/kathrin-michel) for the SPD (second on its list) and Dietrich Matthias Schniebel for the FDP.

Hilse was re-elected with 52,492 first votes, 33.4 percent, 0.2 points above his 2017 share. Ermer received 40,929 votes (26.0 percent), down 4.5 points. Michel was third with 21,006 votes (13.4 percent), Lay fourth with 14,134 (9.0 percent, down 6.3 points) and Schniebel fifth with 12,634 (8.0 percent). Turnout was 77.0 percent: 159,233 of 206,895 eligible voters, 1.6 points higher than in 2017. Second votes also put the AfD first, on 50,050 (31.9 percent), followed by the CDU on 29,213 (18.6 percent) and the SPD on 26,674 (17.0 percent). The 20th Bundestag convened on 26 October 2021.

### 2025 election

After the Federal President dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December 2024, the election to the 21st Bundestag was held early, on Sunday, 23 February 2025, rather than on the previously set date of 28 September 2025. In the renumbered constituency 155, Hilse took 77,339 first votes, 48.3 percent of valid first votes and 14.9 points more than in 2021. Steffen Roschek of the CDU was second with 38,643 votes (24.1 percent), 1.9 points below the CDU's 2021 first-vote share. Turnout in the final count was 80.6 percent, with 161,774 of 200,639 eligible voters participating, 3.7 points higher than in 2021.

Eight candidates stood. Behind Hilse and Roschek, Lay (Die Linke) received 15,654 first votes (9.8 percent), Michel (SPD) 11,384 (7.1 percent), Mike Hauschild of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) 8,050 (5.0 percent), Schniebel (FDP) 4,199 (2.6 percent), Frank Schmidt of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) 3,484 (2.2 percent) and Maik Harald Lehmann of [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland) 1,463 (0.9 percent). On second votes the AfD received 73,912 (46.0 percent, up 14.2 points), the CDU 32,190 (20.0 percent), the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 14,694 (9.1 percent), Die Linke 12,468 (7.8 percent) and the SPD 10,373 (6.5 percent). The list of members elected in 2025 records Hilse both as the member for constituency 155, with 48.3 percent of the first votes, and as number two on the AfD state list in Saxony.

## Parliamentary roles

### Committees and spokesperson roles

Hilse has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, sitting in the 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms as the directly elected member for Bautzen I in Saxony.

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) the archived biography lists him as an ordinary member and as Obmann — the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group's lead member — of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and as a substitute member of the Committee on Internal Affairs. Alongside that committee post, [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) in 2018 called him the group's climate-policy spokesperson, and tagesschau in 2019 its environmental-policy spokesperson.

In the 20th term (2021–2025), with climate and energy in a committee of their own, the archived biography lists him as an ordinary member and Obmann of the Committee on Climate Protection and Energy. On 12 September 2024 the Bundestag also described him as a substitute member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. The AfD group's website identifies him as its climate-policy spokesperson.

In the 21st Bundestag the biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues, without an Obmann function. The council, of 18 members, met to constitute itself on 11 September 2025 and elected [Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker](/people/elisabeth-winkelmeier-becker) (CDU/CSU) as chair. The AfD members named were Rainer Groß, Hilse, [Rainer Kraft](/people/rainer-kraft) and Christian Reck.

### German–Spanish Parliamentary Group

Parliamentary groups are cross-party associations of members, without statutes of their own, which keep contacts with parliaments abroad. At the start of each term the Council of Elders sets their number and structure; chairs are distributed according to the strength of the parliamentary groups, and a group without a chair may name one board member. In the 21st Bundestag, Hilse's biography records him as chair of the German–Spanish Parliamentary Group. The Bundestag directory lists with him [Maria-Lena Weiss](/people/maria-lena-weiss) (CDU/CSU), [Sebastian Fiedler](/people/sebastian-fiedler) (SPD), Julia Schneider (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and [Fabian Fahl](/people/fabian-fahl) (Die Linke). On 12 September 2025 the AfD group stated that he had been designated to that chair.

### Nominations for vice president of the Bundestag

Article 40 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany provides that the Bundestag elects the President of the Bundestag, the President's deputies and the secretaries, and adopts its own rules of procedure. Vice presidents are elected by secret ballot. In the first and second rounds of Hilse's 2020 candidacy the requirement stated by the Bundestag was a majority of its members, then 355 votes.

He was the fifth AfD nominee in the 19th term. Albrecht Glaser, Mariana Harder-Kühnel and [Gerold Otten](/people/gerold-otten) had each failed in three ballots, as had Paul Viktor Podolay, whose third ballot was on 12 December 2019.

On 16 January 2020, in the first ballot on the AfD nomination in Drucksache 19/16161, Hilse received 154 votes in favour and 473 against, with 30 abstentions. On 5 March 2020 the official minutes of the second ballot recorded 644 votes cast, 120 in favour, 509 against and 15 abstentions, and stated that he had not reached the required majority of at least 355 members. On 7 May 2020, in the third ballot on Drucksache 19/17727, the minutes recorded 656 votes cast, 129 in favour, 501 against and 26 abstentions, and stated that he had not obtained a majority of the votes cast.

At the constituent sitting of the 20th Bundestag on 26 October 2021 the AfD nominated Michael Kaufmann, not Hilse. He received 118 votes in favour, 553 against, 29 abstentions and 27 invalid ballots, short of the 369 required, and the group held no further ballot that day.

Hilse was nominated again on 12 September 2024 (Drucksache 20/12203). Seventy-eight members voted for the proposal and 552 against, with 14 abstentions and one invalid vote; 367 votes were required.

On 25 March 2025, at the constituent sitting of the 21st Bundestag, the house decided unanimously that each parliamentary group would provide one vice president and keep the right to nominate. The AfD candidate was again Otten, not Hilse. He was not elected in three ballots: 185 in favour, 411 against and 10 abstentions; then 190, 401 and 13; then 184 in favour, 403 against and 15 abstentions. The majority of members for that sitting was 316.

## Climate and energy policy

### Statements on climate science and international agreements

In the 19th Bundestag, Karsten Hilse spoke for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 23 March 2018 after Environment Minister [Svenja Schulze](/people/svenja-schulze) set out the government’s climate programme. He welcomed “the patriots of Pegida Dresden,” called human-caused climate change a sham crisis “only in the fantasy of green ideologues,” and said there was no proof in any Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that more CO2 produces higher temperatures. Asked by the SPD’s René Röspel about what Röspel called the finding of 99 percent of scientists, Hilse answered that only 0.3 percent, not 97 percent, of about 12,000 studies explicitly said the warming was human-made. He then declared war on the “Irrlehre” (false doctrine) of man-made climate change and called for withdrawal from all related national and international treaties and bodies, and for an end to funding of what he called pseudoscience. The record notes interjections, laughter from other groups and AfD applause; SPD member Carsten Träger said a “whiff of Trump” had gone through the chamber. *Handelsblatt* reported that a UN expert body and the overwhelming majority of scientists had established human-caused climate change, and that the [Paris Agreement](/facts/paris-agreement) aimed to hold warming well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial times. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* wrote that Hilse equated weather with climate, and that a cold Bavarian spring cited by colleague Rainer Kraft did not contradict expectations of more unusually warm days.

At the Katowice Conference (COP24) in December 2018, *taz* found Hilse unconvinced by charts of rising CO2, melting ice and sea level presented by IPCC chair Hoesung Lee and World Meteorological Organization secretary-general Petteri Taalas. He told the paper there was “no proof” that human CO2 emissions measurably affected the climate and that a “consensus of 97 percent of researchers” did not exist. *taz* traced two quotations he attributed to the IPCC—an alleged admission of uncertainty about CO2, and a claim that chaos made forecasts impossible—to 2001 wording and to a 2007 passage in which the panel also said most warming of the previous 50 years was attributable to human activities. He said he felt “like a heretic” because “everyone here is of one opinion.” Hans-Otto Pörtner, a lead author of the IPCC’s 1.5 °C report, told *taz* the pre-industrial baseline was the 1850–1900 average, on page 6 of that report; the SPD’s Klaus Mindrup said Hilse had not grasped an explanation by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.

Deutsche Welle, on 2 December 2018, called Hilse the AfD’s climate-policy spokesperson and reported that he wanted Germany to leave the Paris Agreement, backed remaining eastern German lignite plants scheduled to close for climate reasons, and rejected the premise that humans were causing the temperature rise. He described an “irrational environmental religion” of “imaginary climate sins,” especially on public television, and invoked [Nicolaus Copernicus](/people/nicolaus-copernicus) to say science “has nothing to do with democracy.” Green co-chair [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) called this a cynical questioning of science; DW wrote that researchers rejecting anthropogenic warming were few and generally not climate specialists, and that Copernicus had prevailed by being the better scientist.

Hilse was lead signatory of an AfD motion of 27 February 2020, Drucksache 19/22450, “For the rapid and genuine exit from the Paris climate accord of December 2015.” It called the accord, “out of consideration for the USA, not a treaty binding under international law,” said “pre-industrial times” named neither a period nor a baseline temperature, and asked the government to denounce it at the earliest date and to stop related laws, payments and new obligations. The justification said German emissions could not measurably affect global climate “regardless of one’s view of the highly disputed” effect of CO2, which it said no IPCC report had established.

### Energy transition, coal and nuclear power

In that March 2018 speech Hilse also declared war on the Energiewende and demanded immediate repeal of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the energy-saving ordinance and other measures he called “socialist redistribution,” which he said had already cost consumers several hundred billion euros. *taz* summarised his chamber line as an attack on the “madness” of climate policy, a “doctrine for which hundreds of billions of euros are being spent uselessly.”

Born in Hoyerswerda, in Saxony’s Lusatian lignite district, he has linked that case to the regional coal phase-out. At a forum of the Saxon centre for political education in Hoyerswerda on 15 September 2021, MDR quoted him: “We are in favour of not carrying out this coal exit.” If it proceeded, he said, the town of about 30,000 would shrink toward a pre-1955 size of perhaps 8,000, “because if the coal goes, the people go too.” MDR noted that about 80,000 people worked in Lusatian lignite at the end of the GDR, that Hoyerswerda lost more than half its population after 1990, and that operator LEAG still employed 7,400 people.

On nuclear power, Hilse led the AfD motion of 8 October 2024, Drucksache 20/13230, “Prosperity instead of renunciation—dare a new start with nuclear energy.” It called the climatic influence of CO2 “if detectable at all, only secondary,” blamed the nuclear and coal exits for high prices and scarce supply, and asked the government to drop measures that raise the cost of CO2, end support for renewables, lift runtime limits in the Atomic Energy Act, and promote liquid-fuel reactors and fusion. Adaptation, rather than emissions cuts, was presented as the priority.

A Bundestag account in September 2024 described him as *Obmann* of his group on the Committee on Climate Action and Energy. His biography for the 21st Bundestag, updated on 29 September 2026, lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

### Relationship with EIKE and related networks

*taz* reported that Hilse took his arguments from the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), which the paper described as organising Germany’s small climate-denial scene rather than conducting its own research. In Katowice he said, after repeated questions, that EIKE vice-president Michael Limburg “works a quarter-time post in my Bundestag office” and “I trust him.” Schellnhuber, then emeritus director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told *taz* he had long tried to talk to EIKE: “It simply makes no sense. They do not want to understand.” A footnote in the 2020 Paris motion pointed readers to an EIKE page on defining a global mean temperature.

In February 2020 Correctiv, with ZDF’s *Frontal21*, reported that Limburg confirmed the staff post, that he was an AfD member who had helped write the party’s climate programme and stood on the Brandenburg list in 2017, and that EIKE, founded in 2007, supplied arguments against climate policy. The investigation said the U.S. [Heartland Institute](/organizations/heartland-institute) had helped spread those ideas in Germany and that the AfD quoted them in the Bundestag, against what Correctiv called a worldwide research consensus, assessed by hundreds of scientists in the IPCC, that climate change is substantially human-caused.

Two weeks before COP24, *taz* reported, the AfD invited physicist Nir Shaviv, who attributes warming and sea-level rise to the sun, to a Bundestag hearing. Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute called that work “nonsense”; Hilse told the Greens they “simply cannot stand other opinions being voiced here.”

## Migration, security and foreign policy

### Migration and policing

In his first extended speech in the Bundestag, on 23 March 2018, Karsten Hilse of the Alternative for Germany named the “Migrationskrise” and the “Euro-Krise” as the foremost problems he attributed to longer-serving members. He linked migration to rural security through the return of the wolf in eastern Saxony. As lead signatory of AfD motion 19/594 of 30 January 2018, he asked the government to test whether animals in Germany were the protected subspecies *Canis lupus lupus* or unprotected hybrids and, until that was settled, to remove problem animals, set regional caps and speed compensation for livestock holders.

On 2 February 2018 he warned of possible attacks on children and called a change in wolves’ “Beuteschema” the “nächste logische Schritt”, while saying the AfD did not want to shoot them “in Massen”. On 28 June 2018 he tied the issue to Lusatia and to migration. He said the Saxon CDU had adopted a problem the AfD had raised, and he cited Minister-President [Michael Kretschmer](/people/michael-kretschmer), at an event in Hoyerswerda that Hilse attended, on the need to check which animals were present so as not to protect hybrids. He then said wolf resettlement and the “Migrationskrise” showed “viele Parallelen”. Quoting political scientist Yascha Mounk on an “Experiment” to turn a “monoethnischen, monokulturellen Demokratie” into a multiethnic one, he asked who had authorized it and listed “Vergewaltigungen”, “Morde” and “Angriffe auf Einsatzkräfte” as the “Verwerfungen”. He said the government had first claimed that mostly women, children and skilled workers were arriving and that refugees would finance pensions: “Mittlerweile wissen wir, dass überwiegend junge Männer zu uns kamen. Über 80 Prozent von ihnen verfügen nicht über die in Deutschland benötigte Bildung. Der überwiegende Teil lebt vom Sozialstaat. Genauso läuft es beim Wolf.” Wolves, he added, were “Raubtiere”, not a “Kuscheltier”, and both experiments were out of control; he also referred to a reported attack on two children in Poland. SPD deputy Carsten Träger called the comparison “geschmacklos”, especially on the day of the Polish report, and said the children appeared only minimally injured.

On 20 December 2019, debating an AfD motion that named migration as a cause of the housing shortage, Hilse answered Caren Lay (Die Linke) on his district. He said asylum seekers in the district of Bautzen were in large shelters because the CDU Landrat had so decided, and that vacancies in Hoyerswerda existed because a housing company was drawing demolition subsidies rather than re-letting empty flats.

### European Union

At the AfD federal congress in Dresden on 11 April 2021, Hilse drew, according to the *Rheinische Post*, the strongest applause of the EU debate with the line “Weil die EU sterben muss, wenn Deutschland leben will.” Delegates adopted, against party leader [Jörg Meuthen](/people/jorg-meuthen), the wording: “Wir halten einen Austritt Deutschlands aus der Europäischen Union und die Gründung einer neuen europäischen Wirtschafts- und Interessengemeinschaft für notwendig.” The leadership draft had treated exit only as an option if the party’s concept failed inside the existing union. Meuthen, then an MEP, said declaring a wish to leave would achieve nothing and that it was “weitaus klüger” to cooperate inside the European Union, including with Hungary’s Fidesz. The *Rheinische Post* called the meeting the first “Björn Höcke congress”, with repeated votes sharpening the draft on the EU and on migration against Meuthen and Alexander Gauland.

### Russia, Ukraine and other foreign affairs

After reports of civilian killings in Bucha, Hilse spoke at the AfD Bundestag group’s press conference on 5 April 2022. Asked about a tweet by Saxon colleague Maximilian Krah, he called for an independent inquiry into the “schrecklichen Vorgänge” and said, “Da gibt es ein paar Dinge, die sich nicht so nachvollziehbar darstellen.” The Berlin daily *taz* reported that he denied the sentence minutes later, although the conference was livestreamed. The same account said he was among members seeking disciplinary measures against deputy group leader Norbert Kleinwächter, who had called [Steffen Kotré](/people/steffen-kotre)’s claims of U.S. bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine “widerliche Putin-Propaganda” and had demanded Russia’s exclusion from the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe). Business manager [Bernd Baumann](/people/bernd-baumann) said both sides had acted unwisely and that guilt for Bucha required a full investigation first. *taz* reported that the group’s line remained opposition to economic sanctions and to arms deliveries.

On 30 January 2023, after the federal government agreed to supply tanks to Ukraine, Hilse told a demonstration in Querfurt: “Das hätte ich mir nicht vorstellen können, dass deutsche Panzer wieder in Richtung Russland, wie damals halt in Richtung Sowjetunion fahren und dort quasi in den Krieg eingreifen wollen.” The rbb programme *Kontraste* used the speech in a report on AfD use of Russian narratives; Julia Smirnova of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said such narratives were by then repeated at every level of the party.

On 13 November 2022, as the group’s climate-policy spokesman, Hilse said remarks by Economy Minister Robert Habeck and SPD deputy Bengt Bergt showed an intention, under an amended [Energy Security](/drivers/energy-security) Act, to take remaining pipes from Nord Stream 2 AG so they could not repair the Nord Stream lines. He stated: “Offensichtlich wurden die Pipelines Nord Stream 1 und 2 mindestens in Kenntnis der Bundesregierung zerstört. Jetzt wird die Reparatur der Pipelines verhindert.”

## COVID-19 pandemic and legal proceedings

### Positions on pandemic measures

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Karsten Hilse, an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) member of the Bundestag from Bautzen, rejected official accounts of the disease and the restrictions against it. At a May 2020 rally on the Bautzen market square, shown by *Monitor*, he said, "Wo sind die ganzen Corona-Toten? Die sind nicht da. Erstunken und erlogen." In his constituency office for the 3 December 2020 broadcast he called masks a means of intimidation and said the "riesengroße Seuche" was not there; *Monitor* reported that more than 100 people in the district had died of or with COVID-19.

On 4 November 2020, during a climate speech, he wore a "Querdenken" T-shirt, referring to the movement against pandemic measures, under his jacket. Vice-president [Claudia Roth](/people/claudia-roth) (Alliance 90/The Greens) told him to button it, under an agreement against slogans on clothing; he had used a scarf instead of a mask. At the constituent sitting in October 2021 he was one of 22 AfD members who refused the 3G access rule and sat in the gallery with a sticker reading "nicht geimpft".

From the gallery on 13 January 2022, during the debate on a statement by economics minister Robert Habeck, Hilse said other European countries were following the World Health Organization in treating COVID-19 as a moderately severe influenza, while Germany set aside Basic Law liberties, practically imposed a professional ban on medical staff and made citizens and members "Menschen zweiter Klasse" if they refused an "experimentelle Gentherapie". He likened that to "die dunkelsten Zeiten der Geschichte" and spoke of deaths from "Gentherapieschäden" and a "menschenverachtenden Coronapolitik". On 7 April 2022, in the debate on a general vaccination mandate, he cited Paul Ehrlich Institute statistics and the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment of 15 February 2006 on the Aviation Security Act, arguing that the state may not treat people as mere objects or weigh one life against another, and called the proposal "menschenfeindlich" and unconstitutional.

### 2020 arrest and 2022 penalty order

On 18 November 2020, while the Bundestag considered amendments to the Infection Protection Act, police stopped Hilse beside a Querdenken demonstration in Berlin's government district because he wore no mask. He showed a medical certificate he said exempted him; officers said it named no specific illness. Hilse said officers used force when he tried to film and called the detention "brutal" and "absurd" for an administrative offence. Police wrote that he had been uncooperative, had identified himself as a member, had told a companion to film and had then resisted; video showed him on the ground in handcuffs, and near the Brandenburg Gate he shouted that he was a Bundestag member. A Bundestag police note reported by *Der Tagesspiegel* placed the check at a Wilhelmstraße control point: he first complied, then had a companion film and was brought to the ground.

Police investigated resistance to enforcement officers and suspected forgery of a health certificate. In December 2021 the Berlin prosecution confirmed to *taz* an investigation for suspected resistance and a request that the Bundestag authorize prosecution; *Der Spiegel*, citing *taz*, reported that the certificate allegation was no longer part of it. *Der Tagesspiegel* wrote that Hilse invoked immunity, but that Bundestag rules did not extend it to liberty-restricting measures under the Infection Protection Act.

On 13 January 2022 the Bundestag, by a broad majority against the AfD, authorized the proceeding, adopting the recommendation in Drucksache 20/440, which referred to a Federal Ministry of Justice letter of 9 December 2021. Reporting from the Bundestag said the case concerned that resistance allegation.

The Amtsgericht Tiergarten issued a penalty order of 20 daily rates of €150, €3,000 in total, for *Widerstand gegen Vollstreckungsbeamte*. A court spokesperson told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that Hilse accepted it and that it became final on 4 March 2022; the court found he had resisted an identity check without a mask or a valid certificate. *Der Tagesspiegel*, confirmed by a spokesperson for Berlin's criminal courts, noted that this avoided a public trial and that 20 daily rates left him without a prior conviction, a line the paper put at 90 daily rates. Hilse told the agency he did not accept that he had acted in a "strafrechtlich relevant" way. He said cases against the officers had been dropped, witnesses had not been heard and the investigation had been one-sided, and that he accepted the order to spare his family the media attention of a hearing.

## Public reception

### Criticism of climate positions

National newsrooms have treated Karsten Hilse’s statements on climate change as a rejection of mainstream research. In a March 2018 Bundestag debate, *Der Spiegel* reported that he called human acceleration of warming an “Irrlehre” and a “fantasy of green ideologues,” and that he greeted “the patriots of Pegida Dresden.” Asked by a Social Democratic member why he rejected what about 99 percent of scientists said, he answered that “0.3 percent of studies contain indications that warming is man-made.” CSU deputy Georg Nüßlein, Left deputy Ralph Lenkert and CDU deputy Andreas Jung answered from the floor, the last of them calling climate protection a task for society as a whole.

In September 2019 the ARD Faktenfinder found that he had misstated a letter of more than 500 signatories to the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) secretary-general. Titled “There is no climate emergency,” it said both natural and human factors cause warming; Hilse had called it a rebuttal of human-caused change and named Fritz Vahrenholt. His citation of [World Meteorological Organization](/organizations/world-meteorological-organization) secretary-general Petteri Taalas against “climate hysteria” left out Taalas’s call, that month, for a radical cut in greenhouse-gas emissions.

A December 2018 *taz* profile from Katowice called him the Bundestag’s most radical denier of human-caused warming. He said there was “no proof” that human carbon-dioxide emissions measurably affected the climate and “no consensus of 97 percent of researchers.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change co-author Hans-Otto Pörtner said the baseline Hilse kept demanding is on page 6 of the 1.5 °C report, the 1850–1900 average; Social Democratic deputy Klaus Mindrup, present when Hans Joachim Schellnhuber answered him, said Hilse had not understood. At an Alternative for Germany hearing, Potsdam Institute researcher Anders Levermann called invited physicist Nir Shaviv’s work “nonsense”; Hilse told the Greens they could not bear other opinions. Schellnhuber said of the European Institute for Climate and Energy that he had tried to talk with the group and “they do not want to understand.” Hilse replied that EIKE vice-president Michael Limburg “works on a quarter-time post in my Bundestag office” and “I trust him,” and said he felt “like a heretic” in Katowice.

### Conduct in parliament and public debate

Refusals to elect him vice president became a public measure of his standing. Each group is entitled to a seat, but members vote freely. As the fifth AfD nominee of the 19th Bundestag he received 154 votes in favour and 473 against on 16 January 2020 (30 abstentions), short of the majority of members, then 355. On 5 March the tally was 120 to 509, with 15 abstentions. On a third ballot on 7 May, where *Der Spiegel* and the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that a majority of votes cast would have been enough, he received 129 in favour and 501 against, with 26 abstentions. Nominated again on 12 September 2024, he received 78 in favour and 552 against, with 14 abstentions and one invalid ballot, short of 367.

On 13 January 2022, from the gallery used by unvaccinated members, he told Robert Habeck that treating people who refused what he called “experimental gene therapy” as second class recalled “the darkest times of history,” that Habeck and his advisers should have their “mental state” examined, and that “I despise you—with few exceptions—deeply.” *t-online* called the speech a trivialization of National Socialism; Habeck did not reply, and the chamber largely let it pass. Hilse posted it as “My first speech from the tribune of honour.” Of more than 200 comments, many thanked him, some followers urged fewer insults, and other users called the speech unbearable. The same day the Bundestag authorized a separate criminal investigation over a 2020 demonstration.

On 12 May 2023 Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt called him to order for “political symbols or political stickers, in particular of a defamatory character,” after he held up a folder, to applause from the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP. RTL reported that the sticker read “Whoever votes Green votes for war,” listing “1999: Yugoslavia,” “2001: Afghanistan” and “2023: Ukraine.” On 6 November 2024, debating a CDU/CSU climate motion, he said Jens Spahn as health minister had helped exclude people “in an almost fascist manner” and, “in violation of the Nuremberg Code,” push them into gene treatment. Göring-Eckardt called him to order for “associative and direct comparisons of the CDU/CSU group with the times of the absurd racial ideology and the racial mania of the National Socialists,” again to applause from those four groups.

### Coverage in Saxony

In Saxony, regional outlets have covered him chiefly as the AfD member for the Bautzen area. Before the 2021 election the *Lausitzer Rundschau* introduced the Hoyerswerda candidate as one of ten names in the constituency then numbered 156. On 29 March 2022 Radio Lausitz reported a public exchange in Kamenz with FDP member Torsten Herbst on coronavirus policy and the economic effects of the war in Ukraine; Social Democrat Kathrin Michel had declined, mayor Roland Dantz said.

Two weeks earlier the station reported that Hilse was struck at an AfD stand in central Bautzen after two men knocked over a flag. Police said he was lightly injured and sent the case to the state criminal police’s extremism unit; the attackers had not been found. AfD state deputy Frank Peschel called the assault cowardly and spoke of “left-wing violent offenders” in Bautzen. In January 2025 the *Lausitzer Rundschau* reported a criminal complaint by Hilse against CDU candidate Steffen Roschek. MDR Sachsen reported that in February he took 48.3 percent of first votes in Bautzen I, against 24.1 percent for Roschek and 9.8 percent for Caren Lay of Die Linke.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/karsten-hilse