As an openly gay politician who lives with her Sri Lanka-born partner in Switzerland, Alice Weidel was an unusual choice to many to lead Germany's far-right and anti-immigration AfD into Sunday's elections.

To her legions of political foes, Weidel serves as a "fig leaf" for a party that rails against asylum seekers, Islam and multiculturalism and some of whose top figures have voiced revisionist views on Germany's Nazi past.