André Poggenburg

André Poggenburg is a German politician and former member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. He was state chairman of the party in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt and was leading candidate for the 2016 Saxony-Anhalt state elections. In 2018 he was forced to resign after making derogatory comments on German Turks. In spite of this, he remained a member of the AfD federal board until January 2019 when he left to form his own, further-right party; the Awakening of German Patriots (AdPM).

Early life Poggenburg was born in Weißenfels in the Bezirk Halle of East Germany in 1975. He graduated secondary school in 1991 and operated his own car radiator repair business from 1994 to 2015, closing the shop to pursue politics. Poggenburg would be affiliated with the Pegida movement since their early years.

He was elected to the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt in 2016. Reuters named him one of the four faces of the AfD after this success, alongside Uwe Junge, Joerg Meuthen, and Frauke Petry. At the same time his fellow Flügel member Höcke was reprimanded for criticizing the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and was nearly expelled from the party. He claimed that the media was putting words in his mouth and took the statement out of context, but resigned because "The AfD's success is always more important than the individual's success." He would continue to hold his seat in the Landtag until his term expired in 2021 as an Independent.

Awakening of German Patriots Shortly after being barred from seeking office with the AfD, Poggenburg left the party entirely in January 2019 to form his own far-right party, Aufbruch der deutschen Patrioten ("Awakening of German Patriots", AdP). He claimed that he felt the AfD no longer represented his political views and would be joined by other dissatisfied members of the Saxony-Anhalt AfD, who were also affiliated with Pegida.

After a poor performance in the 2019 Saxony local election where the AdPM only saw 3,948 votes or 0.2% of the electorate, Poggenburg held a vote for the party to dissolve itself and rejoin the AfD, which failed. Afterwards he would resign from the party altogether.

Freie Sachsen

In July 2024 Saxon intelligence reported that Poggenburg was a speaker at two rallies for Freie Sachsen, a small far-right party that supports extensive Saxon autonomy, or outright independence, in Dresden and Chemnitz respectively. By August 2024 Poggenburg openly endorsed Freie Sachsen for the 2024 Saxony state election. Poggenburg hosted a rally later in 2024 for Freie Thüringen, a political movement that seeks to create a similar party in the German state of Thuringia, in Gera that saw numerous far-right politicians attend including Martin Sellner, the leader of the Identitäre Bewegung Österreich, and Jürgen Elsässer, the founder of Compact.

Personal life Poggenburg is single.