Siegbert Droese | |
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| Member of theBundestag | |
| Assumed office 24 October 2017 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1969-06-07)7 June 1969 (age 56) |
| Nationality | German |
| Party | AfD |
Siegbert Droese (born 7 June 1969) is a German politician for the populistAlternative for Germany (AfD) and since 2017 member of theBundestag, the federal legislative body.
Droese was born on 7 June 1969 in the city ofLeipzig, then inEast Germany (GDR).[1] He was raised in a Christian family as the youngest of three siblings. Until he graduated from school, he participated in competitive athletics as atrack and field athlete, specializing in thejavelin throw.[2]
From 1986 to 1988, he trained at Interhotel Leipzig as a restaurant specialist.[3] In July 1989, hefled to West Germany via the open border with theHungarian People's Republic. InHamburg, he worked at theHotel Atlantic Hamburg and trained as ahotel manager. He returned toHotel Merkur in Leipzig in 1991, where he originally begun his training.[4] Until 1994 he worked there as an assistant, then in thefood service department until 1997. From 1998 to 2014 he was self-employed in the Leipzig hotel and restaurant industry.[3] He opened a restaurant in the city centre, which he ran until November 2013.[4] From 2015 to 2017, he was manager and member of the management board at F & B.[3]
In 2013, Droese joinedAlternative for Germany (AfD), and became the AfD Leipzig district association chairman in 2015.[5] Droese was briefly a member of thevölkisch-nationalist associationPatriotische Plattform [de], but according to him, he left before the 2015 AfD federal party conference.[3] He signed the "Erfurt Resolution,"[6] which, according toThe Spectator, is considered the "founding document" ofDer Flügel, an ultranationalist faction of AfD.[7]
In 2016, Droese was nominated by the Leipzig AfD district council as a candidate for theLeipzig II constituency in the2017 German federal election.[8] Following the departure ofFrauke Petry from AfD, he, as her deputy, became the acting chairman of AfD Saxony, but declined to run for the position at the 2018 AfD Saxony state party conference inHoyerswerda.[9] Before the 2019 state election, Droese stated his goal to make the AfD the strongest faction in theLandtag of Saxony and to provide theminister president of the state, though he said he would not run for the role himself.[4]
As a Bundestag candidate in 2017, Droese said that he had not been interested in politics during the GDR-era or after his return to Leipzig. He considered the formerbloc parties to be completely untrustworthy after 1989.[2] He cited hisEurosceptic stance as the reason why he joined AfD. According to him, theeuro had doubled many prices, EU bureaucracy had been increasingly restricting the German government, with the laterzero interest-rate policy having effectively expropriated the savings of German pensioners.[10]
In January 2017, far-right activistTatjana Festerling appeared at aLegida rally, the Leipzig branch of theislamophobic andxenophobic protest movementPegida fromDresden, and proposed an alliance with the AfD. Droese subsequently issued a press release advocating for cooperation between the AfD and Pegida, and for a long-scale joint demonstration in Leipzig. While the Patriotische Plattform was in support, a majority at the subsequent AfD Leipzig district party conference rejected direct official cooperation despite acknowledging "political common ground" between AfD and Pegida.[6]
On 9 November 2022, when a decision was made to rename Turmgutstraße in Leipzig, the street where the Russian Consulate General is located, in honour of UkrainianHolocaust survivorBorys Romanchenko, who was killed in a Russian airstrike during theRusso-Ukrainian war. Droese described the decision as "utter nonsense" that was "purely ideologically motivated,Russophobia is in fashion".[11]
Droese isEvangelical Lutheran. He is married and has four children.[3]
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