Alexander Gauland

Eberhardt Alexander Gauland (born 20 February 1941) is a German politician, journalist and lawyer who has served as leader of the right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag since September 2017 and co-leader of the party from December 2017 to November 2019. He has been a Member of the Bundestag (MdB) since September 2017. Gauland was the party's co-founder and was its federal spokesman from 2017 to 2019 and the party leader for the state of Brandenburg from 2013 to 2017. Gauland was born in 1941 in Chemnitz, a city that became part of East Germany in 1949 and was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt. After graduating from high school in 1959, he fled as a refugee to West Germany. He studied political science and law at Marburg, where he also received his doctorate.In 1972, Gauland entered the Federal Press Office and worked as the Director of the Office of the Mayor of Frankfurt am Main for 10 years.Afterwards, he became the head of a department of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety in Bonn and Member of the Hessian Prime Minister's cabinet.From 1991 to 2006, he worked as an editor of the local newspaper Märkische Allgemeine in Potsdam.