By Sarah Marsh

BERLIN (Reuters) - Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is an unlikely public face for a male-dominated, anti-immigration party that depicts itself as a defender of traditional family values and ordinary people.

The 46-year-old is raising two sons with a Sri Lankan-born woman, a filmmaker, and speaks fluent English and Mandarin, having done a doctorate in economics in China. A western German leading a party that is strongest in the former communist East, she worked for Goldman Sachs and Allianz Global Investors and as a freelance business consultant before entering politics.

Weidel's unusual profile, however, is precisely what makes her an asset to the AfD, say political analysts, lending a veneer of well-heeled liberal respectability to a party that is suspected by authorities of being antidemocratic.

Typically sporting a dark suit, white shirt and pearls, she comes across as more poised and competent on various topics than some of her colleagues, they say. Her critics call her a ruthless opportunist and a "wolf in sheep's clothing". 

She is on track to lead the 12-year-old party to a record score in Sunday's federal election that will consolidate its place in Germany's political landscape and potentially complicate governance in Europe's largest economy.

"Weidel is someone who can appeal to a broader public than the typical AfD constituency, to the middle class bourgeoisie," said Oliver Lembcke, political scientist at the University of Bochum. "She seems like the adult in the room among all these lunatics and extremists."

As AfD co-leader, Weidel has overseen a surge in support for the party in recent years, benefiting from a rising tide of anti-migration sentiment and frustration with Chancellor Olaf Scholz's fractious coalition, which collapsed in November.

She has also harnessed widespread anger over a series of violent incidents throughout the election campaign, which have led to the arrests of immigrants.

The AfD is now on track to score a record 21%, behind the conservatives on 29% but well ahead of Scholz's Social Democrats on 16%, according to polls. 

This is the first time the AfD has nominated a chancellor candidate and Weidel has already acknowledged it is unlikely to enter government for now, given other parties refuse to work with it.

But the firewall could crumble: conservative chief Friedrich Merz, Germany's likely next chancellor, broke a taboo on indirect cooperation with the AfD last month, passing an anti-migration motion in parliament with the party's support. He rules out governing with them, however.

Only with the AfD can the conservatives implement true change, says Weidel, who sees the firewall crumbling by the next election.

 U.S. Vice President JD Vance said at the Munich Security Conference this month there was no room for firewalls in democracy after meeting Weidel.

POLITICAL UPBRINGING

Weidel describes her upbringing as "highly political", although her parents did not belong to any party. 

The youngest of three, she recalls getting into trouble at school for being too argumentative as well as having uncomfortable encounters with Middle Eastern immigrants living in social housing in her West German town.

"You don't enjoy going to the outdoor pool anymore as a teenager when people are always calling you 'slut' or some such," she told WeltWoche, a Swiss magazine. 

After studying business and economics she joined Goldman Sachs, grew bored and moved to China to do a doctorate on the Chinese pension system while working as a business consultant.

Weidel joined the AfD in 2013 over her opposition to bailouts during the euro zone crisis - before the party shifted rightwards to focus more on fighting immigration.

Her position in the party cost Weidel friends, prompting the family to move, she told Weltwoche.

An economic liberal, Weidel claims late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her role model and wants Germany to push for a Brexit-style referendum on EU membership if it is unable to sufficiently reform the bloc.

A climate change sceptic, she wants to lower taxes, end the minimum wage, slim down the state and end the costly shift to a carbon-neutral economy.

She has also called for much tighter restrictions on immigration, tapping into a well of discontent in Germany with the large-scale arrivals from the Middle East in recent years.

"Burqas, girls in headscarves, knife-wielding men on government benefits and other good-for-nothing people are not going to ensure our prosperity," Weidel told parliament in 2018. 

VERSATILITY

Weidel's strength lies in her versatility, said Hans Vorlaender, a political scientist at Dresden University of Technology. She acts as a "moderating, well-mannered bourgeois politician" for established media, but then knows exactly how to reach her more extremist clientele elsewhere, in particular on social media.

Weidel has acknowledged some friction over her personal lifestyle in a party that opposes gay marriage and expanding laws to allow same-sex couples to adopt.

But she mostly does not focus on the issue of her identity - refusing to be called queer - and is adept at dealing with different wings of the party in order to maintain her position of power, tolerating rather than reining in the more extremist factions, said Lembcke. 

When same-sex marriage became law in Germany in 2017, she dismissed the matter as trivial compared to issues like mass migration.

That same year Weidel said she was in the AfD "not despite her homosexuality but because of it" as it was the only party to address the issue of Muslim immigrants' hostility towards LGBT+ people, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Gareth Jones, Helen Popper, Alexandra Hudson)