Alice Weidel, centre left, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), is surrounded by journalists after a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, the day after

From left, activists wearing masks of German far-right chancellor candidate Alice Weidel, Elon Musk, President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Vice President JD Vance protest the U.S. and Russia’s support for the German far-right AfD party at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

An election poster showing AfD top candidate for chancellor Alice Weidel is fixed on a lamp pole in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

- Leader of the far-right Afd, Alice Weidel, speaks during general debate of the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Sept.11, 2024. (AP Photo/, File)

The Alternative for Germany still has pariah status among other major political parties in a country where far-right politics has long carried a stigma because of the Nazi past.

ISENBURG, Germany (Reuters) - "Alice fuer Deutschland" (Alice for Germany) chanted supporters as far-right leader Alice Weidel addressed an election rally outside Germany's financial centre Frankfurt,

One in five voters in the German election favored the far right. The AfD leader’s dramatic rise terrifies many of the others.

The half-naked protester was filmed defacing remnants of the Berlin Wall kept outside the German embassy in Ukraine capital Kyiv on Sunday with a Hitler mustache and swept-over cropped dark hair

Germany’s federal elections took place this weekend, with the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) winning overall and set to form a coalition government.

The leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, a conservative who has adopted many of the AfD’s hard-line positions on immigration, used his closing statement of the debate to promise his voters that he would never allow the AfD into his government. Under him, he said, the firewall would hold.

Germany’s political system is set up to exclude extremists. Yet the country is waking up to a new political reality that has lurched to the right with the once outcast Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now firmly established in German politics.

Germany’s right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland party, or AfD, is on course for a stunning result in Sunday’s German election, with reports indicating one-in-five voters