# Steffen Kotré

# Steffen Kotré

Steffen Kotré (born 29 April 1971 in Berlin) is a German politician of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag from Brandenburg. The Bundestag biography, which is based on his own information, records a 1990 apprenticeship as an electrician combined with the Abitur, civilian service that year at the Charité in Berlin, and a 1997 degree as a Diplom-Ingenieur in industrial engineering. From 1998, and self-employed from 2005, he worked as a management consultant to small and medium-sized firms; from 2014 to 2017 he was economics and energy adviser to the AfD group in the Landtag of Brandenburg.

The same account states that he joined the AfD in 2013, is deputy chairman of its Dahme-Spreewald district association, and sat on that district's council from 2014 to 2017. He has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017. The 19th Bundestag held its first sitting on 24 October 2017. In the 2021 federal election he stood in constituency 62, then called Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III – Oberspreewald-Lausitz I, and received 33,719 first votes (17.6 percent); the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) won the seat with 26.5 percent. At the election of 23 February 2025 he won the redrawn constituency Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III directly, with 66,815 first votes (33.6 percent), ahead of Jana Schimke of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 47,405 votes (23.8 percent). Turnout was 83.2 percent among 241,186 eligible voters.

In the 19th electoral term he was the AfD group's spokesperson for economic and energy policy. From the start of the 20th term the biography lists him as energy-policy spokesperson, speaker of the Brandenburg state group, and rapporteur for the Bundestag's international exchange programmes. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, a deputy member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs), and deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus parliamentary group. He is also an ordinary member of the advisory board (*Beirat*) of the Federal Network Agency (*Bundesnetzagentur*) for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railways.

On Thursday, 2 February 2023, he joined by video a talk show hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, whom *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* described as a prominent supporter of [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin) and of Russia's war against Ukraine. According to recordings reported by the magazine, Kotré said German media were lining the public up against Russia and that he was appalled by German arms deliveries to Ukraine; the next day he wrote that he would give anyone an interview and that, despite the war, diplomacy meant using every channel. *Spiegel* reported that the appearance had not been known to the party. In August 2022 *t-online* reported that a 2004 solidarity appeal for the Holocaust denier Horst Mahler carried the name "Steffen Kotré, Frankfurt an der Oder" beside known deniers and neo-Nazi activists, and that Kotré did not answer the outlet's questions. In May 2025 Brandenburg interior minister Katrin Lange said the state's domestic-intelligence service had, on 14 April, classified the Brandenburg AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour, the fourth state branch of the party to be so classified.

## Early life and education

### Upbringing and vocational training

Steffen Kotré was born on 29 April 1971. The biography kept by the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag), which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own statements, gives the birthplace as Berlin and describes him as having no religious affiliation. A November 2023 portrait in the *Märkische Allgemeine*, based on an interview, reported that he was born in what was then East Berlin and grew up in Friedrichshain, where his parents were teachers. Asked whether being a teacher's child was anything particular, he said that he knew nothing else. The *Lausitzer Rundschau* has likewise referred to him as a native of East Berlin.

In 1990 he completed vocational training as an Elektromonteur, an electrical fitter, together with the Abitur, the school-leaving certificate that qualifies its holder for university. The same year he performed Zivildienst, the civilian alternative to compulsory military service, at the Charité in Berlin, a placement recorded in the Bundestag biography, in his own summary on Abgeordnetenwatch, and in the *Lausitzer Rundschau*. He later told the *Märkische Allgemeine* that he had chosen civilian service because it was less confined to barracks and left him more freedom.

### University studies and the Corps

He then studied in Berlin. In 1997 he graduated as a Diplom-Ingenieur in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen, the German degree combining engineering with management and usually rendered in English as industrial engineering. Neither the Bundestag biography nor the curriculum vitae he posted on Abgeordnetenwatch names the higher-education institution.

The 2023 interview treated those student years as the setting of his membership in a Studentenverbindung. The conversation moved from student corporations to Mensur, regulated bouts with sabres in which the eyes, neck and hands are protected, and to a small fencing scar, a Schmiss, on his left cheek. The *Märkische Allgemeine* named the fraternity as Corps Rheno-Guestphalia, later Corps Berlin. Rheno-Guestphalia traced itself to a society of students from the Rhineland and Westphalia founded on 25 February 1866 at Berlin's royal building and trade academy. On 9 February 2009 it merged with Corps Cheruscia and Corps Teutonia to form Corps Berlin, which continued in the Weinheimer Senioren-Convent, the association of corps historically based at technical and scientific universities. The corps states that fencing remains part of active membership and that an active member is expected to fight four Mensuren. Kotré's Bundestag biography, again on his own information, lists him as an Alter Herr—an alumnus—of a Berlin student fraternity, without naming it. Press accounts used the name Corps Berlin: in July 2018 *Die Tageszeitung* described him as closely tied to that fraternity, and on 17 August 2022 it described him as a member.

## Professional career

### Consulting work

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own statements, describes Kotré as active from 1998 in consulting for small and medium-sized enterprises, and from 2005 on a self-employed basis. The fields named there are management consulting, financing and business plans, controlling, corporate management and advice on public funding. The same dates and subjects appear in the self-description he supplied to Abgeordnetenwatch.

*Kürschners Volkshandbuch* for the 20th electoral term, in the text current on 15 June 2023, places that self-employed work in Potsdam, Frankfurt (Oder) and Berlin. The conduct-rule disclosures on the Bundestag website list the pre-membership occupation more narrowly as “Unternehmensberater, Brandenburg an der Havel.” Abgeordnetenwatch files the consultancy under professional activity before membership in the Bundestag; the record, last changed on 17 September 2026, gives no remuneration. No consulting firm is named in either publication.

The business interest that is disclosed is a participation in Trade Point Mobile UG (haftungsbeschränkt) of Dallgow-Döberitz. North Data’s summary of the register publications shows the company entered on 17 December 2013 at the Amtsgericht Potsdam as HRB 26704, with share capital of 1,000 euros, its address at Breite Straße 7, and an object limited to buying, selling, repairing and optimizing new and used goods. The same summary groups the firm with retail of antiques and second-hand goods and lists Kotré as managing director from that initial entry. Annual accounts for the years 2016 through 2024 have been published; the open summary does not give turnover or profit. Neither the Bundestag disclosure nor Abgeordnetenwatch states the size of his holding or any income from it. Abgeordnetenwatch records the interest for the 2017–2021, 2021–2025 and 2025–2029 terms, captured on 10 December 2025, under the different wording “Trade Point Mobil GmbH (haftungsbeschränkt).”

### Advisor to the Landtag group

From 2014 to 2017 Kotré was a Referent for economic and energy affairs of the Alternative for Germany group in the Landtag of Brandenburg, in Potsdam. The post was faction staff rather than a seat in the Landtag. The conduct-rule filings place it, with the consultancy, among occupations before Bundestag membership, which the biography dates from October 2017. In a 2022 article the public broadcaster rbb, writing about a trip made in 2015, described him as then still a Referent of the AfD group in the Brandenburg Landtag. The biographies and the register extracts do not identify consulting clients, fees or employees.

## Party and local politics

### From the FDP to the AfD

Kotré has said that his party career began in the 1990s, when he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and that [Jörg Haider](/people/jorg-haider) of the [Freedom Party of Austria](/organizations/freedom-party-of-austria) was already his model: Haider’s politics, he said, had “shone across” into Germany as a “conservative-liberal example.” Those accounts do not name a local FDP branch or the date he left. The *Lausitzer Rundschau* reported in October 2023 that he had belonged to the FDP before joining the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2013. His Bundestag biography, drawn from his own information, dates AfD membership from 2013 and does not mention the FDP.

### District council and party offices

In the Kreistag election of 25 May 2014 in Dahme-Spreewald, the AfD received 13,716 votes, 6.8 percent, on a turnout of 50.6 percent. Kotré sat for the AfD. At the constitutive meeting on 24 June 2014 in Lübben, the AfD group nominated him for second deputy chair of the council. He received eight of 49 valid votes, and Robert Seelig of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) was elected. The Bundestag biography gives his council membership as 2014–2017.

In October 2023 the *Lausitzer Rundschau* described him as a member of the Brandenburg state executive, chair of its specialist committee on the economy, technology and tourism, and chair of the Dahme-Spreewald district association. At the state congress in Jüterbog in March 2024, which elected René Springer state chair, a members’ circular listed Kotré as one of seven assessors (*Beisitzer*); that executive was to take office after 9 April 2024. On 10 April 2025 he wrote that he had worked for the district association since 2013, “for a time as chair, now as deputy.” The Bundestag biography still lists the deputy chairmanship. The assessors on the state association’s board page no longer include him.

### 2023 district-administrator election

The Landrat of a Brandenburg district is elected directly. Under the municipal election law, applied to district administrators by cross-reference, a candidate needs more than half of the valid votes, and that majority must also equal at least 15 percent of those eligible to vote. If nobody reaches both thresholds, the two leading candidates contest a runoff, at earliest on the second and at latest on the fifth Sunday after the first poll, under the same rule. If the runoff also fails, the Kreistag chooses the Landrat.

The poll on 8 October 2023 chose a successor to Stephan Loge of the Social Democratic Party, who was leaving after nearly 16 years. Residents from the age of 16 could vote. Of 146,948 people eligible, 74,680 voted (50.8 percent) and 73,332 ballots were valid. Kotré (AfD) received 25,862 (35.3 percent), the non-party Sven Herzberger, mayor of Zeuthen on an individual nomination, 25,545 (34.8 percent), and Susanne Rieckhof (SPD) 21,925 (29.9 percent). Half the valid votes was 36,667, so nobody was elected, though Kotré’s total cleared the separate floor of 22,043. Kotré and Herzberger went to a runoff on 12 November.

Then 70,439 of 147,067 eligible voters took part (47.9 percent), with 69,869 valid votes. Herzberger won 45,264 (64.8 percent) to Kotré’s 24,605 (35.2 percent) and was declared elected; the majority line had been 34,935. *Der Spiegel* reported that every party except the AfD had backed Herzberger, and that Kotré, who lives in Havelland, had counted on former non-voters. Herzberger said he wanted “not to divide, but to bring people together.” Kotré called the result predictable once the others had combined against the AfD. The new term was to start on 1 March 2024.

## Bundestag elections

### State-list seats in 2017 and 2021

Steffen Kotré entered the Bundestag for Brandenburg from the state list of [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD). For the election of 24 September 2017 the state returning officer admitted an AfD list headed by [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland), Roman Reusch and René Springer, with Kotré fourth and Norbert Kleinwächter fifth. Kotré was not a constituency candidate. In constituency 62, then Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III – Oberspreewald-Lausitz I, the AfD nominee was Dietmar Ertel; the other main candidates were Jana Schimke of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Sylvia Lehmann of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Carsten Preuß of Die Linke.

*Brandenburg constituencies 56–65 for the 2017 Bundestag election. The legend names constituency 62 as Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III – Oberspreewald-Lausitz I.*

Ertel took 37,358 first votes (20.3 percent), second to Schimke on 56,607 (30.7 percent). Lehmann was third with 36,148 (19.6 percent) and Preuß fourth with 30,278 (16.4 percent). Turnout was 75.4 percent. Schimke was declared elected in the constituency. Statewide the AfD won 20.2 percent of second votes and none of the ten constituencies: the CDU took nine and the SPD one. The five AfD members—Gauland, Reusch, Springer, Kotré and Kleinwächter—were all returned from the list. The 19th Bundestag met for the first time on 24 October 2017, and membership of that term began only with the constitutive sitting. The Bundestag’s biography records Kotré as a member from October 2017.

On the list admitted for 26 September 2021, Gauland was first, Springer second and Kotré third, followed by Kleinwächter and [Hannes Gnauck](/people/hannes-gnauck). Kotré also stood in constituency 62. Lehmann won it for the SPD with 50,696 first votes (26.5 percent). Schimke was second on 38,080 (19.9 percent) and Kotré third on 33,719 (17.6 percent); Preuß had 17,417 (9.1 percent). Turnout was 76.9 percent. The SPD won all ten Brandenburg constituencies. With 18.1 percent of second votes in the state, the AfD again received five seats, all from the list: Gauland, Springer, Kotré, Kleinwächter and Gnauck. The 20th Bundestag was constituted on 26 October 2021.

### Direct mandate in 2025

Kotré was not on the AfD state list admitted for the election of 23 February 2025. That list had eight places, led by Springer, Gnauck and Kleinwächter. He stood only in constituency 62, redrawn as Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III: the whole of Dahme-Spreewald and part of Teltow-Fläming, including Luckenwalde, Zossen, Trebbin and Rangsdorf, and no longer the former Oberspreewald-Lausitz portion carried in the 2017 and 2021 name. The constituency returning officer admitted Anja Soheam (SPD), Kotré (AfD), Schimke (CDU), Jean-Paul Kley of the Free Democratic Party, [Andrea Lübcke](/people/andrea-lubcke) of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) and Robert Kosin (Die Linke), among others.

Kotré won with 66,815 first votes (33.6 percent). Schimke, who had won the seat in 2017, was second with 47,405 (23.8 percent). Soheam received 35,055 (17.6 percent) and Kosin 22,422 (11.3 percent); the Greens had 10,248 (5.2 percent) and the FDP 4,967 (2.5 percent). Of 241,186 eligible voters, 200,748 voted, a turnout of 83.2 percent. On second votes in the constituency the AfD led with 63,993 (32.1 percent), ahead of the CDU on 39,081 (19.6 percent) and the SPD on 29,308 (14.7 percent). Die Linke (20,400) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (20,398) each had 10.2 percent. Statewide the AfD’s second-vote share was 32.5 percent. The Federal Returning Officer recorded Kotré as elected in the constituency, and the Bundestag lists a constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 062. The 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025.

## Parliamentary work

### Committees and faction posts

Steffen Kotré has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017. In the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) the archived record lists him as an ordinary member, and as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group's coordinator (*Obmann*), of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy (*Ausschuss für Wirtschaft und Energie*), and as a deputy member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the Finance Committee, and the Subcommittee on Regional Economic Policy and ERP Economic Plans. The biographical note, which the Bundestag states is the member's own account, says that in that term he was the AfD group's spokesperson for economic and energy policy.

In the 20th term (2021–2025) he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy and a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and of the Subcommittee on International Climate and Energy Policy. The same self-reported biography states that from the start of the 20th term he has been the group's energy-policy spokesperson, speaker of its Brandenburg state group (*Landesgruppe*), and rapporteur for the Bundestag's international exchange programmes.

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. On 17 September 2025 the CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD jointly proposed him as a full member of the advisory board (*Beirat*) of the Federal Network Agency (*Bundesnetzagentur*) for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railways, with Robin Jünger as substitute. The agency's list of 23 September 2026 still names Kotré in that seat and Jünger as his representative. He holds the direct mandate for constituency 062, Dahme-Spreewald – Teltow-Fläming III; constituency offices are listed in Luckenwalde, at Breite Straße 27, and in Halbe, at Lindenstraße 36a.

### Interparliamentary groups

Bundestag board lists name Kotré as a deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus Parliamentary Group, covering Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the 19th term the chair was Barbara Hendricks (SPD). In the 20th term the chair was [Johann Wadephul](/people/johann-wadephul) (CDU/CSU), with Kotré again the AfD deputy chair. The biography current as of 31 October 2026 still lists that deputy chairmanship and no other parliamentary-group office.

In the 20th term he chaired the Parliamentary Group for Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, with deputy chairs from the SPD, the CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP. On the 19th-term board of that group the chair was Renata Alt (FDP) and the AfD seat was held by Petr Bystron.

### Questions, motions and speeches

On 24 September 2026, in the 96th sitting of the 21st Bundestag, Kotré spoke for the AfD on the motion "Der drohenden Kraftstoffkrise durch souveräne Energiepolitik entgegenwirken – Industrie und Mittelstand retten" (printed paper 21/8115), which he introduced with other AfD members, in a debate that also covered an AfD motion to end German climate-protection measures.

He told the House that the energy-import ratio had risen from 60 to 67 percent and that Germany had become a net importer of electricity because of the *Energiewende*, and he argued for reversing the energy transition in favour of what he called a competitive energy market. The same sitting included the first reading of an AfD bill to repeal the Renewable Energy Sources Act (*Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz*), printed paper 21/8108, introduced by [Leif-Erik Holm](/people/leif-erik-holm), Kotré, [Malte Kaufmann](/people/malte-kaufmann) and the AfD group and referred to the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy.

On 11 December 2025 Kotré was the lead signatory of a minor interpellation (*Kleine Anfrage*), printed paper 21/3225. It asked the federal government about possible trading advantages from access to activation signals in the balancing-energy market and about Regulation (EU) No 1227/2011 on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT).

## Energy and climate policy

Steffen Kotré has been the energy-policy spokesperson of the Alternative for Germany group in the Bundestag since the start of the 20th electoral term, according to the chamber's biography, and is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. A members' list of the advisory council at the Federal Network Agency, dated 23 September 2026, names him among the Bundestag's representatives. The biography, which the Bundestag says rests on members' own disclosures, records membership of Nuklearia; his Abgeordnetenwatch profile also lists him as chairman of the Verein für Energiesicherheit, an office absent from that biography.

### Climate policy and the coal exit

Kotré has treated German climate policy as alarm rather than settled science. On 14 November 2024 he told the Bundestag that the climate was changing but that there was "kein Grund zur Panik", quoted a 1989 remark he attributed to the climatologist Stephen H. Schneider of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change](/organizations/intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change) about frightening scenarios and a choice between honesty and effectiveness, and said avoiding carbon dioxide was "der falsche Weg". He spoke of "Klimahysterie" whose point, he said, was to stop the costs of the Energiewende from being questioned as industry and prosperity were cut. The Social Democrat [Nina Scheer](/people/nina-scheer), speaking next, called the speech climate-change denial built on false claims. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment synthesis states, by contrast, that human activities, principally through greenhouse-gas emissions, have unequivocally caused global warming.

He has opposed the statutory coal phase-out itself. The Coal Phase-out Act provides for coal-fired generation to be reduced in stages and ended by the close of 2038 at the latest. Opening debate on AfD motions to stop that law, on 31 January 2020, he called the exit "ein Produkt einer infantilen Politik: überhastet, impulsgesteuert und ohne Verstand", and said it was unfounded, unsuited to its aim, unsocial and dangerous. He asserted, without the House adopting the figures, that German coal's carbon dioxide was 0.6 per cent of the world total, that models could not reproduce past climate, that the exit would cost about 100 to 150 billion euros, and that 43 gigawatts of firm capacity would go without a secure replacement. He called the Renewable Energy Sources Act a planned-economy law and said wind and solar lacked firm output because "Wind weht nicht immer, nachts ist es dunkel". The AfD's 2025 programme rejects a lignite exit, calls for more coal plant in the short term, and proposes leaving the [Paris Agreement](/facts/paris-agreement) because, it says, humans cannot protect the climate.

### Nuclear power

Commercial nuclear generation ended on 15 April 2023. The government said further running was impossible on legal, technical and business grounds, and Environment Minister [Steffi Lemke](/people/steffi-lemke) said the exit made the country safer; nuclear plants had supplied 6 per cent of gross generation in 2022, against an aim of at least 80 per cent renewables by 2030. On 12 April 2024 Kotré said security of supply was "Geschichte", citing the Oranienburg utility, which he said could no longer connect new customers, and blamed the coalition's "ideologische Energiewendepolitik" rather than Russia. He said renewables cost more than coal or nuclear once grid costs were added, and that harm from wind turbines to birds was being ignored. The AfD, he said, would return to nuclear power that was "umweltverträglich", cheap and secure, and the technology would have a renaissance. The 2025 programme says existing plants should be restarted as soon as possible and the skills to do so rebuilt in German firms, authorities and universities.

### Gas supply and Nord Stream

Kotré has argued that pipeline natural gas from Russia through Nord Stream is a German commercial interest, not a favour to the [Russian government](/organizations/russian-government).

On 22 May 2025, debating a Green motion to rule out any return to the pipelines, he said Russia had "immer zuverlässig Gas geliefert", that the previous government had made gas a weapon by telling Moscow Germany no longer wanted it, and that Nord Stream was "nicht um Putin" but "ein Vorteil für Deutschland", because nothing was cheaper than a direct pipeline from the exporter. Opposing it, he said, meant prices two or three times as high and a further shift abroad of chemicals and other gas-intensive industry. Of the September 2022 explosions he named the perpetrator of the "Terrorakt" as "vermutlich die Biden-Regierung" and called acceptance of the attack without consequences infantile and self-damaging. Asked by the Christian Democrat Andreas Lenz, who said intelligence pointed elsewhere, Kotré cited [Seymour Hersh](/people/seymour-hersh), a sailing boat he called a failed diversion, and an alleged lack of Danish and Swedish cooperation, then conceded: "Ich weiß es nicht zu hundert Prozent, aber ich vermute, dass es so ist." Focus reported the claim as unproven; both Hersh and a [New York](/organizations/new-york) Times account of pro-Ukrainian suspects relied on anonymous sources. The AfD programme calls for the intact Nord Stream 2 string to be commissioned, the damaged lines repaired, and the saboteurs made to pay.

## Foreign policy

### Russia and the war in Ukraine

The Bundestag lists Kotré as a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. On 25 March 2022, during a gas-storage debate, he called Russia's war against Ukraine illegal, said the suffering lay with the Russian government, and said the war had to end at once. He then claimed a "Mitschuld des Westens" (Western co-responsibility): the West, "namely the United States," had provoked the crisis, and American think tanks used Ukraine to destabilize Russia. He added that one also had to discuss "Biowaffenlabore in der Ukraine" directed against Russia. *Der Spiegel* later placed that laboratory claim in a Russian narrative about secret American bioweapons laboratories.

On 2 February 2023 he appeared by video on the state-television talk show of Vladimir Solovyov, whom *Der Spiegel* described as a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin and of the war, and who was on sanctions lists of the European Union and Canada. *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* and *Der Tagesspiegel* reported that he accused German media of turning the public against Russia and its leadership and claimed that a majority, or large parts, of Germans opposed deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine. *Der Spiegel* reported that he said he was appalled by the deliveries and compared them with German weapons used against Russians in the Second World War. An ARD-Deutschlandtrend survey by Infratest dimap, published that day, found that 52 percent did not regard the Leopard decision as a mistake and 39 percent did, while 44 percent called weapons support appropriate and 35 percent said it went too far.

Reporting stated that the appearance had not been known to the Alternative for Germany. Asked whether it had been agreed with him, the group or the party, co-leader Tino Chrupalla told the German Press Agency that each member decides and answers for interviews. The next day Kotré wrote that he gave interviews to anyone, including Foreign Minister [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock), who he said had declared war on Russia: "trotz Krieg: Diplomatie und miteinander reden – alle Kanäle nutzen."

In June 2026 Kotré and fellow AfD member Markus Frohnmaier attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, which opened on 3 June. An AfD Bundestag spokesperson said it was sensible to keep contacts and channels open. Intelligence-committee chair [Marc Henrichmann](/people/marc-henrichmann) (CDU) called such trips a security risk and a "political kneeling before a war criminal"; [Sebastian Fiedler](/people/sebastian-fiedler) (SPD) called the trip highly problematic, and [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) (Greens) said the AfD wanted Germany as a Russian outpost.

### Questions concerning Belarus

From December 2024 Kotré co-signed AfD questions on Belarusian civil society and was the named initiator of one. Paper 20/14279 of 18 December 2024 asked about a €27,300 Foreign Office grant in 2023 to the exile outlet Malanka Media and about a YouTube interview, cited to the minute, in which Vadim Prokopiev was said to back an "uprising" and talks with President [Alexander Lukashenko](/people/alexander-lukashenko) only with a rifle sight on his forehead.

Paper 21/277 of 26 May 2025, which he co-signed, objected to the suspension of Belarusian board members of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future and called its funding of exile group BYSOL interference in Belarus's affairs; it also asked about the Kalinouski Regiment fighting with Ukraine. Follow-up paper 21/814 of 9 July 2025 asked whether BYSOL projects were financed in Germany, in what sums, and whether money for former political prisoners reached Belarusians there.

The rbb programme *Kontraste*, published by tagesschau on 22 August 2025, said there had been three such questions since December 2024. Former board member Anshelika Anoschko said Minsk, having lost access to sensitive project data, appeared to be seeking it through the questions; [Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya](/people/sviatlana-tsikhanouskaya)'s adviser Alexander Dabravolski called that an attempt to de-anonymize a support network, and Social Democrat [Johannes Schraps](/people/johannes-schraps) suggested the texts may have come from the Belarusian or, more likely, the Russian embassy. The AfD group said questions are generally drafted in the initiating members' offices. Kotré told *Kontraste* he could not recall the contents, including of the question he had initiated, and denied foreign influence: the AfD, he said, acted "völlig autark, völlig autonom." The government answered guardedly, citing protection of Belarusian organizations and former prisoners and, in part, the welfare of the state.

### South Caucasus and other parliamentary contacts

In the 20th electoral term the Bundestag named Kotré a deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus parliamentary group, covering Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, under CDU/CSU chair Johann David Wadephul; his biography still listed the post in October 2026. The same list named him chair of the group for Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. An AfD motion of 18 November 2024, with Kotré as first signatory, stated that after a nine-month Lachin blockade and an Azerbaijani offensive, forces in Nagorno-Karabakh capitulated on 20 September 2023 and almost all of about 120,000 Armenians fled. It asked for aid to Armenia, prisoner releases, protection of Armenian heritage, and pressure against any attack on Armenia.

## Migration, public health and domestic positions

### Immigration and remigration

Kotré has tied immigration to crime and to a threatened German homeland. In 2014 the *Berliner Morgenpost* reported that rbb had filmed him invoking, “statistically speaking,” a link between immigration and the rape rate. The paper named no statistical source, and Alexander Gauland said he had neither seen nor heard the remark. Belltower.News reported that in a 2017 interview for *Zuerst!*, which it called far-right, he described immigration policy as a “roadmap to over-foreignization” (*Fahrplan zur Überfremdung*). On 27 September 2018 he told the Bundestag that Germans again faced “the loss of *Heimat*” through “the import of parallel societies, of foreign cultures and of crime.”

At the Brandenburg AfD’s March 2021 list convention, rbb reported, Kotré called for a *Schulterschluss* with street movements. The same account said that differences with Pegida, the Cottbus group Zukunft Heimat—which rbb called far-right—and the Querdenken protests were barely visible among the leading candidates.

On 18 December 2024, after the fall of [Bashar al-Assad](/people/bashar-al-assad), he demanded in the Bundestag “remigration and reintegration of all Syrians living with us—but then there, in Syria,” while calling integrated Syrians who accepted the Basic Law and supported themselves welcome. He spoke of about one million Syrians, a low employment rate and costs of about €25 billion, and said of Essen, Solingen and Bad Oeynhausen that “the worst perpetrators are Syrians,” without citing a statistical publication. He closed with “Remigration can save human lives.”

In the 2023 campaign for district administrator of Dahme-Spreewald, Kotré told the *Märkische Allgemeine* that a *Landrat* must have refugees without a right to remain deported. Incumbent Stephan Loge (SPD) replied that the state’s central foreigners authority carries out removals, while the district only determines whether a duty to leave exists.

His wife, Lena Kotré, has been the more prominent speaker at some remigration events. Correctiv reported that she, not he, addressed a 14 December 2024 meeting in Kloten, Switzerland, with Junge Tat, where she argued that naturalized offenders could lose citizenship. In January 2026 a talk with Martin Sellner of the Identitarian movement was planned at the AfD office in Luckenwalde, with Steffen Kotré listed as a participant. After [Alice Weidel](/people/alice-weidel), Tino Chrupalla and René Springer intervened, it was cancelled. At Sellner’s replacement in Vetschau, Lena Kotré attended and Steffen Kotré did not. In March 2025 *UnHerd* reported that Kotré received a [Homeland Party](/organizations/homeland-party) delegation for a Bundestag visit the party called preparation for remigration. Lena Kotré, not he, was billed for its conference the next month.

### The COVID-19 pandemic

On 16 December 2020 Kotré told the Bundestag that new COVID-19 vaccines had not had the six-to-ten-year testing he attributed to conventional vaccines, that side effects and efficacy were unclear, and that “this procedure is also a procedure that interferes with the genes, that is, a genetic-engineering procedure. So we are dealing with an experiment rather than with a vaccination.” Steffi Lemke (Greens) called that a lie. Rudolf Henke (CDU), a physician, replied that BioNTech messenger RNA is quickly broken down, is not converted into DNA and does not affect human DNA, and that shorter trials reflected the number of infections; n-tv reported that he accused the AfD of misleading the public. Kotré opposed compulsory vaccination and business closures and called for protecting high-risk groups.

At the 2021 convention he also spoke, rbb reported, of an “unconstitutional corona dictatorship” and of [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) and Jens Spahn destroying prosperity. Belltower.News listed him among AfD Bundestag members documented at the Querdenken demonstration in Berlin on 29 August 2020. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* reported in September 2021 that he had nominated the movement for a democracy prize and then wrongly suggested that it had received the award.

## Reported links to the extreme right

### Texts and the 2004 Mahler appeal

In October 2022 rbb, using research by the ARD magazine *Kontraste*, reported that from about 2001 about a dozen poems had appeared under the name Steffen Kotré on sites linked to the neo-Nazi milieu. On the site of a small group, the Deutschherrenklub, they formed a section called "Kotrés Welt," with lines such as "Rühre, wie die Trommel, unser nordisch' Blut" and "singe uns das völkisch' Lied." Gideon Botsch, head of the unit on antisemitism and right-wing extremism at the Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam, called them right-wing extremist texts in an older "blood and soil" style and said the author glorified "struggle, war and violence." In 2004 the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors indexed that site for National Socialist glorification and antisemitism, and the section went offline. Kotré's Bundestag office did not say whether he had written the poems. On 19 April 2004 the paper *Fritz*, of the then Junge Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen, printed "lines sent to us by Steffen Kotré" titled "Deutscher Osten," which Botsch read as a claim to lost eastern territory. The group, later the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, was on the AfD incompatibility list and was classed as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The *taz* treated the poems as apparently his. He did not confirm or deny them.

In August 2022 t-online reported that "Steffen Kotré, Frankfurt an der Oder" stood on a 2004 list backing Horst Mahler, next to Holocaust deniers and NPD and neo-Nazi activists. Mahler, who died in July 2025, co-founded the [Red Army Faction](/organizations/red-army-faction), later became a neo-Nazi, and was repeatedly convicted of Holocaust denial; he left the NPD in 2003 as insufficiently radical and was freed in October 2020. The paper *nd* said it had the appeal of the committee "Freiheit für Horst Mahler, Reinhold Oberlercher und Uwe Meenen!" Signatories said they were defending free speech, not endorsing the three men's views. The trial concerned a Deutsches Kolleg pamphlet, from a group on the AfD incompatibility list, that called for banning associations "influenced by the Jewish national spirit" and for a "Fourth Reich." t-online could not establish how the name was added. Kotré did not answer, and the *taz* reported no denial. The Brandenburg AfD's spokesman, Detlev Frye, said the state board would speak with him but would not comment until the board itself knew the facts. The Bundestag group and the federal executive said party bodies would look into it.

### The 2009 Dresden march and later events

Photographs reported by the *taz* in February 2024 show Kotré at the February 2009 Dresden march of the Saxon NPD and the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, next to Robert Offermann, later Hamburg AfD spokesman. The "mourning marches" around the 1945 bombing anniversary were used to speak of a "bombing Holocaust"; tagesschau put the 2009 crowd at about 6,000 right-wing extremists. rbb reported the photographs. Endstation Rechts, citing rbb, wrote that Kotré said he had gone to see for himself.

In late May 2023, t-online reported from *Welt* and from a photo Kotré posted, he signed a "Manifesto for Europe and against Globalism" in Bratislava with far-right politicians. They included [Grzegorz Braun](/people/grzegorz-braun), whom t-online called leader of Poland's Konfederacja and who had disrupted a Holocaust researcher and alleged a plan to make Poland a "Jewish state," and members of Slovakia's Republika, one fined for insulting Sinti and Roma and quoted as saying only lies were taught about the Third Reich and the Holocaust. The AfD Bundestag leadership had not approved the trip; Kotré was said to have paid himself. Neither he nor the group replied.

### Networks and the Brandenburg AfD classification

rbb also reported contacts with Manuel Ochsenreiter, a pro-Russian publisher who died in Moscow in 2021 and who was listed as a founder of the Deutschherrenklub. Kotré, then a staffer of the Brandenburg AfD group in the state parliament, travelled with him to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2015. The *taz* has called Kotré one of the first signatories of the 2015 Erfurt Resolution, a text it described as foundational for the party's völkisch wing, and has placed him in the camp of Andreas Kalbitz, later removed over an extremist past. In the 2023 Dahme-Spreewald district election, the *taz* wrote, he benefited from far-right structures including Zukunft Heimat in Zützen, where he took 60.2 percent.

In January 2024 Endstation Rechts reported Kotré at the Cologne-Dellbrück funeral of Ralf Küttelwesch, a former deputy leader of the far-right youth league Sturmvogel, a 2019 AfD candidate in Dahme-Spreewald and a Danubia Munich fraternity member. His employee Benjamin Filter, an AfD state candidate, attended in the colours of Berliner Burschenschaft Gothia. The report described about 60 mourners from Sturmvogel, student corporations and Identitarian circles, and no comment by Kotré.

That record is separate from the rating of the state party. On 14 April 2025 the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD state association as confirmed right-wing extremist ("gesichert rechtsextremistisch"), above its suspicion-case status since 2020. News of the upgrade came on 7 May. After the party sued in Potsdam and sought an injunction, the interior ministry paused use of the new label, and the association was again treated as a suspicion case. The AfD dropped the injunction on 24 July 2025; the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* reported that the main case would go on. State chair René Springer called the step political. The ministry says the finding is about the organization: a member is not automatically an extremist, which it says must be judged from individual conduct.

## Personal life

### Family

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, records Steffen Kotré as born on 29 April 1971 in Berlin, without religious affiliation, married, and with two children. On 11 November 2023 the *Märkische Allgemeine* wrote that he was by then married to Lena Kotré, also of the Alternative for Germany and a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg, and that the couple had two children.

Her name before marriage was Duggen. A filing of 8 March 2017 to the register of associations at the Amtsgericht Potsdam named Lena Duggen, born on 11 November 1987, as the new secretary-general of the Erasmus-Stiftung Brandenburg, the office the Landtag biography of Lena Kotré gives her for 2016 to 2021. That biography, also a self-report, says she was born in 1987 in Berlin, is a lawyer in Dallgow-Döberitz, is married with one child, has sat in the Landtag since September 2019 with the direct mandate for constituency 15 (Barnim III), and has since 2019 been deputy chair and deputy parliamentary managing director of the AfD group. No account gives a wedding date, or explains why his entry and the newspaper speak of two children while her Landtag page speaks of one. On 20 February 2022 the *Mitteldeutsche Zeitung* called them a married couple who had walked up the Brocken with their one-year-old son during Storm Zeynep.

### Residence and associations

In a candidate check of 10 February 2025 the *Märkische Allgemeine* wrote that he lives in Dallgow, in the district of Havelland, and that from 2003 to 2020 he lived in the constituency. During the September 2023 campaign for district administrator of Dahme-Spreewald, *nd* reported his account that he lived not in that district but in Dallgow-Döberitz, where his wife's parents lived, and that he had previously lived in Dahme-Spreewald. The Bundestag's published disclosures list a participation in Trade Point Mobile UG (haftungsbeschränkt) of Dallgow-Döberitz, and its contact block gives constituency offices at Breite Straße 27 in Luckenwalde and Lindenstraße 36a in Halbe.

The current biography lists membership of Nuklearia and of the sports club Judoschule Falkensee, and the status of Alter Herr—alumnus—of an unnamed Berlin student fraternity. For the 20th electoral term the archived biography had named him chairman of the Verein für Energiesicherheit and a member of the Mittelstandsforum für Berlin und Brandenburg, of Nuklearia and of Sportverein Motor Babelsberg. His Abgeordnetenwatch profile still lists the Mittelstandsforum. In July 2018 *Die Tageszeitung* described him as closely tied to Corps Berlin. That identification is set out with his university years.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/steffen-kotre