Bundestag Fines AfD MP €1,000 for Quoting Colleague's Own Words
October 18, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Bundestag fined AfD MP Martin Reichardt €1,000 on October 15, 2026, for using an anatomical term that Die Linke MP Kathrin Gebel had introduced to the chamber seven months earlier without any disciplinary consequence.
€1,000. That is what the Bundestag charged AfD MP Martin Reichardt on October 15, 2026 for using an anatomical term in a parliamentary debate. The MP who introduced that same term to the chamber seven months earlier received no penalty at all.
The sequence matters. On March 19, 2026, during a plenary session marking International Women's Day, Die Linke MP Kathrin Gebel told Reichardt from the floor: "The clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings, and yet you are even more sensitive." The Brussels Signal reported that mainstream media and left-wing commentators widely celebrated the remark on social media. No call to order followed.
Gebel's figure was also wrong. A 2023 study by Oregon Health and Science University, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, counted an average of 10,281 nerve fibres in the glans clitoris, according to Brussels Signal. Gebel later acknowledged the error on Instagram: "The clitoris doesn't have 3,000 nerve endings at all, it has 10,000."
On October 15, during a family policy debate, Reichardt returned to the subject. He told both Gebel and SPD MP Ralf Stegner that they had each been "very helpful" to him, saying Stegner had contributed "an unqualified interjection" and adding to Gebel: "you with your lack of knowledge about your own clitoris." Bundestag Vice-President Andrea Lindholz (CSU), who was chairing the session, moved directly to a fine, skipping standard warnings. Under the Bundestag's rules of procedure, as reported by Brussels Signal, the penalty is set at €1,000 for a first offence, rising to €2,000 for a repeat.
Reichard lodged a written objection the same day. His argument, confirmed in both his filing and the Bundestag's published record, was plain: his statement was a "factual observation," he used the term only because Gebel had aimed it at him first, and Gebel had received "not even a call to order" for doing so. On October 16, the Bundestag rejected the objection without debate. CDU/CSU, SPD, the Greens and Die Linke all voted against him. Only the AfD supported him, as the Bundestag's official record confirms.
Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) offered a justification that ranged beyond the specific exchange. She linked Reichardt's remark to separate AfD comments about childless female MPs. "We are in the year 2026. Women and men have equal rights," Klöckner said, per the Morgenpost. She noted that only 32 percent of Bundestag members are women and said the presidency would "immediately punish" future disrespectful language toward women. Lindholz had already framed Reichardt's remark as "a deeply insulting verbal intrusion into a colleague's private sphere," the Morgenpost reported.
The October vote was not isolated. The Bundestag's own records show that on May 8, 2026, the same four-party coalition voted down an earlier Reichardt objection to a call to order issued during a May 7 debate on population research. In each case, the alignment has been identical: four parties against the AfD, and the AfD alone.
A rule applied without consistency is not a rule.
Published October 18, 2026 · Frisian News