MEP Marcus Pretzell keeps his mandate. Far-right German MEP Pretzell to keep seat despite leaving AfD Lawmaker says he’d ‘rather go to hell’ than let the far-right party have his spot.

German MEP Marcus Pretzell said Thursday he plans to keep his seat in the European Parliament even though he is leaving the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

"I'd rather go to hell than give my seat to the AfD," Pretzell told POLITICO by phone.

Pretzell and his wife Frauke Petry, who has been a leader of the AfD since 2015, both said this week they would leave the party after the AfD won its first seats in the Bundestag in Sunday's German general election.

Pretzell previously told Die Welt he had decided to quit because he had a “not very optimistic view of the development of the AfD.”

The AfD was founded as a Euroskeptic group in 2013, but has focused increasingly on a nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam message. It won 12.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, becoming the first far-right party to enter the German parliament since World War II.

Petry, one of the party’s best-known figures, has been at odds with other AfD leaders for months. She has advocated a less extreme course with the aim of making the party fit for government one day, while more radical party members insist the AfD’s vocation is as an opposition party.

In a statement on Facebook this week, Petry said she believed the AfD had become an “anarchic” opposition party that could not make any realistic proposals for government.