This provoked ironic comments as the AfD has been extremely critical of the European Union and the Euro currency since its foundation in 2013 by the economist Bernd Lucke.

Party chairman Alexander Gauland preferred to have a foundation named after Gustav Stresemann, a national liberal politician who served as Foreign Minister and briefly Chancellor.

The party convention in June 2018 held a vote and a two thirds majority agreed to adopt the DES as officially associated foundation.

Among the speakers where the party chairman Jörg Meuthen, Member of the European Parliament, the media scientist Norbert Bolz and the former GDR dissident and later CDU MP Vera Lengsfeld.

She had left Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) in 2017 in protest over the chancellor's open door migration policy.

In 2017 the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit estimated that the foundation could ultimately get as much as 80 million euros of public funds.

After a first funding request of 1.4 million euros was rejected by the Ministry of the Interior, the foundation has started legal action.