When Health Minister Nina Warken takes her seat on the government bench in the Bundestag, she finds herself in close proximity with the parliamentary group of the largest opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).”I can hear much more than what makes it into the official record. There are condescending, derogatory comments about women,” Warken of the ruling center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told media group RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland.
Warken, who also currently chairs her party’s women’s movement, has triggered a debate about how the conduct toward women in Germany’s federal parliament has changed since the AfD, parts of which have been classified as right-wing extremist, entered the Bundestag in 2017.
In the interview, she reported that female politicians from other parties were attacked with “shocking insults” not only because of their political opinions, but also because of their appearance and clothing, and spoke of “abysmal comments.”
“That is unacceptable. That is beneath the dignity of parliament,” Warken said. “We need to collectively condemn such conduct in parliament. No lawmaker should be intimidated by this,” she concluded.
Health Minister Nina Warken has spoken out against misogynistic heckling in the BundestagImage: dts-Agentur/picture alliance
The AfD’s health policy spokesman, Martin Sichert, accused Warken of trying to distract from the actual problems in the health system by accusing the AfD parliamentary bloc of misogyny. “The minister should finally take care of the real problems in the country instead of publicly defaming the largest opposition party,” Sichert told DW via email. “Our party will not be intimidated by the minister’s allegations; rather, we will point out the government’s failures, especially in health policy,” the AfD lawmaker wrote.
Bundestag breaches on the rise
The massive increase in reprimands and calls to order in recent years shows that the tone in parliament has changed significantly. In 2017, before the AfD entered the Bundestag, administrators recorded only 2 calls to order. Between 2017 and 2021 there were 47, from 2021 to 2025 the tally stands at 135. The AfD accounts for 85 of them.
Carmen Wegge of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) has been a lawmaker since 2021. She regularly checks the records of her speeches, and finds they often only state: Shouts from the AfD, she told DW. There is so much heckling that the minute-takers simply cannot keep up. Wegge’s strategy is to ignore it.
SPD politician Carmen Wegge experiences attacks in the analog and in the digital worldImage: Anna Voelske
Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) has been cracking down and increasing the number of reprimands and calls to order. The coalition government of CDU/CSU and SPD has reacted to the increased heckling and insults, especially from the AfD benches, by increasing fines: The fine that lawmakers must pay for serious misconduct has been raised from €1,000 ($1,166) to €2,000, a repeat will cost them €4,000 instead of €2,000. If a parliamentarian receives 3 calls to order in the course of one session, they are expelled from the chamber.
Wegge does not think this will prompt the AfD lawmakers to be more moderate; quite the opposite. “These attempts at intimidation are, of course, part of the AfD’s strategy. The vulgar remarks are an expression of the mindset of this party, ” Wegge says.
If anyone can gauge how the tone in the Bundestag has shifted since the arrival of the AfD, it is former Green Party leader Claudia Roth. Between 2013 and 2021, she was the vice president of the Bundestag, and she has been among the female lawmakers most frequently targeted by the AfD.
The Green Party’s Claudia Roth frequently finds herself to be a target of AfD lawmakers’ hecklingImage: Katharina Kausche/dpa/picture alliance
“Whenever I speak, there is hardly a debate where people are not shouting over me,” she told DW. “They think that by attacking me they will get a lot of support from their followers online — because they celebrate such things there, where hate is continued. That is particularly unsettling for young female colleagues who are in the Bundestag for the first time and making their first speeches.”
Roth refuses to be intimidated. When she found herself briefly considering not to use the term “feminist development policy” in a Bundestag speech, as this would provoke a strong reaction from the AfD, she decided not to be cowed. In the end, she spoke of the “necessity of a feminist development policy” and put up with the verbal attacks.
“They are trying to rattle us. They are trying to silence us. They are trying to make us withdraw, even in debates in the German parliament. And that is highly dangerous,” Roth said.
According to Roth, the AfD wants “to attack women and minorities, to portray them as enemies and discredit them, and with that to attack and weaken the democratic institution of the Bundestag. And if we allow that, we have lost everything.”
This article was originally written in German.
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