Leif-Erik Holm

Leif-Erik Holm (born 1 August 1970 in Schwerin) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany and a trained economist. He has represented Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the Bundestag since the 19th legislative period (2017–2021), when he entered on the state list for the constituency Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I. At the 2025 federal election he won constituency 12, Schwerin – Ludwigslust-Parchim I – Nordwestmecklenburg I, with 35.9 percent of the first votes (60,865), ahead of Dietrich Monstadt of the CDU on 20.9 percent. The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member’s own disclosure, lists him as state chairman of the AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; the Nordkurier already described him in that office in September 2016.

That disclosure traces a path through the late German Democratic Republic and reunified Germany: a ten-class polytechnic secondary school in Lübstorf, an apprenticeship as an electrical fitter at the BMK Industrie- und Hafenbau in Stralsund, basic military service in the National People's Army, the Abitur at the Technische Hochschule Wismar, and a master’s degree in economics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. It also records a long period as a radio presenter at Antenne MV, Hit Radio FFH and Norddeutscher Rundfunk. In 2016 the Nordkurier reported a dispute over how the Antenne MV work ended. Holm produced a letter of 2 May 2013 that ended his freelance contract and referred to a telephone call on 21 April 2013, the day he was chosen as the AfD’s lead candidate in the state for that year’s federal election, while managing director Robert Weber told the trade paper kress that Holm had left of his own accord.

Holm was the AfD’s lead candidate for the 2016 election to the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. His disclosure for the 19th Bundestag lists a prior seat in that Landtag and work as a staffer for the then MEP Beatrix von Storch; by 19 September 2016 the Nordkurier described him as chair of the AfD parliamentary group there. In that Bundestag term he was a full member of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and a deputy member of the Transport Committee, and the disclosure lists an honorary seat on the Schwerin city council.

On 20 September 2026 voters elected the ninth Landtag. The official final result gave the AfD 38.2 percent of second votes and 32 of 71 seats, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany 35.5 percent and 29 seats, on a turnout of 78.0 percent. Holm stood as the AfD’s candidate for minister-president in the Schwerin I constituency and had no place on the state list. Manuela Schwesig of the SPD held the direct seat with 54.4 percent of the first votes to his 28.2 percent, and he remained a member of the Bundestag.

Early life and education

Childhood and family

Leif-Erik Holm was born on 1 August 1970 in Schwerin, then in the German Democratic Republic. He comes from Klein Trebbow, just north of the city. In 2016 Die Zeit called it the village of about 1,000 people to which he said he remained attached, while also describing him as coming from Schwerin.

A March 2026 profile in Das Parlament, drawn from an interview, said he grew up near Schwerin in a politically interested household. It reported that his father was an electrical-trade instructor (Elektrolehrmeister) and his mother a pediatric nurse; published accounts do not name either parent. Holm has described the family as social democratic in outlook and, as he put it, with a bourgeois note: oriented toward the West, yet accommodating the East German state. He recalled the West German Tagesschau and said hardly anyone at home watched Aktuelle Kamera, East German television's main news. He added that he had liked Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, records that he is married with four children. In September 2016 he told the Nordkurier that his main home was in Klein Trebbow, ten kilometres north of Schwerin, and that his wife still had a flat in Berlin for her work; a dpa profile that month placed the family in the village and in Berlin.

Vocational training and military service

The same self-report lists a ten-class Polytechnische Oberschule in neighbouring Lübstorf. That was the GDR's standard general school, introduced from 1959 as a free, uniform compulsory school; by the 1980s most pupils completed ten years. He then trained as an Elektromonteur, an electrical fitter, at BMK Industrie- und Hafenbau Stralsund, the construction and assembly combine named in the biography. Die Zeit reported that when the Peaceful Revolution began he was 19 and still in that apprenticeship, and that he called himself an enthusiastic spectator of the change. Das Parlament also placed the start of the apprenticeship in the GDR. A 1998 Antenne MV presenter note, written in the first person, put the same start as "first an electrician and a village DJ."

The Bundestag entry places basic service in the National People's Army after the apprenticeship, without a unit or dates. From 1962, conscription required men aged 18 to 26 to serve 18 months; there was no civilian alternative. On that order, and because he was still an apprentice at 19 in 1989, the service he reports would have fallen at the very end of the GDR.

University studies

Sources disagree on the next qualification. The Bundestag biography says he passed the Abitur at the Technische Hochschule Wismar, and a t-online profile in September 2026 used the same word. Das Parlament wrote that he took a Fachabitur, and the Berliner Morgenpost wrote that he later made one up there. The Technische Hochschule existed only from 1988 until 1 October 1992, when it was refounded as the Hochschule Wismar, a university of applied sciences. No published biography dates the examination.

He then studied economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The Bundestag lists a Master of Science, and Das Parlament also said he finished with a master's; neither gives a year. Die Zeit tied the Berlin studies to the period in which he worked as a village DJ and then as a radio presenter in Schwerin and Frankfurt am Main.

Broadcasting career

Radio MV and Antenne MV

Holm was a radio presenter for about two decades at Antenne MV, Hit Radio FFH and the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). The Berliner Morgenpost, t-online and his Bundestag biography — the last compiled from members’ own information — all list those stations.

An Antenne MV profile from 1998 dated the start to 1990. It described an electrician and village disc jockey who voiced commercials at Radio Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (RMV), including “Ob spitz, ob flach, jedes Haus braucht ein Dach!”, hosted an oldies programme at 19, did holiday-wave work, and joined Antenne MV in 1993. On 1 January 1992 the NDR took in the former regional stations in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and continued RMV as NDR 1 Radio MV; kress later called Holm’s NDR spell brief.

By December 1998 the station called him its “Uhrmensch” and the host of Live am Morgen. The same joke profile named Heinz Erhardt for wordplay and Ludwig Erhard for economics among his models, and “dogmatists, populists and slow drivers in the left lane” among his irritations.

Hit Radio FFH

From 1999 to 2006 he presented night and evening programmes at Hit Radio FFH in Bad Vilbel, the Frankfurter Neue Presse reported. Station chief Hans-Dieter Hillmoth said he was “a good presenter, but in the end it was not enough for the morning programme,” called him a “netter Junge” (“a nice guy”), and said he had never stood out politically there. Spokesman Dominik Kuhn remembered him as “unobtrusive and reserved.” kress wrote that he left a successful period — it placed a morning show in Rostock — because he wanted a change, and that the FFH years then went less well. The title Live am Morgen is from the 1998 Antenne page, which does not mention Rostock.

Return to Antenne MV and the 2013 departure

kress reported that in 2006 he returned to the north-east as an Antenne MV freelancer and did not repeat his earlier success. An unnamed Antenne employee told the Frankfurter Neue Presse that he “covered every daypart” and was “a big fish in a small pond,” the reverse of FFH, but that colleagues had not known he had a wife and child.

How the contract ended in 2013 was disputed in the press in 2016. Neither kress nor the Nordkurier reported a court ruling.

On 15 September 2016 kress published Armin Fuhrer’s “Die Mär vom selbsternannten Opfer aus dem Nordosten.” Managing director Robert Weber said a dismissal over the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was “false,” and that “Holm himself resigned entirely voluntarily when he began working for” Beatrix von Storch, then the party’s Berlin state chairwoman. The station, which saw itself as unpolitical, had not known of any party activity, he said, and would probably have wanted a conversation if it had. He stressed that Holm was a freelancer, not an employee. kress said Holm had not answered requests for comment.

Four days later Holm showed the Nordkurier a letter of 2 May 2013, which he said the programme director and Weber had signed. As the paper quoted it, the letter cited a call on 21 April 2013 about his AfD engagement and stated that the station was ending the freelance contract that day, “alternatively at the next permissible date.” The Nordkurier reported that 21 April was the day he became the AfD’s Bundestag lead candidate in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Holm said the call had only conveyed that news, that he had not contested the termination, and that he had himself treated a top party office as a problem for journalistic independence. He said work for von Storch could not explain the letter, because she entered the European Parliament more than a year later, and he denied a staged dismissal to protect unemployment benefits: as a self-employed freelancer he had never registered. Weber was not reachable that day.

The unnamed employee told the Frankfurter Neue Presse that Holm resigned when the AfD work began, and that after the party missed the Bundestag his attempt to return “fizzled out” (“im Sande verlaufen”).

Entry into the AfD and state leadership

Founding years and the 2013 federal election

Holm joined the newly founded Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the spring of 2013 and, on 21 April 2013, was chosen as its lead candidate on the state list in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He told the Nordkurier he had set aside radio presenting for the campaign. He called for an orderly exit from the euro, which he said was too strong for southern Europe and too weak for Germany, for simpler and lower taxes, for Swiss-style referendums, and for paying for the energy transition from the federal budget rather than the electricity price.

The AfD stood no constituency candidates in the state. At the Bundestag election of 22 September 2013 it received 48,885 second votes there, 5.6 percent, behind the CDU (42.5 percent), the Left Party (21.5 percent) and the SPD (17.8 percent), on a turnout of 65.3 percent. Nationally it took 2,056,985 second votes, 4.7 percent, and missed the five-percent threshold, so Holm did not enter parliament. By 25 February 2014 the Nordkurier described him as having stepped back for "professional reasons," with the Rostock gallery owner Holger Arppe as state chair, while prosecutors in Rostock investigated whether Arppe was behind anti-Muslim posts under a pseudonym, which he denied.

State chair

On 29 November 2014 a congress in Greifswald elected Holm and the family-court judge Matthias Manthei as the two Landessprecher, ahead of three other candidates, after Arppe withdrew. Arppe had been charged that October with incitement to hatred (Volksverhetzung) over the alleged posts and called the case baseless. The pair were confirmed on 22 November 2015 in Güstrow; Arppe and Petra Federau lost, and Holm said the party wanted a double-digit share at the 2016 state election.

In November 2017, at Gägelow near Wismar, Holm was re-elected first chair by 106 votes to 40 for Heinrich Berkel of Rostock, who cited divided districts, flat membership and an ambition for the federal chair; Holm said he was inclined to decline any such offer. Dennis Augustin became equal co-speaker with 57 percent against Enrico Komning.

In July 2019 the executive under Holm cancelled Augustin's membership, and with it the co-speakership, after the Nordkurier linked him to a 1989 training camp of the National Democratic Party of Germany and to its youth wing. Holm said the issue was false statements on the 2016 application; Augustin called it a planned removal of a rival and said he would go to the party court. Hagen Brauer, a former CDU politician, was elected co-speaker at the end of 2019 and resigned in May 2021 after losing a Schwerin constituency nomination and then a list place, writing that more than half the members had withdrawn their confidence.

On 23 October 2021 in Grevesmühlen, members re-elected Holm and chose Enrico Schult as co-speaker. A proposal for a single chair missed the required two-thirds majority. Both were returned on 4 November 2023 in Neubrandenburg, where Holm told about 300 participants the party wanted government.

At Demmin on 22 November 2025 an open vote nominated him, with a few abstentions, as candidate for minister-president, but a secret ballot on the chair—repeated after a ballot-paper error—still drew almost 50 votes against him among nearly 250 delegates. NDR reported that his choice for deputy, Petra Federau, lost, that a general-secretary post was rejected, and that people around the state-parliament group called him isolated, with influence moving toward Dario Seifert, identified by NDR as founding chair of the state's Young Alternative and as having a far-right past. Holm was still co-chair when, on 30 May 2026 in Grimmen, nearly 240 delegates elected Seifert general secretary with almost 92 percent. NDR reported that Seifert had been in the NPD youth organization and had tried to unseat Holm in 2021; Holm praised his talent, and that rivalry was not raised at the meeting.

Staff role in Brussels and Berlin

Between those campaigns Holm worked for Beatrix von Storch, a member of the European Parliament from 2014. The Nordkurier later described him as head, for a time, of her office in Berlin. He told Der Spiegel that the job ended at the close of May 2016, after which he concentrated on the state campaign. When Antenne MV's manager tied the May 2013 end of Holm's freelance radio contract to work for von Storch, Holm answered that she became an MEP only more than a year later.

Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

2016 state election

On 4 September 2016 Holm led the Alternative for Germany list into the seventh Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin. Turnout was 61.9 percent of 1,328,320 eligible voters. The AfD won 167,852 of 806,419 valid second votes (20.8 percent) and 18 of 71 seats, three of them direct and 15 from the list, behind the Social Democratic Party of Germany (30.6 percent, 26 seats) and ahead of the Christian Democratic Union (19.0 percent, 16 seats). Die Linke took 13.2 percent and 11 seats; Alliance 90/The Greens (4.8 percent), the National Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party (3.0 percent each) missed five percent. Holm called it possibly "the beginning of the end of Angela Merkel's chancellorship."

In constituency 28, Nordwestmecklenburg II, including Klein Trebbow, turnout was 63.8 percent. Martina Tegtmeier (SPD) won with 9,431 first votes (31.9 percent). Holm, with 6,824 (23.1 percent), missed the seat and entered from first place on the state list. The SPD–CDU coalition continued, and on 1 November 2016 the Landtag re-elected Erwin Sellering minister-president by 41 votes to 29, with one abstention.

Challenges to his eligibility

Section 6 of the state and local elections act required a registered residence in the state for at least three months, or a main residence if there was more than one. A Zeit Online article of 1 September 2016 was read as placing him with his wife and child in Prenzlauer Berg and as saying he would move back to Klein Trebbow only after the election. Holm called that a misunderstanding. He said he was registered only in Klein Trebbow, that his wife was registered in Berlin for work, and that his job in MEP Beatrix von Storch's Berlin office had ended in May 2016. To the Nordkurier he said there was "nothing at all to the accusations."

Returning officer Doris Petersen-Goes said on 29 September that five objections had been filed. Amt Lützow-Lübstorf had certified his eligibility, and her office checked those papers formally, not where a candidate actually lived. The constituency nomination was admitted on 7 July 2016 and the state list, with Holm first, on 14 July, before the reports the objectors cited.

The interior ministry, after hearing the registration office, found that from 4 June 2016 his sole residence was in Klein Trebbow. He said that until polling day he had spent 71 days there, 14 away and eight with his family in Berlin. For the time up to 3 June, while he still worked for von Storch, the ministry treated Berlin as his center of life, but held that stretch irrelevant to the three-month test. The Ostsee-Zeitung reported a bill of 38 kilowatt-hours from 1 April 2016 to 15 March 2017. Holm said he ate, washed and spent most of his time in his parents' flat downstairs and used his own rooms mainly to sleep. The election-review committee found the account coherent and said further inquiry would breach his privacy.

His resignation took effect on 30 November 2017, with Horst Förster succeeding from the list, so three objections to his election were formally spent. The committee held unanimously that until then they had been admissible but manifestly unfounded. On 14 March 2018 the Landtag adopted that view, in printed paper 7/1872, with every group's votes and no abstentions.

Group leadership

On 8 September 2016 the 18 AfD members elected Holm chair at the first attempt. A tie for parliamentary manager was broken by lot for Matthias Manthei; Holger Arppe, Enrico Komning and Ralph Weber completed a five-member executive. Der Spiegel described Arppe, Komning and Weber as on the party's right and Holm and Manthei as more moderate. With the largest group outside the SPD–CDU government, he led the opposition.

On 10 October 2017 the group elected Nikolaus Kramer, a former Greifswald police officer, in his place as he moved to the Bundestag; Weber became parliamentary manager. Departures had reduced the group to 13, and those who left accused it of shifting toward the far right. The Nordkurier described Kramer as staunchly conservative and Weber as on the outer right. Holm and Komning kept their Landtag seats until 30 November 2017. The group said the two salaries were fully offset and that they stayed only for the handover. Förster and Jens-Holger Schneider replaced them.

Bundestag

Elections of 2017 and 2021

Holm has been a member of the Bundestag since the federal election of 24 September 2017. He stood for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in constituency 15, Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the district then held by Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). On 26 February 2017 a state party congress in Sparow elected him, with no opponent, as the AfD's lead candidate on the state list, by 187 of 206 votes, and he was also the direct candidate against Merkel.

The final count gave the CDU 73,746 first votes (44.0 percent) and the AfD 32,173 (19.2 percent), ahead of Die Linke on 15.9 percent and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 11.6 percent; turnout was 70.4 percent. The Bundestag recorded Merkel's share as the best first-vote result in the state. Der Spiegel later named Holm as the runner-up and put him at 19.3 percent, a tenth of a point above the AfD's final figure. He missed the district and entered on the state list: the biography for the 19th Bundestag lists that list mandate together with constituency 15, and the Nordkurier later wrote that he had headed the AfD state list in both 2017 and 2021 and had come in on second votes.

He stood again in constituency 15 on 26 September 2021. At a state congress in Kemnitz, the Nordkurier reported, 198 of about 290 members backed him for the top list place in a first secret ballot, against 70 for Andreas Mrachacz and 18 for Siegfried Klein; objections over surplus ballots forced a repeat, after which the paper treated the place as filled. The direct seat, which Merkel had won eight times from 1990, went to Anna Kassautzki of the SPD with 40,429 votes (24.3 percent), the first time in more than 30 years it had not gone to the CDU. Georg Günther (CDU) received 33,903 votes (20.4 percent) and the AfD 33,025 (19.9 percent), so Holm finished third; turnout was 70.1 percent. He returned to the 20th Bundestag on the state list, still tied to constituency 15.

Direct mandate in 2025

Before the election of 23 February 2025, Holm said he would leave Vorpommern-Rügen and stand in constituency 12, Schwerin – Ludwigslust-Parchim I – Nordwestmecklenburg I. He won the district with 60,865 first votes (35.9 percent), ahead of Dietrich Monstadt of the CDU on 35,455 (20.9 percent); the SPD received 34,100 (20.1 percent). The AfD's first-vote share was 19.3 percentage points higher than in 2021, and the party also led the second vote, with 54,975 votes (32.3 percent). Turnout was 80.7 percent of 212,978 eligible voters. NDR reported that the constituency of Reem Alabali-Radovan, the SPD's lead candidate in the state, passed to Holm, a member since 2017. The 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025, and his biography records a constituency mandate for district 012.

Posts inside the parliamentary group

On 5 October 2017 the AfD group, then 92 members after Frauke Petry had left, elected five deputy chairs under Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel: party deputy Beatrix von Storch, Holm, Tino Chrupalla, Roland Hartwig and Peter Felser. Handelsblatt reported that none was counted in the current around Björn Höcke, and that Holm, the state chair and a former radio presenter, first beat von Storch in one ballot; she won a later round, ahead of candidates including Stephan Brandner.

He lost the deputy chair at the mid-term board election on 10 October 2023, to Stefan Keuter of North Rhine-Westphalia. A dpa report said he had been in the group's inner leadership for six years. Holm called the result close and a setback in the group, citing unpopular personnel decisions over two years and pressure from the large North Rhine-Westphalia delegation for a board seat, and said the vote did not weaken his position in the state party. Separately, the group elected him its economic-policy spokesperson on 14 December 2021 and again on 20 May 2025.

Committees and constituency offices

Committee seats changed by term. In the 19th Bundestag he was a full member of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) he was a full member of the Economic Affairs Committee and a deputy member of the committees on Climate Action and Energy, Tourism, and Transport. In the 21st Bundestag his biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and a deputy member of the Transport Committee.

For the present mandate the Bundestag lists a Berlin office at Platz der Republik 1 and constituency offices in Hagenow (Lange Straße 108) and Schwerin (Bürgermeister-Bade-Platz 2). The archived biographies for the 19th and 20th periods, when his district was on the Baltic coast, publish only the Berlin address.

Economic and energy policy

Taxation, regulation and the business location

As economic-policy spokesperson of the Alternative for Germany group in the Bundestag, Holm has tied the industrial location to taxes, social contributions, regulation and energy prices. His motion of 23 June 2026, “Neue Wirtschaftskraft entfesseln”, asked for a reform on lines drawn by Paul Kirchhof: a €15,000 basic allowance, an extra €12,000 child allowance, lower corporate taxes, simpler rules, energy taxes at the European Union minimum, and repeal of the national carbon levy. It also sought “one in, two out”, bureaucracy costs down 25 per cent by 2030, and repeal of the supply-chain, building-energy and renewable-energy laws. The text called the tax-and-contribution ratio one of the world’s highest.

In January 2026 he told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung the programme was “Befreiung”: less state, lower electricity, income and corporation tax, an end to the Energiewende, and pensions eventually at 70 per cent. Bureaucracy should be cut “mit der Kettensäge”. Knut Bergmann of the German Economic Institute called this “wirtschaftspolitisches Gift”: revenue down and spending up meant “auf der Überholspur in Richtung Staatsbankrott”. Marcel Fratzscher of the German Institute for Economic Research said tax cuts, higher spending and the debt brake could not be financed together. Holm called that AfD-bashing. Die Familienunternehmer said, after inviting him, that the programme was “wirtschaftsfeindlich”. He replied that a “billionenteure Energiewende”, higher taxes and contributions and a “Bürokratie-Moloch” were exporting jobs.

Energy, nuclear power and pipelines

On 13 February 2019 he said that, after nuclear power and coal, Alliance 90/The Greens wanted to “verteufeln” gas, and that only flexible gas plants could cover calm, dark periods. Nord Stream 2, he argued, strengthened security rather than dependence on Russia. On 19 November 2020 he said United States sanctions threatened the Sassnitz ferry port and accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of wavering. The line, he said, was 97 per cent built. The Bundestag rejected the AfD motion to back the pipeline by 556 votes to 83. Timon Gremmels of the Social Democratic Party of Germany also called it useful for supply security, but said the government was already defending it.

On 21 September 2022 he moved to drop the gas levy, bridge importers with loans and guarantees, use Nord Stream and keep reactors online. He cited 4,500 demonstrators in Schwerin and gas prices up by as much as ten times. The levy, he said, fed inflation and, after Uniper was nationalised, was “de facto eine Steuer”; closing nuclear and coal plants had created the demand. Quoting Robert Habeck on a mild winter, he said shutting modern reactors and then hoping for the weather was scarcely rational. Gremmels answered that Russia’s war was the cause, that the West had imposed no gas sanctions, and that Vladimir Putin had stopped Nord Stream 1. Ingrid Nestle of the Greens said the shock came from fossil dependence, not renewables, and that Uniper’s losses were not a gap banks would fill.

In 2026 he again called Russian gas “konkurrenzlos günstig”, wanted Nord Stream repaired after the war, and called Germany the “energiepolitische Geisterfahrer” on nuclear power. Bergmann called renewed dependence on a state at war absurd; Fratzscher said treating renewables as inefficient was incompetence or misdirection. The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern programme asked to commission the intact Nord Stream 2 string, repair the rest and restart shut reactors, and spoke of “Windkraftwahn”. The economics ministry told dpa that Russian gas stayed sanctioned and certification was federal, neither possible nor wanted. Jacopo Maria Pepe of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said a Land government could slow wind by planning, but not stop it or decide a nuclear return, without federal law.

In the NDR debate on 16 September 2026 he repeated the price claim. NDR noted an EU import ban a Land government could not lift, found no proof new Russian gas would be “konkurrenzlos” cheap, and recorded prices still almost twice the pre-war level. Manuela Schwesig called the plan unworkable. NDR found the programme does propose reactivating reactors and studying sites in the state; a 2024 Fraunhofer analysis called reactivation slow and costly, and renewable output was about three times consumption, not the double Schwesig cited. Holm said the Lubmin plant, given to Ukraine, could have supplied 50,000 households. NDR confirmed the gift and the April 2023 closure, but 2021 output implied about 24,000.

Migration, broadcasting and other positions

Migration and asylum

As a Bundestag member of the Alternative for Germany, Leif-Erik Holm separates regulated labour migration from what he calls illegal immigration. In a September 2026 debate on ntv and Ostseewelle he called skilled immigration “völlig in Ordnung” and defined “remigration” as sending people without a residence right home, and as letting Germans who had left for lack of prospects return. Manuela Schwesig of the Social Democratic Party of Germany said border controls had reduced illegal migration and that many immigrants already contributed.

Interior Ministry answers to his questions put deportations initiated by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern at 79 in the first half of 2026, against 152 a year earlier, and the national figures at 9,663 and more than 11,800. Holm called the policy a “Desaster”. Reported with those numbers, the AfD state programme proposed a departure facility, detention for offenders and a police returns unit. An NDR fact-check of the 16 September debate confirmed the 79 and 9,663 totals.

After Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December 2024, a further ministry reply listed 13,563 Syrians with a residence title in the state, including 3,705 with refugee status and 4,777 with subsidiary protection. Holm said the fall had ended both the need for protection and the right to stay. Ulrike Seemann-Katz of the state refugee council said revocation had to be individual, called post-Assad Syria a failed state, and noted that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had paused decisions affecting about 1,000 people in the state.

Public broadcasting

Holm, formerly a commercial-radio presenter, has said that cancelling the treaties on the Norddeutscher Rundfunk and on the media would be among his first acts if the AfD took office. A draft programme proposed a smaller “Grundfunk”; the Nordkurier reported that the party regards the household fee as wrong and the output as one-sided. NDR chief lawyer Michael Kühn said termination of the NDR treaty could not take effect before August 2031, that a “Grundfunk” would not satisfy the Basic Law’s demand for an independent public broadcaster, and that altering that demand would require a two-thirds Bundestag majority. A single Land, he said, could not abolish the contribution.

In the NDR magazine Zapp in August 2026 Holm said the goal was not abolition but forcing “echte” reforms, which he did not specify. The charge, as the programme reported it, was too little airtime on ARD and ZDF. Editor-in-chief Gordana Patett said relevant forces had to be covered, though not uncritically, and noted right-wing-extremist classifications of the AfD in five Länder. In the 16 September debate he denied that the AfD had placed an active politician on the NDR council. The fact-check found the treaty allows this and that the AfD’s 2017–2020 delegate, Romy Schult, was herself a district councillor.

Other domestic themes

Before the 2026 election, Enrico Schult, AfD group chair in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, said the group would open an inquiry into the state’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. It was to examine closures, lockdowns and what the party called pressure to vaccinate. SPD group chair Julian Barlen called an inquiry the wrong instrument and said the decisions had been made under uncertainty in order to protect lives.

On the war in Ukraine, Holm told the NDR debate that Nord Stream gas was “konkurrenzlos günstig” and should resume once the war ended and relations with Russia were normal. The fact-check said direct imports had stopped in 2022 and prices were still almost twice pre-war levels; a uniquely cheap restart could not be shown, and a ban by the European Union could not be overridden by one Land. Pipeline economics are treated in the section on economic and energy policy. He also said a Lubmin plant given to Ukrainian companies could supply 50,000 households; from 81.1 million kilowatt-hours in 2021, the check calculated about 23,973. On the talk show hosted by Markus Lanz on 23 September 2026, Holm said he did not fear Russia and urged diplomacy and “verbale Abrüstung”.

Local politics in Schwerin

2023 mayoral election

On 4 June 2023 Schwerin, capital of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, elected its Oberbürgermeister. Of 78,545 eligible voters, 39,508 cast ballots (turnout 50.3 percent), and 39,347 votes were valid. Incumbent Rico Badenschier of the Social Democratic Party of Germany led with 16,510 votes (42.0 percent). Leif-Erik Holm of the Alternative for Germany, the party's state chair and a Bundestag member, was second with 10,792 (27.4 percent). Thomas Tweer, an independent backed by the Christian Democratic Union, the Free Democratic Party and the Unabhängige Bürger, took 6,714 (17.1 percent). Daniel Trepsdorf of Die Linke received 3,506 (8.9 percent), Regina Dorfmann of Alliance 90/The Greens 1,088 (2.8 percent), and Martin Steinitz of Aktion Stadt und Kulturschutz 737 (1.9 percent). Nobody had an absolute majority, so the first two advanced to a runoff.

It was the first time an AfD candidate had reached a mayoral runoff in a German state capital. That evening Die Linke and the Greens urged support for Badenschier, and minister-president Manuela Schwesig asked democrats to set a signal against the AfD. The next evening the Schwerin CDU district executive recommended Badenschier "with a heavy heart" but unanimously: chair Jascha Dopp said Holm tolerated right-wing extremists in his party. The delay had brought a call from Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee for a barrier against the AfD at every level. The local FDP issued no recommendation. Holm answered with a poster, "All against one, one for Schwerin." He had demanded a stop to receiving migrants in the city and cited rising violent crime. Badenschier told NDR he stood for a "city of good neighbourliness."

On 18 June, with 38,663 of 78,390 eligible voters taking part (49.3 percent) and 38,438 valid votes, Badenschier won 26,078 (67.8 percent) to Holm's 12,360 (32.2 percent). The term of office is seven years.

City council

Holm entered the Stadtvertretung at the municipal election of 9 June 2024, heading the AfD lists in all three electoral areas. Turnout was 64.8 percent (50,842 of 78,517 eligible voters), against 58.0 percent in 2019. Voters may give more than one vote to individual candidates, and 147,473 votes were valid. The AfD received 38,352 (26.0 percent) and 12 of 45 seats, up from 15.1 percent and seven seats in 2019, and became the largest group. The CDU won 9 seats, the SPD 8, Die Linke 5, the Unabhängige Bürger 3, the Greens 3 and the FDP 2; Die PARTEI, Aktion Stadt und Kulturschutz and the independent Heiko Steinmüller won one each. On the preliminary count Holm had 19,794 personal votes, more than any other candidate; Sebastian Ehlers of the CDU was next with 12,504.

At the constitutive sitting on 8 July 2024 Holm stood for Stadtpräsident, which he said the largest faction could claim. In a secret ballot Ehlers, the sitting president, was returned with 20 votes to Holm's 14 and Steinmüller's 9. Only 11 of the 12 AfD members were present, so at least three of Holm's votes came from outside the group, but the AfD won no seat on the presidium. The other faction chairs had met beforehand without the AfD and, the Nordkurier reported, settled the posts in order to limit the party's influence.

The Bundestag register of disclosable interests lists, under functions in public-law bodies, "Mitglied der Stadtvertretung, ehrenamtlich" for the state capital Schwerin: honorary membership of the city council, with no payment shown.

The 2026 state election

Candidacy and campaign

On 22 November 2025 a state congress of the Alternative for Germany in Demmin nominated co-chair and Bundestag member Leif-Erik Holm, with only a few abstentions among about 250 delegates, as its candidate for minister-president of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He said the aim was to govern alone, but he did not stand on the state list and sought only Schwerin I, against the incumbent Social Democratic minister-president Manuela Schwesig. Co-chair Enrico Schult was to head the list, so Holm would not appear on the statewide ballot; the NDR reported that a constituency defeat would leave him in the Bundestag.

At a list conference in Neubrandenburg on 24 January 2026, Schult defeated Landtag group leader Nikolaus Kramer for first place, 164 votes to 82 of 249 cast. Holm proposed him and did not contest a list place. Four days before the 20 September election, on 16 September, Holm and Schwesig debated for an hour on Norddeutscher Rundfunk television from the state broadcasting house in Schwerin. Susanne Stichler and Thilo Tautz moderated; the lead candidates of the other parties had debated without them the day before. Education, the economy and migration dominated. Holm proposed moving about 400 teachers from administration into schools and cited 79 deportations from the state in the first half of 2026. An NDR fact-check treated the deportation figure as correct. Asked about ending the NDR state treaty and the broadcasting fee, he said public broadcasting, including the NDR, often misinformed viewers. Tautz interrupted that these were "complete false claims" and that the broadcaster would not accept an accusation of disinformation; Schwesig accused Holm of misleading people.

Holm said he and Schult were a team: he would enter the Landtag if he won the constituency, but would not give up a directly elected Bundestag seat after about a year if he did not. He came without party colleagues. The SPD called Schwesig the winner; NDR reported that the AfD barely mentioned the debate and that Schult had said a defeat in Schwerin would send Holm "back to Berlin."

Result and immediate aftermath

In the election the AfD took 38.2 percent of second votes (388,050) and 32 of 71 seats, 22 of them direct mandates among 36 constituencies. The SPD followed with 35.5 percent (360,396) and 29 seats, 14 of them direct. Die Linke received 6.5 percent and five seats, and Alliance 90/The Greens 5.7 percent and five. The Christian Democratic Union, on 4.9 percent, and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, on 4.8 percent, missed the five-percent threshold. Turnout was 78.0 percent. In Schwerin I, Schwesig won 21,369 first votes (54.4 percent) to Holm's 11,064 (28.1 percent), on a turnout of 80.6 percent. With no list place he did not enter the Landtag. A minister-president need not hold a Landtag seat, but no majority was open to the AfD, and Holm remained a Bundestag member.

SPD, Left and Greens together held 39 seats, and the other parties had ruled out cooperation with the AfD. Schwesig called the SPD result a mandate for a "democratic, stable government" and opened talks with the Left and the Greens; both state boards agreed. Schult said the AfD was ready for opposition and called continued exclusion of so large a group "abenteuerlich." Holm told NDR Info: "I think we could govern. At the moment, though, it does not look as if that will happen." CDU lead candidate Daniel Peters resigned as state chair.

The Landtag met for its constituent sitting on 20 October 2026 in Schwerin Castle, while a prospective SPD–Left–Green majority was still being assembled. It re-elected Birgit Hesse of the SPD as president against the AfD's Carlos Rodrigues and chose Simone Oldenburg of Die Linke and Maya Tischler of the Greens as vice-presidents; the AfD received no presidium seat. Schult, by then group leader, said the party would ask the state constitutional court to review the new members' law and rules of procedure. An AfD inquiry into the state's coronavirus measures, which Holm had announced, was withdrawn in the council of elders before the sitting, with no reason given.

Public image and reception

Media portrayal

Reporting on Holm has started from his manner as a long-time radio presenter and then tested the "moderate" or bürgerlich label. In the September 2016 campaign in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Die Presse wrote that his soft radio voice wrapped "nationale und manchmal auch radikale Inhalte", that he played the smiling "Paradeschwiegersohn", and that his place on the moderate wing was disputed. It noted his call to close the borders "zur Abwehr von Flüchtlingen" and his label for the Social Democratic Party, "Scharia-Partei Deutschlands". After that election the Frankfurter Neue Presse, citing the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, called him less loud than Björn Höcke, less vain than Alexander Gauland and less preoccupied with power than Frauke Petry — the politician who had put "nett" into political reporting.

In 2026 the reservation was in the headlines. A Spiegel profile of 14 September was titled around voters cheering him while his own people gossiped. From Bad Doberan, the taz wrote that he affected a bürgerlich air, with "dem Charme eines Sparkassenbeamten", avoided "millionenfache Remigration", and still demanded a "Rückführungspolizei". On 18 September Die Zeit published "Leif-Erik Holm und die radikalen Burschen". The Neue Zürcher Zeitung next day headlined "Der nette Herr Holm, zu freundlich für seine Partei": at a Schwerin rally he did not contradict talk of "den Ukrainer" drawing Bürgergeld, and later called that criticism of "Sozialtourismus".

Place in the party

On 5 October 2017 the new Alternative for Germany group in the Bundestag elected five deputy chairs whom the Handelsblatt did not count in the nationalist Der Flügel around Höcke: Tino Chrupalla, Beatrix von Storch, Roland Hartwig, Holm and Peter Felser, under chairs Alice Weidel and Gauland. On 28 October 2023 the Nordkurier reported that he marched beside Höcke at an AfD demonstration in Erfurt against federal migration policy, and that both spoke. In a Welt interview on 10 September 2026 he called Höcke a successful state chairman and the AfD a "breit aufgestellte Volkspartei" in which there was a place for him too. He did not adopt Höcke's Neubrandenburg claim of a path into a "Diktatur neuen Typs", but said "der Weg kann dahin führen".

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported national-conservative members calling him lazy and interested only in money. The taz reported that in May 2026 Dario Seifert, formerly in the youth organization of the National Democratic Party of Germany and earlier barred from office partly under pressure from Holm, became general secretary with 92 percent, and called Holm a presentable but replaceable figurehead. He left its questions about other candidates unanswered; the paper also reported that he has defended a "Remigrationskonzept" and described Islam as a political ideology "absolut unvereinbar" with "unseren Vorstellungen".

Criticism

Minister-president Manuela Schwesig said, as the taz quoted her, "Niemals darf unser Land in die Hände von Extremisten fallen." Daniel Trepsdorf of Die Linke called the state AfD a dense gathering of violence-prone right-wing extremists, "wohlwollend begleitet" by the leadership around Holm.

The intelligence classifications are of the party, not a published personal finding on Holm. In May 2025 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution upgraded the federal AfD to a "gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung". On 26 February 2026 the Cologne administrative court barred that public label until the main case, finding anti-constitutional tendencies that did not yet shape the whole party. NDR reported that the assessment linked 13 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern parliamentarians and functionaries, including Enrico Komning and Nikolaus Kramer, to unconstitutional activity, without treating this as a finding about Holm. Unlike the other eastern Länder, the state office has not classified the branch "gesichert rechtsextrem". Presenting the report on 11 June 2026, interior minister Christian Pegel (SPD) cited "Unterschiede in Ton, Inhalt und Radikalität". Holm told Welt the authorities perhaps worked "noch etwas korrekter", so the party could appear as "eine ganz normale bürgerlich-konservative Partei".