Gerold Otten

Gerold Otten
Gerold Otten
	Otten in 2019
Member of the Bundestag
	Incumbent
	Assumed office ; 24 October 2017
Personal details
Born	7 December 1955 (age 70); Lübberstedt, West Germany
Party	AfD

Gerold Joachim Otten (born 7 December 1955) is a retired German Air Force Oberst (Colonel) and politician (AfD). Since 24 October 2017, he has served as member of the Bundestag.^[1]

On 9 April 2019, in the post 2021 term, and again on 25 March 2025, the AfD faction in the Bundestag nominated Otten for the position of Vice President of the Bundestag.^[2] As every AfD candidate since 2017, he was rejected.

Biography

Birn 7 December 1955, Otten grew up in a hamlet near Bremen, his father was a social democratic mayor of Lübberstedt for 25 years.

In July 1975, he joined the Bundeswehr Luftwaffe and was trained as a Weapon systems officer (WSO) for the F-4 Phantom and Panavia Tornado aircraft. The last three years of his "BO 41" career ("professional officer with the special age limit of 41 years") were spent at the multinational Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment, based at RAF Cottesmore in England for German, British and Italian Tornado crews. He left the Bundeswehr in March 1997 with the rank of major.^[3]

Subsequently, Otten worked for the aerospace group DASA and was most recently active as a Eurofighter Sales Director in its successor company Airbus Defense and Space.^[3] He was a colonel of the reserve at the Air Force Officer School in Fürstenfeldbruck.^[4]

Otten lives in Putzbrunn,^[5] is divorced and has an adult son.^[6]