Dispute over Aigner's Bundestag visit
Aigner, the CDU/CSU candidate and president of Bavaria's state parliament, plans to introduce herself in the Bundestag on Tuesday, a day after her official nomination. She declined the AfD parliamentary group's invitation, with her spokesman citing von Storch's comments on X.
Speaking to WELT TV, Kiesewetter said Aigner's reluctance to talk to a party that treated her with contempt was understandable. Asked whether meeting with the AfD would demonstrate her nonpartisanship, he said that decision was hers to make.
Kiesewetter argued that the party's treatment of Aigner showed contempt for the German state and its free democratic constitutional order. He praised her as a candidate capable of reuniting the political center.
Von Storch's criticism
Von Storch, a deputy leader of the AfD parliamentary group, had portrayed Aigner's nomination as evidence of failure in the selection of Germany's highest officeholder. She claimed Aigner's qualifications were being a woman, being someone Markus Söder wanted out of Bavaria and being sufficiently left-wing to win SPD votes.
Even before the nomination, von Storch had attacked the commitment to choosing a woman. She argued that those who supposedly denied the existence of biological sex were making it the decisive qualification for the presidency, ahead of competence and other considerations, and used that argument to deride Germany's approach to gender.
Support and alternative candidates
Aigner is considered almost certain to win. The CDU/CSU and SPD together hold a majority of roughly 50 votes in the Bundesversammlung, the body that elects Germany's president, and the Greens have also signaled support for her.
The AfD and the Left plan to nominate their own candidates. The Left said it had not invited Aigner to meet with its parliamentary group either.
Söder, Bavaria's minister-president and the CSU leader, first proposed Aigner for the presidency in April 2026. As her nomination took shape, Left parliamentary group co-leader Heidi Reichinnek argued that a nonpartisan candidate would have been a more sensible choice. She criticized what she described as the presidency's treatment as a patronage post passed between the CDU/CSU and SPD.
An alternative name had drawn public support through an online petition launched in April 2026 on the association Campact's platform. More than 160,000 people had signed by the end of October in support of comedian Hape Kerkeling's candidacy. Reichinnek described him as a suitable proposal.
The January election
The 18th Bundesversammlung is scheduled to elect the president on January 30, 2027, at the Reichstag building in Berlin. Its 1,260 members comprise the Bundestag's 630 lawmakers and an equal number of delegates chosen by state parliaments. A candidate needs an absolute majority of at least 631 votes in either of the first two rounds.
Incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier's second five-year term ends on March 18, 2027. Article 54(2) of the Basic Law bars a third consecutive term, so he cannot run in this election.
Aigner's background and potential firsts
If elected, Aigner would become Germany's first female federal president and the first member of the CSU to hold the office. The preceding 12 presidents over roughly eight decades were all men: six from the CDU, three from the SPD, two from the FDP and the independent Joachim Gauck.
Born in 1964 in Upper Bavaria's Rosenheim district, Aigner earned a Realschulabschluss and trained as a radio and television technician before later working for helicopter manufacturer Eurocopter. She served as federal minister of agriculture and consumer protection from 2008 to 2013.
Her educational and vocational background would mark another first: no previous German head of state has held a Realschulabschluss and a skilled-trade qualification.
