Jörg Meuthen: wife, children and private matters - who is the AfD candidate?
Created: 01/29/2022, 08:43
AfD top candidate Jörg Meuthen and his wife Natalia Meuthen (previously Zvekic).
© picture alliance/dpa / Michael Kappeler
Jörg Meuthen is the AfD top candidate for the 2019 European elections. This is known about his wife, his children and his private life.
Jörg Hubert Meuthen (57) is
the AfD's top candidate
for the 2019 European elections. He was born on June 29, 1961 in Essen.
Later, however, his family moved to Bad Ems in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Alongside Alexander Gauland, he has been one of the party leaders of the AfD since July 2015 and has also been
a member of the EU Parliament since the end of 2017.
There he is deputy group leader of the EFDD, which includes parties from the EU-sceptical and right-wing populist spectrum.
According to his own statements, he made the decision to join the AfD on the evening of the 2013 federal elections, when Bernd Lucke was mocked by Wolfgang Schäuble in a broadcast by Günther Jauch.
In 2014, Jörg Meuthen ran as a candidate in list place 10 in the European elections, but was unable to get a mandate. In November 2017, after the federal elections, a mandate for the AfD in the European Parliament became available and he accepted it. In November 2018, he was elected by his party with over 90 percent as the top candidate for the European elections, which will take place in Germany on May 26, 2019. The chances are good that he will also be elected to the European Parliament. In the current polls, the AfD is around 10 percent. We have summarized an overview of all election programs, including that of the AfD, in an article for you.
While much is known about Frauke Petry, Alexander Gauland or Björn Höcke from private life, Meuthen keeps his mostly under lock and key.
Despite his
party chairmanship of the AfD
, he was unknown to many and he was able to move about freely in public without being recognised.
It was only after he separated from his second wife Petra Meuthen and married Natalia Zvekic, who was over 20 years his junior, that some of the details of his private life became known.
Jörg Meuthen (AfD): You know that about your family
Jörg Meuthen has been
married for the third time
.
Not much is known about his first marriage, except that he has three children with his first wife.
The politician also has two other children (eight and eleven years) with his second wife Petra Meuthen, who is said to work in the
administration of the city of Karlsruhe
.
At the beginning of 2017, the 57-year-old announced the separation from his second wife.
He told Focus
magazine
: "But we will continue to take care of our two children together, my wife lives in the immediate vicinity and there is no war of roses.
We live in peace, we want it to stay that way.”
Nothing is publicly known about his five children.
Since the two youngest live with his ex-wife Petra Meuthen, they will probably go to school in Karlsruhe.
Jörg Meuthen together with his second wife Petra Meuthen.
© picture alliance / Felix Kästle/ / Felix Kästle
He gave his involvement in politics as the reason for his separation.
He sometimes
worked 18 hours a day
and underestimated the stress and strain.
Jörg Meuthen and his ex-wife Petra met when he was still working as a professor at the administrative and business academies in Karlsruhe and Offenburg.
"I understand that a woman is concerned about whether she imagined her life this way," Meuthen continued to
focus
on.
Jörg Meuthen (AfD) has a third wife
In an interview with Die
Welt
, he talked about a family vacation on the Baltic Sea when his phone kept ringing.
At that time he was only deputy state party leader in Baden-Württemberg.
He was advised at the time to stand up for the sole leadership of the AfD.
Since the election, he has rarely been in bed before two o'clock.
At the time, the
world
had described him as
"the unknown power of the AfD"
.
"The burden on the family is huge," said the 57-year-old.
His ex-wife Petra Meuthen is not an AfD member.
As Meuthen says, they had an agreement.
After the state elections he had to make a decision: either a professional politician or a university professor again - and it was precisely this decision that caused his second marriage to break up.
Shortly after the separation from Petra Meuthen, the relationship with Natalia Zvekic (36) became known.
She married Jörg Meuthen in June 2018 in Baden and she took his last name.
His third wife is also a member of the AfD.
The explosive thing about it: She met Meuthen in the
AfD federal office in Berlin
- where she was employed.
So he was her boss.
But two weeks after the beginning of the relationship, she quit there, according to the politician.
"That would have really tasted good," Meuthen told the
Schwäbische Zeitung
.
However, after the termination and the move to Stuttgart, she continued to work in Meuthen's office - but without pay.
Jörg Meuthen's wife: You know that about Natalia Meuthen
Natalia Meuthen (formerly Zvekic) is a Russian-German from Siberia.
She was married to the Serb Zlatko Zvekic, with whom she also has five children.
In 2011 she came to Serbia with her family from Germany and found a home in Gajdorbra - a former German house where
Danube Swabians
used to live.
The 36-year-old founded together with her ex-husband an association that aims to reconnect Serbs and Germans and set up the
first museum of the Danube Swabians
in their house .
The two also took care of the preservation of German churches and cemeteries there.
This emerges from a letter that the couple published on the website kulturstiftung.donauschwaben.net in December 2012.
Jörg Meuthen and his wife Natalia Meuthen.
© picture alliance/dpa / Michael Kappeler
Meuthen was also affected by the AfD donation scandal
A donation scandal overshadows Jörg Meuthen's election campaign in the European elections.
Because, as has already become known, the AfD has accepted dubious campaign donations and, according to information from “Spiegel”, even sent the Bundestag a false list of donors!
At first it was assumed that these were donations to Alice Weidel and Guido Reil.
But on March 7th it became known that Meuthen itself was also affected by the donation scandal.
It is about an amount of 90,000 euros, reported the ZDF.
In a Facebook post on Sunday (March 24), Jörg Meuthen himself commented on the donation affair.
“I have done nothing wrong, either morally or legally.
All insinuations to the contrary, by whomever made, are wrong,” the text says, among other things.
We also introduce you to other top candidates in the European elections.
This includes, for example, Ska Keller from the Greens.
Finally, on the evening of the election, we offer you an overview of how the top candidates assess the election result and in our live ticker you will find all the forecasts, results and reactions.
By the way:
According to a survey, more than 70 percent of Germans consider their vote in the European elections to be significant and are aware of the importance of it.
You can see what the ballot paper for the European elections looks like here.