Marcus Bühl

Marcus Bühl (born 29 April 1977 in Ilmenau) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag from Thuringia. He has sat in the Bundestag since 2017, initially via the Thuringian AfD state list and, from 2021, as the directly elected member for Gotha – Ilm-Kreis. The parliament lists his occupation as Diplom-Informatiker (M. Sc.) (FH) and records that he has been self-employed in new media since 2004. The Bundestag states that biographical entries of this kind rest on the members’ own accounts.

That account says he belonged to no party before 2013, when he was a founding member of the AfD in Thuringia, and that from 2014 to 2017 he helped set up the constituency office of Landtag member Olaf Kießling in Arnstadt and worked for the AfD group in the Landtag of Thuringia in Erfurt. In a March 2017 portrait, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk described him as then working full-time as a staffer to an Ilm-Kreis member of the Landtag. He entered the 19th Bundestag in 2017 in third place on the Thuringian AfD list. At the 2021 federal election the Bundestag records him as the direct winner in the constituency, then numbered 192. The federal returning officer’s result for that district gives the AfD candidate 37,249 first votes (26.5 percent); the AfD also led the second votes with 36,522 (26.0 percent), and turnout was 74.8 percent of 190,519 eligible voters.

In the snap election of 23 February 2025 he again led the field in the renumbered constituency 191, with 60,354 first votes (41.2 percent), ahead of Tankred Schipanski of the Christian Democratic Union (29,345 votes, 20.0 percent). The AfD took 59,557 second votes (40.6 percent). Turnout was 80.3 percent of 184,279 eligible voters. Reporting on the preliminary count, MDR noted that the electoral law used for the first time in 2025 no longer awarded a Bundestag seat automatically to every constituency plurality winner; a seat also required the party to have sufficient second votes. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Budget Committee, a deputy member of the Interior Committee, and deputy chairman of the German-Irish Parliamentary Group. The same biography describes his budget work as centred on internal security, especially border protection, and on infrastructure such as schools, roads and bridges.

He is unmarried. His younger brother, Andreas Bühl, is a CDU member of the Thuringian Landtag; MDR’s 2017 report said their parents had never joined a party and that the brothers kept party disputes out of family gatherings. The Thuringian AfD state association, of which Bühl was a founding member, has since March 2021 been classified by the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution as confirmed extremist and placed under observation. n-tv reported that the state party was led by Björn Höcke and that the classification, formally in force from mid-March, became public in May 2021 after it was discussed in the state cabinet.

Early life and education

Childhood in Ilmenau

Marcus Bühl was born on 29 April 1977 in Ilmenau, in Thuringia. The Bundestag gives that date and place in his member biography and states that the biographical text rests on information supplied by the member; the federal returning officer lists 1977 as his year of birth among the members elected in 2025. The town lies on the northern slope of the Thuringian Forest, in the valley of the Ilm.

He grew up in the German Democratic Republic. The GDR statistical yearbook for 1990, in its table of municipalities with 10,000 or more inhabitants, recorded 29,293 people in Ilmenau at the end of 1989. The town administration's historical account describes a local economy long tied to technical glass and to porcelain, including a porcelain works that at one stage employed more than 3,000 people and a technical-glass combine that has since closed. The local engineering college, founded in 1953 as a Hochschule für Elektrotechnik, was raised to a Technische Hochschule in 1963 and in 1992 became the Technische Universität Ilmenau.

In March 2017 the MDR correspondent Ludwig Bundscherer reported on the family in Ilmenau. Marcus was then 39; his brother Andreas was 30, about ten years younger. The parents, the report said, had never belonged to a party. Andreas told the broadcaster that the family had long discussed politics in a rather bourgeois-conservative way at the supper table.

In the biography he provided to the Bundestag, and in almost the same words on his own website, Bühl states that in the autumn of 1989 he took an active part in the demonstrations in the GDR and that he has thought politically since then. No contemporary report found for this article places him at a particular march. Born in April 1977, he was twelve that autumn. The local course of the Peaceful Revolution is documented apart from that claim. A chronicle citing an MfS report states that on the evening and night of 7 October 1989, the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, 48 people were detained in Ilmenau after slogans that included "Freiheit, wir bleiben hier", "Gorbi gib uns Freiheit" and "Stasi raus". On 10 December, Human Rights Day, Neues Deutschland reported an estimated 15,000 people in a New Forum march from the town church through the centre to the Platz der Festhalle; speakers named in that account included the physician Hartmut Krauße and the mathematician Pedro Hertel.

Schooling and military service

No public source names the school Bühl attended or the trade in which he qualified. The biography he supplied to the Bundestag states that in 1995 he completed a vocational qualification (Berufsabschluss) together with the Fachhochschulreife, the certificate he reports rather than the general Abitur. The transparency project Abgeordnetenwatch lists his professional qualification more shortly as "Dipl. Informatiker" and his birth year as 1977.

The same parliamentary text, which the Bundestag marks as the member's own account, places basic military service (Grundwehrdienst) in 1996 and 1997 with the armoured engineers (Panzerpioniere) of the Bundeswehr. Conscription in Germany was still in force for men. From 1 January 1996 the Wehrrechtsänderungsgesetz shortened that basic service from twelve months to ten, followed by two months of standby during which those liable for service could be called up. He does not name a barracks or a battalion.

Higher education

He dates a course of study from 1995 to 2003, so that the span he gives includes the year of military service, and he reports two awards: Diplom-Informatiker Medien (FH) and a Master of Science. The Bundestag's one-line occupational description is "Diplom-Informatiker (M. Sc., FH)". On his website he adds that the studies were in southern Germany. Neither that page nor the parliamentary biography names a university, and no enrolment list, thesis or independent press report confirming an institution turned up in research for this section. The degree titles above are therefore those in his Bundestag self-report, not a verified record of study at any particular Hochschule.

Professional career

On the member page for the 21st electoral term, the Bundestag prints Marcus Bühl's occupation as Diplom-Informatiker (M. Sc., FH). The archived biographies for the 19th term (2017–2021) and the 20th term (2021–2025) used the same title with the parentheses divided, "Diplom-Informatiker (M. Sc.) (FH)". The longer texts, which the Bundestag states rest on members' own information, put a course of study from 1995 to 2003, ending in Diplom-Informatiker Medien (FH) and a Master of Science, immediately before self-employment. Only the 19th-term version names the Hochschule Furtwangen, written there as "HS Furtwangen", and describes the awards as an FH diploma in Medieninformatik and a master's degree. A candidate note published by MDR Thüringen on 23 February 2025 likewise called him an Informatiker, reported an informatics degree between 1995 and 2003, and dated self-employment in new media from 2004.

Work in new media

Self-employment in new media (Neue Medien), beginning in 2004, is the post-study occupation given in the Bundestag biographies for the 19th, 20th and 21st terms. Those accounts do not name clients, give a turnover or describe particular services, and the February 2025 MDR note adds none of those details. The trade name that appears in an official disclosure is buehlmedial. Under the heading "Berufliche Tätigkeit vor der Mitgliedschaft im Deutschen Bundestag" on the archived 19th-term page, Bühl is listed as Inhaber of buehlmedial in Ilmenau. The Bundestag's publication guidance states that items within one disclosure category are arranged alphabetically. In that same category the page also records two employed positions: Technischer Mitarbeiter of the Alternative for Germany group in the Landtag of Thuringia at Erfurt, and Persönlicher Mitarbeiter of the Landtag member Olaf Kießling in Arnstadt.

The current biography dates the setting-up of, and the work in, Kießling's constituency office in Arnstadt, together with work for the Landtag group in Erfurt, to 2014–2017, after the stated start of the self-employment and before the Bundestag mandate. It does not say whether the Ilmenau practice continued through those years. The 19th-term self-description adds that his party-building work in the Thuringian AfD from 2013, which he called honorary (ehrenamtlich), was concerned above all with technology, the internet and social media. Section 45(1) of the Members of the Bundestag Act requires a member to notify the professional activity last exercised before joining the Bundestag; paid work beside the mandate falls, where the Act requires publication, into a different category.

For the 20th and 21st terms the member page states that there are no Angaben subject to publication. On 13 February 2025, in a reply on abgeordnetenwatch.de, Bühl wrote that since he began as a member in 2017 he had received no side income and did not represent the interests of lobbyists. The platform's profile nevertheless still gives the exercised activity as member of the Bundestag and self-employed in new media, and the qualification as Dipl. Informatiker. The disclosure entry for buehlmedial states the name, the place Ilmenau and the role Inhaber; it does not record a company form or any client.

Entry into politics

AfD Thuringia from 2013

Bühl was not a member of a party before 2013. The biography he supplied to the Bundestag, which the parliament publishes as the member’s own information, calls him a founding member that year of the state association in Thuringia of the Alternative für Deutschland and describes unpaid work building up the state and district organizations, above all on technical systems, websites and social media. An MDR profile ahead of the 2025 federal election repeats the founding-member claim and the statement that he had previously been unaffiliated. He is not named in the contemporary news-agency report of the state founding itself.

That association was founded on 27 April 2013 in Herrenhof, near Gotha, about two months after the AfD had emerged at federal level. A dpa report the next day, datelined Gotha, named Matthias Wohlfarth and Arndt Breustedt as the new state speakers, put membership in the state at 147 with further applications still being processed, and said the association intended to stand in the Bundestag election of 22 September. The agency described the AfD at that point as an anti-euro party arguing for an orderly dissolution of the euro area.

On 29 June 2013 members from what was then Bundestag constituency 192, covering the Ilm-Kreis and Gotha, met at the Gasthaus “Zur Goldenen Henne” in Arnstadt. The state association’s account calls the meeting the founding of the first regular district association in Thuringia, presents the new executive as largely a continuation of an earlier one, and names Rüdiger Schmitt as speaker, Jens Dietrich as deputy speaker, and Olaf Kießling—already state treasurer—as district treasurer. It lists Bühl, from Ilmenau, as one of four Beisitzer (assessors), with Thomas Schulze, Bodo Matzat and Gerd Strößner. At a district congress on 24 September 2016 in Großrettbach, with 51 members entitled to vote, the association’s report of the new executive names Sebastian Thieler as first speaker and Bühl again as a Beisitzer, with Carsten Günther, Hans-Joachim König and Christian Seyffarth, and with Kießling still treasurer.

The Bundestag biography now in use still records the Beisitzer role and dates his position as Vorsitzender (Sprecher) of the district association Ilmkreis-Gotha to 2017. A December 2019 account published by the state association, recording his re-election as first speaker, refers to the previous district-executive election as having taken place at the end of 2017.

From June 2014 the state association was led by Björn Höcke and Stefan Möller. In March 2021 the Thuringian domestic-intelligence service classified that state association as confirmed extremist (gesichert extremistisch). Der Spiegel reported that the classification had formally taken effect in mid-March, that it was discussed in the state cabinet in May, and that the service had treated the whole state association as a suspected case since March 2020, on the stated ground of efforts against the free democratic basic order.

Constituency staff and the Landtag group

After the AfD entered the Landtag of Thuringia in 2014, Kießling sat as a member of that parliament. The state association announced that his constituency office at Rosenstraße 22 in Arnstadt would open on 27 November 2014, with Hans-Joachim König as office manager, and that Bühl had been hired as Kießling’s personal employee, assigned to social media. The same notice said Bühl had already been maintaining the websites of AfD Thuringia and of the Ilmkreis-Gotha association and would also maintain Kießling’s site, and that the district executive—of which Bühl was a member—had been newly elected in Arnstadt on 27 September 2014.

In the disclosure filed for the 19th Bundestag of professional activity before he took his seat, Bühl listed himself as Kießling’s personal employee in Arnstadt and as a technical employee (Technischer Mitarbeiter) of the AfD Landtag group in Erfurt, and also as owner of the Ilmenau firm buehlmedial. The biography he later supplied dates the work of setting up and staffing Kießling’s Arnstadt office, and the work for the Landtag group in Erfurt, to 2014–2017. In March 2017 MDR reported that he had for years worked full-time for the AfD as an employee of a Landtag member from the Ilm-Kreis, and that in the summer of 2016 he had driven from Ilmenau to Schwerin to put up AfD posters for the state-election campaign in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Bundestag elections

The 2017 state list

At the election to the 19th Bundestag on 24 September 2017, Marcus Bühl stood only on the Thuringia state list of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), in third place, behind Stephan Brandner and Jürgen Pohl. The Federal Returning Officer’s list recorded no constituency candidacy for him. The AfD direct candidate in constituency 192, Gotha – Ilm-Kreis, was instead Carsten Günther, a business broker born in 1966, who was not also placed on the state list.

Günther took 34,798 first votes, 23.9 percent, and finished second. The constituency seat went to Tankred Schipanski of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 42,221 votes, 29.0 percent. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) received 18.6 percent of first votes and Die Linke 15.6 percent. On second votes the CDU led with 27.8 percent and the AfD followed with 24.1 percent. Turnout was 74.7 percent of 198,341 eligible voters.

Bühl nevertheless entered the Bundestag on that list place. His official biography records the 2017 entry as having come through third place on the Thuringian AfD list, and records a direct election only from 2021. Under the law used in 2017, list seats were allocated from second votes, while a relative majority of first votes itself filled the constituency seat.

Direct mandates in 2021 and 2025

On 26 September 2021 Bühl was the AfD direct candidate in the same constituency, still numbered 192, and was also fifth on the Thuringian AfD list. He won a plurality of first votes: 37,249, or 26.5 percent. Michael Christian Müller of the SPD was second with 23.5 percent, and Schipanski, again the CDU candidate and fifth on the CDU state list, fell to 18.4 percent. The AfD also led the second vote, with 26.0 percent, ahead of the SPD on 23.8 percent and the CDU on 15.5 percent. Turnout was 74.8 percent of 190,519 eligible voters. Because a constituency plurality then conferred the seat, Bühl entered as the directly elected member.

The following federal election was brought forward from a date that had been set for 28 September 2025 and was held on 23 February 2025, after the Bundestag’s term ended early. The constituency, unchanged in territory, was renumbered 191. Bühl received 60,354 first votes, 41.2 percent, and the final result names him as elected in the constituency. Schipanski was the official runner-up on 29,345 votes, 20.0 percent. Sascha Bilay of Die Linke took 12.8 percent and Florian Wagner of the SPD 10.0 percent; Juliane Hein of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht took 8.0 percent. Second votes for the AfD were 59,557, 40.6 percent. Turnout rose to 80.3 percent of 184,279 eligible voters.

That election was the first under the electoral-law reform enacted in 2023. The Bundestag is fixed at 630 members, with 299 constituencies retained, but second votes alone set each party’s seat total. In each Land, candidates who won a relative majority are ranked by their share of first votes, and the party’s Land seats are given first to that ranking. If the party has fewer seats than constituency pluralities, the winners with the lowest shares do not enter, the constituency stays vacant, and no overhang or compensatory seats are added. A plurality of first votes therefore no longer guarantees a seat for a party candidate; an independent candidate still does. The Federal Constitutional Court held the second-vote coverage procedure compatible with the Basic Law in a judgment of 30 July 2024. On election night, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk reported that whether Bühl would actually take a seat still depended on the AfD’s second votes. The final roll of members elected in Thuringian constituencies includes him, at 41.2 percent.

The constituency Gotha – Ilm-Kreis

Constituency 192 in 2017 and 2021, and constituency 191 in 2025, each consisted of two whole rural districts: Landkreis Gotha and the Ilm-Kreis. The Federal Returning Officer’s boundary descriptions list the same two districts for all three elections; only the constituency number changed.

For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer recorded 46 municipalities, an area of 1,741.2 square kilometres and a population of 243,900 on 31 December 2023, a density of 140.1 people per square kilometre. Landkreis Gotha, in western central Thuringia, covers 936 square kilometres and had 137,240 inhabitants on 1 January 2025, in 29 municipalities. Its seat is the former residence city of Gotha. The Ilm-Kreis covers 805 square kilometres and had 106,775 inhabitants on 31 December 2023. Its largest municipality is Ilmenau, with 39,147 inhabitants, ahead of Arnstadt with 28,264. Ilmenau is the seat of the Technische Universität Ilmenau, which had 3,968 students in the winter semester 2025/26.

The CDU plurality of 2017, 29.0 to 23.9 percent over the AfD on first votes, became a narrow AfD plurality in 2021, 26.5 to 23.5 percent over the SPD, and an AfD first-vote share of 41.2 percent in 2025. AfD second votes in the constituency rose from 24.1 percent in 2017 to 26.0 percent in 2021 and 40.6 percent in 2025, and turnout from about 75 percent to 80.3 percent. Statewide in 2025 the AfD took 38.6 percent of Thuringian second votes. Seven of the eight constituency seats, including 191, went to AfD candidates; constituency 192 went to Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke.

Parliamentary work

Budget Committee

Marcus Bühl has been an ordinary member of the Bundestag Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) in the 19th (2017–2021), 20th (2021–2025) and 21st electoral terms. The Bundestag’s current biography, which it states rests on members’ own information, says he has sat on the committee since 2018. In that self-description he gives the work the emphasis of internal security, in particular border protection, and of infrastructure, including schools, roads and bridges, and he repeats those priorities for 2022 to 2025.

The Bundestag Budget Committee at its constitutive meeting on 21 May 2025.

Its 42 members debate the annual federal budget and oversee budget management and euro-area financial assistance; the Bundestag states that the government receives no treasury money without parliamentary consent. For the 21st term it was constituted on 21 May 2025 under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner. Of the 42 seats, the CDU/CSU held 14, the AfD ten, the SPD eight, Alliance 90/The Greens six and Die Linke four; Bühl was one of the ten AfD members. The AfD, which held the right to propose the chair, nominated Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing. In a secret ballot she received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention, and the group did not call a second ballot; Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU/CSU), the longest-serving member, took the chair on an acting basis. On the Bundestag’s membership listing, Lisa Paus (Alliance 90/The Greens) was recorded as acting chair and Michael Espendiller as the AfD’s Obmann and spokesperson. Bühl was listed only as an ordinary member.

Two sub-bodies give every ordinary Budget Committee member an automatic deputy seat, which is not a full appointment. The Bundestag states that all ordinary members of the Budget Committee are at the same time deputy members of the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss). That subcommittee, with 18 ordinary members drawn from ordinary or deputy members of the Budget Committee, follows the execution of spending, examines the federation’s budgetary and economic management, and prepares the plenary’s discharge of the government on the basis of remarks by the Bundesrechnungshof. Bühl is not an ordinary member. In the listing the AfD’s ordinary seats were held by Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing (the group’s Obfrau), Iris Nieland, Julian Schmidt and Georg Schroeter, with Kerstin Radomski (CDU/CSU) as chair. Nieland’s ordinary Audit Committee seat alongside a mere deputy seat on the Budget Committee is allowed by that rule; Bühl’s biography lists no separate Audit Committee post.

The same rule covers the Subcommittee on Questions of the European Union: the Bundestag states that its deputies are the ordinary members of the Budget Committee. The subcommittee prepares the Budget Committee’s consideration of documents from the Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission, and meets the European Court of Auditors, members of the European Parliament and commissioners. Its ordinary AfD members on the listing were Peter Boehringer (Obmann), Mirco Hanker and Jürgen Koegel, and the chair was Yannick Bury (CDU/CSU). Bühl was a deputy only by virtue of his Budget Committee seat, and that role is not entered separately on his biography.

On 27 November 2025, at the second reading of the 2026 federal budget (21st Bundestag, sitting 44), the plenary protocol named him among the rapporteurs for Einzelplan 06, the interior ministry, with Martin Gerster, Klaus-Peter Willsch, Leon Eckert, Dietmar Bartsch and Stefan Seidler, and for Einzelplan 12, the transport ministry, with Paula Piechotta, Florian Oßner, Uwe Schmidt, Sascha Wagner and Stefan Seidler. He spoke for the AfD on both: on interior lines for migration advice, asylum-procedure counselling and integration courses, and on roads, bridges and fuel taxation in the transport chapter.

Interior Committee and related bodies

His other committee seat has been a deputy membership, and the assignment has changed with the term. In the 19th Bundestag the archived biography lists him as a deputy member of the Committee on the Digital Agenda and not of an interior committee. In the 20th term he was a deputy member of the Committee on the Interior and Homeland. In the 21st term his biography and the committee’s membership list record him as a deputy member of the Interior Committee (Innenausschuss). Its 42 members cover matters from aliens and asylum policy to civil protection, control the interior ministry and its agencies, prepare legislation, and hold hearings.

German-Irish Parliamentary Group

The current biography lists Bühl as deputy chair of the German-Irish Parliamentary Group (Deutsch-Irische Parlamentariergruppe). The archived biographies for the 19th and 20th terms do not record the post. In the 21st term the chair is Linda Heitmann of Alliance 90/The Greens. These are cross-party associations, without statutes of their own, for personal dialogue with a partner parliament. In the 21st term, 47 bilateral and multilateral groups covered relations with about 180 countries. The Council of Elders sets their number and structure and allocates chairs by parliamentary-group strength; any group without the chair may name one deputy. The Elders’ decision for this term was announced in June 2025. The groups adopt no bills, have no budget of their own, and a bilateral group may host one partner delegation and make one trip to the partner country in a term.

Political positions

Migration, asylum and borders

In the Bundestag on 27 November 2025 Marcus Bühl spoke for the Alternative for Germany on the Interior Ministry chapter. He said the coalition was continuing what he called a "migrationspolitische Geisterfahrt": few border refusals, and more tax-funded services for asylum seekers. He criticised a further rise in migration counselling for adult immigrants, the survival into 2026 of asylum-procedure advice independent of the authorities — abolition of which he said the CDU had promised before the election — and higher payments for voluntary departure, which he described as paying rejected asylum seekers to obey the law.

He cited the Central Register of Foreigners for about 935,000 rejected asylum seekers at the end of October 2025, about 40,000 more than in summer 2023, and treated that as people still in Germany after rejection. A government answer of 20 November 2025 recorded 934,553 foreign nationals with a rejected asylum application on 31 October 2025, but added that a rejection stays on the register while it is the latest decision, may be years old, and does not itself mean the person must leave or is staying illegally.

On integration courses he said a further three-digit million sum had been added, that billing by signature invited abuse, and that checks by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees were negligible. He stated that €1 billion a year went into the courses and that 40 percent of participants missed B1. Mediendienst Integration, using ministry and office replies, reported about €1.2 billion spent in 2024 and €763 million appropriated for 2025. For Ukrainian nationals, a government table shows 54.5 percent of 2023 sittings of the Deutsch-Test für Zuwanderer — 86,527 of 158,744 — reaching B1, with repeats included and only the highest result counted.

On 18 September 2025 he repeated the cost and failure claims and, citing the press, said thousands of forged B1 certificates were circulating, with cases in Bonn and Stuttgart. He wanted such titles withdrawn and certificates issued only by the state; Clara Bünger (Die Linke) called that an insinuation. He also asked for more Federal Police officers and drones against smugglers. On 27 November he set German trials against surveillance by Poland, other neighbours and Frontex. Sonja Eichwede (SPD) said an interior budget passing €15 billion included €80 million to counter hostile drones, not a border fleet; Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU/CSU) said a turn was under way under Alexander Dobrindt.

On 30 January 2024 he had already contrasted cuts at the Technisches Hilfswerk, the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Office for Information Security and Federal Police IT with sums he gave as €70 million for resettlement, more than €1 billion for integration courses, €25 million for independent asylum advice and €20 million more for migration counselling. He said the Bundesrechnungshof had found the need for that counselling unclear and success uncontrolled for 18 years, and he called for an end to voluntary admissions, permanent Polish and Czech border controls, and a returns offensive.

Budgets, infrastructure and security

Later that day he called the 2026 transport budget a patchwork. He said the CO2 price would make fuel dearer than in Poland, that roads and bridges were short almost €15 billion for 2026–2029 while military payments to Ukraine would reach €11.5 billion in 2026, and that nearly €20 billion was going to rail although more than 80 percent of traffic was on the road. He wanted the truck toll paid wholly into roads and cut by at least €2 billion a year. Isabel Cademartori (SPD) replied that this ignored climate change, Russia and overloaded roads, and that record sums were going into every mode.

On 30 January 2024 he had criticised a truck-toll rise he said would bring €7.1 billion extra and up to €370 a year for a family of four, and €1.5 billion for rail left unspent beside talk of restructuring Deutsche Bahn. On housing he said a target of 400,000 new homes would again be missed. He put the heating law at up to €2,500 billion — unsourced in the speech — and a new chancellery at almost €1 billion.

Other recorded positions

On the education budget that day he backed an AfD bill for a school fund of €30 billion each from federation and states, and put the building backlog above €50 billion. The KfW Kommunalpanel 2023, a treasurers' survey, put the perceived school backlog at €47.4 billion in 2022. He called Startchancen too small — an advertised "education billion" was, he said, €200 million federal plus €300 million from the states via VAT — and said vocational training was neglected.

On abgeordnetenwatch in November 2023 he wrote that he had moved €20 million more for research on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and Long Covid, and that the then majority voted it down. In August 2024 he called animal protection important, cited the AfD's 2021 programme and printed paper 20/5365, and noted that his own briefs were the budget and a deputy seat on the interior committee. In April 2022, on parental alienation, he quoted the programme on fathers' contact, against using children as pressure, and for joint custody from birth, and invited the questioner to his Gotha office.

Constituency activity and local disputes

Local offices and campaigning

The Bundestag lists a constituency office for Marcus Bühl, member for constituency 191 (Gotha – Ilm-Kreis) in Thuringia, at Siebleber Straße 2, 99867 Gotha. The district administration of Ilm-Kreis publishes that Gotha citizens’ office, telephone 03621 3502993, and a second office in Ilmenau at Am Vogelherd 10, telephone 03677 8119495. Bühl’s own site gives the hours of both offices as Tuesday to Thursday, 11:00 to 19:00, and otherwise by appointment. The same site lists information stands and citizen evenings in the constituency. For October 2026 it included a stand at the Hopfenbrunnen in Arnstadt on 27 October and one on the Neumarkt in Gotha on 29 October, each from 10:00 to 12:00, plus a citizen evening in Waltershausen on 21 October with other Alternative for Germany members of the Bundestag and the Thuringian Landtag.

Attacks on the Gotha office

Police notices and the Thüringer Allgemeine describe repeated damage at the office on Siebleber Straße. The published accounts do not name perpetrators; police asked for witnesses and did not announce arrests.

Spray paint on the windows of the constituency office marked Marcus Bühl, MdB, in Gotha, including a circled X on an adjoining pane, December 2025.

A notice republished on 24 February 2019 said that on 23 February unknown perpetrators had put an insulting inscription on the entrance door of the AfD citizens’ office in Siebleber Straße, called there a further case of damage. The wording was not quoted. Police Gotha took information under reference 0053619/2019. On 29 April 2019 Gotha-Aktuell carried a police report that, in the night from Saturday to Sunday, unknown people had sprayed writing of a political content in black and purple paint across about four metres of the wall and shop window of a constituency office in the same street (reference 0109378/2019). The same day the Thüringer Allgemeine reported that unknown people had left political slogans at Bühl’s office and that police wanted information.

On 10 December 2025 the Thüringer Allgemeine, citing police, reported that unknown people had sprayed “NSDAP” and “Nazi” on the windows of Bühl’s office and an X inside a circle on the facade, between 11:50 on the Tuesday and 04:05 on the Wednesday. It wrote that the symbol’s meaning was unknown and that a damage estimate was still outstanding; witnesses were sought under reference 0320349/2025. The article said the AfD office is regularly daubed and that the office of the Greens, a few metres away, is repeatedly targeted by political opponents, including, in February 2025, the words “Volksverräter tötet euch” scratched into a window. In a passage on rising politically motivated crime it cited the interior ministry for 597 offences recorded the previous year by the Gotha state police inspectorate in the districts of Gotha, Ilm-Kreis and Wartburgkreis.

A police notice published by Gotha-Aktuell on 21 December 2025 said that between 16:10 and 20:25 on the Friday, one or more unknown people had painted graffiti on a window frame of a constituency office in Siebleber Straße, with damage estimated at about €500. The notice did not name a party. The reference was 0330089/2025.

The Thüringer Allgemeine reported that on 1 January 2026, between 02:00 and 08:00, light-blue paint was spread over the facade, door and window of the AfD office in Siebleber Straße. Police put the damage at about €1,000; the pavement, a street sign and a lamp were also marked. Gotha AfD councillor Dieter Freund, cleaning a window, was quoted as saying the act had nothing to do with political debate and was primitive vandalism. Police took information under reference 0000484/2026 and the report named no suspect.

Disputes inside the local party

On 29 July 2025 the Thüringer Allgemeine ran a report by Gotha reporter Tobias Leiser under the headline “Bürger und Wähler sind egal”, with the standfirst “Zwist im Kreisverband” (dispute in the district association). The text available without payment said that an AfD city councillor in Gotha was sharply criticising his party colleague Bühl. The photograph caption identified the councillor as Jens Fiedler. The article was marked as paid content, and the open page did not set out the accusations.

On 11 August 2025 the same paper and reporter followed with “Schwere Vorwürfe in Gotha: AfD-Bundestagsabgeordneter hält sich bedeckt” (serious allegations in Gotha: AfD member of the Bundestag remains guarded). The open deck said Bühl sits in the Bundestag for Gotha and Ilm-Kreis, that criticism was coming from his own ranks, and that he was staying silent. That article was also behind the paywall; the accessible text did not specify the allegations or record a public reply.

Personal life and family

The Bundestag biography of Marcus Bühl, which the parliament states is drawn from the member's own information, records that he was born on 29 April 1977 in Ilmenau and is unmarried. It states no religious affiliation. The family detail that regional reporting has added is that his younger brother sits for the Christian Democratic Union in the Thuringian state parliament, while Marcus Bühl sits for the Alternative for Germany.

Andreas Bühl

Andreas Bühl states that he was born on 6 February 1987 in Ilmenau. The Landtag of Thuringia lists him as born in 1987 in Ilmenau, Protestant and married, and as the CDU deputy directly elected for constituency 22, Ilm-Kreis I. He has been a member since 2014, after the Abitur at Ilmenau's Gymnasium "Am Lindenberg," training as a Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH) in Gotha and, in 2022, a Master of Public Administration from the University of Kassel.

At the 2014 state election the Thuringian statistical office recorded Andreas Bühl (CDU) as elected in Ilm-Kreis I; the CDU took 36.6 percent of the constituency vote. A March 2017 MDR portrait described him, then aged 30, as the youngest CDU member of the Landtag and noted that he had won the Ilm-Kreis direct mandate at 27. On 12 September 2024 MDR reported that he defended the Ilm-Kreis I seat with 39.6 percent of the first votes, ahead of Jens Dietrich of the AfD on 35.5 percent.

On 13 December 2024, the day after Mario Voigt was elected minister-president, the CDU Landtag group elected Andreas Bühl its chairman. MDR reported that a spokesman gave the result as 21 votes in favour and one abstention, with one of the 23 CDU deputies absent, and described Bühl as a confidant of Voigt who had been the group's parliamentary managing director.

The main published account of the brothers is that 24 March 2017 MDR article, "Die Bühl-Brüder: Einer CDU, der andere AfD," by Ludwig Bundscherer. Marcus, then 39 and a Bundestag candidate, was a staff member for an AfD Landtag deputy from the Ilm-Kreis. Andreas said he had joined the CDU at 18 to support Angela Merkel, after finding Gerhard Schröder's manner unconvincing, and that the family had long talked in a bourgeois-conservative way at the dinner table. He called the Thuringian AfD politically highly dangerous, saying it tried to unsettle people rather than look for solutions; Marcus said the CDU did not carry upward what citizens, and parts of its own base, were saying. Both described a limit on those arguments at home. Andreas said that, where differences could not be bridged, it helped not to discuss them over birthday coffee; Marcus said that was acceptable, that both were democrats, and that there were other subjects. Their parents, the report stated, had never belonged to a party.

A Thüringer Allgemeine introduction dated 6 November 2024, to the podcast "Reden wir über Thüringen," returned to that setting without naming Marcus Bühl. It presented Andreas, then 37, as parliamentary managing director and one of the chief negotiators of the Brombeer-Bündnis then being formed, and said that he had a quite special relationship with the AfD which reached the coffee table at home, and that the episode would explain what lay behind it.

Public profile and reception

Disclosure and constituent questions

On Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de), Marcus Bühl’s profile for the 2025–2029 Bundestag listed a response rate of zero: none of eight questions from members of the public had been answered. The site counts only questions put during the current candidacy or mandate, and the profile stated that he had not signed its voluntary transparency pledge (Transparenz-Versprechen).

In the preceding term the rate was high and the volume low. Parliamentwatch’s 2024 ranking, covering questions from 26 September 2021 through 24 June 2024 and excluding replies that did not address the question, gave Bühl nine questions and nine answers, rated “hervorragend”. In the same table Stephan Brandner, the AfD member for Gera – Greiz – Altenburger Land, had 695 questions, also all answered. Thuringia’s 19 members received 1,343 questions and answered about 95 percent, against a federal average of 77 percent.

On 13 February 2025, asked why he had not signed the pledge, Bühl wrote that since taking his seat in 2017 he had drawn no outside income and did not represent lobbyists. The Bundestag publishes members’ returns under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act only after checking whether a disclosure threshold is met. Under veröffentlichungspflichtige Angaben his biography reads “Keine veröffentlichungspflichtigen Angaben.” The page says the biography rests on the member’s own information, and it links a homepage and accounts on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and X.

Coverage and political placement

Opened reporting is regional and tied to elections or the Gotha office, not national profiles. On 23 February 2025 MDR Thüringen reported that Bühl had held constituency 191, Gotha and Ilm-Kreis, with 41.2 percent of first votes, against 20 percent for CDU candidate Tankred Schipanski, with the Alternative for Germany also leading second votes at 40.7 percent, and added a short biography (born 1977 in Ilmenau; computer scientist; in the Bundestag since 2017). A dpa item on Die Zeit recorded the same result in brief. The Thüringer Allgemeine has covered him locally: on 11 August 2025 its Gotha reporter wrote that criticism was coming from his own ranks and that he was staying silent, and the paper has repeatedly reported damage at the constituency office. No opened national feature treats him at the length tagesschau.de gave Brandner in October 2025, after the Bundestag lifted Brandner’s immunity.

The intelligence classification used in Thuringia concerns the state association, not a published finding about Bühl. Presenting the 2020 report in Erfurt, Stephan Kramer, president of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said the association had on 15 March 2021 been classed an “erwiesen extremistisches Beobachtungsobjekt” (a proven extremist object of observation), with publication held back ahead of a Bundestag election and a planned state election. He tied the step to personnel and programmatic developments, and said statements by leading members documented racist, antisemitic and xenophobic attitudes without the use of intelligence methods. The Süddeutsche Zeitung identified the association with its best-known figure, Björn Höcke.

That label was not the claim before the Verwaltungsgericht Weimar. On 28 August 2024 the court dismissed the association’s suit against three passages of the 2021 Verfassungsschutzbericht, on hostility to Islam, the rule of law and historical revisionism, drawn from quotations of Landessprecher Höcke and Stefan Möller. The court recorded that the association was not challenging its placement there as a “rechtsextremistische Partei”, found the office’s reading tenable, and held that being named was not a ban. Neither that notice nor the Süddeutsche Zeitung account names Marcus Bühl, and no opened public source places him personally in an intelligence report.