Beatrix von Storch

Beatrix Amelie Ehrengard Eilika von Storch (née Herzogin von Oldenburg; 27 May 1971) is a German politician and lawyer, who has been the Deputy Parliamentary Leader of the Alternative for Germany since July 2015 and a Member of the Bundestag since September 2017. She previously was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany. From April 2016 to 2017 she was also a member of the right-wing populist Anti-EU group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. She is part of the right-wing conservative wing of the parliamentary group of the AfD. She belongs ancestrally to the royal House of Oldenburg which reigned over the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg until 1918.

In accordance with the traditions of the House of Oldenburg, her dynastic style from birth was Her Highness Duchess Beatrix Amelie Ehrengard Eilika of Oldenburg. She is the elder daughter of Duke Huno of Oldenburg (b. 1940) and his wife, Countess Felicitas-Anita "Fenita" Schwerin von Krosigk (b. 1941). Her father is a younger son of Nikolaus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1897–1970), erstwhile head of the former ruling family of Oldenburg that lost its throne in 1918. She belongs to the same male-line as the royal houses of Denmark and Norway, the deposed royal house of Greece and imperial Russia, and Charles III, king of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms, to which last crown she is also distantly in line in accordance with the Act of Settlement 1701.

Her maternal grandfather was Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, who served as finance minister from 1932 in the Weimar Republic and continued serving as finance minister in Nazi Germany until its fall in 1945. Schwerin von Krosigk was one of only three members of the Hitler cabinet to serve continuously from its formation until its dissolution. After the death of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, he additionally served as the Leading Minister and foreign minister of the short-lived Flensburg Government of Karl Dönitz – and so as the de facto last head of government of Nazi Germany was tasked with announcing on 7 May 1945, via radio Reichssender Flensburg the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht, thus ending the war in Europe. He was convicted for crimes committed as part of the Nazi regime at the Ministries Trial in 1949, with his prison sentence commuted in 1951.

Her cousin, Eilika of Oldenburg, is married to Georg von Habsburg, a son of Otto, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary.

On 22 October 2010 she married German-Chilean businessman Sven von Storch (born 1970), member of a German noble family from Mecklenburg. He is the son of businessman Berndt Detlev von Storch (1930–2004) and Antje Liete Krüger-Franke (b. 1938).

Von Storch was a banker before she studied law in Heidelberg and Lausanne. She worked as a lawyer in Berlin when she began her political career. She has also been a member of the Friedrich A. von Hayek Society [de].

Together with her husband, she founded several conservative associations. On several occasions, the tax authorities have investigated the couple, accused in particular of having misappropriated donations intended for their associations.

Von Storch was a co-founder of the Göttinger Kreis – Students for the Rule of Law Association – an organization which sought to campaign for reparation for the expulsions and nationalization of land in the Soviet occupied zones of Germany and the former East Germany. The organization calls for appropriated land to be returned to their original owners. The association organized various events with Mikhail Gorbachev, among others.