Who Is the Woman Leading Germany’s Notorious AfD? A Lesbian Finance Expert

Alice Weidel leads a party that attacks immigrants and opposes the LGBTQ community, yet she lives with a female partner and raises two sons with her. That contradiction has become one of the defining features of the AfD leader’s public profile.

The surprise surrounding the Alternative for Germany’s sweeping victory in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt has not faded. The party won almost 44% of the vote and fell only a few seats short of an absolute majority. Its breakthrough marked the far right’s first victory in Germany since the Second World War, while the party machine continues to gather momentum.

Weidel and her partner, Sarah Bossard, a descendant of immigrants from Sri Lanka, have been married for more than 20 years. Their family lives between Germany and Switzerland. At the same time, Weidel presents herself as the leader of a conservative party, supports a traditional definition of the family and sees no need to legalize same-sex marriage. The article says her voters appear willing to overlook the contradiction.

Her professional background adds another unexpected element. Weidel previously worked for Goldman Sachs, Bank of China, where she speaks Mandarin, and Allianz Global Investors. That experience helps her appeal to the AfD’s more moderate supporters, despite the party’s populist economic politics and nationalist, anti-immigration direction.

Weidel joined the AfD in 2013 and initially criticized the European Union and the euro. After Angela Merkel allowed more than one million refugees into Germany in 2015, the party rode an anti-immigration wave and called for closed borders and a restrictive migration policy. Weidel, who was the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in the last federal election, now stands alongside figures such as Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen on Europe’s right. She rejects comparisons between the AfD and the Nazis, describing the party instead as a conservative movement. The article also notes reports about her grandfather, Hans Weidel, who was appointed by Adolf Hitler in 1944 as chief judge of a military court in Warsaw. Weidel said she barely knew him and that the family never discussed his past.