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The deaths of four candidates for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which occurred within weeks of each other, ahead of local elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, scheduled for September 14, have been shrouded in mystery, as conspiracy theories have gripped Germany.
Those who lost their lives were Ralph Lange, 67, Stefan Berendes, 59, Wolfgang Klinger, 72, and Wolfgang Seitz, 59, all candidates in the Blomberg, Bad Lippspringe, Schwerte, and Rheinberg constituencies, respectively. According to German public radio WDR, these were "unexpected" deaths that "caught public opinion by surprise" and created tension given the proximity of the election.
In fact, the ballots issued in the various electoral zones have lost their validity following the death of the candidates, and the party is obliged to quickly identify a new candidate for each district and quickly deliver the new ballots to the citizens.
In none of the four cases has the cause of death been officially communicated, and the AfD has yet to issue any statement regarding the deaths, which are beginning to become the subject of speculation and suspicion from figures, activists, and social media channels more or less connected to the world of conspiracy theories and the German far right.
Stefan Homburg, an economist and former director of the Institute of Public Finance at the University of Hanover, already known for several denialist theories about the Covid-19 pandemic (which later turned out to be false), called the coincidence regarding the candidates' deaths "statistically almost impossible."
“Whether it’s vaccine side effects, deindustrialization, climate fraud or war, in this brave new world, early analyses are called conspiracy theories,” Homburg wrote in another post on X, commenting on the news of the four deaths. There are currently no ongoing investigations in Germany suggesting a link between the cases.
According to the latest August 2025 poll conducted by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis, if national elections were held today, 26% of Germans would vote for the Alternative for Germany.
This result puts the far-right party ahead of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative bloc, which falls into second place with 24% of the votes collected in the poll.
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