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Deutsche Welle (9 July 2017)

The Alternative for Germany's (AfD) party congress voted on Sunday in favor of allowing Frauke Petry to run as a candidate for the state of Saxony in this year's federal elections.

A proposal to stop her from running was put forward by a wing of the AfD who accuse her of splitting ranks by refusing to support two disgraced party members over comments they made concerning the Holocaust at an event in January. Her detractors also claimed that the charges of perjury against her have damaged the party's reputation.

However, at Sunday's AfD party congress in the eastern German town of Dohna, 33 lawmakers for the nationalist party voted against the proposal to ban her from running, while 19 voted in favor.

Petry remains the top candidate on the AfD's list of candidates in Saxony for a seat in the Bundestag, giving her a very good chance of entering Germany's lower house following September federal election.

Petry the target of anger as AfD support wanes

Petry, a trained chemist and businesswoman, entered politics to help AfD founder Bernd Lücke establish the party as a mainstream political force in 2013. Her ultra-nationalist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigration politics proved to be a boon for the AfD, with support reaching a record high of 15 percent last September.

However, the party has seen a recent slump in support in this year's state elections, thanks in no small part to a series of scandals that have plagued prominent members.

In January, AfD lawmaker Jens Maier  declared that Germany's "guilt cult" about the Holocaust was over during an event hosted by the AfD's youth organization in Dresden - the sort of statement generally designed to play well with Germany's neo-Nazis.