Stephan Protschka

Stephan Protschka (born 8 November 1977 in Dingolfing, Lower Bavaria) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, returned on the Bavarian state list, and the Bundestag lists him as the party's candidate in the Rottal-Inn constituency (Wahlkreis 230 in the 19th and 20th terms, Wahlkreis 229 in the 21st). Since October 2021 he has been state chairman of the AfD in Bavaria. He is the AfD parliamentary group's spokesperson (Obmann) on the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from his own statements, records primary and lower-secondary schooling in Mamming, the Realschule in Dingolfing, and an apprenticeship as an electrician (Elektroinstallateur). Archived biographies for earlier terms, likewise based on his statements, add basic military service and sales work, including a post as sales manager for Germany at an Italian company, before self-employment. The current biography describes him as an insurance broker (Versicherungsvermittler, IHK) and a financial-investment specialist (Finanzanlagenfachmann, IHK). He is Roman Catholic, married, and has two children. Before entering parliament he brokered insurance in Mamming, in the district of Dingolfing-Landau, and the register of members' interests lists continued brokerage of insurance and real estate there alongside the mandate. He belonged to the Young Union, the youth organisation of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, from 1993 until 2010. In 2012 he took part in Wahlalternative 2013, a precursor association of the AfD, and the current biography dates his AfD membership from April 2013.

At the 2017 federal election in constituency 230 the AfD received 15.1 percent of the first votes (18,539), behind the Christian Social Union on 45.0 percent; Protschka entered the Bundestag on the state list rather than as the directly elected member. In 2021 the AfD first-vote share in the same constituency was 12.7 percent (16,808), behind the Christian Social Union (35.1 percent) and the Free Voters (16.7 percent). In the February 2025 election, in the renumbered constituency 229, the Federal Returning Officer recorded Protschka at 23.1 percent of the first votes, second to Günter Baumgartner of the Christian Social Union (34.9 percent); the AfD's second-vote share in the constituency was 26.1 percent (37,107). He has sat on the Dingolfing-Landau district council since 2020, was a member of the AfD federal executive until 2022, and served on the Lower Bavaria district executive from May 2013 to March 2022.

In November 2019 he co-financed a memorial stone in Bytom (Beuthen) whose inscription remembered German soldiers of both world wars together with Selbstschutz and Freikorps fighters; Polish authorities removed the stone, and the Institute of National Remembrance said the text glorified Nazi-era formations. A party congress in Greding on 16 October 2021 elected him Bavarian state chairman on a second ballot with 51.8 percent of the vote, ahead of Martin Sichert (23.6 percent) and the outgoing chair, Corinna Miazga (22.3 percent). Delegates in Greding re-elected him on 13 January 2024 with 58.27 percent against Andreas Winhart (39.24 percent). In June 2024 the Amtsgericht Deggendorf discontinued an insult prosecution, brought after he called the Bavarian minister-president Markus Söder "Södolf" and a "Landesverräter" at the AfD's Political Ash Wednesday in Osterhofen in 2023, on condition that he pay 12,000 euros.

Early life and occupation

Education and training

Stephan Protschka was born on 8 November 1977 in Dingolfing, in Lower Bavaria. He lives in Mamming, a municipality on the Isar between Dingolfing and Landau in the district of Dingolfing-Landau. The municipality counted 3,528 inhabitants, including secondary residences, on 28 October 2025. In a portrait published by the regional paper idowa on 26 January 2026, he said he had lived in Mamming all his life and could not imagine moving away. The biography he supplies to the Bundestag, which the parliament publishes with the note that such texts rest on members' own information, states that he is Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children.

That biography records primary school and Hauptschule in Mamming, the Realschule in Dingolfing, and an apprenticeship as an electrician (Elektroinstallateur). The archived entries for the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025) add basic military service (Grundwehrdienst) in the Bundeswehr after the apprenticeship; the shorter text for the 21st term does not repeat that line. Those entries name the electrical trade, military service, sales, and self-employment in insurance and financial advice, not farming.

Sales and financial services

The 19th- and 20th-term biographies place his next work in sales, as sales manager for Germany for an Italian company (Vertriebsleiter Deutschland), and then in self-employment. They do not name the company. The 20th-term text adds the qualifications Geprüfter Vermögensberater (DBBV) and Finanzanlagenfachmann (IHK). DBBV is the Deutsches Berufsbildungswerk Vermögensberatung, an association founded in 1998 that examines advisers on private and statutory cover and on retirement provision. The current biography gives the chamber credentials as Versicherungsvermittler (IHK), an insurance intermediary, and Finanzanlagenfachmann (IHK), a financial-investment specialist.

For the period before he entered the Bundestag he declared his occupation as insurance brokerage, carried on in his own name in Mamming. Abgeordnetenwatch records that pre-mandate activity and a continuing paid sideline described as independent insurance brokerage; the current parliamentary disclosure also lists real-estate brokerage in Mamming. Versicherungswirtschaft-heute, drawing in part on his Xing profile, reported work as a wealth adviser at Deutsche Vermögensberatung from 2012 to 2019 and, from 2019, as a Direktionsleiter at Finanzprofi AG. The Merkur, citing the Landshut public prosecutor's office, likewise described the activity as Vermögensberatung.

Civic associations

The current Bundestag biography lists membership of TSV Mamming, the Mamming theatre group, the Mamming volunteer fire brigade as a passive member, KRK Mamming, and the Red Cross. idowa reported that he was treasurer (Kassier) of the football section of TSV Mamming and watched the club's matches when his schedule allowed, and it described the club ground as a favourite place of his.

The 19th-term biography, again his own account, called him an actor in the Mamming theatre group and treasurer of the football section, and named further clubs: Schützen Bachhausen, Löwenfanclub Mamming, and Hoizschuhclub Bachhausen, together with the fire brigade, KRK Mamming, and the Red Cross. The 20th-term and current texts keep the sports club, the theatre group, passive fire-brigade membership, KRK Mamming, and the Red Cross, and no longer print the longer list. Mamming's register of associations includes the Krieger- und Reservistenkameradschaft Mamming and a local group of the Bavarian Red Cross. A regional directory abbreviates the camaraderie as KRK Mamming: founded in 1891, it holds an annual memorial for local war dead and also runs village social events.

Political beginnings

Junge Union

The biography Stephan Protschka supplied to the Bundestag, which publishes deputies' own statements, says he belonged to the Junge Union from 1993 until 2010, seventeen years, and names no local branch or office he held there. The Junge Union's statutes describe it as an independent association of young people that seeks to educate its members politically and to represent their interests in public and in the Union parties. Membership does not require belonging to the Christian Democratic Union or the Christian Social Union, though members of its state and federal executives are expected to belong to one of those parties. In Bavaria a CSU district association describes the Junge Union as the party's youth organisation (Nachwuchsorganisation).

On Abgeordnetenwatch he has given his own account of the exit. He wrote that the turning point was 2010, after the first aid package in the Greek government-debt crisis, and that reading the treaty of the European Stability Mechanism convinced him the established parties broke treaties and promises without hesitation. He then left the Junge Union to look for another political home. The Bundestag biography records the year but not this explanation.

Joining the AfD

An archived biography for the 20th electoral term adds that in 2012 he joined Wahlalternative 2013, which it calls a precursor association of the AfD. The Federal Agency for Civic Education describes that initiative as having been launched in September 2012 by Bernd Lucke, Konrad Adam, Alexander Gauland and others, and as the body from which the Alternative for Germany shortly developed. The party was formally founded on 6 February 2013; at its Berlin founding congress on 13 April 2013, Lucke, Adam and Frauke Petry were elected equal speakers of the federal executive. Protschka's current parliamentary biography states that he has been an AfD member since April 2013. On Abgeordnetenwatch he wrote that in spring 2013 he learned a new party was being founded which, in his view, could confront the large established parties.

District board and Kreistag

Bavaria is divided into seven Regierungsbezirke, one of them Lower Bavaria (Niederbayern). The AfD's Bavarian organisation states that its Lower Bavaria district association (Bezirksverband) was founded on 1 May 2013. The Isar edition of the Wochenblatt reported on 13 November 2013 that Protschka, from Mamming, had resigned all party offices on 10 November with immediate effect, citing health reasons he would not specify. Spokesman Peter A. Gebhardt said Protschka had built up the association and five Kreisverbände with then more than 200 members, and that a members' meeting around 30 November would elect a new chairman. André Wächter of the state executive said he would remain a member.

In October 2015 the regional site da Hog'n called him the Lower Bavarian AfD district chairman. His biography for the 20th Bundestag lists him as Bezirksvorsitzender for Lower Bavaria; the current one says he sat on that district executive from May 2013 until March 2022. Neither self-reported entry dates a return to office after the November 2013 resignation.

Since 2020 he has also sat on the Kreistag of Dingolfing-Landau. Under the Bavarian Landkreisordnung the Kreistag represents the district's citizens, decides important district business and oversees the administration. Councillors are honorary; a district of 75,001 to 150,000 inhabitants has 60. A council elected at a general municipal election serves six years from the following 1 May. At the election of 15 March 2020 the district's official final result, dated 23 March, gave the AfD list 159,776 votes (7.1 percent) and four of 60 seats. Protschka received 11,611 personal votes, the most on that list, and finished first on it. The archived biography dates the mandate from May 2020, and the district's council directory lists him as an AfD member.

Bundestag elections

Stephan Protschka of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been the party's direct candidate in the Rottal-Inn constituency at each Bundestag election since 2017. He has not won the seat. He entered parliament on the AfD state list in Bavaria, and the Bundestag biography records him as a member since October 2017. The constituency lies in rural Lower Bavaria. As Wahlkreis 230 in 2017 it covered the districts of Dingolfing-Landau and Rottal-Inn and, from Landkreis Landshut, the Gerzen administrative community (Aham, Gerzen, Kröning and Schalkham). From 2021 it also included the Wörth an der Isar community (Postau, Weng and Wörth a.d. Isar); for the 2025 election the same area was numbered Wahlkreis 229. At the end of 2023 it contained 53 municipalities across 2,331.4 square kilometres and 234,100 inhabitants, a density of 100.4 people per square kilometre; 88.7 percent of the area was classified as vegetation or water. His Bundestag office is at Platz der Republik 1 in Berlin, and his constituency office is at Griesgasse 9 in Dingolfing.

2017 election

At the election of 24 September 2017 Protschka stood in Wahlkreis 230 and was ninth on the AfD's Bavarian list. The state returning officer's register of approved nominations described him as self-employed, born in 1977 in Mamming and resident in Dingolfing. Of 168,642 eligible voters, 124,299 voted, a turnout of 73.7 percent. He received 18,539 first votes, 15.1 percent of 123,060 valid first votes, and finished second. The Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) candidate Maximilian Straubinger, also listed as Max Straubinger, won the constituency with 55,364 votes (45.0 percent). Florian Pronold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was third with 17,683 votes (14.4 percent), 856 behind Protschka. On the second ballot the AfD took 20,401 votes (16.5 percent) and the CSU 52,752 (42.7 percent). The Federal Returning Officer's constituency table recorded the CSU candidate as elected and the AfD candidate as runner-up. The 2021 nomination register, noting how 2021 candidates had been elected in 2017, marks Protschka as returned on the list rather than in the constituency.

2021 election

On 26 September 2021 he again contested Wahlkreis 230, now from third place on the AfD state list. The same register names Max Straubinger for the CSU and Werner Schießl for the Free Voters. Turnout was 77.1 percent, with 133,885 voters out of 173,632 eligible. Protschka's first votes fell to 16,808, 12.7 percent of 132,447 valid first votes and 2.4 percentage points below 2017, and he placed third. Straubinger kept the seat with 46,493 votes (35.1 percent). Schießl was second with 22,158 (16.7 percent). Second votes split 45,687 for the CSU (34.3 percent), 19,910 for the Free Voters (14.9 percent) and 16,384 for the AfD (12.3 percent), the AfD share down 4.3 points from 2017. Across Bavaria the AfD's second-vote share was 9.0 percent, against 12.4 percent in 2017. Protschka did not win the constituency; his continued membership from October 2017 was through the state list.

2025 election

For the election of 23 February 2025 the AfD placed Protschka first on its Bavarian list, and he stood again in the renumbered Wahlkreis 229. The approved nominations name Günter Baumgartner for the CSU and Hubert Aiwanger, the Free Voters' lead list candidate, in the constituency.

Turnout reached 82.5 percent: 142,709 of 172,941 eligible voters. Baumgartner won the direct seat with 49,582 first votes (34.9 percent of 142,070 valid first votes). Protschka was second with 32,885 (23.1 percent), 217 votes ahead of Aiwanger, who received 32,668 (23.0 percent). Protschka's first-vote share was 10.5 points higher than in 2021. Second votes were less close. The CSU received 54,710 (38.4 percent), the AfD 37,107 (26.1 percent, up 13.8 points) and the Free Voters 14,997 (10.5 percent), so Aiwanger's personal vote ran well ahead of his party's list vote. In Bavaria as a whole the AfD took 19.0 percent of second votes. The Federal Returning Officer's list of members elected on state lists in Bavaria names 22 AfD deputies, with Protschka at list place 1; Baumgartner is recorded as the member elected in the constituency.

Leadership of the Bavarian AfD

Election in 2021

On Saturday, 16 October 2021, a state party congress of the Bavarian Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Greding elected Stephan Protschka state chairman. The Bundestag member from Lower Bavaria won only on a second ballot. An opening round between Landtag member Martin Böhm and Bundestag member Martin Sichert had ended in a near tie; Böhm, narrowly ahead, still missed the majority required. The ballot was reopened, Böhm stood down, and Protschka and the outgoing chair, Corinna Miazga, entered beside Sichert. Protschka took 51.8 percent, Sichert 23.6 percent and Miazga 22.3 percent; the rest rejected all three or abstained.

A dpa account in the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the result a shift to the right. Protschka, then 43 and a co-founder of the AfD district in Lower Bavaria, was said in the party to be close to the formally dissolved Der Flügel, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as a right-wing extremist endeavour. The report also placed new deputies, including Rainer Rothfuß and Martin Böhm, near Thuringia's Björn Höcke. The state association was described as split between Flügel supporters and somewhat more moderate members, and no Bavarian chair had then lasted longer than two years. Protschka appealed for unity and said he would do everything in his power to make the Bavarian AfD a leading force.

Re-elections and the 2026 leadership dispute

On 13 January 2024 he was confirmed in Greding with 58.27 percent against 39.24 percent for Upper Bavarian Landtag member Andreas Winhart, among 766 members present. Welt, citing dpa, wrote that he was not officially counted among representatives of the dissolved Flügel around Höcke but stood close to that current, while Winhart was regarded as somewhat more moderate. At a members' meeting in Greding's Hippodrom in early December 2024 he was chosen as Bavarian lead candidate for the Bundestag election with 78 percent, before about 660 members. Bundestag member Peter Boehringer took second place, with a higher share than Protschka, and Rainer Rothfuß third.

The office was contested again before the congress of 20 June 2026 in Passau. In October 2025 a motion to remove most of the state executive, though not Protschka, won more than 57 percent but not the two-thirds required. The Bayerischer Rundfunk described the board that remained as split and without a majority, with Protschka isolated on it. Several of those named in the motion then backed Bundestag member Reinhard Mixl, who announced a challenge in late May 2026. The broadcaster reported that the quarrel was less about programme than about personal rivalries and people outside the party. In a letter to the federal executive, co-signed by several parliamentarians, Protschka wrote of a targeted attempt by external networks to capture the free formation of will in the state association, meaning above all Tom Rohrböck, a consultant who was not a member. Mixl said he had no contact with Rohrböck; his supporters said no solid evidence had been produced, and the federal executive banned cooperation with Rohrböck in party business. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Protschka, in videos, also spoke of rumours that holidays were being paid for and that AfD parliamentarians had appeared with Rolex watches and made-to-measure suits.

About 1,400 members met in the Dreiländerhalle. Mixl withdrew, telling BR he read the hall as about 35 to 65 against him and that talks had at least secured his side seats as assessors. Protschka, now unopposed, was confirmed with a little more than 79 percent; Mixl was then elected an assessor with just under 61 percent.

Federal board and intra-party alignment

His Bundestag biography, based on his own information, lists membership of the AfD federal executive until 2022. At the federal congress in Braunschweig in early December 2019 he remained on the new board. A dpa profile in Welt introduced him there, then 42 and a former Junge Union member, directly after Andreas Kalbitz, whom that text called the most important leadership figure of the Flügel alongside Höcke.

Press descriptions have stayed short of a formal faction label. Dpa in 2021 spoke of proximity to the dissolved Flügel and of a split with somewhat more moderate members, without casting Sichert or Miazga as their own moderate slate; Welt in 2024 repeated the distinction and treated Winhart as the more moderate candidate. Coverage of 2026, including in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, presented the contest with Mixl as a struggle over posts and alleged outside influence rather than programme, and described both men as part of the party's völkisch-nationalist wing. The state association by then had nearly 12,000 members, and federal co-chair Alice Weidel had publicly urged the Bavarian party to close ranks.

Parliamentary roles

Agriculture committee

Stephan Protschka has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, sitting in the parliamentary group of Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025) the Bundestag recorded him as an ordinary member and as Obmann of the Committee on Food and Agriculture (Ausschuss für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft). In the 21st term his list of offices names him as an ordinary member and Obmann of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland (Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat), the title used when that committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025. The Bundestag's account of the meeting places him among the AfD group's seven ordinary members on a committee of 30.

The Obmann is not the committee chair. The Bundestag glossary describes the Obleute as each group's main contact with its leadership inside a committee: every group names one Obmann or Obfrau, who help set the group's line, formulate its interests, agree agendas and the planning of business, and, because they follow the detail of the work, carry it back to the group. Reporting the November 2022 vice-presidential ballot, the Bundestag identified Protschka as his group's Obmann on the food and agriculture committee; Der Spiegel, on the same vote, called him the group's agriculture-policy spokesman.

Other assignments

The archived membership lists add two deputy seats that were not carried into the next term. In the 19th term he was a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. In the 20th term he was a deputy member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government, which the Bundestag also noted in its account of the sitting of 10 November 2022. In the 21st term the current list names him as a deputy member of the Petitions Committee (Petitionsausschuss) and does not repeat those earlier deputy memberships.

A further post belonged to the AfD group rather than to a Bundestag committee. The group announced that on 27 June 2018 its working group on expellees, resettlers and German minorities elected Wilhelm von Gottberg as first spokesperson and Protschka, with Waldemar Herdt, as deputy spokespersons. The self-reported biography archived for the 20th term still described him as deputy spokesperson of that group. The Bundestag's structured list of offices for the term did not include the post, and the current biography does not either.

Candidacy for vice president

On 10 November 2022, at the 66th sitting of the 20th Bundestag, members voted by secret ballot on an AfD-group proposal, printed as Drucksache 20/4153, to elect Protschka as a deputy to the President of the Bundestag. Of 677 votes cast, 83 were in favour, 579 against, 14 were abstentions and one was invalid. The official minutes state that he therefore missed the required majority of at least 369 votes of the members of the Bundestag.

The president and the vice presidents form the Presidium, elected for the electoral term. It meets in each sitting week on the management of the House, including senior staffing of the administration, major contracts and public communication. In plenary, the president and the vice presidents as a rule alternate every two hours in the chair, and the powers of the chair pass to whoever is presiding.

The AfD group did not obtain a vice-presidency with this ballot, nor had it held one before. Der Spiegel reported that day that, since entering the Bundestag in 2017, the AfD was the only parliamentary group never represented on the Presidium, that every one of its candidates had missed the required majority, and that a case before the Federal Constitutional Court had not secured the office. Later nominations failed as well. On 28 September 2023 Hannes Gnauck received 81 votes in favour, 571 against and 13 abstentions. At the constitutive sitting of the 21st Bundestag on 25 March 2025, vice presidents were elected from the other groups, while the AfD nominee Gerold Otten was not elected in three ballots, drawing 185, 190 and 184 votes in favour against 411, 401 and 403 votes against.

Agricultural and food policy

Stephan Protschka is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group's Obmann on the Bundestag agriculture committee in the 19th and 20th terms and, from 25 March 2025, on the Committee for Agriculture, Food and Heimat. The Bundestag biography, from his own disclosures, lists a chamber-certified insurance intermediary born in Dingolfing, Lower Bavaria, not a farmer.

Regulation, prices and farm structure

The Federal Statistical Office reported that German farms fell by about 7,800 between 2020 and 2023, to 255,000, while farmland stayed near 16.6 million hectares and average size rose from 63 to 65 hectares. In November 2019 he told abgeordnetenwatch this was a politically intended “wachse oder weiche” (“grow or go”), driven by area payments after the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy reform; he proposed less bureaucracy, no tighter fertiliser rules, stronger producer groups, a cap on CAP payments and no farm concessions in trade deals.

An AfD motion of 16 October 2019, led by him, noted that the European Court of Justice had in 2018 found Germany in breach of the EU nitrates directive and asked for a moratorium so the 2017 fertiliser rules could be evaluated first. A motion he led on 4 November 2025 called the ordinance disproportionate and asked that rules since 2017 be reviewed, that “red zones” follow validated nitrate measurements and bind only farms shown to exceed the limits, and that nitrogen ceilings on organic manure be loosened where possible. On abgeordnetenwatch he also says livestock numbers should be tied to a farm’s land. Motions of that date sought plant-protection supply “according to good professional practice”, with no rules beyond Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, and a freeze on new paperwork down to the EU minimum. “Marktstellung der Landwirte stärken” blamed supermarket concentration for weak prices and asked for rules beyond the EU unfair-trading directive, a Federal Cartel Office inquiry, and origin labels on all food, including meat, milk and eggs in processed goods. On 26 March 2021 he said shoppers usually could not see origin, and demanded it on every food.

European agricultural policy and trade

That November 2025 motion also asks for farm support to be fully renationalised, so Germany could again choose instruments “in the German interest”. A motion of 25 June 2024 which he co-signed noted an EU easing of set-aside and of GAEC checks on farms under 10 hectares, yet still demanded further simplification, imports at German standards, a block on Ukraine joining the European Union for farm and economic reasons, and a diesel refund of 42.96 cents a litre from 2025, or heating oil as tractor fuel on the French model.

A motion of 24 January 2023, with Protschka first signatory, opposed ratifying the EU–Mercosur deal while it kept quotas for sugar, ethanol, beef and poultry—99,000 tonnes of beef at 7.5 per cent duty and 180,000 tonnes of duty-free poultry—arguing from studies that meat incomes would fall and forest clearance rise. On 22 February 2024 CDU/CSU member Hans-Jürgen Thies said halting Mercosur contradicted economic and geopolitical realities. A CDU/CSU motion of 16 January 2024 had asked that diesel relief and the vehicle-tax exemption stay, that national solo regulation end, and that direct payments be separated from environmental services.

Farmer protests and parliamentary initiatives

January 2024 protests followed coalition plans, after a budget ruling, to end the diesel refund and the farm vehicle-tax exemption. Before the 15 January Berlin rally the coalition dropped the tax change and only phased out the diesel privilege; Chancellor Olaf Scholz ruled out more. Tagesschau counted 8,500 people at the Brandenburg Gate, heard calls for a full reversal, and reported AfD and far-right attempts to appropriate some actions. Agriculture minister Cem Özdemir (Alliance 90/The Greens) offered a levy raising meat, milk and egg prices; Finance Minister Christian Lindner offered less red tape. Deutscher Bauernverband president Joachim Rukwied called it a “rotten compromise”, and on 7 January told Bild am Sonntag—as Der Spiegel reported—that “right-wing and other radical groups with fantasies of overthrow” were not wanted on the demonstrations.

An AfD motion of 20 February 2024, co-signed by Protschka, blamed the diesel rise for what it called Germany’s largest farmer protests and sought a rules review, one-for-one EU transposition, fewer Ukrainian imports and no tax on domestic meat. In the chamber on 22 February he called the refund a tax exemption, not a subsidy—Green member Renate Künast interjected “Quatsch”—and said the AfD, like Bavaria’s agriculture minister, wanted it doubled. Thies said doubling overshot; FDP spokesman Gero Hocker said farmers had kept radical groups from taking over the street.

Statements and online communication

Social-media posts

In 2014 Stephan Protschka wrote on Twitter that Angela Merkel was planning a “deutschen Völkermord” and that the EU was “nicht Europa” but “das Vierte Reich.” A 2021 dpa report published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the posts extremist statements.

In early November 2017 the closed Facebook group “Die Patrioten” carried a photomontage of Anne Frank on a pizza box captioned “Die Ofenfrische.” Der Tagesspiegel reported that almost 50 Alternative for Germany (AfD) members of the Bundestag and of state parliaments were in the group. Berliner Morgenpost also described posts glorifying Adolf Hitler. After parliamentary business manager Jürgen Braun urged members to leave at once, Protschka emailed the paper that he stayed “da ich mich auch als Patriot verstehe” and to learn “was die Menschen bewegt.” He said he had never seen the Anne Frank post, would find it “katastrophal” if it existed, and saw no reason to leave because he could not find it.

On 5 December 2018, after ZDF described a suspect as German, Protschka wrote: “Es war ein Kenianer, ein #Passbeschenkter, aber kein Deutscher, liebes @ZDFheute” (“a Kenyan, someone gifted a passport, but not a German”). Watson reported that the 19-year-old, suspected of killing a 17-year-old in Sankt Augustin, held both Kenyan and German citizenship. He added: “Wenn sich ein Hund einem Wolfsrudel anschließt, ist er dann ein Wolf oder bleibt er Hund?”

Chemnitz arrest warrant

A 35-year-old man was killed in Chemnitz on Sunday, 26 August 2018. Tagesschau reported that an arrest warrant naming the victim, the suspected perpetrators, witnesses and the judge then circulated online. “Pro Chemnitz,” an AfD district association and Pegida co-founder Lutz Bachmann shared copies with some redactions; some neo-Nazis posted versions that left names visible. Passauer Neue Presse reported on 5 September that Protschka had tweeted the warrant against two men of Iraqi and Syrian origin, then deleted it; the paper said it held a screenshot. The Dresden public prosecutor’s office told the paper it had opened a Prüfverfahren—short of a full investigation while immunity applied—against a Lower Bavarian Bundestag member and others who had spread a warrant a Dresden justice official had illegally posted without redactions. A staff member said Protschka was on holiday, and he did not answer.

Comments after attacks and on public institutions

On 25 June 2021 a man killed three people with a knife in Würzburg. Die Tageszeitung reported that Protschka tweeted that the attack had also happened “dank Merkel” (“thanks to Merkel”). Authorities identified the arrested man as a 24-year-old Somali who had arrived in 2015; the motive was open, with reported shouts of “Allahu akbar” and recent psychiatric treatment.

On 2 May 2025, after the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the whole AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist, Protschka called the decision a “Farce” and a political manoeuvre. In a dpa report carried by the Süddeutsche Zeitung he said, “Wir sind die einzige Partei, die noch ganz klar zum Grundgesetz steht” (“We are the only party that still stands quite clearly by the Basic Law”), that the office had not disclosed its reasons, and that “Sowas kommt immer, wenn unsere Umfragewerte steigen.”

On 7 September 2026, at the Gillamoos fair in Abensberg, the day after an AfD win in the Saxony-Anhalt election, he demanded political neutrality from the churches: “Die Kirche hat sich '33 eingemischt, und was für ein Scheiß rausgekommen ist, das haben wir alle mitgekriegt.” He said he gladly paid church tax but that “Unsere Zukunft muss blau sein, und die Kirche muss neutral sein.” Welt, citing dpa, reported the remarks beside Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s comment that the result for a “gesichert rechtsextremistische Partei” was “furchtbar und niederdrückend.”

Bytom memorial stone

Financing and inscription

On 17 November 2019, Germany's Volkstrauertag, a memorial stone was unveiled on a parish cemetery in Bytom (German: Beuthen), in Poland's Upper Silesia. The German inscription commemorated fallen German soldiers of the First and Second World War, "Selbstschutz and Freikorps fighters," and "the murdered and oppressed eastern Germans."

Stephan Protschka, then an Alternative for Germany member of the Bundestag and an assessor on the party's federal executive, gave about 300 euros and was named as a donor. On Facebook he called it an honour to have helped make the stone. Also listed were the Berlin branch of the Young Alternative for Germany and the Burschenschaft Markomannia Wien zu Deggendorf, which Bavaria's domestic intelligence service observed as right-wing extremist.

Photographs taken beforehand also named the Junge Nationalisten, the youth organisation of the National Democratic Party of Germany. Protschka first called that image a fake. He later said the name had been plastered over at his request before the unveiling, because he wanted nothing to do with the NPD. The Junge Nationalisten said the inscription and the other donors could have been checked.

Markus Tylikowski, the Bytom representative of the German-minority youth organisation and a Young Alternative member, initiated the stone; that spring he had attended a Bundestag youth parliament through Protschka's office. The board in Opole said it had not been consulted, learned of the stone on social media "with horror," and rejected the action and his contacts.

Freikorps were armed units of largely demobilised soldiers, authorised by a Reich law in December 1918. Many adherents were on the radical right, and formations fought Polish forces in Upper Silesia during the Silesian Uprisings. "Selbstschutz" covered both a 1921 coalition of those Freikorps and SS-organised units raised from the German minority, which after the 1939 invasion took part in killing thousands of Poles and Jews. In Upper Silesia that later formation was under SS-Oberführer Fritz Katzmann.

Removal and official reactions

The stone was defaced soon afterwards. Der Spiegel reported a racist "White Pride" sign, the word "Raus" and "Szwaby," a derogatory Polish term for Germans. The Polish embassy told the magazine the stone was removed from the parish cemetery on 22 November 2019. Die Tageszeitung, citing Gazeta Wyborcza, reported that the German minority took it down and that police seized it while an investigation went on.

The embassy had called the case very serious and referred it to the Institute of National Remembrance. Press attaché Dariusz Pawlos said Poland regarded the Freikorps and Selbstschutz as perpetrators, not victims, and that a church-cemetery memorial needed permission. The institute said the inscription glorified National Socialist soldiers and members of those formations, and insulted "in a dreadful way" the memory of millions of Polish and Jewish citizens murdered by criminal National Socialist formations. It said the cemetery administrator had not consented and that the stone was illegal; every such object should be removed at once, and the institute would notify prosecutors.

The German embassy in Warsaw summoned Bernard Gaida, chairman of the German minority association. He told Zeit Online he was asked why a revisionist stone had been unveiled in the youth organisation's name, with the Berlin Young Alternative, Protschka, a far-right Burschenschaft and, at first, the NPD youth involved. He said the lettering advertised the sponsors more than it remembered the fallen, and asked German parties to respect the minority's political neutrality.

Calls for resignation and his account

About 25 historians, in an open letter first reported by Der Tagesspiegel, demanded that Protschka give up his Bundestag seat. Michael Wildt and Jens-Christian Wagner initiated it; signatories included Norbert Frei. They called the stone an "unbearable and scandalous glorification of National Socialist and far-right associations" and an "unacceptable affront to Poland." Wagner, director of the Foundation of Lower Saxony Memorials, had already filed a complaint in Celle for suspected Volksverhetzung. State-protection authorities were reported to be examining the case.

Protschka told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that a different text had been agreed, naming only fallen German soldiers of both wars and meant for a small plaque. He called the resignation demand laughable, said he had apologised in writing to the Polish ambassador and offered to pay for removal, and noted that the stone was already gone. He said he donated regularly, including more than 14,000 euros that year to groups such as the German Red Cross. The Facebook post was later deleted.

Criminal proceedings and immunity

A member of the Bundestag may be prosecuted or arrested for a criminal offence only with the chamber's permission, unless caught in the act or arrested during the following day. Lifting this parliamentary immunity, which is limited to the term of membership and is set out in the Basic Law, requires a Bundestag resolution. Its purpose is to protect the parliament's ability to work, including against politically motivated complaints.

Insurance-brokerage investigation

On 7 July 2022 the Bundestag unanimously authorised searches and seizures against Stephan Protschka of the Alternative for Germany, on a recommendation of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure (printed paper 20/2667) referring to a Federal Ministry of Justice letter of 14 June 2022. The public prosecutor's office in Landshut said the case was unrelated to his work as a member. The suspicion was falsification of data of evidentiary significance (Fälschung beweiserheblicher Daten, section 269 of the Criminal Code) in connection with his earlier work as a financial adviser: in 2017, while arranging an insurance contract, he was suspected of having sent incorrect data to the insurer. Prosecutors first said a member's home and offices had been searched, then said that only office and business premises had been searched.

Protschka, the AfD's state chairman in Bavaria, said he was accused of forging a signature in what he called an alleged insurance fraud, described the allegation as laughable, and said he believed the investigation was politically motivated. On 8 March 2023 the Landshut office discontinued the investigation. Senior public prosecutor Martin Strunz told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the inquiries had not produced sufficient suspicion. Protschka said the whole matter had been clearly politically motivated and intended only to damage him and the AfD in public.

Insult case concerning Markus Söder

On the evening of 6 July 2023 the Bundestag authorised a criminal prosecution of Protschka, against the AfD group's votes and with the other groups in favour, again on the committee's recommendation (printed paper 20/7637) and a Justice Ministry letter of that day. Der Spiegel reported that the step was understood to follow a complaint by Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder of the Christian Social Union. Citing Bayerischer Rundfunk, Spiegel wrote that Söder had complained of insult after Protschka, at the AfD's Political Ash Wednesday in Osterhofen in 2023, called him "Södolf", a blend of "Söder" and "Adolf", and "Landesverräter" ("traitor to the country").

The Amtsgericht Deggendorf issued a penalty order of 60 daily rates; Protschka objected in April 2024, and the case went to a hearing. On 25 June 2024 the court discontinued the proceedings on condition that he pay 12,000 euros by the end of August 2024, in equal shares to Stiftung Opferhilfe, the Tafel Deggendorf and the Bayerische Krebsgesellschaft. The discontinuation was tied to a statement read by a defence lawyer: allusions to the Nazi period were fundamentally foreign to Protschka; he had only picked up terms used by a previous speaker; and he had meant to take part in political debate rather than to insult Söder. The court treated the remarks as spontaneous and said that, because he had taken up the earlier speaker's expressions, the case differed from the proceedings against that speaker. After the hearing Protschka said, "I am innocent," and that he was leaving with his head held high.

Spiegel reported as context that the previous speaker, the Austrian former Freedom Party of Austria politician Gerald Grosz, had used some of the same descriptions of Söder and was convicted by the same court in April 2024 of insult, with a fine of nearly 15,000 euros; he appealed, and the judgment was not yet final.

Reception and assessments

Staff and organisational contacts

In March 2018 Zeit Online reported that three Alternative for Germany (AfD) members of the fencing Berlin fraternity Gothia, a Burschenschaft, had also taken part in actions or demonstrations of the Identitarian Movement. Two worked for Bundestag member Frank Pasemann and the third for Stephan Protschka. The regional paper idowa, citing Bayerischer Rundfunk, reported that Vadim Derksen, then on Protschka’s Berlin staff, had confirmed attending an Identitarian demonstration in Freilassing in January 2016. The broadcaster notes that the federal domestic-intelligence service classifies that movement as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour and that the AfD’s incompatibility list bars its members.

Der Spiegel described Protschka, elected an assessor on the federal executive at the late-2019 congress, with Andreas Kalbitz and Stephan Brandner, as explicit “Flügelianer” of Der Flügel, the current around Björn Höcke. On 12 March 2020 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified Der Flügel as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour (gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung). Höcke and Kalbitz then told supporters to end Flügel activities by 30 April 2020. In January 2024 Welt wrote that Protschka was not officially counted among representatives of the dissolved wing but stood close to it.

In October 2026 the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, covering a leak of AfD emails, described an unsigned message of 2 April 2019 with Protschka named as sender. It linked a blog item on Laurens Nothdurft, then legal adviser to the Bavarian AfD group and formerly a leader of the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend, banned in 2009, and objected to his hiring; he was soon dismissed.

Domestic-intelligence and media assessments

In September 2022 Bavaria’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution began observing the AfD as a whole as a suspected case (Verdachtsfall). Landtag members were not included. The Bavarian association’s lawsuit failed at the Administrative Court of Munich on 1 July 2024 (M 30 K 22.4912). It found factual indications of anti-constitutional efforts, including an ethnic-biological concept of the people. On 16 June 2026 the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court refused leave to appeal (10 ZB 24.2079). These rulings concern the party, not a criminal finding against Protschka.

On 2 May 2025 the federal office said it was upgrading the AfD from a suspected case to a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour, citing an ethnic concept of the people by descent and the degradation of migrants and Muslims. On 26 February 2026 the Administrative Court of Cologne held, in interim proceedings, that the upgrade could not remain until the main case ended: efforts inside the party were sufficiently certain, but not shown to define the party as a whole. The suspected-case status, upheld through three instances, remained. In 2019, 25 historians demanded in an open letter, reported by taz, that Protschka resign his Bundestag seat over a Bytom memorial he had helped finance; that dispute is covered elsewhere.

His responses

Protschka has called the classifications political. On the Bavarian observation he said it was “politisch motiviert”, that the CSU was trying to silence an opponent (“mundtot zu machen”), and that he faced it “sehr entspannt”. On the May 2025 upgrade he told dpa, in a report carried by Welt, “Wir sind die einzige Partei, die noch ganz klar zum Grundgesetz steht.” He called the step a “Farce” and said, “Sowas kommt immer, wenn unsere Umfragewerte steigen.” He added that the office had not published its reasons. Of the leaked 2019 message he said he could “weder bestätigen noch dementieren” it and doubted authorship, because he never cited “solche Blogs”.

In June 2025, asked by BR’s Kontrovers about Identitarian activists at an event hosted by Bavarian AfD legislator Franz Schmid, he asked what an extremist was. He said he had seen “junge Menschen” talking politics and asked, “Warum soll man sich mit solchen Menschen nicht zusammensetzen und das Gemeinsame herausfinden?” After the 2026 refusal of appeal he said it remained troubling that an opposition “die von Millionen Bürgern gewählt wird” was watched with intelligence means, and that “Die AfD steht auf dem Boden des Grundgesetzes.”