# Ronald Gläser

# Ronald Gläser

Ronald Gläser (born 16 December 1973 in Berlin) is a German journalist and politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, in the 21st electoral term, elected on the Berlin state list, and he was the AfD candidate in constituency 75, Berlin-Pankow. From 2016 to 2025 he sat in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. A 2019 author note in *Der Tagesspiegel* identified him as a member of the AfD since 2013, a member of its Berlin state executive from 2016, and the media-policy spokesman of its group in the state parliament.

The Bundestag biography, compiled from Gläser's own disclosures, records that he is Roman Catholic, married and the father of two children. He attended St. Alfons primary school from 1980 to 1984 and the Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin from 1984 to 1993, leaving with the Abitur, and in 1993 he did military service with the ABC-Abwehrbataillon in Prenzlau. From 1993 to 2002 he studied North American studies and business administration at the Free University of Berlin and graduated with a Magister Artium. He worked for a company in the information-and-communications sector from 2000 to 2002, has worked as a freelance journalist since 1996, and has been an editor at the weekly *Junge Freiheit* since 2010. Abgeordnetenwatch lists his qualification as Americanist and journalist, and his occupation before the Bundestag mandate as freelance journalist in Berlin.

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February he placed third in Berlin-Pankow, with 33,179 first votes (16.9 percent), behind Julia Schneider of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) (50,854 votes, 25.8 percent) and Maximilian Schirmer of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) (45,010 votes, 22.9 percent). The AfD received 31,087 second votes in the constituency (15.7 percent), and turnout was 84.6 percent. He entered the Bundestag from third place on the Berlin state list rather than with a constituency seat. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media and a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization. He is also a deputy member of the Art Advisory Board (Kunstbeirat).

In 2010, in a *Junge Freiheit* column responding to a *Der Spiegel* cover on [Winston Churchill](/people/winston-churchill) and [Adolf Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler), Gläser wrote that the two "warlords" were not treated equally as the war criminals he said both had been, and he attributed a large share of Europe's wartime destruction and the postwar communist rule in Eastern Europe to Churchill's policy toward Germany. In early September 2018, while chair of the Abgeordnetenhaus committee on communication technology and data protection, he posted on Twitter a leaked arrest warrant against an Iraqi man suspected in a fatal stabbing in Chemnitz, with the comment "Anklagen, verurteilen, bestrafen, abschieben" ("Charge, convict, punish, deport"). He later called the post a mistake that he would not repeat and described removal from the chair as disproportionate. The Berlin public prosecutor's office investigated the prohibited publication of official documents from a criminal case, and the other groups in the Abgeordnetenhaus voted him out as chair; the right to propose a successor stayed with the AfD.

## Early life and education

### Family and schooling

Ronald Gläser was born on 16 December 1973 in Berlin. The Bundestag biography, which states that members' biographical details rest on their own information, lists him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children. He describes himself as a Catholic from Pankow-Niederschönhausen and as a father of two. In August 2020 the *Tagesspiegel* reported that unknown persons set fire to a car of his in Berlin-Niederschönhausen, near Dietzgenstraße, and that he said he noticed the attack only when police rang at his door.

The same Bundestag biography gives his schooling as Grundschule St. Alfons from 1980 to 1984 and the Canisius-Kolleg Berlin from 1984 to 1993, with the Abitur as his leaving qualification. The Kolleg is a state-recognized Gymnasium in the care of the Jesuits, at Tiergartenstraße 30/31 beside the Tiergarten; the order dates the school's foundation to 1923, and religious instruction there runs through to the Abitur. The Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin likewise records a 1993 Abitur at the Canisius-Kolleg and the birth year and place as 1973 in Berlin. Neither parliamentary biography uses the wording "West Berlin," and neither names his parents or a childhood address.

An author note circulated with his 2011 pamphlet *Dresden – maximal 25.000 Tote?*, issued in Hamburg by *Deutschland-Magazin*, states that part of his family came from Dresden. That family connection is not mentioned in the Bundestag or Abgeordnetenhaus biographies.

### University, military service and early work

In 1993 Gläser performed basic military service (Wehrdienst) with the NBC-defense battalion (ABC-Abwehrbataillon) of the Bundeswehr in Prenzlau. A historical survey of the Prenzlau garrison records that ABC-Abwehrbataillon 805 was housed at the Uckermark-Kaserne after the East German army was absorbed into the Bundeswehr, lists commanders at the garrison continuously from 1990, and states that the battalion left the town on 30 September 2007.

From 1993 to 2002 he studied North American studies (Nordamerikastudien) and business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) at the Free University of Berlin and graduated with a Magister Artium. The Abgeordnetenhaus biography gives the same degree, dated 2002, after those two subjects. In the 2011 pamphlet's author note he described the North American studies course as concentrated on history and politics. On his own website he has used the wording Amerikanistik and business administration for the same degree.

From 2000 to 2002 he worked at a firm in the information and telecommunications sector; the Bundestag biography does not name the company. That biography dates freelance journalism from 1996, while the Abgeordnetenhaus biography says he had worked as a journalist since 1995. In August 2002, while those university years were still running, Junge Freiheit published his article "Wir können da nicht zusehen," subtitled a helper's report from Dresden during the Elbe flood. The piece says the paper accompanied Berlin volunteers and, in places, uses the first person plural for the group that pumped out the Hotel Bellevue and other flooded buildings. The 2011 author note adds that he joined the disaster work partly because of the Dresden family connection and that Saxony's minister-president Georg Milbradt (CDU) awarded him the Saxon Flood Helper's Order the same year for what the note calls that "selfless effort." The decoration does not appear in the parliamentary biographies. Those later profiles list journalism, rather than the unnamed technology job, as his occupation.

## Journalism

### Freelance reporting and Junge Freiheit

Parliamentary biographies date Ronald Gläser’s journalism to the mid-1990s, with a slight difference in the starting year. His Bundestag self-report says he has worked as a freelance journalist since 1996 and as an editor at the weekly *Junge Freiheit* since 2010; the occupation listed before his 2025 Bundestag seat is “freelance journalist” in Berlin. The Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, where he sat from 2016 until 25 March 2025, calls him a journalist since 1995, “most recently” an editor at *Junge Freiheit*. The paper’s archive already identifies him as a “JF-Reporter” in a December 1997 item.

Dieter Stein founded *Junge Freiheit* in Freiburg in 1986, while still a secondary-school student. It has been a weekly since 1994, published in Berlin largely by subscription; Stein is editor-in-chief and managing director of the publishing company. The paper says it joins a conservative standpoint to what it calls classical journalism, and names nation, liberty, conservatism and Christianity as reference points. In a 2017 essay for the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Gideon Botsch wrote that it is regarded as the journalistic “flagship” of the Neue Rechte and as a leading medium of a radical-nationalist milieu that has tried to claim “conservatism” even after moderating its language. A 2016 survey for the same agency described it as meaning to be a political project and a forum for a movement, not only a newspaper, while presenting itself as democratic conservatism. IVW-certified sold circulation was 28,675 copies in the third quarter of 2016. For the first quarter of 2025, DWDL.de reported an IVW sold circulation of 28,990 and a “hard” circulation—full-price single copies and subscriptions only—of 21,074.

In the mid-1990s the interior ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia discussed the paper in the state Verfassungsschutzberichte for 1994 and 1995. The Verwaltungsgericht Düsseldorf and the Oberverwaltungsgericht Münster left that treatment standing. On 24 May 2005 the First Senate of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) (1 BvR 1072/01) upheld the publisher’s complaint, quashed those decisions and sent the case back. Naming the weekly in such a report, the court held, interferes with freedom of the press, because readers, advertisers and contributors may turn away, and needs justification by a general statute and a strict proportionality test. Texts by outside authors and letter-writers are not automatically the publisher’s or the editors’ own aims, and offering a forum to only one part of the political spectrum is itself protected. The ruling did not finally find the suspicion unfounded; it required the administrative courts to reapply those standards. The state office said that day that it still considered the 1994 and 1995 mentions lawful and would await the new review. Botsch later wrote that, after a verbal moderation from the early 2000s, the paper had not appeared in that state’s report since 2004.

Before the state mandate, *Junge Freiheit* identified Gläser in print as a “JF-Redakteur,” and the author note at *eigentümlich frei* calls him the paper’s media editor. On the site of the Alternative for Germany group in the Abgeordnetenhaus, and on his own site, he wrote that he had been an editor since 2010 and was on leave from that post for the duration of the state mandate. The leave did not end the bylines. The paper’s author index still lists commentaries from 2021, 2022 and 2023; the piece of 9 August 2022 identifies him not as an editor but as the group’s parliamentary business manager and media-policy spokesman. Its published editorial roster does not include him and names another editor for the media desk. Abgeordnetenwatch’s reproduction of his Bundestag disclosure records the pre-membership occupation “freelance journalist,” in media, and lists no paid editorship alongside the mandate.

### Other outlets

Gläser has also written regularly for the monthly *eigentümlich frei*. Its author page carries a long series of his articles and describes him as a Berlin-based scholar of American studies and as media editor at *Junge Freiheit*. A 2016 survey by the Federal Agency for Civic Education says André Lichtschlag founded the magazine in 1998, that it appears ten times a year and calls itself libertarian, and that others describe it as radical-libertarian or right-libertarian. The same survey places it among titles read in [New Right](/organizations/new-right) and right-intellectual circles, beside *Junge Freiheit* and *Sezession*.

In 2004 and 2005, before the editorship dated to 2010 in the Bundestag biography, he signed articles for the *Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung*, whose archive masthead also carries the titles *Das Ostpreußenblatt* and *Pommersche Zeitung*.

## Party political career

### FDP years

Ronald Gläser was a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) from 1991 until 2007, according to the biography published by the Berlin [House of Representatives](/organizations/house-of-representatives). By the summer of 2001 he chaired the local branch in Tempelhof. The *Tagesspiegel* placed him on the party's right in a dispute inside the merged Tempelhof-Schöneberg district association: he and other members accused the Berlin leadership of arranging a nominating assembly so as to weaken that wing. The state party court sided with him; in August 2001 the federal arbitration court set that ruling aside and held the district committee properly composed.

Press accounts later tied the same local conflict to the national-liberal current around Jürgen Möllemann. *Der Spiegel*, reporting a vigil on 12 June 2003 outside the FDP federal headquarters, described Gläser as a young former Berlin functionary from the conservative wing in Tempelhof. It said he had led a rebellious branch that accused state chair Günter Rexrodt of manipulating membership lists to keep the right from internal power. Gläser was an initiator of the vigil, held after Möllemann's death. He told *Spiegel* that if the death was suicide the leadership had driven Möllemann to it by treating him as an outcast, and he speculated that a secret service "of a small country in the Near East" might instead have killed him. The *taz*, which still identified him as the 2002 Tempelhof chairman and as a *Junge Freiheit* contributor, quoted him accusing the leadership of "base conduct" and a "grave injustice" against Möllemann. He counted about ten current and former Berlin FDP members there; state parliamentarians classed as national-liberal distanced themselves. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* later wrote that he had been a Möllemann supporter on what the paper called the FDP's far-right fringe.

### AfD offices in Berlin

Gläser joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2013, again according to the House biography. By July 2015 the *taz* listed him, then a *Junge Freiheit* editor, on the Berlin state executive. After a January 2016 congress at which [Beatrix von Storch](/people/beatrix-von-storch) took the chair, to be shared with Georg Pazderski, the paper reported that Gläser had become the association's spokesman. In September 2016 the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* called him a board member of the district association in Pankow and press spokesman of the Berlin AfD. He was still described as the state association's spokesman in September 2017, when the *Tagesspiegel* reported a Twitter suspension, and in December 2018, when the *taz* quoted him on the board's answer to possible domestic-intelligence observation.

On 4 November 2017 a state congress elected him one of six assessors (*Beisitzer*) on an executive chaired solely by Pazderski, the party reported. At the congress of 13 March 2021 the *taz* reported his election as third deputy state chairman under Kristin Brinker, while still calling him the spokesman; he said he wanted closer work with right-wing bloggers. When the board was renewed in March 2023, the *taz* again identified him as press spokesman and reported that Rolf Wiedenhaupt and Alexander Bertram had moved up to deputy chairs alongside Jeannette Auricht. On 6 April 2025 a congress in Jüterbog re-elected Brinker with 94.3 percent and chose Auricht, Bertram, Wiedenhaupt and Gläser as deputies. The Pankow association's board page, updated on 31 August 2026, listed Gläser as an assessor, with Jan Streeck and Daniel Krüger as district chairs.

Berlin has not publicly fixed the intelligence status of that state association. In May 2021 the *Tagesspiegel* reported, citing security politicians, that the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution had graded it a *Verdachtsfall*, allowing informants and telecommunications monitoring; the interior administration did not confirm this, because Berlin law then barred disclosure short of a confirmed-extremist finding. That November the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg refused an AfD bid to stop any such classification, because the party had not shown it had been so classified and was relying on press reports (order of 15 November 2021, OVG 1 S 121/21). Federally, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said on 2 May 2025 that it was upgrading the whole party from suspect case to a "confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor." The Administrative Court of Cologne, by interim order of 26 February 2026, barred that label until the main case ends at first instance: internal efforts against the free democratic basic order were sufficiently certain, but had not been shown to dominate the party.

## Berlin House of Representatives

### Elections and faction offices

Ronald Gläser was a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, the parliament of the city-state of Berlin, from the [2016 Berlin state election](/facts/2016-berlin-state-election) until the end of 25 March 2025. He sat for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) through the 18th legislative period and the 19th, the latter covering both the [2021 Berlin state election](/facts/2021-berlin-state-election) and its [repeat on 12 February 2023](/facts/2023-berlin-state-election). On each occasion he was the AfD candidate in constituency Pankow 2 (Wahlkreis 0302, in the borough of Pankow) and failed to win it; each time he entered on the state list (Landesliste).

*The Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin on Niederkirchnerstraße, where Gläser sat from 2016 to 2025.*

At the election of 18 September 2016 the official ballot in Pankow 2 listed him for the AfD against, among others, Torsten Hofer (SPD), Gottfried Ludewig (CDU) and Eveline Lämmer (Die Linke). Of 32,812 eligible voters, 23,396 cast ballots, a turnout of 71.3 percent, and 22,996 first votes were valid. Gläser received 4,358 first votes, 19.0 percent, behind Hofer’s [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) on 23.3 percent and the CDU on 19.9 percent, and just ahead of Die Linke on 17.9 percent. The AfD’s second votes in the same constituency were 4,343, or 18.9 percent. Citywide the party took 14.2 percent. He stood third on the AfD state list.

In the days after that election the new faction chose Georg Pazderski as chair, with Kristin Brinker, Karsten Woldeit and Gläser as deputy chairs and Frank-Christian Hansel as parliamentary managing director (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer). After Kay Nerstheimer left the group, the *taz* counted 24 members. He was still a deputy chair at the end of that period.

For the 2021 election the Berlin AfD ranked its list on the weekend of 5–6 June 2021, the first of two candidate-selection weekends. Delegates chose state chair Kristin Brinker for first place; Gläser followed in second, then Karsten Woldeit and Harald Laatsch. On 26 September 2021, in the poll later declared invalid, he again stood in Pankow 2 and received 2,732 personal votes, 10.9 percent, down 8.1 points from 2016. Hofer held the constituency for the SPD with 22.6 percent. Gläser returned to the house on the state list.

At the new faction’s first meeting, on 29 September 2021, Brinker was elected chair with 12 votes in favour and one abstention. Gläser, until then a deputy chair, succeeded Hansel as parliamentary managing director; Woldeit stayed a deputy chair, and Antonín Brousek joined the leadership as another deputy.

The official tables for 12 February 2023 treat that day as a full repeat of the 26 September 2021 election, which had been declared invalid, and compare the new Pankow 2 figures with both 2016 and the annulled vote. Gläser was again the constituency candidate. The AfD took 2,909 first votes, 12.9 percent of 22,468 valid ballots — 2.1 points above the annulled result and 6.0 points below 2016 — and 2,938 second votes, 13.1 percent. Turnout was 69.2 percent of 32,753 eligible voters. The direct seat went to Lars Bocian of the CDU with 31.4 percent; Hofer was second on 19.1 percent. Gläser was again returned on the state list, the list on which the party had placed him second in June 2021. The repeat gave the AfD 17 seats, two of them direct mandates in Marzahn-Hellersdorf and the rest, including Gläser’s, on the Berlin list.

On 17 February 2023 the faction said it had reconstituted itself after the repeat and had re-elected Gläser as parliamentary managing director, with Antonín Brousek as his deputy. A *Junge Freiheit* author note of 9 August 2022 already identified him in those terms, as parliamentary managing director and the group’s media-policy spokesman. He left the Abgeordnetenhaus at the end of 25 March 2025 because he had become a member of the Bundestag. Frank Scheermesser, an AfD member of the house from 2016 to 2021, accepted the successor’s mandate on 27 March 2025.

### Committees and parliamentary work

In the 18th period Abgeordnetenwatch records Gläser as the AfD spokesman on three standing committees: European and federal affairs and media (Ausschuss für Europa- und Bundesangelegenheiten, Medien); communication technology and data protection (Ausschuss für Kommunikationstechnologie und Datenschutz); and the committee that oversees the state domestic-intelligence service (Ausschuss für Verfassungsschutz). He chaired the communication-technology and data-protection committee until 15 October 2018. That day, on a motion by Bernd Schlömer of the FDP, every faction except the AfD voted him out of the chair. The immediate cause was a tweet in which he had circulated part of a leaked arrest warrant from the Chemnitz homicide investigation; he called the post a mistake he would not repeat and the removal disproportionate. The episode is set out in the Controversies section. The AfD kept the right to propose the next chair. Gläser said Marc Vallendar should take the post, but the election was adjourned because the faction had not attached a letter from its chair or its parliamentary managing director.

Near the end of the same period the plenary, on 28 January 2021, elected him deputy chair of the fourth investigative committee, “Diese eG,” with Frank Zimmermann (SPD) as chair. The committee was constituted on 5 February 2021; its AfD members were Gläser and Frank Scheermesser.

He did not return to the Verfassungsschutz committee in the 19th period. In mid-January 2022 the other factions voted down the AfD’s nominees, Gläser for a full seat and Karsten Woldeit as deputy. At a further vote reported by early February, the SPD, Greens, Left and FDP again opposed the AfD’s candidates — this time Woldeit and Martin Trefzer — while the CDU abstained. *Der Tagesspiegel* wrote that the AfD would in all likelihood sit on neither that committee nor the G10 commission, the parliamentary body for intelligence oversight, during the legislative period, and noted that Gläser had held a Verfassungsschutz-committee seat in the previous one. His continuing parliamentary role on the AfD side of the house was the managing director’s post, together with the media-policy spokesman’s brief still attached to him in August 2022.

## Bundestag

### 2025 federal election

The election of the 21st [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) on 23 February 2025 was held ahead of the regular date. On 16 December 2024 the 20th Bundestag refused Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) a vote of confidence under Article 68 of the Basic Law: of the members voting, 207 supported him, 394 voted against and 116 abstained. Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) dissolved that Bundestag on 27 December 2024 and set the election for 23 February 2025. Ronald Gläser stood for [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) in constituency 75, Berlin-Pankow, and in third place on the party's Berlin state list. The Federal Returning Officer lists him as Ronald Karl Gläser and records the seat as a Berlin list mandate, with the Pankow candidacy noted separately. The Bundestag's biography dates his membership from 25 March 2025, the day of the constituent sitting of the 21st Bundestag; the stenographic report of that sitting names him among the members who took part in the election of the president.

*The plenary chamber of the Reichstag building during the constituent sitting of the 21st Bundestag on 25 March 2025.*

He did not win the constituency. Of 235,392 people eligible to vote, 199,072 cast ballots, a turnout of 84.6 percent and 26.4 percentage points above the comparison figure for 2021. On 196,813 valid first votes, Julia Schneider of Alliance 90/The Greens was elected with 50,854 votes (25.8 percent). Maximilian Schirmer of Die Linke was runner-up with 45,010 votes (22.9 percent). The AfD first-vote total, cast for Gläser as the party's constituency candidate, was 33,179 (16.9 percent), 2.7 points higher than in 2021. That was third place, ahead of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) with 31,918 votes (16.2 percent), the Social Democratic Party with 26,106 (13.3 percent) and the Free Democratic Party with 5,407 (2.7 percent).

Second votes in the constituency placed Die Linke first, with 43,180 (21.8 percent), and the Greens second, with 38,819 (19.6 percent). The AfD received 31,087 second votes (15.7 percent), 1.2 points more than in 2021, ahead of the CDU on 14.4 percent and the SPD on 13.1 percent.

### Committee assignments and parliamentary activity

The biography records Gläser, from 25 March 2025, as a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media (Ausschuss für Kultur und Medien) and as a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization (Ausschuss für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung). He is a deputy member of the Art Advisory Board (Kunstbeirat) in the same electoral term.

The culture committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025, with Bundestag president [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) presiding over the election of its chair. It has 18 full members. Gläser was one of four from the AfD, with [Götz Frömming](/people/gotz-fromming), [Matthias Helferich](/people/matthias-helferich) and Martin Erwin Renner. Sven Lehmann of the Greens, himself only a deputy member of the committee, was elected chair with 13 votes in favour out of 17 cast. The same day the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization held its constituent meeting. Its minutes list Gläser as an AfD deputy member, and [Hansjörg Durz](/people/hansjorg-durz) was elected chair.

In the plenary, an early recorded contribution was on 5 November 2025, in the 36th sitting. Gläser spoke in the debate on a motion by Alliance 90/The Greens, "Digitalabgabe für Werbeumsätze einführen – Medienvielfalt und Kulturstandort stärken" (printed paper 21/2247). That motion and a further motion on printed paper 21/2536 were referred to the Committee on Culture and Media as the lead committee. He quoted its statement that a pluralistic and free media landscape is central to a functioning democracy, said the text mixed a tax with a levy, and called the proposal clientele politics. He said taxes were no answer to the market power of large United States companies, and he made the same objection to a motion from Die Linke.

The sitting also took up an AfD motion, printed paper 21/2539, "Den Deutschen Verlagspreis grundlegend reformieren – Keine Steuergelder für Verlage, deren Programme auch linksextreme Inhalte umfassen", tabled in the names of Helferich, Gläser, Frömming and further members of the group. It was referred to the culture committee as lead committee and also to the committees on legal affairs, on education, family, senior citizens, women and youth, and on the budget. Gläser rejected a charge of opening the way to censorship and said the AfD alone stood for freedom of opinion, the press and the arts. He cited the influencer [Naomi Seibt](/people/naomi-seibt), who he said had sought asylum in the United States, argued that the prize had subsidised what he called Antifa publications, and asked that money paid contrary to rules against youth-endangering, extremist and violence-glorifying content be repaid. He described Antifa as a terrorist organisation that should be banned. [Martin Rabanus](/people/martin-rabanus) (SPD) congratulated the honoured publishers and said the motion singled out titles the AfD disliked, including a brochure titled "Tipps & Tricks für Antifas und Antiras".

## Political positions

### Media policy and public broadcasting

As media spokesman for the Berlin Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, and from 2025 a full member of the Bundestag Committee on Culture and Media, Ronald Gläser has argued that public broadcasting is one-sided and too costly for a compulsory household fee.

In a March 2019 *Tagesspiegel* essay he called ARD, ZDF and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg "Erziehungsanstalten." Citing an ARD study and an Insa poll, he wrote that Green voters rated ARD far more favourably than AfD voters and that AfD voters trusted public television less on the Abgeordnetenhaus. He put spending near eight billion euros a year, claimed that at rbb about three pensioners already stood against four staff, and urged the detachment associated with Hanns Joachim Friedrichs, fewer services — closing ZDF was an option he named — and encrypted pay-television on the Danish TV2 model.

On 19 November 2020 he opposed an 86-cent monthly rise. People without a set, he said, had paid 17.50 euros since the 2013 household levy; the commission fixing broadcasters' needs was not independent; and only those who wanted the programmes should pay. He also said ARD and ZDF were concealing United States election fraud, a system of "organisierte Lüge." SPD deputy Frank Zimmermann called this mistrust sown by distortion and the rise, at 1.2 percent a year, modest. A Green interjection noted that the pensioner Gläser invoked would be exempt from the fee. CDU speaker Christian Goiny said the programmes had carried American officials calling that election the most secure in United States history.

On 30 August 2022 Gläser and Kristin Brinker signed a motion to terminate the media, contribution, financing, ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio and rbb treaties. Written during the rbb crisis, it called the system illegitimate, accused it of one-sided reporting, and asked for a smaller service: information, one national channel plus regional cultural stations, and no compulsory fee.

On 25 February 2026 he denied that the AfD wanted to destroy public broadcasting and said the broadcasters were doing so themselves. Unmarked AI pictures in a ZDF item on American deportations were, he said, systemic failure, and the dismissal of an employee who had complained to the television council was censorship by withdrawing work. CDU speaker Marvin Schulz called the video a clear error but said one failure was being used to condemn the system. [Ellen Demuth](/people/ellen-demuth) noted AfD candidates in public-service election debates.

On 15 October 2025 the Federal Administrative Court held, in a Bavarian case not brought by Gläser, that the levy is unconstitutional only if the whole offering grossly misses diversity and balance for a long period. Contribution law does not let a payer withhold money over alleged defects. Applying the Federal Constitutional Court's 2018 judgment, the court remanded for evidence rather than quashing the fee.

### Digital affairs and data protection

On 17 May 2018, chairing the committee on communications technology and data protection, Gläser held up the General Data Protection Regulation and called it a "bürokratisches Monster aus Brüssel." He welcomed protections for photographers and a press exemption beyond established newsrooms, but opposed sanctions on the press and carve-outs for state-owned firms and deputies. Green deputy Stefan Ziller cited recital 153's wide journalistic privilege; Gläser said he expected that reading. Left deputy Niklas Schrader argued Berlin should use the regulation to strengthen protection, not fall behind it.

In October 2018 the committee removed him as chair. An FDP motion by Bernd Schlömer passed with SPD, Green, Left and CDU votes after he posted parts of a leaked arrest warrant, an episode treated among the Chemnitz controversies.

On 19 December 2025, debating repeal of the [Digital Services Act](/facts/digital-services-act), Gläser — a deputy on the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation — said the European Union regulation could sink economy and democracy together, that "trusted flaggers" were state-financed denunciation agencies, and that anyone who feared tweets feared the truth. SPD deputy [Maja Wallstein](/people/maja-wallstein) said he had confused the act with EU artificial-intelligence rules: it applies offline illegality online and gives users a reason and a complaint, with courts still deciding. An AfD motion the same week, which he did not sign by name, asked the government to reject every form of "chat control," including voluntary scanning for child-sexual-abuse imagery, under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. [Pierre Lamely](/people/pierre-lamely) opened the debate.

### Domestic intelligence, migration and internal security

On the Verfassungsschutz he has wanted a narrow remit and opposed watching his party. In May 2018 he said counter-espionage should face no data-protection hurdle, but opposed extending that exemption to "public security" and to surveillance of political groups. In September 2018, after Green spokesman Benedikt Lux urged observation of Berlin AfD figures over alleged ties to the Identitarian movement, and SPD interior senator Andreas Geisel called the Chemnitz marches a caesura, Gläser called the demand an electoral distraction and said the party's ban on cooperation with extremist groups still stood. In December he told *taz* the state party took possible nationwide observation "sehr ernst" and would act against members at events of Kameradschaften or the NPD.

After New Year's Eve 2022/23 he asked, beyond the nationalities the Senate had given, for every suspect's first name. Berlin's constitutional court dismissed the organ dispute on 13 December 2023 (VerfGH 34/23) as inadmissible: he had sued before fully disputing how detailed an answer must be. He said he would ask again. The *Berliner Zeitung* noted that the Berlin CDU had also sought first names.

On 7 January 2025, on a first-name list published by Nius, he said it showed "wir haben kein Böllerproblem, sondern ein Problem mit bestimmten Bevölkerungsgruppen," that most offences were by people with a migration background, and that the violence was largely "imported." Secure borders and an end to illegal migration and to what he called almost indiscriminate naturalisation would, he said, shrink it. He accused senates led by the CDU and the SPD of stopping police, from 2022, recording migration background. Figures reported by rbb24 counted citizenship, not background: of 670 suspects, 406 were German nationals and 264 were not. Police called the list unacceptable and unlawful, a data-protection breach that encouraged discrimination, and said they were investigating the leak.

## Publications and historical commentary

### Dresden casualty pamphlet

In February 2011 Gläser published the 71-page pamphlet *Dresden 1945. Maximal 25.000 Tote? Eine kritische Untersuchung des Gutachtens der „Dresdner Historikerkommission“* as a special issue of *Deutschland-Magazin*, issued by Die Deutschen Konservativen e.V. in Hamburg and printed by SZ-Druck in St. Augustin. The preface is dated Berlin, February 2011; an author note records North American studies, emphasising history and politics, at the Free University of Berlin and family roots in Dresden.

The pamphlet answers the historians’ commission on the bombing of Dresden. The city appointed the commission in November 2004, and the city council confirmed it in January 2007 under the military historian Rolf-Dieter Müller. Its report of 17 March 2010, from nearly 60,000 individual records, put the death toll of the raids of 13–15 February 1945 at up to 25,000, in line with official figures from 1945 and 1946, and found no basis for six-figure totals, a large refugee share, widespread traceless burning, or strafing of the city on those days.

Gläser writes that the toll could not be fixed in 2011 and declines to assert any other total, including 81,862. Rumours of 250,000 to 500,000 dead arose, he argues, because not every body was counted; he quotes Alexander McKee calling Dresden “the German Hiroshima,” and alleges that the commission, with no written order to that effect, kept only results supporting a ceiling of 25,000. He reads the report as about 18,000 to 25,000 dead, below a later municipal figure of about 35,000 used in the GDR. The text compares the raid with the 1943 bombing of Hamburg, disputes the exclusion of low-level attacks, and adds 29 eyewitness accounts, most of which he says he wrote up from interviews. The conclusion treats 25,000 as a floor, “somewhere above” which the true figure lay.

A 2025 [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) fact check, using commission member Matthias Neutzner and city archivist Thomas Kübler, repeats that ceiling, a police estimate of about 25,000 within weeks, and the GDR’s long use of 35,000, taken from Max Seydewitz. It traces six-figure claims to an unsourced line in *[Svenska Dagbladet](/organizations/svenska-dagbladet)* of 25 February 1945—“rather 200,000 than 100,000”—which the Foreign Office told its Bern legation to repeat and which the commission classed as Nazi foreign propaganda. [David Irving](/people/david-irving)’s *Der Untergang Dresdens* later used a supposed “Tagesbefehl 47” for 135,000 dead, a document Walter Weidauer and Richard J. Evans treated as a forgery. Kübler said the revision from 35,000 angered many, without changing the judgment that Dresden was the bombardment’s victim.

### Columns and other commentary

Gläser has also signed columns for decades in *Junge Freiheit*, whose author page still listed him in the 2020s, and in *eigentümlich frei*.

In “Widersprüche” (14 December 2001) he criticised ZDF and ARD/ORB programmes on the end of the Second World War for blaming Breslau’s Gauleiter both for delay and for a hasty evacuation, “as if he were the expeller—not the Russians.” He called the Soviet advance “an unbelievable trail of blood through Germany” and, “expressed in a politically correct way,” “a Holocaust,” a reading he said neither broadcaster offered.

“Gegen das Vergessen” (12 September 2003) reported *Die große Flucht*, a DVD presented by Erika Steinbach, then president of the Federation of Expellees, for classroom use on the flight and expulsion of Germans. He notes its 70-euro price, Bavaria’s distribution to schools, and what he calls half-truths in video taken from Guido Knopp, including a denial of Soviet atrocities at Nemmersdorf.

On 18 February 2010, in *eigentümlich frei*, the publicly visible opening of a subscriber article described that year’s Dresden anniversary—several thousand people from the right at a commemoration of the bombing’s victims, and a larger counter-demonstration—as the rule of law being undermined.

## Controversies

### Churchill column

On 16 August 2010 Gläser published “War Churchill ein Held?” in *Junge Freiheit*, answering a *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* cover that placed Winston Churchill in front of Adolf Hitler. The two “Kriegsherren,” he wrote, were not treated equally “als die Kriegsverbrecher … die sie waren,” because the war’s outcome had given Hitler the villain’s part and Churchill the hero’s; he asked what would have happened if “die Engländer uns Deutschen 1939 nicht ohne Not den Krieg erklärt hätten,” and called the result the world Churchill had brought—much of Europe in ruins, fifty million dead, and communist rule over half of Germany and over Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, and the Czech and Slovak lands—not Churchill’s work alone, he added, but substantially his, through blindness to the real war aims of [Joseph Stalin](/people/joseph-stalin) and a war policy aimed at Germany.

Four days later, in “Churchills Fehler,” he said that setting a democrat such as Churchill beside Hitler invited the charge of relativization, that the first column could be read that way, and that he had been unclear. Hitler, he wrote, had been a war criminal of another order—a dictator outside democratic rules who had set the murder of the Jews in motion—and he withdrew “ohne Not”: Britain’s declaration of war was the logical consequence of Hitler’s setting aside the [Munich Agreement](/facts/munich-agreement), though Britain had still, in his view, steered toward conflict with Germany. The column also criticized the First World War blockade of German civilians, bombing he said culminated in the 1945 attack on Dresden, and the alliance with Stalin.

The text drew notice again after the 2016 Berlin state election. On 20 September 2016 *[The Daily Telegraph](/organizations/the-daily-telegraph)* reported that a new member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin for the Alternative for Germany had described Churchill as a war criminal, quoting the comparison with Hitler and the claim that Britain had declared war in 1939 without necessity.

### Chemnitz arrest-warrant tweet

In late August 2018 a 35-year-old man, Daniel H., was fatally stabbed in Chemnitz. Two men who had arrived as asylum seekers were in pretrial detention, and a partly blacked-out arrest warrant—name and date of birth of an Iraqi suspect still readable—spread online. A Dresden prison employee admitted photographing and passing on the warrant and was suspended; *Welt* reported in October that the Iraqi suspect was by then free again.

Gläser, chair of the Abgeordnetenhaus committee on communication technology and data protection, posted the first page on Twitter with the line “Anklagen, verurteilen, bestrafen, abschieben.” The *taz* wrote that the post was gone after several hours; he told reporters he had deleted it the next morning. Section 353d, number 3, of the Strafgesetzbuch threatens up to one year in prison or a fine for publicly communicating, verbatim and in whole or in essential part, an indictment or other official document of a criminal proceeding before it has been discussed in open court or the case has ended.

On 10 September 2018 he called the tweet a mistake and said he had not known it could be a crime, while describing the employee’s leak as “eine mutige Tat” and likening him to whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning. He said he would give up the chair only if sentenced to prison or a suspended sentence. A prosecutor’s spokesman told the *taz* that the office was considering an investigation and a request to lift his parliamentary immunity. By the removal vote the paper reported that Berlin prosecutors had opened an investigation into the prohibited publication of official documents. Neither that account nor the dpa reports in *Süddeutsche Zeitung*, *Welt*, and *Bild* stated that a charge had been filed or that a court had imposed a penalty.

On 15 October 2018 every faction but the AfD voted him out, calling the post a flagrant breach of data protection. Free Democratic member Bernd Schlömer, who moved the vote, said anyone who rejected liberal constitutional rules could not stay chair. Sven Kohlmeier of the Social Democrats said Gläser lacked a basic interest in data protection; Niklas Schrader of Die Linke said he had defended the original leak; Dirk Stettner of the Christian Democratic Union said he was unfit for the office and would repeat the error. Gläser said he would not post the warrant again and that removal was disproportionate. The AfD kept the right to name a successor. He proposed Marc Vallendar, but the election was put off because a required letter from the faction leadership was missing.

### Leaked group-chat messages

In April 2019, amid a quarrel in the AfD branch in Pankow over borough deputy Andreas Geithe, *Der Tagesspiegel* reported that Stephan Wirtensohn, leader of the AfD group in the borough assembly, had circulated a photograph of himself with a firearm. One account described a machine gun captioned “Antifaneutralisierer,” sent to Geithe by text message to test his views; the report on Gläser described an assault-rifle picture subtitled “Antifaneutralisator.” In a WhatsApp exchange Gläser, spokesperson of the Berlin AfD and a deputy to state chair Georg Pazderski, answered “Haben will” and “Toll.”

The messages surfaced weeks after Pazderski had demanded a “Reinigungsprozess” and said “verwirrte Köpfe mit rechtsradikalem Gedankengut” did not belong in the party. Benedikt Lux of Alliance 90/The Greens asked Pazderski to expel Gläser and called him a “Gefährder.” *B.Z.* reported that Gläser confirmed the replies: he had found the photograph cool, noticed the “Antifaneutralisator” line only later, and would not put it that way today. He treated the disclosure as a leak from an internal dispute.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/ronald-glaser