enabled mod_rewrite but not able to use question mark in permalinks

Hello

I’ve found many threads about this topic, but I didn’t get it. What I’m trying to do is to add a question mark in my permalinks. So for example:

localhost/wordpress?page=home

So I added this in my permalinks settings:

Custom -> ?page=%postname%

But it throws this error:

preg_match(): Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 1 in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-includes\class-wp.php on line 195

I think I totally missunderstand this. You can see my .htaccess file here:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wordpress/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I hope someone can help me, I’m totally confused.

Cheers