5 Surprising Faces In Germany’s New Parliament As Far-Right Emerges

Here are 5 prominent faces from the chamber:

1. HELMUT KOHL’S GRANDSON – Helmut Kohl, the architect of German reunification, had been chancellor for 14 years when his grandson Johannes Volkmann was born in 1996. Volkmann was originally named Kohl – like his father Walter – but his parents decided to change it to his mother’s surname to protect his identity. At age 28 he stood for the Christian Democrats (CDU) in February’s election, taking up his grandfather’s political mantle. Volkmann showed an interest in politics from an early age, joining the CDU’s youth wing at the age of 14. After studying economics, politics, sociology and contemporary Chinese studies — spending a semester at university in Shanghai and Beijing — he worked as chief of staff to an MEP and in 2024 became the youngest member of the CDU’s executive committee.
2. MERKEL’S FAR-RIGHT SUCCESSOR – The AfD’s Dario Seifert, 31, caused a sensation in February’s election by winning Angela Merkel’s old constituency on the Baltic Sea coast. Seifert, who ran on a ticket of improving local housing and infrastructure, was once a member of the youth wing of the neo-Nazi NPD party. He called it a youthful indiscretion in comments to the Nordkurier local newspaper, emphasising his “right to have evolved politically”. With a thick head of dark hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and often seen wearing a leather jacket, Seifert has become a symbol for the AfD’s success in the ex-communist east. Merkel held the constituency in northern Germany for more than 30 years until her retirement in 2021, when it went to a young unknown from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD.
3. THE FACE OF INTEGRATION – Awet Tesfaiesus, 50, became the first black woman to be elected to the Bundestag in 2021 and was re-elected this year for the Greens. Tesfaiesus arrived in Germany at age 10 with her family, fleeing the Eritrean war of independence. She learned German at school and went on to become a lawyer representing asylum seekers and refugees. Tesfaiesus decided to go into politics after nine people were killed in a shooting spree by a far-right extremist in the city of Hanau in 2020. She has accused the AfD of racism and said she wanted to stand for a second time because “giving up is not an option”. “It’s also my parliament and my country,” she told the left-wing news outlet nd.Aktuell. “If the AfD is there, then I also want to be there as a black woman.”
4. THE DEMOTED CHANCELLOR – Olaf Scholz led his Social Democrats (SPD) to the worst result in the party’s history in February’s election, bringing home just 16.4 percent of the vote. Although the SPD looks set to be part of the next government, Scholz has ruled out taking a senior position under the likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the conservative CDU. Scholz did however narrowly win his constituency in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, and unusually for an ex-chancellor he is returning to the chamber as an MP.
5. THE OLD COMRADE – With 30 years and nine months of service, Gregor Gysi, 77, of the far-left Die Linke, is the longest-tenured member of the new German parliament. Gysi worked as a lawyer in the former East Germany before helping to reform the old communist party after the Berlin Wall fell. He was first elected to the Bundestag after reunification in 1990. Die Linke had been teetering on the brink of the five-percent threshold for inclusion in the German parliament, but made an unexpected comeback in the final weeks before the election. That success was partly down to a light-hearted social media campaign centred around three “old comrades” including Gysi. During the campaign, Gysi even became a TikTok star after a techno DJ made a video using fragments of his speeches.

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