Once a year on her birthday, Alice Weidel sits down with her wife over a glass of red wine. The couple ask themselves: Is it all worth it? The hatred, the anonymous threats, the public exposure.

At Weidel’s next birthday — it will be her 45th — she will have plenty to show for these pains. Things are going pretty well for the co-head of Germany’s noisiest party, the so-called Alternative for Germany, usually known as the AfD.

Outpolling Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, the party now ranks second of the six main parties with 20% support nationwide. In former East Germany it does even better.

Weidel herself is likely to be named the AfD’s first ever candidate for chancellor in the next federal election, scheduled for September 2025. If she succeeds in that unlikely ambition, the Goldman Sachs alum would be the first far-right politician to lead Germany since the end of the Nazi era.