Adrian Grasse

Adrian Grasse (born 20 January 1975 in Berlin) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag for constituency 78, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, since the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025. Before entering federal politics he sat in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin from 2016 until 30 April 2025.

Grasse passed the Abitur in 1994, then completed civilian service (1994–95) and an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk (Industriekaufmann, 1995–97). He studied business administration at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1997 and graduated as a Diplom-Kaufmann in 2003. From 2003 to 2005 he was a board assistant, and from 2006 to 2009 a department head, at the German Cooperative and Raiffeisen Confederation (Deutscher Genossenschafts-Raiffeisenverband). From 2009 to 2025 he worked at Siemens, latterly in People & Organization Germany on industrial relations and employment conditions, with a right to return to the company. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own disclosures, records that he is evangelical and has two children.

He joined the CDU in 1993, has chaired the local branch CDU Zehlendorf-Mitte since 2013, and has been a deputy state chairman of the Berlin CDU since 2023. In the Abgeordnetenhaus he was the CDU group's spokesperson on research policy. In October 2020, when the group presented a legal opinion on the Free University of Berlin's reprimand of Franziska Giffey over her doctoral thesis, Grasse said the city science administration's failure to intervene sent a "fatal signal" that falsification carried no consequences, and he called for the procedure to be reopened. Abgeordnetenwatch records that he held the state constituency Steglitz-Zehlendorf 6, that his first-vote share there in the 2023 Berlin election was 40 percent, and that he resigned the state seat on 30 April 2025 after his election to the Bundestag.

In the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025 he won the federal constituency with 55,398 first votes (30.7 percent). Ruppert Stüwe of the Social Democratic Party placed second with 40,355 votes (22.4 percent), and Nina Stahr of Alliance 90/The Greens third with 39,843 (22.1 percent). The Alternative for Germany received 10.3 percent of first votes, Die Linke 8.8 percent and the Free Democratic Party 4.1 percent. Turnout was 84.7 percent among 214,757 eligible voters, and on second votes in the constituency the CDU led with 26.8 percent. Grasse stood in third place on the CDU Berlin state list.

The Bundestag's biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführer), and as a deputy member of the Health Committee, the Transport Committee and the study commission on the COVID-19 pandemic. The parliamentary watchdog Abgeordnetenwatch also lists a deputy seat on the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Early life and education

Adrian Grasse was born on 20 January 1975 in Berlin. The biography published by the Bundestag, from members' own particulars, and the parallel entry of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin give the same sequence: the Abitur in 1994, civilian service from 1994 to 1995, training as an industrial clerk from 1995 to 1997, and a degree in business administration at the Humboldt University of Berlin, completed in 2003 as Diplom-Kaufmann. He has stated that he grew up in the constituency of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, the south-western area he later represented. Steglitz and Zehlendorf were then separate boroughs of West Berlin. After German reunification the city had 23 boroughs; a reform that took effect on 1 January 2001 merged Steglitz with Zehlendorf and reduced the number to twelve.

He has written that he took the Abitur at the Schadow-Gymnasium in Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The state Gymnasium at Beuckestraße 27–29 in Zehlendorf states that its main building was constructed between 1911 and 1914 to designs by Paul Mebes. Berlin's heritage register describes the complex as the Oberrealschule known as the Schadow-Schule, a Reformrealgymnasium built for the municipality of Zehlendorf. It is named for the Berlin sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow. In 1994 the school still used the older Berlin title Schadow-Oberschule. In 2004 Der Tagesspiegel reported that its head, Harald Mier, had asked the borough to rename it Schadow-Gymnasium after a school-law reform dropped "Oberschule" as the generic name for secondary schools beyond primary level.

From 1994 to 1995 he performed Zivildienst, the civilian alternative to military service for men recognised as conscientious objectors. Until the end of 1995 the statutory term was 15 months, set against 12 months of basic military service; from 1 January 1996 both were cut, civilian service to 13 months and basic military service to 10. His recorded service falls before that change. Conscription in Germany, and with it the Zivildienst, was suspended in peacetime from 1 July 2011 after a Bundestag vote on 24 March 2011.

Between 1995 and 1997 he trained as an Industriekaufmann. The Abgeordnetenhaus later listed his occupation as "Industrie- und Diplom-Kaufmann", joining that title to the university degree. Industrial clerk is a recognised occupation in the dual education system: training is split between a firm and a vocational school, and the chambers of industry and commerce examine candidates. The prescribed duration is three years, so the two calendar years he records are shorter than the standard. The Vocational Training Act requires the competent body to shorten an apprenticeship, on a joint application, when the training aim can still be reached, and guidance from the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training treats the Abitur as a ground for a reduction of up to twelve months. The firm that trained him is not named in public sources.

From 1997 to 2003 he studied business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) at the Humboldt University of Berlin, graduating in 2003 as Diplom-Kaufmann. Its Faculty of Economics was refounded in 1993, after reunification; Wulff Plinke, appointed that year, was the first dean. The national framework for the university Diplom in the subject, adopted by the rectors' conference and the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs in 1994 and revised in 2001, set eight semesters: a four-semester Grundstudium closed by the Diplom-Vorprüfung, then a Hauptstudium closed by the Diplomprüfung and a thesis, leading to the degree Diplom-Kaufmann or Diplom-Kauffrau. Grasse's enrolment, from 1997 to 2003, ran longer than that standard. The preliminary examination covered principles of business administration and economics, relevant private and public law, and statistics, with specialisation left to the Hauptstudium and the thesis. He has not publicly named a concentration or a thesis topic.

Professional career

The biographies Adrian Grasse supplied to the German Bundestag and the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin list him as an industrial clerk (Industriekaufmann) and a Diplom-Kaufmann. They record an apprenticeship from 1995 to 1997, a degree in business administration at the Humboldt University of Berlin completed in 2003, and then employment at the Deutscher Genossenschafts- und Raiffeisenverband (DGRV) as assistant to the executive board (Vorstandsassistent) from 2003 to 2005 and as a department head (Abteilungsleiter) from 2006 to 2009. The entries do not name the department, or the employer for the apprenticeship.

The DGRV describes itself as the cross-sector apex association of German cooperatives under the Cooperative Societies Act, with the stated purpose of developing, promoting and representing the interests of its members and of the cooperative system, including cooperative auditing. Its own account of that work covers cooperative law, formation, accounting and audit, tax, financial supervision and energy, and it reported 5,197 member cooperatives with 18.8 million members, plus about 2,000 housing cooperatives with 3.1 million members that are not affiliated. The parliamentary biographies do not attribute particular matters or results to Grasse's years at the association.

From 2009 to 2025 he worked at Siemens AG, most recently, according to the Bundestag biography, in People & Organization Germany, Industrial Relations & Employment Conditions. The mandatory disclosure names the same function at Siemens AG, Munich, and records a right to return (Rückkehrrecht). Siemens's report for the year ended 30 September 2025 describes the group as a technology company focused on automation and digitalization in industry, infrastructure, rail mobility and medical technology, with its headquarters in Munich; at that date it reported about 318,000 employees, 86,401 of them in Germany.

The biographies state the title of the post and not its duties. In a German stock corporation that normally employs more than 2,000 people, the Co-determination Act gives employees seats on the supervisory board. Siemens states that its supervisory board has 20 members, divided equally between shareholder and employee representatives, and that the labour director who heads the managing-board portfolio for People & Organization is appointed under section 33 of that act; the filings do not identify Grasse as that director. Below board level, the Works Constitution Act provides for elected works councils. A works council co-determines specified social matters, including the start and end of daily working time, where no statute or collective agreement already applies, and a works agreement may not set pay and other conditions that are, or are usually, regulated by collective agreement. Siemens reports a group works council representing its employees in Germany and collective-agreement coverage in Germany of 80 to 100 percent. No source in those biographies or company filings assigns Grasse a named negotiation, site or project.

The Siemens post overlapped the Berlin seat. The Abgeordnetenhaus lists membership from 27 October 2016 to 30 April 2025 and, in the same profile, employment at Siemens since 2009 in People & Organization Germany, Industrial Relations & Employment Conditions. The Bundestag disclosure enters both the state mandate, until 30 April 2025, and the Siemens function as activity before membership of the Bundestag, the latter with the right of return. Section 45 of the Members of the Bundestag Act requires notification, within three months of taking the seat, of the last occupation and of any right to return after the mandate or of dismissal protection; the Bundestag states that the entries are published once it has checked that a disclosure duty exists. The published list does not show Siemens remuneration as income during the federal mandate.

Party offices in the CDU

Grasse joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in 1993. Under the state statute, the Berlin association is divided into district associations (Kreisverbände), one for each borough, and those associations are subdivided into local branches (Ortsverbände). In Steglitz-Zehlendorf he has chaired the local branch CDU Zehlendorf-Mitte since 2013. The district association lists him as one of several deputy chairs under Kreisvorsitzender Stephan Standfuß; the state statute leaves the exact composition of a district executive, beyond a minimum set of offices, to the district's own rules.

The state executive is elected by the state party congress. The statute provides for a chair, a general secretary proposed by the chair, up to four deputy chairs, a treasurer, a membership officer, the governing mayor if a CDU member, the leader of the CDU group in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, up to twelve further members, and any Berlin members of the federal CDU executive. Those offices through the group leader and, where applicable, the governing mayor form the Präsidium, which conducts day-to-day business. Kai Wegner has chaired the Berlin CDU since May 2019. At the congress on 9 September 2023 the delegates confirmed him as chair and elected Ottilie Klein general secretary with 196 votes in favour, 61 against and 13 abstentions (72.6 percent). She succeeded Stefan Evers, who had held the general secretary's post for seven years and had become finance senator. Grasse's Bundestag biography dates his own office as deputy state chairman from 2023.

The next regular renewal was the 49th state congress, held on 20 September 2025 at the EUREF campus in Schöneberg. The Teltower Stadtblatt put membership at just under 12,500 and attendance at about 290 delegates. rbb24 reported 258 votes for Wegner, 26 against and three abstentions, out of 287 ballots, against 94.7 percent for him at the board election two years earlier. Klein was confirmed as general secretary with 175 votes in favour, 110 against and 16 abstentions. The state party's press office then announced that the deputies elected for the following two years were Manuela Anders-Granitzki, Nadja Zivkovic, Stefan Evers and Grasse. Before the congress, the Berliner Morgenpost reported from inside the party that Grasse, Evers and Zivkovic were expected to remain, and that Anders-Granitzki — until then an ordinary executive member and the membership officer — would replace Frank Balzer, described as the outgoing deputy and a former borough mayor of Reinickendorf. Accounts of the congress did not publish separate totals for the deputy-chair ballots.

For the 2025 German federal election, a delegate assembly on the evening of 12 December 2024 drew up the Berlin state list at the Mercure Hotel MOA in Moabit. The delegates followed the executive's proposed order on every place. Jan-Marco Luczak was placed first with 200 votes in favour, 12 against and four abstentions; Klein was placed second with 162 in favour, 57 against and five abstentions. The executive had recommended Grasse, then a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus and described by nd as the CDU group's science specialist there, for third place. Mario Czaja, then the only directly elected CDU member of the Bundestag from eastern Berlin, told the meeting that it was wrong to leave the eastern district associations without a candidate on a promising list place. He briefly looked ready to contest third place against Grasse, with whom he had sat in the Abgeordnetenhaus group until 2021, but stood down, saying the ranking reflected the executive's judgment and that he held Grasse in high regard. nd reported that there was no contested ballot and that the list contained four women and seven men. The taz described it as heavily weighted toward western Berlin and noted that, for the first time since 2002, a woman did not head it. On 14 October 2024 the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district executive had already recorded a unanimous recommendation for Grasse after hearing the known candidates. The Federal Returning Officer's volume of provisional results lists him as the candidate returned in constituency 078, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, and as place 3 on the Berlin state list; Abgeordnetenwatch records the same list position.

Berlin House of Representatives

Elections and mandate

Adrian Grasse sat in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, the parliament of Berlin, from 27 October 2016 until 30 April 2025, with the direct mandate for constituency Steglitz-Zehlendorf 6 in the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He laid the seat down at the end of 30 April 2025 on entering the Bundestag; Marco Hahnfeld, also of the CDU, succeeded him and accepted the mandate on 2 May 2025.

At the 2016 Berlin state election on 18 September he won the constituency with 7,276 first votes, 30.3 percent, on a turnout of 78.6 percent, ahead of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 23.4 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens on 18.1 percent. At the 2021 Berlin state election on 26 September the state returning officer’s final count gave him 8,025 first votes, 31.0 percent, ahead of the SPD on 22.4 percent and the Greens on 22.1 percent; turnout was 84.6 percent of 31,274 eligible voters. On 16 November 2022 the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin declared that election, and the same day’s borough-assembly elections, wholly invalid because of widespread organisational failures, and ordered a repeat within 90 days. At the repeat, the 2023 Berlin state election on 12 February, Grasse again won the constituency, with 9,338 first votes, or 40.0 percent, against 20.4 percent for the Green candidate Torsten Wiesske and 19.9 percent for the SPD. Compared with 2016 the CDU’s first-vote share there was 9.6 points higher, and turnout was 75.4 percent.

Science and research policy

By October 2020 Grasse was the CDU group’s research-policy spokesperson, and he sat on the Committee for Science and Research until he left the house.

The Hochschulverträge, the multi-year funding agreements between the state and its public universities under section 2a of the Berlin Higher Education Act, were a standing subject of that brief. On 25 February 2021 the CDU group, with Grasse among the first signatories, moved to extend the 2018–2022 contracts by one year to the end of 2023, keeping the annual 3.5 percent rise and treating the 2021 performance indicators as met because of the pandemic. Opening the debate on 11 March 2021, he said an early extension would give the universities planning security while an evaluation was unfinished, and opposed the coalition’s draft Higher Education Act, which he said the rectors’ conference had publicly rejected. The house referred the motion, without a vote on the substance, to the main committee and, for an opinion, to the science committee. On 22 March 2022 he and Martin Pätzold asked how a one-year extension then in preparation would work. The Senate answered on 7 April that parliamentary consent was still required and that the draft budget financed a 3.5 percent rise overall, not a flat increase for every institution. On 16 November 2023 he spoke in the plenary on the Senate proposal for new contracts covering 2024 to 2028.

The Giffey plagiarism affair

From 2019 the doctorate of Franziska Giffey, then federal family minister and a leading SPD politician in Berlin, was under review at the Free University of Berlin. She had asked in February 2019 for a formal check of her 2010 dissertation, Europas Weg zum Bürger; in October 2019 the presidency issued a reprimand (Rüge) but left the degree in place. The university later said that panel had found at least conditionally intentional deception but had not asked whether the case was minor enough for a reprimand.

In a written question of 13 November 2020 Grasse asked why the science administration had not established the panel’s composition, any conflict of interest, or the seriousness of the faults. The Senate replied that reviewing a doctorate was the university’s task. The Free University told the Senate that Giffey’s supervisor, then chair of the doctoral committee, had voted when the first panel was appointed, and that an appearance of bias could have been avoided had she not taken part.

On 28 October 2020 the CDU group presented an opinion by Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz, professor of public law at the University of Bonn, dated 27 October and addressed to the university’s internal report rather than the dissertation. Gärditz concluded that the reprimand was unlawful: the review body had lacked competence, the Higher Education Act did not provide for a reprimand, and systematic plagiarism required withdrawal of the title even if other parts of the thesis were original. Grasse called the administration’s inaction a “fatal signal” that forgeries had no consequences and demanded that the procedure be reopened. Der Spiegel noted that the opinion appeared days before Giffey was expected to become Berlin SPD chair and the party’s lead candidate for 2021.

The Free University said three 2020 opinions led it to announce a second review on 18 November: one it commissioned from Ulrich Battis, an opinion of the Abgeordnetenhaus research service of 31 July, and Gärditz’s. At the science committee on 19 April 2021, during an AfD hearing on whether a reprimand could replace withdrawal of a doctorate, Grasse objected to debating the point while a review was open, called the case the most prominent since those of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Annette Schavan, and said the university needed no political advice in the meantime. The chair, Martin Trefzer of the AfD, answered that Grasse had shown how to campaign while claiming not to; Grasse declined to continue the discussion. On 5 March 2021 Tagesspiegel reporter Hannes Heine had profiled him as a low-profile deputy, called unobtrusive even by some in his own party, who would not drop the case and had become a factor in the Berlin campaign.

Giffey resigned as family minister on 19 May 2021, having said in August 2019 that she would leave office if the title were withdrawn, and she remained the SPD’s lead candidate. On 10 June the presidency unanimously withdrew the doctorate and lifted the 2019 reprimand, finding deception about the independence of the work and at least conditional intent. She said she accepted the decision while maintaining that the errors were neither intended nor planned. Grasse called it the “greatest scandal in German science” and said the first proceeding appeared to have tried to treat the plagiarism as minor.

2025 federal election

Constituency Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf

Constituency 78, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, returned one member of the Bundestag at the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025. The district is coterminous with the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in south-west Berlin, and its number changed from 79 to 78 because Saxony-Anhalt lost a constituency and Bavaria gained one.

On 31 December 2023 it covered 102.6 square kilometres and had 319,000 inhabitants, including 251,700 German citizens, with foreign nationals at 21.1 percent and a density of about 3,110 people per square kilometre. Settlement and transport accounted for 64.7 percent of the area, and vegetation and water for 35.3 percent; income, unemployment and similar figures on the same sheet are published only for Berlin as a whole. At the election, 214,757 people were eligible to vote.

The outgoing member was Thomas Heilmann of the Christian Democratic Union. In August 2024 the Tagesspiegel reported that Heilmann, a former Berlin justice senator, would not stand again, and that Adrian Grasse, then science-policy spokesman of the CDU group in the Berlin House of Representatives, intended to succeed him in a borough the paper called a long-standing CDU stronghold. Grasse was nominated after Heilmann chose not to seek the constituency candidacy inside the party. In 2021 Heilmann had finished narrowly ahead, on first votes, of Ruppert Stüwe of the Social Democratic Party and Nina Stahr of Alliance 90/The Greens, and he widened that margin slightly in Berlin's partial rerun in early 2024. On second votes in 2021 the SPD had finished just ahead of the CDU and the Greens.

Campaign and result

The Berlin official gazette of 3 February 2025 admitted Grasse (CDU; born 1975 in Berlin), Stüwe (SPD; economist, born 1978 in Berlin), Stahr (Greens; teacher, born 1982 in Frankfurt am Main), Marcus Otto (Die Linke), Peer Döhnert (the Alternative for Germany), Hanns-Henning Krumrey (the Free Democratic Party), Stephan Michael Weiß (Free Voters) and Anna Schäfer (Bündnis Deutschland). Grasse was also third on the Berlin CDU state list, after Jan-Marco Luczak and Ottilie Klein.

In the final result, 181,883 people voted, a turnout of 84.7 percent, 5.7 percentage points above the comparison with 2021 published by the Federal Returning Officer. Of 180,189 valid first votes, Grasse received 55,398 (30.7 percent, up 2.1 points). Stüwe was second with 40,355 (22.4 percent, down 2.0) and Stahr third with 39,843 (22.1 percent, down 0.2). Döhnert took 18,539 (10.3 percent, up 4.8), Otto 15,823 (8.8 percent, up 4.5) and Krumrey 7,382 (4.1 percent, down 4.7); the Free Voters had 1,905 (1.1 percent) and Bündnis Deutschland 944 (0.5 percent).

On 181,064 valid second votes the CDU remained first with 48,500 (26.8 percent, up 3.3), below its first-vote share. The Greens followed with 35,848 (19.8 percent, down 2.9) and the SPD with 32,989 (18.2 percent, down 5.8). Die Linke rose to 20,722 (11.4 percent, up 6.7) and the AfD to 18,678 (10.3 percent, up 4.4), while the FDP fell to 10,750 (5.9 percent, down 6.3). Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which fielded no constituency candidate, took 7,070 second votes (3.9 percent).

A party candidate no longer receives a seat merely by winning the most first votes. Under Zweitstimmendeckung, introduced with the 2023 reform and used for the first time in 2025, the seat must also be covered by the places that party's second votes produce in that Land within a Bundestag fixed at 630 members; if a party wins more constituencies than that allocation, those with the lowest first-vote shares stay vacant, and overhang and compensatory seats are not added. On election night the Berlin returning officer therefore named first-vote leaders, and the Federal Returning Officer decided which leads became seats. A transitional basic-mandate clause, kept for this election after the Federal Constitutional Court held a five-percent threshold without it unconstitutional, still lets a party under five percent enter if its candidates lead in at least three constituencies. That clause did not decide constituency 78, because the CDU was above the threshold. The final return lists Grasse as elected there. Nationally, 23 first-vote winners received no seat—15 from the CDU, four from the AfD, three from the CSU and one from the SPD—in Länder that did not include Berlin.

Grasse told the Tagesspiegel that it was an honour to represent Steglitz-Zehlendorf in the Bundestag and that he was pleased with the CDU result in the borough, where the paper also noted heavy SPD and FDP losses.

Membership of the Bundestag

Adrian Grasse has been a directly elected member of the 21st Bundestag for constituency 078, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, since the constituent sitting on 25 March 2025. He sits in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. In his first plenary speech he described the seat as a direct mandate for that constituency.

Committees and parliamentary offices

He is a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment. At its constituting meeting on 21 May 2025 he was one of ten CDU/CSU members; the 30-member committee elected Karl Lauterbach (SPD) chair with 22 votes. It advises on research funding and conditions, including artificial intelligence, quantum technology and supercomputing, and under § 56a of the rules of procedure it steers technology assessment for the whole Bundestag through the Office of Technology Assessment, run by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with partner institutes.

He is also a Schriftführer, a secretary who assists the President of the Bundestag in the plenary. On 22 May 2025 the Bundestag elected 64 secretaries without debate from faction lists under § 3 of the rules of procedure; Drucksache 21/215 included him on the CDU/CSU list of 21. Two secretaries, normally one from each side of the House, sit with the presiding officer as the Sitzungsvorstand. They keep the speakers’ list, take motions and requests to speak, and establish vote results, including by counting ballot papers at roll-call votes and members entering in a Hammelsprung.

The biography lists him as a substitute member of the Health Committee, the Transport Committee and the Enquete Commission “Corona” (“Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse”). Its 14 parliamentary members and 14 outside experts are to report, by the end of June 2027, on how risk assessment and crisis response could work better in a future pandemic. The member list shows Grasse as a CDU/CSU substitute, not a full member; Michael Hose (CDU/CSU) is chair.

He is not on the autumn 2026 membership of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Its attendance list for 22 April 2026 named him as a CDU/CSU substitute and marked him absent, but the biography, modified on 29 September 2026, and the committee list loaded from bundestag.de on 26 October 2026 omit that assignment.

Legislative and committee work

The papers reviewed since he entered in 2025 show plenary speeches, two committee reports naming him as rapporteur, and one written question, not a bill or minor interpellation in his own name.

On 10 July 2025, in the debate on Einzelplan 30, his first speech tied the constitutional freedom of research to what he called a duty to answer antisemitism at universities after the Hamas attack on Israel, and he said the coalition would fund research on antisemitism and contemporary Jewish life. On 17 September 2025 he closed the CDU/CSU side of a further research-budget debate by linking lost industrial jobs to research-based competitiveness, rejecting what he called a split of science into “good” and “bad”, and crediting Research Minister Dorothee Bär with drawing women into technical work and spaceflight. On 28 November 2025, before the CDU/CSU and SPD adopted Einzelplan 30 against the other groups, he called himself the responsible rapporteur and cited two networks in the draft: contemporary Jewish research (€2 million in the next year and €6 million later) and independent China studies (€800,000 in 2026 and €5.4 million afterwards), arguing that Germany lacked Chinese-language capacity and should reduce influence such as that of Confucius Institutes.

On 14 January 2026, speaking on the Steglitz-Zehlendorf blackout, he called the attack on the Teltow Canal cable bridge a left-wing terrorist attack on more than 100,000 people and over 2,200 firms, and thanked the emergency services, the Charité, the Bundeswehr and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. On 6 March 2026, on the expert commission’s research reports for 2025 and 2026, he described a shift from “societal transformation” to technological performance and a planned Innovationsfreiheitsgesetz to speed up grants.

Later speeches stayed on science policy. On 16 April 2026 he opposed a Green motion on animal experiments, saying approvals averaged about five months and sometimes exceeded two years against a 40-day rule, and that fewer animals since 2020 partly showed research leaving Germany; he pointed to a coalition promise of a separate statute. On 11 June 2026 he supported needs-based BAföG but rejected the Left motion in Drucksache 21/6359 as unfunded; it was sent to the research committee. On 9 July 2026 he opposed Left and Green motions on fixed-term academic contracts, citing Berlin’s permanent-contract rule, which the Federal Constitutional Court had held unlawful. On 8 October 2026 he welcomed the government’s bill to amend the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz as the coalition agreement put into statute after, he said, a failed earlier reform.

In committee he was rapporteur for two recommendations to reject AfD motions. On 25 February 2026 the research committee recommended rejecting Drucksache 21/3832, on weather modification and geoengineering; Drucksache 21/5131 of 31 March 2026 names him, and the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and the Left outvoted the AfD. On 18 March 2026 the same majority recommended rejecting Drucksache 21/2230, on organised scientific fraud; he is the CDU/CSU rapporteur on Drucksache 21/6695 of 24 June 2026. Written question 89, in Drucksache 21/2486, asked how the B.L.O.-Ateliers on Deutsche Bahn land in Berlin-Lichtenberg could be kept. Parliamentary State Secretary Ulrich Lange replied on 27 October 2025 that leasing was for DB and DB InfraGO, that a contract ran from 1 December 2024 to 31 May 2027, and that DB then expected to use the site for railway operations, probably as train storage.

Political positions

Higher education, research and the Excellence Strategy

Under the federal-state Excellence Strategy (Exzellenzstrategie), which continues the earlier Excellence Initiative, an Excellence Commission advised by the German Research Foundation and the German Council of Science and Humanities selected eleven institutions from nineteen applicants on 19 July 2019, including the Berlin consortium. The Berlin University Alliance—the Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin and Charité—was awarded up to €196 million over seven years from 1 November 2019, with the Berlin Senate adding €6 million a year through the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

In January 2025, as science-policy spokesman of the Christian Democratic Union in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, Grasse made his public case on Berlin's own higher-education budget. He proposed closing one Berlin Hochschule rather than cutting every institution. Senate spokeswoman Christine Richter said the question of closing one "does not arise." Former governing mayor Michael Müller (Social Democratic Party) called the idea a "declaration of bankruptcy" that laid "the axe to the future of the city" and said it disqualified Grasse for the Bundestag; science senator Ina Czyborra, also SPD, criticised it as well. Tagesspiegel reported that Grasse stood by the proposal while leaving central questions open.

On 16 April 2026 he told the Bundestag, against a motion by Alliance 90/The Greens, that approvals for animal experiments took about five months on average, and sometimes more than two years, against a 40-day statutory limit, and that the delay was pushing research abroad. He said experiments were already allowed only where no alternative existed, and backed a separate law on scientific animal experiments.

Civil clauses and defence-related research

In an interview with Maximilian Beer in the Berliner Zeitung on 3 April 2025, Grasse said that civil clauses flatly banning military research at universities, and the third-party funds attached to it, should be abolished "in view of the geopolitical challenges we face." The article placed that CDU position in the debate, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, over whether the Zeitenwende should reach the universities, and reported that about 70 German institutions had a clause excluding armaments research.

The clauses are institutional self-commitments, not a national prohibition. Since a resolution of its Academic Senate on 29 May 1991, the Technical University of Berlin has refused armaments-related research and the contracts, grants and staff contracts that go with it. Bavaria legislated the other way. A 2024 law on the Bundeswehr amended Article 20 of the Bavarian Higher Education Innovation Act so that results may also be used for military purposes of Germany or of NATO allies, and so that "a restriction of research to civilian uses (civil clause) is inadmissible."

Unions and the left have argued for keeping the clauses. In November 2024 the Berlin branch of the Education and Science Workers' Union (GEW) resolved to seek their inclusion in the Berlin Higher Education Act. The GEW's 2025 congress again rejected what it called the militarisation of research, teaching and study. On 22 September 2025 the Bundestag group of Die Linke tabled a motion (Drucksache 21/1596) asking the federal government to support civil clauses at public universities and non-university institutes. A guest essay in Die Zeit that April argued instead that the clauses should be reformed, because civilian and military uses had become hard to separate.

Campus antisemitism and university disciplinary law

Grasse's argument for restoring disciplinary law followed the February 2024 assault on Lahav Shapira, a Jewish student at the Free University. Prosecutors investigated an alleged beating by a fellow student in Berlin-Mitte as dangerous bodily harm with a suspected antisemitic motive; Shapira was hospitalised with facial fractures. On 7 February Grasse told the Berliner Morgenpost that universities needed the power to expel students "in order to protect Jewish students and to make clear that antisemitism has no place at our universities."

In the Jüdische Allgemeine on 9 February he said temporary bans could not be the only answer—"Students who pose a threat to their fellow students should be able to be exmatriculated"—and asked rectors for a condemnation of antisemitism "without relativisation." Until 2021 the Berlin act had allowed expulsion for violence against other university members or for sexual harassment. The red-red-green coalition removed that rule just before the 2021 election, without hearing the universities; Grasse called the deletion a grave error and a cut in university autonomy.

The Abgeordnetenhaus amended the act before the 2024 summer recess. Expulsion returned only as a last resort and only after a final criminal conviction, with a two-year bar on re-enrolment; lesser measures included a reprimand and exclusion from facilities or from courses for up to a semester, and a ban from the premises could last nine months rather than three. The Greens, Die Linke and the Alternative for Germany voted against. Green deputy Laura Neugebauer called the change rushed and ineffective; Left deputy Tobias Schulze called it law-and-order symbolism that would not protect victims, having earlier described the draft as the most repressive disciplinary law in Germany.

On 29 January 2025, while Grasse was still a state deputy and not yet in the Bundestag, the 20th Bundestag adopted a motion, sponsored by the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP, on antisemitism and hostility to Israel at schools and universities (Drucksache 20/14703). The AfD voted for it, the BSW against, and the Left abstained. Citing the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, it asked the federation and the states to back the full use of legal powers, including exmatriculation in especially serious cases, while saying federal research funds should be awarded only by scientific excellence, which the sponsors treated as incompatible with antisemitism.

The German Rectors' Conference had already, on 19 November 2024, called a further resolution of that kind neither necessary nor useful for university autonomy and academic freedom. President Walter Rosenthal said its demands could be read, even if well meant, as "a gateway for restrictions and paternalism, for example in research funding."

Honorary offices and outside roles

Under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act, members of the Bundestag must notify the President of board and advisory posts in companies, public corporations, associations and foundations that are not purely local, and of other outside activities. Income above 1,000 euro in a month, or 3,000 euro in a year, must be stated to the cent; notices are due within three months of taking the seat or of a later change, and are published on the Bundestag website. Grasse's member page says the biography rests on members' own information and carries outside posts once publication is required.

The disclosure lists him on the supervisory board of Hilfswerk-Siedlung GmbH in Berlin from 13 April 2026, at 8,500 euro gross a year, and on the Kuratorium of the Alexandra-Stiftung in Berlin from 17 June 2026, with no remuneration figure. Those dates appear only in that notification. Hilfswerk-Siedlung, founded on 13 June 1952, is the property company of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia and states that it manages about 10,000 dwellings, leaseholds and other land, its own and for others. A housing-trade report describes the Alexandra-Stiftung as founded in 1852 and named for Tsarina Alexandra, with about 1,000 dwellings in Berlin and Brandenburg, and states that Hilfswerk-Siedlung has administered it since 2001.

He is disclosed as an honorary supervisory-board member of Joblinge gAG Berlin, with no start date. The company's site lists him on that unpaid board. JOBLINGE was started in 2008 by the Boston Consulting Group and a BMW foundation to move 15- to 27-year-olds seeking work or an apprenticeship into training and jobs; shareholder representatives on its non-profit stock corporations are unpaid.

The disclosure records an honorary seat on the advisory board of the Einstein Foundation Berlin until 30 April 2025. The state of Berlin founded the foundation in 2009 to fund research in the city. The advisory board, of up to 13 members, advises the executive board and includes nominees of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. Its 2024 report names Grasse there as a CDU member of the Abgeordnetenhaus; the board page maintained in 2026 does not.

He is listed on the executive board of the Humboldt-Universitäts-Gesellschaft, the friends', alumni and supporters' association of Humboldt University of Berlin, which funds research and teaching projects and describes the board as unpaid. The Bundestag entry gives no start date; the association's site quotes him as saying he joined in December 2023. From 1 January 2026 he is listed as a senator of the Leibniz Association, with no remuneration figure. It links 96 independent research institutes, funded jointly by the federation and the states. Its senate—ministers, heads of other research bodies and elected public figures—advises on science policy and on recommendations to the Joint Science Conference. A roll in force from August 2026 names him; January 2026 is the Bundestag date.

The biography, not the list of notifiable posts, states that from July 2026 until February 2027 he sits on the advisory board of the Studienstiftung des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin. The Abgeordnetenhaus founded it in 1994 to award about 15 ten-month scholarships a year to early-career researchers from France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia and other former Soviet states working at Berlin institutions. The foundation's published advisory board, last appointed in February 2022 for five years, does not name him.

Personal life

The biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, records that he is Protestant (evangelisch) and has two children. A February 2023 Focus profile reported that he was married and had two young children.

On his website he writes that he grew up in the constituency of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, took his Abitur at the Schadow-Gymnasium there, and still likes to spend time in the borough with his family. Reporting from Dahlem before the February 2023 rerun of the Berlin state election, Focus wrote that he had gone to school in the area and still lived there, and described the neighbourhood as one popular with higher earners.

In March 2021 Der Tagesspiegel, introducing his role in the dispute over Franziska Giffey's doctorate, called him the Berlin CDU member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin "whom even some in his own party call 'unauffällig'" (inconspicuous). Focus later described "an inconspicuous type with glasses in a friendly face, whom one could easily overlook," noticed on the street chiefly because a Smart car carried his picture.

The member page kept by the Abgeordnetenhaus lists English among his language skills (Sprachkenntnisse: Englisch). The Bundestag biography does not list any languages.

The direct mandate he holds is Bundestag constituency 078, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, the borough in which the 2023 profile reported that he still lived. The Free University of Berlin describes its Dahlem campus as including the Rost- und Silberlaube and Holzlaube complexes and the Botanical Garden, which it gives as 43 hectares with more than 20,000 species of wild plants.

By the borough administration's land-use figures for 31 December 2023, Steglitz-Zehlendorf is the third-largest Berlin borough by area, at 10,256 hectares, of which 2,457 hectares (24 percent) were forest and 1,118 hectares (about 11 percent) water. The borough office points to the Wannsee and the Schlachtensee as waters known beyond the city, and places the borough in the southwest, beside Spandau, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Tempelhof-Schöneberg and, across the state line, Potsdam, Kleinmachnow and Teltow. On the official population estimate, 295,786 people lived there at the end of 2024, a density of 2,884 inhabitants per square kilometre, with an average age of 46.6 years. In 2025 that count fell by 704 people (0.2 percent), and the average age of 46.7 was the highest of Berlin's boroughs.