Max Otte

Matthias "Max" Otte (born 7 October 1964) is an economist, publicist and political activist who holds German and U.S. citizenship. Otte, who has held professorships in Worms, Graz and Erfurt, is currently a fund manager. He has written several bestsellers, mainly on financial policy topics. From June 2018 to January 2021, Otte was chairman of the board of trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius-Erasmus-Foundation. A member of the CDU since 1991, he led the Werteunion from May 2021 until January 2022. In January 2022, Otte became provisorily expelled from the CDU when he was nominated by the right-wing populist party AfD as a candidate for the 2022 German presidential election. He faced further proceedings for a permanent exclusion from the CDU which concluded in August 2022 with Otte's formal expulsion from the CDU. Otte was born in Plettenberg, West Germany to Lore Otte, née Hauter, and Max Otte (1928-1983), a vocational school teacher and local politician. After the death of his father, Otte took his first name Max. Max Otte obtained his Abitur (university entrance qualification) at Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium Plettenberg in 1983. In 1983, Otte graduated from high school in Plettenberg. From 1983 to 1989, he studied business administration, economics and political science at the University of Cologne. Between 1986 and 1987, he spent a year abroad at the American University in Washington, D.C., on a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, where he majored in economic policy, finance and marketing. During this time, he received various scholarships and awards. He completed his education in 1989 with a degree in economics. After graduating from Princeton University with a Master of Arts in Public Affairs in 1991, Otte earned his doctorate there in 1997 with Aaron Friedberg's thesis "A Rising Middle Power? - German Foreign Policy in Transformation." Otte worked as a consultant for international organizations and the public sector at Kienbaum and Partners from 1989 to 1994 and was an employee of the Gütersloh Center for Higher Education (CHE) in 1995.