Björn Uwe Höcke (born 1 April 1972) is a German politician of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). He is chair of the state branch of the AfD in Thuringia, which is classified as a far-right extremist organization. Höcke led the AfD to its first-ever first place finish in a state election at the 2024 Thuringian state election. It was the first time a far-right party placed first in an election since the Nazi era.
After Andreas Kalbitz was banned from the AfD, Höcke was the sole leader of the party's far-right faction, which the German government's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared a suspected right-wing extremist organization. Even after its formal dissolution, Höcke is considered the most influential politician in the AfD due to his strong network.
Early life and education Björn Höcke was born in Lünen and grew up in Anhausen and Neuwied. Höcke's father was a teacher at while his mother was a nurse. His father is a Protestant and his mother is a Catholic. In 1986, Björn was baptized and confirmed as a Protestant.
His paternal grandparents were expelled Germans from East Prussia. Höcke took his Abitur at Rhein-Wied-Gymnasium in 1991.
Höcke studied sport and history at University of Giessen and at University of Marburg before working as a teacher. He taught at the Rhenanus School, a comprehensive school in Bad Sooden-Allendorf.
Political career
In 1986, Höcke was briefly a member of Junge Union, the joint youth organisation of the CDU/CSU coalition.
As one of the founders of AfD Thuringia, he was elected to the Landtag or state parliament of Thuringia following the 2014 election. He is the speaker of the parliamentary group of the AfD and the spokesman of the Thuringia Regional Association () of his party. He is said to be the leader of the "national-conservative wing" of the AfD, a faction known as the Flügel (the Wing), with which 40 percent of AfD party members identify themselves.
Previously a rather obscure regional politician of a new party, Höcke became known nationwide in 2015, when party leader Bernd Lucke was ousted in July and the 2015 European migrant crisis unfolded. In October 2015, one day after a knife attack on Cologne mayor Henriette Reker, during the political talkshow "Günther Jauch", Höcke pulled out a small German flag and stated, "3000 years of Europe, 1000 years of Germany".
In September 2019, Höcke threatened "massive consequences" to a ZDF journalist who refused to restart an interview after a series of difficult questions and asked party members whether various quotes were from a book Höcke had written or from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Höcke led the AfD in the 2019 Thuringian state election, where it doubled its vote share to 23% and overtook the main opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to place second.
In 2021, the moderate AfD co-leader Jörg Meuthen attempted to remove Höcke from the party on account of his alleged racism, but failed. This led to Meuthen ultimately quitting the party in 2022.
In November 2021, Höcke's parliamentary immunity in the Landtag of Thuringia was cancelled. He was accused of ending a speech in May 2021 with the phrase ("All/Everything for Germany"), a phrase used by the Hitlerian regime's SA paramilitary wing and whose use is illegal under insignia legislation. In June 2023, Höcke was officially indicted for this. He was indicted for an additional charge after making use of the phrase again in December 2023 during an AfD meeting in Gera. He was convicted in both instances in separate trials by the regional court of Halle in May and June 2024, and sentenced to two monetary fines totalling €29,900. Höcke appealled the judgement, but the convictions were upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in September 2025.
Before the 2024 local elections in Thuringia, Höcke attempted to prevent already nominated candidates in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district from being elected and to replace them with candidates he favored. To this end, his state executive committee wanted to expel nine local AfD members from the party. Nevertheless, Höcke's internal opponent, Karlheinz Frosch, secured the top spot on the party list. The Gera Regional Court allowed the already nominated candidates to proceed. Höcke then called for the election of an "Alternative for the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt District" (AfL) and had his portrait printed on their posters. In order to achieve the expulsion of those nine AfD members, he accused them of an alleged "conspiracy against the grassroots democratic, undisputed decision-making process," which he claimed had severely damaged the party. Subsequently, several AfD local politicians, including the mayoral candidate for Rudolstadt, Jörg Gasda, demanded that Höcke himself be expelled from the AfD. Furthermore, it was uncertain whether Höcke's alternative list was compatible with the electoral law. In the state election, the CDU received the most votes in that district, while the official AfD list received five percent (three seats) more than Höcke's list.
In the 2024 Thuringian state election, the AfD, under the leadership of Höcke, increased its vote share to a record high of 33%, and became the biggest party in the state. It is the biggest voteshare ever won by the party and the first time AfD placed first in a federal state election. Political views
Höcke espouses far-right views and advocates for Prussian virtues. During demonstrations in autumn of 2015, Höcke called for Germany to have "not only a thousand year past", but also "a thousand year future." He would go on to describe the period of the German Reich from 1871 to 1914 as the heyday for the German People.
When Höcke was young, his family frequently discussed their expulsion from East Prussia. His grandparents instilled in him a strong sense of belonging to East Prussia, even though he had never lived there. The family obituary for Höcke's grandmother features the coat of arms of the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen, an organization for people displaced from East Prussia. Höckes speeches often reference the expulsion of Germans from East Prussia at the end of World War II, suggesting that this experience of his grandparents has influenced his views on German identity and victimhood. His father subscribed to the antisemitic magazine Die Bauernschaft, published by prominent Holocaust denier Thies Christophersen, and supported individuals and groups with ties to far-right groups. This suggests that Höcke was exposed to right-wing ideologies from a young age.
Höcke has stated that "the big problem is that one presents Hitler as absolutely evil." He believes that Germans have been denied the right to national pride and expression due to their country's history. He has questioned the amount of time that German schools spend teaching students about Nazis. He has called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a "monument of shame," and wants a "180-degree change in memory policy."
Höcke has used the term "Lebensraum," which was used by Nazis to refer to territorial expansion and has questioned why this phrase is denounced by the German public. He called former Chancellor Angela Merkel's officials a "Tat-Elite," a term SS officers used to refer to themselves.Political scientists such as and have commented that Höcke's opinions are close to the Die Heimat and consider his statements völkisch, racist and fascist. In September 2019, a German court ruled that describing Höcke as fascist was not libelous. However, a later court ruling in 2020 ruled against the FDP politician Sebastian Czaja for stating that the court ruling had classified Höcke as a fascist. He participated in several rallies of the anti-Islam Pegida movement alongside Andreas Kalbitz in the early 2020s.
Höcke has expressed public support for the far-right ecologist magazine Die Kehre (The Turning), which has been published since 2020 in an attempt to "reclaim" environmental conservation from the left.
In April 2026 he laid out his political views for the future of Germany in a 4 ½ hour interview that went viral in Germany, gathering more than a million views in the first day it got published on YouTube.
Education He opposes the mainstreaming of students with disabilities, calling for such students to go to separate special education schools. In an interview with far-right publisher Götz Kubitschek, Höcke compared inclusive schooling to communism and claimed that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations only applied to newly industrialized and developing countries.Riebe, Jan (2024). "Ideologieprojekt Inklusion": Positionierungen der AfD zu Inklusion als Ausdruck ihres rechtsextremen Weltbildes. In: Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft (Hg.). Wissen schafft Demokratie. Schwerpunkt Behindernde Gesellschaft, Band 15. Jena, 30–45. He opposes school sexual education, which he called "harmful, expensive, tax-funded social experiments that serve to abolish the natural order of sexes" and a means of "early sexualization of the students". Höcke described sexual education as an attempt to "dissolute the natural polarity of the two sexes", stating that "the higher development of humanity goes back to polarity".
Family Höcke has called for more Prussian virtues and promotes natalist views, specifically the "three-child family as a political and social model." He opposes gender mainstreaming and demands an end to what he calls "social experiments" that undermine what he deems the "natural gender order."
Foreign affairs Höcke supports closer relations with Russia. He once said that if he ever became the German Chancellor, he would visit Russia in his first trip abroad. In a January 2023 video debate, Höcke said "Today, Russia — whether the mainstream media want to hear it or not — is a country which not only provokes negative associations but is also a country that hopes it could possibly be a pioneer for a world of free and sovereign states without hegemonic influence".
At a state party conference of the Thuringian AfD at the end of 2022, Höcke described the right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a "role model"; he is "perhaps one of the last statesmen in Europe". Höcke described his election defeat in April 2026 as a "weakening of patriotic forces in Europe"; it is undoubtedly a setback in the short term.
Immigration Regarding the 2015 European migrant crisis, Höcke opposed Germany's asylum policy, leading regular demonstrations in Erfurt against the federal government's asylum policy, which regularly attracted several thousand sympathizers. He opposes the euro, favoring a return to national currencies. He has been critical of the Made in Germany – Made by Vielfalt campaign.
He is reported to have declared that if Europe keeps on taking in immigrants, the African "reproductive behavior" will not change. In 2017, Höcke stated, "dear young African men: for you there is no future and no home in Germany and in Europe!"
Controversies
Ties to Neo-Nazis Höcke has links with neo-Nazi circles in Germany. Höcke has written with , a leader of NPD. In 2015 Höcke was accused of having contributed to Heise's journal under a pseudonym ("Landolf Ladig"). Höcke denied having ever written for NPD papers, but refused to give a statutory declaration as demanded by the AfD Federal Executive Board.
In a 2014 email to party colleagues, Höcke advocated the abolition of section 86 of the German Criminal Code (which prohibits the spread of propaganda by unconstitutional organizations) and section 130 of the German Criminal Code (which criminalizes incitement to hatred towards other groups). This would also have legalized Holocaust denial, which is illegal in Germany.
Allegations of antisemitism