Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing (born 17 June 1969 in Neubrandenburg) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since October 2017. She represents constituency 017, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte II – Landkreis Rostock III, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 2017 and 2021 she entered parliament on the AfD state list after finishing second in that constituency; in the federal election of 2025 she won the direct mandate with 65,039 first votes (41.1 percent).

The Bundestag’s biography, drawn from her own declaration, records that she is divorced, has three children, and passed the Abitur. On her own website she states that she lives in Lebbin, qualified in 1989 as a skilled worker in data processing for mainframe computers, worked as a software developer until 1991, and in 1992 completed a Fachhochschule degree as a Verwaltungswirtin specialising in pension law. Since 1991 she has been employed in the gehobener Dienst of the German pension insurance; the parliamentary disclosure names Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord in Neubrandenburg and describes her as a Verwaltungsangestellte with a right to return to that post.

She joined the AfD in July 2013. Until November 2016 she was spokesperson of the district association Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, and from November 2014 to November 2017 she was treasurer of the state association in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She leads the state expert committee on the economy and social affairs and is a member of the corresponding federal committee. In the current Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Audit Committee, where she is the AfD’s Obfrau, and a deputy member of the Petitions Committee. On 21 May 2025 the Budget Committee, which the parliamentary news service listed her as having joined, rejected her nomination for the chair in a secret ballot by 12 votes to 29, with one abstention.

In the same 2025 election the AfD also led the constituency on second votes, with 63,397 (39.8 percent). In October 2025 NDR reported that the mayors of Demmin, Altentreptow and Röbel said she had not taken up local problems since winning the seat; she replied that work on the Budget Committee meant she had, for a time, to neglect the constituency. On 2 May 2025 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that it classified the AfD as a whole as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour; in February 2026 the Cologne administrative court granted the party an injunction against that upgrade. The published classification concerns the party and does not name Schielke-Ziesing.

Early life and education

Birth and family

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing was born on 17 June 1969 in Neubrandenburg. The city's chronology records that in 1952 Neubrandenburg became the capital of the Bezirk Neubrandenburg of the German Democratic Republic, the state in which she was born and schooled. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on the member's own information, states that she has three children and is divorced.

The biography archived for the 20th electoral term (2021–2025) had described her as married, likewise with three children. She lives in Lebbin, near Altentreptow. In January 2017, reporting her selection as a Bundestag candidate, the Nordkurier identified her as coming from Lebbin near Altentreptow, and her website still gives Lebbin as her place of residence. Lebbin is an Ortsteil of the municipality of Groß Teetzleben, which belongs to the Amt Treptower Tollensewinkel in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Schooling and vocational training

Her secondary schooling fell in the last years of the GDR. In that system the ten-year polytechnical secondary school was the general school for the age group. Only about a tenth of pupils were admitted to the two-year Erweiterte Oberschule, which awarded the Abitur; from 1984 that transfer followed the tenth grade rather than the eighth. A narrower alternative, the three-year Berufsausbildung mit Abitur, led to the Abitur and a skilled-worker title together. Published accounts do not name a school or say which of those routes she took.

A Federal Employment Agency description dated 31 October 2005 treats Facharbeiter/Facharbeiterin für Datenverarbeitung as a GDR skilled-worker training, offered with specializations until 1990. The work it describes is operating and monitoring computer systems, managing data, organizing the load on those systems, and writing and testing system or application programs. The chronology Schielke-Ziesing publishes gives the Abitur in 1987, the year she turned 18; in 1989 the title Facharbeiter für Datenverarbeitung, specialized in Großrechenanlagen (large computer installations); work as a software developer until 1991, a span that includes German reunification on 3 October 1990; and in 1992 a Verwaltungswirt (FH) qualification specialized in pension law, a Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) credential, which is also when she dates her entry into the Deutsche Rentenversicherung in the gehobener Dienst, the higher intermediate grade of public employment. The chronology does not name the institution that awarded the Verwaltungswirt title.

For the 20th electoral term the Bundestag's short occupational label for her was Verwaltungswirtin, and both that archived text and the current biography say she has been employed since 1991 at the Deutsche Rentenversicherung in the gehobener Dienst, a year earlier than her own chronology. The mandatory disclosure of her work before the parliamentary mandate specifies a salaried administrative post (Verwaltungsangestellte) at Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord in Neubrandenburg. The two self-descriptions agree on an administrative qualification and on that employer; they differ by a year on when the employment began. Where they conflict, the current Bundestag text is the later official self-declaration.

Career before parliament

Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord

Before she entered the Bundestag, Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing worked in the administration of Germany’s statutory pension insurance. The biography published by the Bundestag states that she has been employed since 1991 at the Deutsche Rentenversicherung in the gehobener Dienst. The archived biography for the 20th electoral term uses the same sentence and notes that the biographical details rest on the member’s own information.

The parliament’s mandatory disclosures locate the post more precisely. On both the current page and the 20th-term archive, the occupation before membership is entered as Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord, Neubrandenburg, Verwaltungsangestellte, with a Rückkehrrecht (a right of return). Verwaltungsangestellte denotes a salaried public employee, not a Beamtin appointed under public law. For such employees of a public-law body, sections 5, 6 and 7(1) to (4) of the Members of the Bundestag Act apply by analogy: rights and duties from the employment are suspended during membership and for at most six months afterwards, and within three months of the mandate ending the employee may apply to return to a position of at least equivalent career and final basic pay. Section 45 requires notice of the last occupation and of any right of return; the published line “Verwaltungsangestellte, Rückkehrrecht” is that notice.

The name in those entries is partly retrospective. “Deutsche Rentenversicherung” dates from the reform in force on 1 October 2005, which ended the split between workers’ and salaried employees’ insurance and grouped the carriers under one name. On 30 September 2005 the Landesversicherungsanstalten of Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein merged into Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord. Its 2005/06 report gives the headquarters as Lübeck and lists Hamburg, Lübeck and Neubrandenburg as the administrative sites. The Bundestag text uses the later name for employment it dates from 1991 and does not name the predecessor authority.

When the Nordkurier reported, on 29 January 2017, her nomination as the Alternative for Germany direct candidate in constituency 17, it described her as an employee of the Deutsche Rentenversicherung. She told the paper she wanted a Bundestag seat to work against old-age poverty and for social security in old age. That is the occupational setting of her later pension brief, separate from the positions argued there.

Reported qualifications

The two accounts do not use the same year. Against the Bundestag’s “since 1991”, her website lists a 1989 qualification as Facharbeiter für Datenverarbeitung (skilled worker in data processing for large computers), software development until 1991, a 1992 qualification as Verwaltungswirt (FH) specializing in Rentenrecht (pension law), and Deutsche Rentenversicherung employment in the gehobener Dienst from 1992. The parliamentary biography mentions neither the data-processing training nor the Fachhochschule title, and neither source names the institution that awarded the 1992 qualification.

In the federal civil service, the gehobener Dienst is the higher intermediate of four career groups (Laufbahngruppen): basic, intermediate, higher intermediate and higher. The Federal Ministry of the Interior places established civil servants in that group on salary grades A 9 to A 13. Admission normally requires schooling that opens higher education, plus a preparatory service or a bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent award. That preparatory service is a degree course ending in a bachelor’s degree or a Diplom with the suffix Fachhochschule—the Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH), of which “Verwaltungswirt (FH)” is the shorter style on her website. The disclosure records a salaried employee, so those grades are not her pay scale. What is documented is employment at the level the biography calls the gehobener Dienst in pension administration; the pension-law specialization is only in her own account.

Party offices and internal currents

District and state roles

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in July 2013. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own statements, lists her as spokesperson of the district association for the Mecklenburg Lake Plateau (Kreisverband Mecklenburgische Seenplatte) until November 2016, and as treasurer of the state association in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern from November 2014 to November 2017. Her website dates the spokespersonship to 2014–2016, still lists the treasurership as “seit 2014,” and says that since 2016 she has belonged to federal committee 11 while leading the state committee on social-security systems, pensions, and labour and social policy.

The Bundestag biography names her head of the state specialist committee “Wirtschaft und Soziales” and a member of the federal committee of that name. The archived text for the 20th electoral term still used “Soziale Sicherungssysteme” for both. These are party bodies, not Bundestag committees, and neither text dates the start of the state chair.

The Erfurter Resolution

On 14 March 2015, at an AfD state party conference in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, then Landessprecher and head of the state parliamentary group, and André Poggenburg, state chairman in Saxony-Anhalt, presented the Erfurter Resolution. The site of the movement that followed called the text its first step and listed office-holders from nine states as first signatories, among them Alexander Gauland, Andreas Kalbitz, Andreas Rösler of the state executive, and Schielke-Ziesing as treasurer. The resolution said the party was wasting voters’ confidence by adapting to an “established political business” of technocracy, cowardice and “betrayal of the interests of our country.” It called the AfD a “fundamental, patriotic and democratic alternative,” a “movement of our people” against “social experiments” such as gender mainstreaming and multiculturalism, and a “resistance movement” against the erosion of sovereignty and identity, and it objected to distance from “civic protest movements.” Der Spiegel later called that text the founding document of Der Flügel, a völkisch-nationalist current around Höcke that favoured cooperation with Pegida against the party leadership.

On 17 April 2015 the same site published her reasons and again called her treasurer and a first signatory. She said she had joined in 2013 “because this party was different, because I sensed a mood of departure and the will to replace the dangerous and stuck policy of the established parties.” The party had since, she said, grown anxious and clung to the euro: “Where has the courage for the truth suddenly gone? Is it fear of one’s own courage? Is it the ‘softening’ in preparation for coalitions with other parties?” Reminding members why they had joined “cannot be called a split,” she said, and open argument about a programme that would be “a real alternative” for Germany was already a success.

Der Flügel kept no membership list. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution treated it as a suspected case from January 2019. On 12 March 2020 its president, Thomas Haldenwang, said it was now a proven extremist endeavour for breaches of human dignity, democracy and the rule of law, and called Höcke and Kalbitz right-wing extremists. Der Spiegel reported that the federal executive then asked the network to dissolve itself by the end of April 2020, without expelling either man, and that Höcke announced a dissolution while saying the political course would continue. That classification attached to the network, not to Schielke-Ziesing’s 2015 signature.

Alternative Mitte in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Alternative Mitte, a separate current, took shape in July 2017 after Höcke’s “Denkmal der Schande” speech and was formally founded that October as a federal working group, the Nordkurier reported. The paper called it a counterweight to the stronger national-conservative part of the AfD, whose core used the name Der Flügel.

On 31 January 2018 the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that Schielke-Ziesing had announced a founding meeting for the following Saturday in Malchin. Frank Kortmann, a former state business manager and co-initiator, said, “We want to hold together the bourgeois-moderate part of the AfD,” because too many had already left. The dispatch said the group saw itself as a counter-pole to the right-national wing around Höcke. A report of 4 February said about 20 members had founded Alternative Mitte MV in Malchin the day before and had elected Schielke-Ziesing, Roger Schmidt and Kortmann as speakers. Its first paper called the AfD “the last chance to change Germany again for the better” and said the group sought cooperation inside the party rather than a further split. The account said the initiators rejected the right-national course linked to Höcke, Poggenburg and the Neubrandenburg Bundestag member Enrico Komning.

The Nordkurier described the new state group as patriotic and bourgeois and as rejecting every form of extremism, and named Landtag member Christoph Grimm as a founding member alongside Schielke-Ziesing. Grimm was removed within weeks. With Komning he had invited Pegida co-founders Lutz Bachmann and Siegfried Däbritz, and Michael Stürzenberger of “PI News,” to meetings in Neubrandenburg and Schwerin. He wrote that Pegida’s basic concern was “absolutely justified, honorable and serious” and that Germany faced a “downright raging Islamization.” The state group said those views were “not compatible with the principles of Alternative Mitte,” ended his membership and barred him from speaking in its name. Grimm told the paper that discussion inside the group continued and that the federal executive’s 2016 ban on cooperation with Pegida would eventually fall. Schielke-Ziesing was still counted as a member after the break; the paper did not quote her on it.

Elections

2016 state election

Schielke-Ziesing stood for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the election to the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 4 September 2016 as the party's direct candidate in Landtag constituency 14, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte II. That constituency had 32,141 eligible voters. Of 18,706 ballots cast, a turnout of 58.2 percent, 18,276 first votes were valid.

She received 3,918 first votes, 21.4 percent, and finished third. Thomas Krüger of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) won the direct mandate with 4,473 votes (24.5 percent), 555 ahead of her. Marc Reinhardt of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was second with 4,375 votes (23.9 percent), only 98 behind Krüger. Peter Ritter of Die Linke took 2,865 first votes (15.7 percent), and Olaf Heidebreck of Freier Horizont 1,028 (5.6 percent). On the party lists in the same constituency the SPD led with 5,065 second votes (27.7 percent). The CDU, with 3,830, and the AfD, with 3,826, were both recorded at 20.9 percent. The final constituency return named Krüger as the holder of the direct mandate.

Bundestag elections of 2017 and 2021

In the federal elections of 2017, 2021 and 2025 she was the AfD candidate in Bundestag constituency 17, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte II – Landkreis Rostock III, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Under the delimitation published for 2025, the seat takes in part of the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, including the independent towns of Dargun, Demmin, Neustrelitz and Waren (Müritz) and the Ämter around Malchin, Stavenhagen, Altentreptow and the Müritz, together with part of Landkreis Rostock, including Güstrow, Teterow and the Ämter of Bützow-Land, Laage, Güstrow-Land and Krakow am See. The remaining municipalities of those two districts are assigned to other constituencies.

On 24 September 2017 the constituency had 212,099 eligible voters and a turnout of 68.0 percent (144,239 voters). Schielke-Ziesing polled 26,199 first votes (18.4 percent) and placed second. Eckhardt Rehberg of the CDU won the direct mandate with 53,538 votes (37.6 percent). Heidrun Bluhm of Die Linke was third with 24,728 votes (17.4 percent), ahead of Jeannine Pflugradt of the SPD with 22,401 (15.7 percent). Second votes went to the CDU with 51,007 (35.8 percent), the AfD with 27,382 (19.2 percent), Die Linke with 24,102 (16.9 percent) and the SPD with 20,594 (14.5 percent). The state returning officer's notice of those elected placed Schielke-Ziesing third on the AfD state list, behind Leif-Erik Holm and Enrico Komning, and recorded her as elected from that list; Rehberg was the elected constituency member.

The same constituency on 26 September 2021 had 209,348 eligible voters and a turnout of 68.6 percent (143,622 voters). Johannes Arlt of the SPD won the direct mandate with 43,730 first votes (31.1 percent). Schielke-Ziesing was again second, with 30,320 votes (21.6 percent), 370 votes ahead of Dr. Stephan Bunge of the CDU (29,950; 21.3 percent). Amina Kanew of Die Linke received 14,494 (10.3 percent). Second votes were led by the SPD with 42,049 (29.9 percent), followed by the AfD with 29,421 (20.9 percent) and the CDU with 26,402 (18.8 percent). She again stood third on the AfD state list, behind Holm and Komning. The notice of those elected named her as a list member and Arlt as the constituency member.

The 2025 direct mandate

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 the constituency had 205,056 eligible voters, 7,043 fewer than in 2017. Turnout rose to 78.3 percent (160,586 voters), 9.7 percentage points above 2021, and 158,426 first votes were valid. Schielke-Ziesing won the direct mandate with 65,039 first votes (41.1 percent), 34,039 votes and 21.5 percentage points ahead of Arlt, the runner-up with 31,000 votes (19.6 percent). Dr. Stephan Bunge finished third with 30,810 votes (19.4 percent), 190 behind Arlt, and Niklas Hehenkamp of Die Linke received 16,949 (10.7 percent). The other constituency candidates were Christoph Stitz of the Free Democratic Party (4,313), Sabine Schröter of the Free Voters (3,583), Jana Klinkenberg of Alliance 90/The Greens (3,370) and Nadine Warncke of Bündnis Deutschland (3,362). The Federal Returning Officer's result page names Schielke-Ziesing as elected in the constituency and Arlt as the leading unsuccessful candidate.

Second votes in the constituency were 63,397 for the AfD (39.8 percent), 28,480 for the CDU (17.9 percent), 18,161 for the SPD (11.4 percent), 17,739 for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (11.1 percent) and 16,377 for Die Linke (10.3 percent). On the AfD state list admitted on 31 January 2025 she was placed fourth, after Holm, Komning and Dario Seifert. The list notice gives her residence as Groß Teetzleben, a municipality inside constituency 17. The state returning officer's final notice listed her among the elected constituency members for Wahlkreis 17 and did not list her among those returned from a state list.

Bundestag membership

Mandate and parliamentary group role

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017 and sits in the parliamentary group of Alternative for Germany. The Bundestag's archived biographies for the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025) record the mandate as election via the state list of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Both archives also name constituency 017, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte II – Landkreis Rostock III, as her Wahlkreis.

In the 21st term the biography records a direct mandate (Wahlkreismandat) for that same constituency in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Offices inside the AfD parliamentary group are not part of the Bundestag biography. On 6 August 2025 Tagesschau described her as the AfD's pension-policy spokesperson (rentenpolitische Sprecherin der AfD), a designation of the group rather than a Bundestag office.

Committees

For the 19th and 20th terms the archived biographies list her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, the Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) and the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss), and as Obfrau of the Audit Committee. In Bundestag usage an Obfrau or Obmann is the member a parliamentary group names as its main point of contact with the group leadership inside a committee. Each group names one per committee, and those members take a leading part in setting the group's line and formulating its interests in the committee's deliberations. The office is not the chair of the committee.

The Audit Committee sits with the Budget Committee. The Bundestag states that the Budget Committee is responsible above all for authorising funds, while the Audit Committee follows the execution of expenditure, examines the budgetary and economic management of the federation, and prepares the plenary's decision on discharging the federal government on the basis of the remarks of the Bundesrechnungshof. The committee page gives it 18 members and states that every ordinary member of the Budget Committee is also a deputy member of the Audit Committee.

The biography for the 21st term lists ordinary membership of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Audit Committee, the office of Obfrau of the Audit Committee, and deputy membership of the Petitions Committee. It does not list the Budget Committee. The Audit Committee's published membership names her as the AfD Obfrau, with Iris Nieland, Julian Schmidt and Georg Schroeter as the group's other members, and Kerstin Radomski of the CDU/CSU as chair.

She was an ordinary member of the Budget Committee when that body was set up for the 21st term. Parliamentary news notice hib 164/2025 carries a membership list dated 19 May 2025 that includes her among the AfD's ten ordinary members of the 42-member committee. The committee's later published membership does not include her as an ordinary or deputy member. The other nine AfD ordinary members named in May 2025 remain on the list, and one AfD ordinary seat is shown as unfilled (N.N.).

Nomination for the Budget Committee chair

The Budget Committee held its constitutive meeting on 21 May 2025 under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner of the Christian Democratic Union. The 42 members did not elect a chair. In that term the AfD group held the right to propose the chair and nominated Schielke-Ziesing. In a secret ballot she received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention, short of a majority, and the group initially waived a second round. The committee's longest-serving member, Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU), then took the chair on an acting basis.

The Bundestag's account of the sitting gives the seats as 14 for the CDU/CSU, ten for the AfD, eight for the Social Democratic Party, six for Alliance 90/The Greens and four for Die Linke. Deutschlandfunk reported the same day that she had not obtained the majority required for the chair and that AfD nominees for five further committee chairs were expected to fail, as in the previous term. Lisa Paus of Alliance 90/The Greens has been acting chair of the Budget Committee since June 2025, according to her Bundestag biography, and the committee's membership list uses the same description.

Pension and social policy

Retirement age and pension level

As pension-policy spokesperson of the Alternative for Germany group, Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing has argued in the Bundestag that the standard retirement age should stay at 67, the ceiling already phased in by 2031, and that 45 contribution years should open an unreduced pension. Her motion of 13 October 2025 calls a further rise, discussed as a “pension at 70”, unrealistic for long physical careers and a concealed cut, because early retirement then carries permanent deductions. It asks for an unreduced pension from 63 after 45 years, at least 40 of them employment contributions, voluntary contributions or child-raising periods, and another if all 45 years are of those kinds, while the rule for the especially long-insured (64 years and six months for the 1961 cohort) would remain in transition. In July 2026 she told abgeordnetenwatch she opposed linking the age to life expectancy. Citing Eurostat, she gave German life expectancy as 81.2 years, 16th in the EU, and wrote that averages do not show whether someone can still work.

She has treated a statutory level of 48 per cent as too low, and a statutory floor at that rate as too costly. In the first reading on 16 October 2025 she called the figure meagre, put the floor at about 145 billion euro by 2040, said contribution rates would rise from 2027 as the reserve fell to 0.3 months of spending, and put federal payments to the statutory pension above 120 billion euro. The act passed on 5 December 2025, in force on 1 January 2026, extended the 48 per cent line—45 years at the average wage, relative to the current average wage—through July 2031 and credited three child-raising years for children born before 1992. Tagesschau, using the pension-insurance report, put the budget cost nearer 122 billion euro through 2039.

In February 2024 she told the Bundestag weekly Das Parlament that the state ought to meet one third of pension-insurance finance. She attributed a 6.8 billion euro loss over four years to subsidy cuts by the coalition of the Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party, and warned of near inability to pay in 2026 if the reserve ran out. On 4 December 2025 she said the group wanted a long-run level of 70 per cent “according to Eurostat”. When a CDU/CSU speaker replied that a 70 per cent statutory level would add about 170 billion euro a year, she interjected that she meant the overall replacement rate, not the statutory ratio alone.

Funded supplements and the Junior-Spardepot

She has argued for personal funded accounts rather than debt-financed capital inside the pay-as-you-go system. In that December speech she described the previous government’s Generationenkapital, which she called a Free Democrat project, as of no benefit to people already drawing a pension: new borrowing was meant only to slow the rise in contribution rates from 2035, and in her view would not have done so. In the 2024 interview she had questioned plans to borrow 12 billion euro for an equity pension while treating the loan as outside the debt brake.

The motion “Für eine sichere Rente unserer Kinder – Junior-Spardepot” (Drucksache 21/2163, 13 October 2025), which she led, asks for a foundation paying, from taxes and without new debt or pension contributions, 100 euro a month until age 18 (21,600 euro) into a securities account for each child with German citizenship living in Germany. The claim would be property under Article 14 of the Basic Law, locked to old age and taxed on payout. Its calculations give more than 214,000 euro by 67 at 4 per cent and more than 663,000 at 6 per cent, which it calls optimistic given crises, policy changes and inflation. In the chamber she also cited 377,000 euro at 5 per cent.

The motion contrasts this with the coalition Frühstart-Rente of 10 euro a month from ages 6 to 18 (1,440 euro), which it says is too small without large parental top-ups. She called that plan symbolic and, at 4 per cent, worth about 13,000 euro after 61 years before inflation. The 2025 act did not include it; the cabinet adopted only key points, and a pension commission was to report by mid-2026. CDU/CSU speaker Carsten Brodesser called her motion unfunded and objected to excluding children who are not German citizens.

Basic security and non-contributory benefits

On means-tested support she has argued that an earned pension should still leave its recipient better off. Motion 21/2718 of 11 November 2025 asks that 25 per cent of a statutory old-age pension, and at least 100 euro a month, be disregarded in basic income support in old age, with the same rule for reduced-earning-capacity pensions. It says the basic-pension supplement since January 2021, which requires 33 qualifying years, misses many low pensions: about 1.3 million pensions were topped up, by about 92 euro gross on average. The Federal Statistical Office counted 1.26 million such recipients in December 2024, about 739,000 above the age threshold, then 66; the motion put about 500,000 of that older group as also drawing a statutory pension.

In October 2025 she said benefits outside the contribution principle left the pension fund about 40 billion euro short each year, and that the supplement introduced under Hubertus Heil had not been fully tax-financed as promised.

Drucksache 21/958 of 22 July 2025, repeating a motion of 19 March 2024, would put Bundestag members into the statutory scheme. It contrasts a pre-tax level of about 48 per cent with about 1,122 euro a month in old-age compensation after four years—about seven times an average earner’s accrual—financed from the budget without member contributions. A cross-party group would draft, by the end of 2026, a model with statutory insurance as the compulsory base, protecting rights already earned and applying only from the next electoral term.

Budget and other positions

Federal budget debates

Schielke-Ziesing is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) rapporteur for Einzelplan 11, the budget of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The Budget Committee recommendation of 16 October 2025 names her Berichterstatterin for the 2026 plan. On 11 December 2020 she opened the Bundestag debate on the same chapter.

She put the 2021 labour draft at about €165 billion, the largest single plan. The basic pension, she said, was met from imprecise subsidies and a global underspend of €400 million. With federal borrowing of about €180 billion, she said, social benefits too were being paid on credit, a pattern she told labour minister Hubertus Heil predated the pandemic. The AfD would reject the plan.

Under labour minister Bärbel Bas she called the gap structural. On 17 September 2025, with the 2025 year largely elapsed, she cited more than three million unemployed, a third year of recession and insurance funds held up by loans, and said moving new arrivals from Ukraine from Bürgergeld to asylum-seeker benefits would shift costs and flatter the statistics rather than save money. On 28 November 2025 she put gaps in care, health, unemployment insurance and pensions at nearly €50 billion, and a Bürgergeld saving billed at €1.5 billion against €86 million in the draft. The AfD would vote no. On 11 September 2026 she cited a pension-insurance forecast of about €35 billion short by 2028 and said renaming Bürgergeld had raised costs by €5 billion, which a CDU/CSU member called factually wrong.

Energy and climate costs

She has treated energy prices as a cause of hardship and of pressure on contributions, not as a separate climate portfolio. On 20 October 2022, on a €300 lump sum for pensioners and civil-service pensioners, she said the AfD had demanded it in May and would not oppose that part, "because every euro that serves to ease the hardship of pensioners helps." She called it late and uneven: carers, disabled people and recipients of unemployment benefit or sickness benefit, who also had to heat, were left out. A further midi-job rise in the same law would, she said, take about another €0.8 billion from the social funds. She blamed energy policy that "puts the axe to the lifeline of our country and plunges millions of people into poverty"; relief could not offset it, because the public paid. CDU/CSU interjections answered that Russia's president was responsible.

On 13 October 2023 she named the Energiewende, the transport transition and immigration into the benefit systems together as causes of higher contributions. On 17 September 2025 she listed the carbon tax with value-added tax and the energy tax among charges which, on top of contributions she said were heading towards 50 percent, would hit ordinary employees.

Migration and social-insurance financing

She has argued that non-contributory spending, especially for non-citizens, is where Einzelplan 11 could be cut. On 11 December 2020 she said removing rejected asylum seekers would save €4.4 billion in that chapter. She cited a Bundesrechnungshof comment that refugee accommodation often cost more than twice the local comparable rent, and she moved a note demanding full compensation of benefits foreign to the pension insurance.

On 13 October 2023, for the AfD motion "Immigration must pay off for Germany" (Drucksache 20/7665), she said not even a third of people from the main asylum countries were in insured jobs, a claim a member of Alliance 90/The Greens called untrue from the floor. Qualified immigration into shortage jobs could, she said, yield a surplus if measured, and she asked for a running study on the Denmark model, whose results she said implied costs for Germany in the tens of billions.

On 28 November 2025 she said the system was "not there to supply half of Calcutta" if "more than half of the Bürgergeld" was paid to non-citizens. On 17 September 2025 she spoke of help for people in need, "and not umpteen millions whom, on top of that, we let be imported into the country"; a Green member asked who was importing anyone.

The intelligence classification concerns her party, not a finding that names her. On 2 May 2025 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said the AfD as a whole was a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour ("erwiesen rechtsextremistische Bestrebung"). After the party sued in Cologne, the agency on 8 May 2025 gave a standstill undertaking and suspended public use of that label without withdrawing the assessment. On 26 February 2026 the administrative court there (13 L 1109/25) provisionally barred the agency from treating the whole party as "gesichert rechtsextremistisch" until the main case: it found anti-constitutional efforts inside the party, but not a hostile tendency of the party as a whole.

Asked on Abgeordnetenwatch on 22 September 2026 whether she wanted all foreigners to leave Germany, she replied on 29 September: "Natürlich nicht! Das entspricht weder unserer Absicht noch unserem Parteiprogramm" ("Of course not! That matches neither our intention nor our party programme").

Local roles and constituency relations

District council and public boards

Since 18 June 2024 Schielke-Ziesing has been a member of the Kreistag of the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte and of its Alternative for Germany group, and from 5 August 2024 a full member of the council’s budget and finance committee. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, also records Kreistag membership since 2024. The district register lists her, as a Kreistag member, on the advisory board of Jobcenter Mecklenburgische Seenplatte Süd from 9 September 2024 to 31 December 2025. On 5 June 2025 the district and the Neubrandenburg office of the Federal Employment Agency agreed to merge the northern and southern job centres into one Jobcenter Mecklenburgische Seenplatte from 1 January 2026, based in Neubrandenburg, with the existing sites kept. The current Bundestag biography still names the Süd board and gives no end date.

Disclosures for the 20th electoral term record her as a member of the Verwaltungsrat of Sparkasse Neubrandenburg-Demmin from 11 November 2024; the later biography repeats the seat without the date. From 2 August 2024 the district register also lists her on the assembly of the Sparkassenzweckverband Neubrandenburg-Demmin. The statute of 15 October 2024, published by the district on 22 November 2024, describes the Sparkasse as a public-law institution sponsored by that Zweckverband, with a Verwaltungsrat of 15 members: a chair, nine further members and five employees of the bank. Parliament publishes her seat under functions in public-law bodies, not as employment at the savings bank.

Constituency offices and criticism of her presence

The Bundestag lists constituency offices at Treptower Straße 26 in Demmin and Warener Straße 13 in Teterow. She has held the direct mandate for constituency 17, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte II – Landkreis Rostock III, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, since the February 2025 federal election. The Federal Returning Officer assigns it named municipalities in the districts of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte and Rostock, including Demmin, Neustrelitz and Waren (Müritz) in the former and Güstrow and Teterow in the latter, with the remaining municipalities of each district in other constituencies; at the end of 2023 it had 175 municipalities, 6,277.7 square kilometres and 243,800 inhabitants. NDR called it the second-largest constituency in Germany, covering large parts of both districts from Bützow in the west to Altentreptow in the east and from Mirow in the south to Gnoien in the north.

Cars on a street in Demmin, with buildings along the road and a brick church tower at the far end.

On 17 October 2025 NDR reported that mayors criticised the lack of contact after that mandate. In Demmin, about 11,000 inhabitants, Mayor Thomas Witkowski of the Christian Democratic Union said heavy-goods traffic on federal road 110 ran through the town and that federal help was needed to change the route so the centre could develop; talks with the road-construction authority had, he said, lasted six years without progress, and he had had no direct exchange with her. NDR noted that her office is about 600 metres from the town hall. Witkowski, four years in office, said he did not feel that members were improving conditions for smaller rural towns.

In Altentreptow, non-party mayor Claudia Ellgoth, also four years in office, said the member had never come to hear local problems, while adding that she herself had not made contact, because she expected a regional representative to look at the area as other members had, including by passing on federal funding programmes. She wanted a commercial area using electricity from nearby wind turbines and said the federal conditions for attracting businesses were difficult. In Röbel/Müritz, Mayor Matthias Radtke of the Social Democratic Party said the town is the school authority and that its Amt also takes in 18 other municipalities. Campus smartboards financed in 2020 from the federal Digitalpakt needed replacing, he said, at about 6,000 euros each, and the town hoped for further funds from that programme. He said that immediately after the February result he had congratulated her and invited her to discuss the south of the state, and had received no reply.

Schielke-Ziesing replied that the mayors could write if the issues mattered to them, and that Budget Committee work meant she had for a time to neglect the constituency a little. She said opposition limited her influence but that both sides had to approach each other; she had heard of Radtke’s invitation, had not yet found it and would come, and once the 2026 federal budget was through that November she would tour the constituency and visit the mayors.