Lucke joined the
Junge Union, the youth wing of the
Christian Democratic Union of Germany, as a teenager in response to the conditions of his relatives living in
East Germany under communism. He was a member of the CDU for thirty years until 2011 when he cancelled his membership in opposition to the party's eurozone rescue policies. He first contested an election as a member of the
Free Voters in the
2013 Lower Saxony state election but was not elected. In 2013, he founded
Wahlalternative 2013 ("Electoral Alternative 2013") with
Alexander Gauland,
Frauke Petry and
Konrad Adam to oppose the German government's handling of the
eurozone crisis. The group was later founded as the
Alternative for Germany in April 2013, with Lucke as one of the party's three spokespeople. During his speech at the party's founding rally, he described the Euro currency as a "historic mistake." During a campaign speech in
Bremen on 24 August 2013, Lucke was attacked with
pepper spray by two members of
Anti-fascist Action. Several people in the audience were treated for irritation of the eyes and throat. During the
2013 German federal election, Lucke stood as the AfD's top list candidate in
Lower Saxony and for the directly elected seat of
Harburg but was not elected to either. During the
2014 European Parliament election, Lucke was elected as an MEP and negotiated for the AfD to join the
European Conservatives and Reformists. Lucke stated that the AfD's preferred partners in the European Parliament would be the British
Conservative Party and that they would not team up with "xenophobic" parties. Following the rise of the
Pegida protests in Germany, which were welcomed by some AfD state branches, Lucke stated that most of the arguments voiced by Pegida were legitimate and that the movement was a sign that politicians had not listened to concerns felt by ordinary people. On 4 July 2015, Lucke was displaced as leader of the party
Alternative for Germany (AfD) by his former deputy,
Frauke Petry, in a leadership election after several months of infighting. On 9 July 2015, Lucke left the Alternative for Germany, saying that the party had "fallen irretrievably into the wrong hands" after Petry's election and moved too far to the right by adopting what he termed as anti-foreigner positions. He also cited an “
anti-Western, decidedly
pro-Russian foreign and security policy orientation” and increasing calls to “pose the ‘system question’ regarding our parliamentary democracy” as reasons for his departure from the party. ALFA has since been renamed
Liberal-Konservative Reformer ("Liberal Conservative Reformers," LKR) and later
Wir Bürger ("Us Citizens"). In 2015, Lucke was announced as the LKR's top candidate for the Bundestag ahead of the
2017 German federal election. However, the LKR decided not to contest the election. The party stood in the
2019 European Parliament election, but all its MEPs, including Lucke, lost their seats. ==Post-AfD leadership==