Knuth Meyer-Soltau

Knuth Meyer-Soltau (born 13 March 1965 in Diepholz, Lower Saxony) is a German criminal-defence lawyer and a politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since the 21st term opened at its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025, holding a seat from the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia. At the federal election of 23 February 2025 he stood for the AfD in constituency 139, Bochum I.

The Bundestag biography, which records the member's own account, states that he grew up in Hamburg-Neugraben, is unaffiliated with a religious denomination, is married for the second time and has two children. He attended a Realschule in Hamburg-Fischbek and then the Lessing-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Harburg, and studied law at the Philipps University in Marburg, at Goethe University Frankfurt and at Ruhr University Bochum, completing the second state examination. Since 1998 he has practised in Bochum as a self-employed lawyer and certified specialist in criminal law (Fachanwalt für Strafrecht). Until 2017 he examined candidates for the qualification "Fachkraft für Schutz und Sicherheit" at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Gelsenkirchen.

He joined the AfD in 2016. A Westfalenpost profile of 9 February 2017, published when he was the party's direct candidate for a Landtag seat in the eastern Hochsauerlandkreis, reported that he had earlier belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany and, for about a year around German reunification, to The Republicans, which he said he left when the "strammen Rechten" took that party over. A federal party congress in Cologne on 23 April 2017 elected him to the AfD's Bundesschiedsgericht, and the Bundestag biography states that he was the court's president in 2018. In December 2020 the federal executive, on a motion by co-chair Jörg Meuthen, made him head of the party's working group on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, replacing Roland Hartwig; co-chair Tino Chrupalla voted against the change. From 2019 to 2024 he was an assessor on the AfD's North Rhine-Westphalia executive, latterly its legal adviser (Justiziar), and from 2018 a scientific adviser to the party's group in the state parliament. The biography also lists him as deputy district speaker of the AfD in Bochum.

In Bochum I he received 22,797 first votes (14.1 percent), behind Serdar Yüksel of the Social Democrats (53,007 votes, 32.7 percent) and Vivienne Chantal Fee Roth of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (39,925 votes, 24.6 percent), and ahead of Max Lucks of Alliance 90/The Greens (22,181 votes, 13.7 percent). The AfD's second-vote share in the constituency was 13.8 percent, 7.2 points above 2021, and he entered the Bundestag from place 16 on the party's North Rhine-Westphalia list. On 4 February 2025, at a debate of the direct candidates hosted by the churches in the Friedenskirche in Bochum-Wattenscheid, he threatened Lucks with a slap and then with blows after Lucks said the CDU had formed majorities "with Nazis". In the Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Petitions Committee, and a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführer). He has kept the Bochum criminal practice alongside the mandate and, from 1 November 2025, has also sat on the Bochum city council. In a ruling that WDR reported on 4 September 2026, after a seven-hour hearing and nine witnesses, the Landgericht Essen found for fellow AfD member Matthias Helferich on an alleged insult at the party's North Rhine-Westphalia list congress in Marl on 12 July 2026, leaving him free to repeat that Meyer-Soltau had said "Halt die Fresse, du dummes Arschloch"; the allegation that Helferich had been pushed from a chair was dropped in the hearing, the chamber rejected Meyer-Soltau's account that the words had been aimed at himself, and he was ordered to bear the costs.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Knuth Meyer-Soltau was born on 13 March 1965 in Diepholz, in Lower Saxony. The biography published by the German Bundestag says that he grew up in Hamburg-Neugraben, that he belongs to no religious denomination, and that he is married in a second marriage and has two children; the parliament states that these details are the member's own information. In December 2024 the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, reporting his candidacy in Bochum, described him as a 59-year-old lawyer, which is consistent with that date of birth.

Neugraben-Fischbek, the quarter named in the biography, is in the southwest of Hamburg, in the borough of Harburg and on the border with Lower Saxony. The city describes it as one of Hamburg's largest quarters, a residential district beside the Fischbeker Heide. Meyer-Soltau's biography says that he attended a Realschule in Hamburg-Fischbek and then transferred to the Lessing-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Harburg. It gives neither dates nor the name of the Realschule. Under the framework agreed by the Kultusministerkonferenz, a Realschule follows the intermediate track of lower secondary education and leads to the Mittlerer Schulabschluss, while a Gymnasium leads toward the Abitur and the general higher-education entrance qualification; a sufficiently strong intermediate certificate can open the way into the gymnasiale Oberstufe. The parliamentary text does not say which leaving certificate he obtained, or where.

University and student corporations

He studied law at the Philipps University of Marburg, Goethe University Frankfurt and the Ruhr University Bochum, and completed the second state examination in law. The Bundestag text spells the Marburg university "Phillips-Universität". The university itself is the Philipps-Universität: Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse founded it in Marburg in 1527 as the first Protestant university still in existence, with a law faculty among its original four, and it has carried its founder's name since the early twentieth century. Goethe University, in Frankfurt, opened in 1914 as the Königliche Universität zu Frankfurt am Main, a civic foundation, and was renamed the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in 1932. The Ruhr University, a campus university in Bochum in North Rhine-Westphalia, records a decision to found it in 1961 and the start of teaching in 1965. The biography lists the three universities but does not say in which order he attended them, how long he stayed at each, or where he sat the examinations.

Under the German Judiciary Act, qualification for judicial office is acquired by completing a university course in law with a first examination and a subsequent preparatory service, the Referendariat, with a second state examination. Meyer-Soltau's biography records only that second examination. It does not give a year, a mark or the state in which he took it.

The same biography does not mention a student corporation. In June 2025 the Berlin daily taz, in a report on the Coburger Convent and its relationship to the Alternative for Germany, wrote that Meyer-Soltau and Sebastian Maack were members of the Convent sitting in the Bundestag for that party. The article does not name a particular Studentenverbindung or say when he joined. The Convent, founded on 12 May 1951 in Coburg by the merger of the Deutsche Landsmannschaft and the Vertreter-Convent of Turnerschaften, describes itself as an association of nearly 100 Landsmannschaften and Turnerschaften at universities in Germany and Austria. Its stated principles are "Ehre, Freiheit, Freundschaft, Vaterland"; it says it is colour-wearing (farbentragend), that its members are Waffenstudenten, and that it requires each member to fight two regulated academic fencing bouts, or Pflichtmensuren, which it presents as a contact sport rather than a duel over honour. Membership is described as a lifelong bond between students and graduates. The Convent's spokesman told taz that members' party affiliations are neither asked for nor a criterion of membership.

Criminal-law practice

Chambers in Bochum

Since 1998 Meyer-Soltau has practised on his own account in Bochum. The biography the Bundestag publishes from members' own information describes him as a Rechtsanwalt and Fachanwalt für Strafrecht, a specialist designation in criminal law. Under the Fachanwaltsordnung of the Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer, that title requires, among other things, three years' admission and practice within the six years before the application, proof of personal casework in the field, and a structured further-training course; Strafrecht is one of the designations the rules list. His firm's legal notice names the Rechtsanwaltskammer Hamm as the competent chamber and gives the Bochum office as Kortumstraße 110, 44787 Bochum. Directory entries do not all use that street number. Das Örtliche places the Bochum office at Kortumstraße 105. Gelbe Seiten lists a separate office at Niederwiesenring 56 in Rodgau and likewise describes him as a lawyer and specialist in criminal law.

Representation of football supporters

The fullest independent accounts of how he used the practice are local profiles from 2013 and 2014. On 30 November 2013 the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung described him as a Bochum lawyer who called himself a "Fananwalt" and who stepped in around football matches when supporters ran into trouble with the police, stewards or others. He told the paper that the police often overshot the mark and that this was not acceptable.

Bild returned to the subject on 12 May 2014 and called the then 49-year-old the only fan-curve lawyer in the Ruhr football region, someone whose workplace included the stadium as well as the office and the courts. The paper reported that he wore a suit and white tie at his desk and, in the stands, a heavy black jacket printed "Fan-Anwalt". It quoted him as saying that the jacket made him easy to approach for supporters who usually had no lobby and often even less money, and that the work joined his hobby to his profession. He told Bild that VfL Bochum was his favourite club and that he held a season ticket in Bochum, but that he also acted for clients from Schalke, Dortmund and Essen, and that the division was irrelevant. The matters he described ranged from an allegation over a stolen St. Pauli backpack to criminal damage from pyrotechnics on an artificial pitch in Marl; most often, he said, they were arrests before kick-off for resisting enforcement officers (Widerstand gegen Vollstreckungsbeamte).

That role later became a point of conflict inside the local supporter scene. On 7 February 2017 the Westfalenpost reported that the Bochum lawyer had been nominated in Bestwig as the Alternative for Germany direct candidate for the state election in the eastern Hochsauerland constituency of North Rhine-Westphalia, by 12 votes to eight. Two days later the fan site Faszination Fankurve reported that Faninitiative Bochum had distanced itself from a Bochum fan lawyer and VfL supporter who was to stand for the AfD. The group was quoted as saying that the party's positions contradicted its rejection of discrimination and racism, and that it would no longer instruct a lawyer who was a candidate for a party at odds with those principles. The site added that the lawyer had represented many football supporters in court but did not belong to the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fananwälte. The initiative's Facebook post names Meyer-Soltau as that Fananwalt and says he was standing as an AfD direct candidate at the coming state election.

Examining and other professional roles

The same Bundestag biography states that until 2017 he was an examiner for the apprenticeship Fachkraft für Schutz und Sicherheit at the chamber of industry and commerce in Gelsenkirchen. The IHK Nord Westfalen describes that occupation as work protecting people, premises and installations, including measures to avert hazards, in private security firms, transport companies and facility management. The parliament's register of members' interests, compiled from his declarations, shows that the law office stayed open beside later public posts. Before the mandate it lists both the Bochum practice and a post as scientific staff of the AfD group in the North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag, the latter with a right to return. As paid work alongside membership of the Bundestag it lists "Rechtsanwalt und Fachanwalt für Strafrecht, Bochum", with the clients anonymised as Mandant M 32, M 33 and M 38.

Political affiliations before the Bundestag

Earlier party memberships

Meyer-Soltau's party memberships before the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are on the public record through a February 2017 Westfalenpost interview, given when the paper profiled him as the AfD's new direct candidate in the eastern Hochsauerlandkreis. He said that he had first belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and later, for about a year, to The Republicans (Die Republikaner). The article's sub-headline placed that Republican membership in the 1990s; Meyer-Soltau himself located it in the period of the Wende, the German reunification, and said that he made no secret of it.

He told the paper that he had left the Republicans when the "strammen Rechten" (the hard right) had taken the party over, and that he had said to himself, "Freunde, da mache ich nicht mit" ("Friends, I'm not going along with that"). The interview names no office in the SPD or the Republicans and no day or month of joining or leaving. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on the member's own disclosures, contains the line "Eintritt in die Alternative für Deutschland 2016" and does not mention either earlier party.

Die Republikaner were formed in 1983 as a right-wing breakaway by dissatisfied members of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. The Federal Agency for Civic Education records that scholars place the party, depending on the phase, in the national-conservative, right-populist or right-extremist spectrum, and that a long internal contest between far-right and national-conservative currents was never settled. On account of those tendencies, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and several state offices observed the party from 1992 to 2006. Because the 2017 interview gives no calendar year for the resignation, it does not show whether Meyer-Soltau's year of membership fell inside that period of observation.

Joining the Alternative for Germany

The same Bundestag disclosure dates his entry into the AfD to 2016. The party had been founded in 2013, in protest against eurozone rescue policy. By April 2017 the investigative newsroom Correctiv described him as coming from the AfD district association in Bochum, the city where he practised law. His first reported candidacy was nevertheless not there but in the Sauerland: on 7 February 2017 the Hochsauerlandkreis AfD nominated him at a meeting in Bestwig.

He was selected as the direct candidate for Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia constituency 125, Hochsauerlandkreis II, which the Westfalenpost described as the area covering Brilon, Bestwig, Meschede and Olsberg. He received 12 of 20 votes; Klaus Selter, a businessman from Ramsbeck, received eight. The vote filled a vacancy left by Andre Monkol, until then both candidate and district chairman, who had resigned in January. Monkol told the paper that he was dissatisfied with what he called a growing "Funktionärs-Clique" (clique of functionaries) around Marcus Pretzell, the AfD state chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia. Pretzell addressed the Bestwig meeting as a guest. The association had not published the venue beforehand, writing to the paper that it was withholding the address for general security and for Pretzell's protection.

The nomination did not reach the ballot. The Berliner Morgenpost reported that, because the AfD was not yet represented in the Bundestag, a direct candidate had to present 100 supporting signatures from voters in the constituency. Meyer-Soltau told the Westfalenpost that, having stepped in after the local quarrel, he had assumed the Hochsauerlandkreis association would handle those formalities. On 3 April 2017 the Morgenpost reported that he had gathered too few signatures and had not been admitted. In the official result for the state election of 14 May 2017, constituency 125 shows no AfD candidate for the first vote. The party's state list was on the ballot and received 3,879 second votes, 6.0 percent; Matthias Kerkhoff of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany won the constituency.

Party offices

Federal arbitration court

The Bundesschiedsgericht is the federal arbitration court of the Alternative for Germany, and in an expulsion case it can be the further instance after a state arbitration court. At the federal congress in Cologne on 23 April 2017, delegates elected four new members: the Bochum lawyer Knuth Meyer-Soltau, Germut Bielitz, Ines Oppel from Bavaria, and Ralf Bommermann, a judge from Hilden. Several opponents of Björn Höcke, chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in Thuringia, welcomed the slate; one called the four "almost our preferred candidates."

The court then being renewed had been described as dominated by sympathizers of the national-right faction Der Flügel. It had blocked dissolution of the Saarland state association, which was disputed because of contacts into the far-right milieu, and it had refused a clear break with Pegida, described in the same report as hostile to Islam. A majority of the federal executive had already decided to expel Höcke over his speech in Dresden, citing his call for a "180-degree turn in remembrance policy" and his criticism of alleged careerists in the party. The case was to be heard first by the Thuringian state arbitration court and only afterwards, if at all, by the federal court.

Meyer-Soltau's entry on the website of the Bundestag, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own accounts, says that he was president of the Bundesschiedsgericht in 2018. Reporting of the Cologne election records him as a member of the court, not as its president.

Working group on domestic intelligence

In September 2018 the federal executive created an internal working group, "Verfassungsschutz," to prepare legal and argumentative responses to possible observation by state offices for the protection of the constitution or by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. By December 2020 some AfD state associations were already under watch, and the Federal Office had classified the formally dissolved Flügel as a right-wing extremist endeavour. Roland Hartwig, a Bundestag member and former chief counsel at Bayer, had led the group for about two years.

On 21 December 2020 the executive, meeting by telephone on a motion from co-chairman Jörg Meuthen, removed Hartwig and appointed Meyer-Soltau head of the group. Co-chairman Tino Chrupalla voted against the change and said so publicly. Bundestag member Roman Reusch left the group, stating that trusting cooperation with the majority which had carried the decision was no longer possible for him. Deputy chair Alice Weidel, who a spokesman said had missed the call and who also co-chaired the Bundestag group, said the working group had been "shot to pieces without need" and that Hartwig, "a level-headed and intelligent mind," had been "coldly dumped."

Hartwig said he regretted the decision on what he called a very important task, and he described the extremist classification of the Flügel as unjustified. Asked in the Bundestag group about the risk that the whole party would be observed, he said he had answered that this was quite to be expected, because the Verfassungsschutz acted in a "strongly political" way, and that certain statements by Meuthen had made the party's defence more difficult. Der Spiegel reported that Hartwig had sided with those who thought the annulment of Andreas Kalbitz's membership a mistake, and that the change of leadership was also apparently intended to avert observation of the party as a whole, which might come as early as January. Meuthen had shortly before criticized the party's right wing at a federal congress.

At the federal congress in Dresden in April 2021, Höcke secured a late vote on a resolution meant to reverse Hartwig's removal. Der Spiegel reported that Meuthen would not submit to the vote, and it quoted a letter from the executive majority that criticized how the ballot had been taken and contrasted the two heads of the group. Under Meyer-Soltau, the letter said, there were weekly meetings and a sharply increased workload was shared more evenly; Hartwig, it said, had decided important questions ever more often without informing colleagues, so that work "in the team" had become "almost impossible." The magazine separately described Meyer-Soltau as a confidant of Meuthen; that label is Spiegel's, not a quotation from the letter. Chrupalla, Weidel, Stephan Brandner and Stephan Protschka voted in the executive against sending the letter. The Bundestag biography states that he headed the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Verfassungsschutz from December 2020 to October 2021. News reports confirm the December appointment; they do not independently date the end of the post to October 2021.

North Rhine-Westphalia executive and Landtag staff

The same self-reported biography says that Meyer-Soltau was an assessor (Beisitzer) on the AfD state executive in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2019 to 2024, latterly its legal officer (Justiziar), and that from 2018 he was a scientific adviser to the party's group in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. A statutory disclosure of work before his Bundestag membership separately records him as a scientific staff member and adviser to that Landtag group in Düsseldorf, with a right to return to the post, but it does not give a start year.

The state association reported that, on the weekend before 7 February 2022, delegates in Siegen elected a new executive under Martin Vincentz and listed Meyer-Soltau as one of five assessors, with Heliane Ostwald, Andreas Keith, Iris Dworeck-Danielowski and Hans Neuhoff. On 7 March 2026 it reported that about 500 delegates, a little more than a year before the 2027 state election, chose an executive for two years, confirmed Vincentz as state speaker for a third term, and again named Meyer-Soltau an assessor, alongside Sven W. Tritschler, Tim Csehan, Markus Matzerath and Denis Pauli. Writing in 2026, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger described him as sitting on that executive for the camp around Vincentz, whom the paper called the more moderate-appearing state leader, as distinct from a völkisch camp in the state party.

2025 Bundestag election

Candidacy and campaign

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. Constituency 139, Bochum I, comprises the city districts of Bochum-Mitte, Wattenscheid, Bochum-Süd and Bochum-Südwest; the remaining districts of North Rhine-Westphalia's Bochum sit in constituency 140, Herne–Bochum II.

On 24 January 2025 the constituency electoral committee admitted every nomination it had received for Bochum I, subject to the state electoral committee. Nine candidates stood, in the order the nominations arrived: Fee Roth of the Christian Democratic Union, Serdar Yüksel of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Knuth Meyer-Soltau of the Alternative for Germany, Max Lucks of Alliance 90/The Greens, Anna Schmit of the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany, Léon Beck of the Free Democratic Party, Cansin Köktürk of Die Linke, Lena Maria Christina Bormann of Die PARTEI and Nicole Marie-Luise Scheer of Bündnis Deutschland.

The state electoral committee admitted the North Rhine-Westphalia lists the same day, and the state returning officer published them on 30 January 2025. On the AfD list Meyer-Soltau — full name Knuth Hans-Peter Meyer-Soltau, a lawyer living in Bochum — held place 16. A Ruhr24 profile on election day described him as an AfD member since 2016 and a former legal adviser on the state executive, calling for a cannabis ban and more respect for police and firefighters. It summarised the others in their own terms: Yüksel on social justice and housing, Roth on tax and pensions, Lucks on human rights and wages, Köktürk on a basic income without sanctions, and Beck on civil liberties.

Confrontation at the Wattenscheid debate

On the evening of 4 February 2025 the Protestant and Catholic parishes in Wattenscheid hosted the direct candidates in the Friedenskirche. Janina Amrath of Radio Bochum and Jörg Steinkamp of Westdeutscher Rundfunk moderated. Yüksel, Lucks, Roth, Beck, Köktürk and Meyer-Soltau took part before a full church, and the audience could put questions. Migration dominated, alongside climate protection, education, digitalisation and poverty. Radio Bochum reported that Roth distanced herself from recent decisions of the federal CDU.

Lucks said that the CDU had formed majorities "with Nazis" ("mit Nazis"). Meyer-Soltau threatened him with a slap (Ohrfeige) and then with blows if Lucks called him a Nazi again. People in the audience shouted. Radio Bochum reported that the other candidates were openly shocked, sided with Lucks, and that by the end of the evening the participants had ruled out cooperation with the AfD. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported the next day that the discussion had escalated and had briefly come close to being stopped; a subtitle gave the threat as "Kriegst 'ne Ohrfeige". On 12 February the paper reported that Lucks intended to file a criminal complaint against Meyer-Soltau over the threat.

Result and list seat

Turnout in Bochum I was 81.7 percent: 163,505 of 200,128 people eligible to vote, 5.3 points higher than in 2021. Of 162,128 valid first votes, Yüksel won the constituency with 53,007 (32.7 percent, down 5.6 points). Roth, named on the federal returning officer's result as Vivienne Chantal Fee Roth, was second with 39,925 (24.6 percent, up 2.9 points). Meyer-Soltau was third with 22,797 (14.1 percent). The change from 2021 is shown as a dash: in the predecessor constituency Bochum I, then numbered 140, the AfD had no direct candidate, while its second-vote share there was 6.7 percent (10,232 votes). Lucks took 22,181 first votes (13.7 percent, down 4.9 points), Köktürk 15,273 (9.4 percent, up 3.3), Beck 4,680 (2.9 percent, down 6.1), Bormann 2,795 (1.7 percent, down 1.4), Scheer 1,050 (0.6 percent) and Schmit 420 (0.3 percent, down 0.1).

On second votes in the constituency the SPD led with 39,364 (24.2 percent, down 8.5 points), ahead of the CDU on 38,257 (23.5 percent, up 4.1), the Greens on 24,221 (14.9 percent, down 5.2), the AfD on 22,483 (13.8 percent, up 7.2), Die Linke on 19,653 (12.1 percent, up 6.7), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht on 6,374 (3.9 percent) and the FDP on 5,941 (3.7 percent, down 5.8). The constituency electoral committee adopted its result on 26 February 2025. The City of Bochum's figures for the first votes match the federal final result; some second-vote totals were revised slightly afterward.

In North Rhine-Westphalia the AfD received 1,770,379 second votes (16.8 percent) and 26 seats. The state returning officer's file of members elected from the state lists places Meyer-Soltau at AfD place 16, with AfD names running from place 1 to place 26; it also lists Lucks at Green place 12 and Köktürk at Left place 2, and does not list Roth. The Bundestag biography records him as elected on the North Rhine-Westphalia list after standing in constituency 139. The 21st Bundestag met for its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025, the 30th day after the election, at 11:00 in the plenary of the Reichstag building.

Parliamentary work

Committees, secretaryship and disclosures

In the 21st Bundestag, Knuth Meyer-Soltau sits for the Alternative for Germany as an ordinary member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. He was among the AfD's nine ordinary members when the committee was constituted on 21 May 2025, and the official biography, dated 31 October 2026, still records that seat.

The biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Petitions Committee, not a substitute. He was not named when that committee was constituted on 21 May 2025; the AfD seats then were Nicole Hess, Olaf Hilmer, Kurt Klaus Kleinschmidt, Angela Rudzka, Manfred Schiller and Jörg Zirwes. A directory with the committee's 2025 report, current as of May 2026 (printed paper 21/6000), lists him as an ordinary member and Rudzka as a substitute.

On 21 May 2025 the plenary also elected the Bundestag members of the committee which, with the competent federal minister, chooses judges of the highest federal courts, including the Federal Court of Justice (Richterwahlausschuss). The AfD list, printed paper 21/211, took four seats by d'Hondt; the chair named Meyer-Soltau, Stephan Brandner, Ulrich von Zons and Thomas Fetsch. He was not on the AfD slate for the separate committee that elects judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. The biography's office list of 31 October 2026 records the two standing committees and the secretaryship and does not mention the Richterwahlausschuss.

It also lists him as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführer). Of 64 secretaries in the 21st term, two at a time sit with the presiding President of the Bundestag, take motions, keep the speakers' list and declare the vote.

Before the mandate, the disclosures list scientific staff work for the AfD group in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf, with a right to return, and practice as a lawyer in Bochum. Alongside the mandate they record paid work as a lawyer and specialist in criminal law in Bochum, clients shown only as M 32, M 33 and M 38, and a City of Bochum function as a council member from 1 November 2025: monthly gross of 516.20 euro to 31 December 2025 and 552.20 euro from 1 January 2026, plus irregular gross sums of 878.00 euro in 2025 and 761.40 euro in 2026.

Plenary interventions

Floor speeches in the 21st term have concentrated on criminal law and criminal procedure.

On 25 September 2025, in the first reading of the 2026 federal budget (printed paper 21/600), he put unfinished prosecution files at about a million — about 950,000 open at the end of 2024 and 980,000 in early September 2025 — and argued that the six-month custody limit in section 121 of the Code of Criminal Procedure could not be met, so higher regional courts would lift arrest warrants. He asked for less spending on non-governmental organisations and more for the justice system.

On 9 October 2025, at the first reading of a government bill on electronic court files (printed paper 21/1852), he said the file, like the special electronic lawyer mailbox, had been enacted before the technical conditions existed. A duty on lawyers for appeals, beside an exemption for the courts, was in his view unequal treatment, and decryption in a data centre rather than end-to-end encryption was a point of attack, a view he attributed to the Federal Court of Justice. Separate Land systems, undigitised evidence and incomplete files, he said, put the defence at risk, so the statute was for the present unusable in practice.

On 19 December 2025, in the first reading of government bills on European counter-terrorism rules (printed paper 21/3191) and on cross-border electronic evidence in the European Union (printed paper 21/3192), he spoke on the evidence bill. Cooperation against crime, he said, must not drop domestic safeguards: he cited Article 23 of the Basic Law and argued that an order from another member state would interfere with Articles 10 and 13. He claimed preservation orders lacked both a judicial reservation and a mandatory role for the public prosecutor. Axel Müller of the CDU/CSU interjected that this was incorrect, and later said such requests were reserved to the higher regional courts.

On 23 April 2026, at the first reading of a bill from Alliance 90/The Greens for a consent-based sexual criminal law (printed paper 21/5480), he called the draft an attack on basic principles of German criminal law. Although the text denied any shift in the burden of proof, he said it would in practice reverse that burden, contrary to the presumption of innocence and to section 261 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and that requiring demonstrable consent, including negligent sexual assault, would punish misunderstandings. Green members interrupted to deny a reversal, and he called the bill symbolic politics.

On 10 June 2026 he spoke on a Green bill to extend the right to refuse testimony to social work and voluntary legal advice (printed paper 21/4290), taken with motions on football supporters from the Greens (21/4293) and Die Linke (21/5826). Citing the Federal Constitutional Court on truth-finding as the core of criminal justice, he said that circle had to stay narrow and that an extension to social work would weaken investigations. On the fan motions he said he had done that work for many years, rejected further schemes and spending, and said violence should be punished while peaceful supporters needed no supervisory state.

On 23 September 2026, in the first reading of a government bill and a Bundesrat bill on knockout drops used for robbery and sexual offences (printed papers 21/7560 and 21/551), he supported closing what he called a gap in the criminal code: a knife and a substance leaving a victim equally defenceless should not, he said, be treated differently on a technicality. A higher sentencing range, he added, would not secure convictions, because many such substances cease to be detectable within hours. He called for common standards and for emergency departments able to run rapid toxicological tests and keep court-usable evidence.

Local office in Bochum

City council

In the municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia on 14 September 2025, Knuth Meyer-Soltau stood in Bochum for the Alternative for Germany as its candidate in electoral district 23 (Wattenscheid-Mitte/Ost) and in seventh place on the party's reserve list for the city council. The city's notice of admitted nominations records him as a lawyer, born in 1965 in Diepholz and resident in Bochum.

The election committee fixed the official result on 22 September 2025. Of 153,681 valid votes, the AfD received 22,825 (14.85 percent) and 14 of the 92 council seats: one from the 33 electoral districts and 13 from the reserve lists. The Land returning office rounds the same total to 14.9 percent and records a gain of 9.2 percentage points on the 2020 municipal election, when the party had 5.6 percent and five seats; turnout was 55.0 percent. The Social Democratic Party of Germany remained the largest group, with 43,201 votes (28.11 percent) and 26 seats, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (30,789 votes, 20.03 percent, 18 seats) and Alliance 90/The Greens (22,110 votes, 14.39 percent, 13 seats).

The AfD's single district seat was not Meyer-Soltau's. Provisional figures had credited the party with district mandates in Wahlbezirke 22 (Wattenscheid-Mitte/Westenfeld), where its candidate was Bernhard Schneider, and 24 (Wattenscheid-West/Leithe). Postal ballots from Wahlbezirk 21 had been assigned to Wahlbezirk 22; after that error was corrected, the CDU candidate Stefan Klapperich took the seat, and reporting recorded that the AfD was left with one district mandate. The AfD candidate in Wahlbezirk 24 was Maik Klaus, third on the reserve list. Meyer-Soltau, who had stood in Wahlbezirk 23, therefore came onto the council from the reserve list. The city lists him as an AfD councillor. In the Bundestag register of members' interests, membership of the Stadtrat of the Stadt Bochum is given as beginning on 1 November 2025. Under section 14(2) of the North Rhine-Westphalian Municipal Elections Act, the new term after a general municipal election begins on the first day of the following month.

The same disclosure lists gross monthly payments from the city of 516.20 euros until 31 December 2025 and 552.20 euros from 1 January 2026, plus irregular gross payments of 878.00 euros in 2025 and 761.40 euros in 2026. For the council sitting of 20 November 2025, the AfD group filed an amendment dated 18 November and signed by its chairman, Ulrich Fuchs, asking the council to elect the group's nominees to the committees. Meyer-Soltau was named on the slate for the committee for sport, movement and leisure and placed first on the group's list for the election-review committee. An amendment of 24 September 2026, for the sitting of 1 October 2026, repeated those nominations.

District party and constituency office

Meyer-Soltau is deputy spokesperson of the AfD district association in Bochum. The association's board list names Christian Loose as spokesperson and Meyer-Soltau, Uwe Heitmann and Maik Klaus as deputy spokespersons, and gives a post-office box in Bochum (Postfach 10 22 05, 44722 Bochum) as its address. The Bundestag biography, which rests on the member's own particulars, uses the title stellvertretender Kreissprecher of the Kreisverband.

Separately from the council seat, the Bundestag lists a constituency office (Wahlkreisbüro) at Somborner Strasse 83, 44894 Bochum. That office is attached to his Bundestag mandate; the district association does not publish a street address of its own.

Intra-party conflict and litigation

The Marl party congress

On 12 July 2026 the Alternative for Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia met in Marl to nominate its list for the 2027 state election to the Landtag. WDR, citing participants, called the mood heated. It wrote that members who called themselves "liberal-conservatives", around state chair Martin Vincentz, were competing with members who called themselves "patriots". Der Tagesspiegel described a disorderly Landesvertreterversammlung, with more than 100 nominations for one list place, and placed Vincentz in what it called the more moderate camp. Der Westen reported that Matthias Helferich, a Bundestag member from Dortmund, lost a runoff to Landtag member Klaus Esser and that the Vincentz side carried the list. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger called Helferich head of a völkisch camp and placed Knuth Meyer-Soltau, a Bundestag member from Bochum and a state-executive member, with Vincentz, whom it said presented himself in a more moderate way. Der Tagesspiegel called Helferich far-right. WDR noted that both men are lawyers.

Helferich alleged a physical clash as well as an insult. He told Die Welt, as also reported by Der Spiegel and Der Tagesspiegel, that Meyer-Soltau walked along his row while arguing with another member, turned, bumped him in his seat, and shouted "Halt deine Fresse, du dummes Arschloch!" His complaint to prosecutors, copied to the federal and state executives, said Meyer-Soltau had deliberately or negligently struck his chair and upper body so that only the table edge kept him from falling, and it named two witnesses. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger quoted another sequence from the complaint: Helferich called "Was soll das?" and was answered "Halt deine Fresse, du dummes Arschloch!"

Meyer-Soltau denied it. Der Tagesspiegel, citing The Pioneer, quoted him: "Den erhobenen Vorwurf bestreite ich." He called Helferich's list result a "krachende Niederlage" and said Helferich was looking for satisfaction elsewhere. His lawyer told the Dortmund prosecutor that an assault allegation was gravely defamatory, and told Helferich that Meyer-Soltau had neither insulted nor attacked him and should sign a penal undertaking to stop. Der Spiegel reported the cross-complaints: Helferich over the alleged attack, Meyer-Soltau for alleged defamation (Verleumdung). Daniel Tapp, spokesman for co-leader Alice Weidel, said it was sad to have to recall minimum standards of conduct.

Proceedings at the Landgericht Essen

On 19 July 2026 Meyer-Soltau swore that he had neither insulted Helferich nor shoved him off the chair. A first-instance court barred Helferich from repeating the claims, and Helferich challenged that injunction at the Landgericht in Essen.

WDR reported on 3 and 4 September 2026 that, after about seven hours and nine witnesses, the court sided with Helferich on the insult. He could go on saying that Meyer-Soltau had insulted him at Marl with the words "Halt die Fresse, du dummes Arschloch", the form WDR gave, without the "deine" of Helferich's quotations. The claim that he had been shoved off the chair was dropped in the hearing and was not decided. Meyer-Soltau was ordered to pay the costs. He said he had aimed the words at himself, not at Helferich; WDR reported that the chamber did not accept that. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger quoted his description of a "spontane und emotionale Selbstansprache", wrote that several witnesses confirmed the insult, and wrote that the court found the explanation implausible and lifted the injunction. On 29 October 2026 that paper still described the judgment as not final. In a letter of 24 September quoted by Die Welt, Helferich wrote that the court had called the affidavit "lebensfern"; WDR did not use that word.

Complaints and party measures

Helferich then filed a further criminal complaint alleging a false sworn statement. Die Welt quoted his letter to the federal executive and Meyer-Soltau's reply: "Ich sehe dem gelassen entgegen, ich habe keine falsche Versicherung abgegeben." Neither that report nor the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger's 29 October survey recorded a criminal charge.

On 30 October Die Welt reported that the federal executive had opened a disciplinary proceeding (Ordnungverfahren) against Meyer-Soltau, with no sanction yet chosen, though exclusion and an immediate suspension of membership rights were in prospect. From a document it said it had seen, Welt reported party allegations — not court findings — of a conflict of interest over a counting machine that failed at Marl, a loss of about €30,000, an initial suspicion of Untreue, the insult, and a false affidavit. On 19 October Meyer-Soltau asked the federal leadership whether it really meant to allege Untreue, called that seriously defamatory, and wrote that the steps would show a wish to intervene in the state association, "something one could also call a politically motivated disciplinary measure."

Welt set the case in a wider contest in which, it wrote, Weidel's federal leadership was trying to overturn a state executive where Vincentz's side held seven seats to five. By late September it had opened an exclusion case against treasurer Christian Blex, accusing him of loudly intimidating delegates at Marl, and had suspended his membership rights. On 20 October a minority around deputy chair Christian Zaum, whom Welt called close to Helferich, asked the Düsseldorf prosecutor to investigate seven Vincentz-side members for Untreue over the failed count and lawyers' budgets. The state executive had also sought an urgent injunction at the Landgericht Düsseldorf against a federal order to stop the nomination and rerun the list; the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that the court refused it once the list was complete, for want of urgency, and that the federal executive then reprimanded all seven Vincentz-camp executive members for suing before using the party court, with a second reprimand for Vincentz for not withdrawing the application. Helferich challenged the list in the state party court and, in the letter Welt quoted, called Marl the party's "rechtlich-moralischen Tiefpunkt".