# Anja Karliczek

# Anja Karliczek

Anja Maria-Antonia Karliczek (born 29 April 1971 in Ibbenbüren) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia. She has represented the constituency of Steinfurt III since 2013, winning it as the CDU direct candidate at the federal elections of 22 September 2013 (47.9 percent of the first votes), 24 September 2017 (44.8 percent), 26 September 2021 (34.0 percent) and 23 February 2025 (37.9 percent, 62,253 votes), when the seat was numbered 127 rather than 128. From 14 March 2018 she was federal minister of education and research in [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)'s fourth cabinet, and she left that office when Bettina Stark-Watzinger was sworn in as her successor on 8 December 2021.

The Bundestag biography, which rests on the member's own account, describes her as Roman Catholic, married and the mother of three children. She took the Abitur at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Ibbenbüren in 1990, then trained as a bank clerk at [Deutsche Bank](/organizations/deutsche-bank), and in 1993 trained as a hotel clerk in the family hotel business. From 1994 to 2013 she held a leading position at the Hotel Teutoburger Wald; her parliamentary disclosure lists her pre-Bundestag occupation as managing director of Ringhotel Teutoburger Wald GmbH in Tecklenburg, with a right to return. While working, she studied business administration at the FernUniversität Hagen from 2003 to 2008 and graduated as a Diplom-Kauffrau.

She joined the CDU in 1998. From 2004 to 2014 she sat on the Tecklenburg council, as deputy chair of the CDU group from 2009 to 2011 and as group chair from 2011 to 2014, and the same biography lists her as chair of the CDU city association in Tecklenburg from 2011. Before the fourth Merkel government was appointed, [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) described Merkel's nominee for the education ministry, then aged 46, as relatively unknown. On 14 March 2018 the Bundestag re-elected Merkel chancellor with 364 of 692 votes cast, and Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) then handed appointment certificates to the new ministers, among them Karliczek as education minister, in a cabinet of seven women and nine men besides the chancellor.

After the change of government she returned to the CDU/CSU benches. In the 20th Bundestag, from 2021 to 2025, she was the group's spokesperson on tourism policy, an ordinary member of the tourism and environment committees, and a deputy member of the finance committee. In the 21st Bundestag her official roles are chair of the Committee on Tourism, ordinary member of that committee and of the Finance Committee, and deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. On 22 October 2023 the Catholic German Women's Federation (Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund) elected her president, in succession to Maria Flachsbarth, who could not stand again after twelve years under the association's rules.

## Early life, education and business

### Family background and schooling

Anja Maria-Antonia Karliczek, née Kerssen, was born on 29 April 1971 in Ibbenbüren, in the Steinfurt district of North Rhine-Westphalia. She is Roman Catholic and grew up in Brochterbeck, a district of Tecklenburg, with two brothers; on her own website she states that she has lived there since birth. Her parents, Werner and Irmgard Kerssen, ran the Hotel Teutoburger Wald. The *Westfälische Nachrichten* reported in 2025 that the great-grandparents of her brothers, Olaf and Rainer Kerssen, had opened the hotel on 2 September 1902 and that the family had operated it ever since. A 2002 trade-press account placed its origins as a station inn beside the Brochterbeck halt on the Lengerich–Meppen line, built in 1901, at the edge of the Teutoburg Forest.

In a 2015 Bundestag profile she said that she had spent her whole childhood in the hotel with her parents and two brothers. The family lived on a separate floor but had no kitchen of its own and ate with the staff in the break room, an arrangement she compared with a large household. An archived Bundestag biography, compiled from her own information, records that she entered the Goethe-Gymnasium in Ibbenbüren in 1981 and passed the Abitur there in 1990.

### Vocational training and the hotel

After the Abitur she began a two-year apprenticeship as a bank clerk (*Bankkauffrau*) at Deutsche Bank AG in Osnabrück and was afterwards taken on as an employee. Early in 1993 she left the bank for the family hotel.

Her current Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own details, describes the 1993 step as training to be a *Hotel-Kauffrau* in the family business, followed by a senior role at the Hotel Teutoburger Wald from 1994 to 2013. Munzinger, the 2015 Bundestag profile and a 2020 *WirtschaftsWoche* report instead call that qualification *Hotelfachfrau*. Munzinger adds that she also gained the statutory trainer’s certificate (*Ausbildereignung*) and dates the senior role from 1994, in the four-star house later run by her brothers.

In February 2008 the *Westfälische Nachrichten* wrote that she and her brothers were running the fourth-generation family firm. The same report said the German hotel and restaurant association DEHOGA had just given the house four-star-superior status, the first such mark in the Tecklenburger Land, and named Olaf and Rainer Kerssen as the managing directors at the ceremony, with Werner Kerssen still described as *Seniorchef*. The operating company, Hotel Teutoburger Wald GmbH, was entered at the Amtsgericht Steinfurt (HRB 7232) in 2006 with those two brothers as managing directors, share capital of €25,000 and its seat at Im Bocketal 2 in Tecklenburg; its object is the hotel together with a restaurant and wellness area, and it trades as the Ringhotel Teutoburger Wald. A 2015 Bundestag profile put the hotel at about 90 beds and 50 employees. In her parliamentary declaration Karliczek listed her work before entering the Bundestag as managing director of a “Ringhotel Teutoburger Wald GmbH” in Tecklenburg, with a right to return to that post. A 2026 local report said the brothers had taken the hotel over from their parents about twenty years earlier.

### University studies

From 2003 to 2008, by which time she was already married and the mother of three children, she studied business administration alongside that work at the distance-teaching FernUniversität in Hagen and graduated as a *Diplom-Kauffrau*. Munzinger and the 2015 Bundestag profile state that her diploma thesis examined, from an employer’s point of view, the tax advantages of transferring pension obligations out of a firm. In a 2015 interview the *Westfälische Nachrichten* identified her husband as Lothar Karliczek, then a pilot with Air Berlin, and their three children as teenagers; she described Brochterbeck as home. The Bundestag biography records her as married with three children but does not name her husband or give a wedding date.

## Local politics

### Tecklenburg council

Karliczek's party activity in Tecklenburg, in the Steinfurt district of North Rhine-Westphalia, began in the Christian Democratic Union. A biography published by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung links that step to the town's short supply of kindergarten places: at events of the CDU's Frauen-Union she argued for more childcare and a better balance of paid work and family life, and in 1998 she joined the party through its youth organisation, the Junge Union. The Bundestag biography, drawn from her own disclosures, likewise records CDU membership from 1998.

She was elected to the Rat der Stadt Tecklenburg in 2004 and remained a councillor until the end of 2014. On taking her seat she became chair of the council's committee for family, senior citizens and social affairs, and chair of the assembly (Verbandsversammlung) of the Volkshochschule Lengerich. In the council chosen on 30 August 2009 the CDU held 10 of 30 seats, with 31.5 percent of the vote, one seat behind the SPD. From 2009 until 2011 Karliczek was deputy chair of the CDU council group.

In February 2011 the group elected her chair by a large majority. She succeeded Wolfgang Rath, who did not stand again for health reasons but remained a councillor; Björn Hollenberg was elected deputy chair. A statement from the local CDU called the change a generational shift. At the municipal election of 25 May 2014 the council was cut to 26 seats. The CDU again took 10, on 38.0 percent of the vote, and the SPD 11, on 41.4 percent; turnout was 61.3 percent. Karliczek resigned the seat and the group chair at the end of 2014. She said that her diary as a member of the Bundestag, which she had entered in 2013, increasingly clashed with council meetings, and that chairing a council group was tenable only with regular attendance, especially while the town was consolidating its budget. In January 2015 the group elected Egbert Friedrich, a councillor since 2004, to succeed her. Dominic Hoge of Leeden, then 18, filled the vacant council seat.

### CDU Tecklenburg

In parallel she chaired the CDU city association (Stadtverband) of Tecklenburg. The state party dates that office from January 2011. Local reporting already described her as Stadtverbandsvorsitzende when she became council-group leader in February 2011, and an account of her departure placed the start of the tenure in that February. She kept the party post after leaving the council. In April 2015, as Bundestag member and city-association chair, she met Eike Brinkhaus, district chair of the Junge Union, and local youth activists, including Hoge, about restarting a Tecklenburg branch of the youth organisation.

The city-association chair lasted fifteen years. At a members' meeting in Brochterbeck in March 2026 she handed it to Alexander Plato; the Westfälische Nachrichten, drawing on a CDU account of the meeting, reported that 22 members voted for the change. The Bundestag biography records the office as 2011 to 2026. The association's published board list afterwards names her deputy treasurer, while she remained a Bundestag member, with Plato as chair and Hoge as deputy chair and leader of the council group.

## Bundestag career, 2013–2018

### First term and the Finance Committee

At the federal election of 22 September 2013, Anja Karliczek, standing for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), won the direct mandate in constituency 128, Steinfurt III, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Returning Officer recorded 69,385 first votes for the CDU, 47.9 percent of the valid ballots, against 36.5 percent for the Social Democratic Party (SPD); turnout was 75.3 percent. She entered the 18th Bundestag on 22 October 2013 and sat with the CDU/CSU group.

For that term the Bundestag lists her as a full member of the Finance Committee and a deputy member of the Budget Committee. She took the group's reporting for the reform of life insurance, on stable and fair benefits for policyholders, after a similar attempt to change the distribution of valuation reserves had failed in the spring of 2013. The Finance Committee finished on 2 July 2014. With Antje Tillmann, the group's finance-policy spokesperson, Karliczek, named as rapporteur, said the package balanced policyholders whose contracts were maturing against those still in the pool, and that every cost capable of reducing a benefit would have to be disclosed. A Bundestag profile in June 2015 recorded criticism that the law had been rushed through during the football World Cup and had favoured insurers; Karliczek said the aim was to protect the insured collectively and the benefits promised to them, while limiting payouts from hidden reserves.

She was also the rapporteur for the law modernising financial supervision of insurers, which transposed the European Solvency II regime. The Finance Committee adopted that bill on 28 January 2015. With Tillmann she argued that risk-based supervision would let the authorities act earlier against risks at insurance companies, and that smaller and medium-sized insurers should face lighter reporting and organisational duties, so that a manager could still hold more than one key function.

On occupational pensions, she spoke for the CDU/CSU at the second and third reading of the Betriebsrentenstärkungsgesetz on 1 June 2017, when she was already a parliamentary business manager. She said the aim was more retirement saving for people on low incomes and in small firms. The points she defended were an allowance, then 202 euros, that someone on basic security in old age could keep; an employer payment of up to 480 euros a year, with 30 percent refunded through wage tax; a doubling, to 8 percent of the contribution-assessment ceiling, of pay that could be saved tax-free; and an occupational opt-out, which she compared with practice in the Netherlands and Britain. The government bill, first debated on 10 March 2017, also let social partners agree pure defined-contribution promises. On 24 September 2017 she again won Steinfurt III, with 44.8 percent of the first votes to the SPD's 30.3 percent.

### Parliamentary business manager

On 24 January 2017 the CDU/CSU group elected Karliczek a parliamentary business manager (*Parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin*) with 92 percent of the votes cast. She succeeded Michaela Noll, who had held that post since April 2010 and whom the Bundestag, on 19 January, had elected a vice president with 513 votes in succession to Peter Hintze. The *Münstersche Zeitung* reported that the office made Karliczek a member of the Council of Elders, where her responsibilities included matters concerning members' staff.

The CDU/CSU group had five parliamentary business managers, with different remits for day-to-day parliamentary and internal business, the group's bodies and the preparation of plenary sittings, working with the chair. Volker Kauder was confirmed as chair, and Michael Grosse-Brömer as first parliamentary business manager, on 26 September 2017. On 29 January 2018 the group elected Karliczek again, with 173 votes (94.0 percent), alongside Manfred Grund and Patrick Schnieder.

Her Bundestag biography, compiled from her own information, dates the business-manager role from January 2017 to March 2018, and the Finance and Budget Committee memberships to 2013–2017. She gave up the business-manager post after her appointment as Federal Minister of Education and Research. On 20 March 2018 the group replaced board members who had entered the federal government and elected Heike Brehmer a parliamentary business manager with 156 votes (95.7 percent). The CDU in Saxony-Anhalt stated that Brehmer was succeeding Karliczek.

## Federal Minister of Education and Research

### Appointment and portfolio

Anja Karliczek was sworn in on 14 March 2018 as federal minister of education and research in the Fourth Merkel cabinet. She succeeded Johanna Wanka and left office on 8 December 2021, when Bettina Stark-Watzinger was appointed and sworn in; Karliczek handed over the ministry the next day.

Chancellor Angela Merkel nominated her on 25 February 2018, and reporting at the time treated the choice as a surprise. Karliczek, a Christian Democratic Union member of the Bundestag since 2013 and a CDU/CSU parliamentary business manager from 2017, had worked on finance and tourism, not education or research. Merkel pointed to Karliczek’s route through vocational training, family and a part-time degree, and called her a living example of how those could be combined. Karliczek told *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* that the call had caught her cold (“kalt erwischt”) and that she would “ask, ask, ask” until she could explain research more widely. *Handelsblatt* reported that hardly anyone in the ministry had heard of her, and a *Süddeutsche Zeitung* commentary said the appointment was the wrong signal for a research portfolio in which she had still less background than in education.

The ministry funded federal research and the federal parts of education, above all vocational-training law and student support; schools otherwise stayed with the Länder. She sat in the Joint Science Conference, where federal and Land science and finance ministers agree joint programmes under Article 91b of the Basic Law. Its chair alternates yearly between the federal research minister and a Land minister.

### Schools, training and higher education

The main federal school measure was the DigitalPakt Schule. An amendment of Article 104c let the Federation aid the Länder for municipal education infrastructure of national importance, including digital equipment, without taking over curricula or school operations. Karliczek signed the administrative agreement for the Federation in Berlin on 16 May 2019. It provided 5 billion euros from the Digital Infrastructure special fund for 2019–2024, with the Länder adding an investment share of at least 10 percent, for networks, wireless coverage and related equipment; teacher training remained a Land task.

In 2019 the Bundestag debated the government’s 26th bill to amend the Federal Training Assistance Act. It raised standard rates by 5 percent from the 2019/20 winter semester and by a further 2 percent in 2020, and raised the housing allowance for students not living with their parents from 250 to 325 euros, so that the maximum award would move from 735 euros to 853 and then 861 euros, with higher parental income allowances as well. Karliczek called it “more BAföG for more young people”, aimed at families just above the old limits; opposition speakers said the rise was too small and too late.

A minimum training allowance was introduced in the Vocational Training Act, federal education law rather than the labour ministry’s minimum-wage statute. After the Bundesrat’s consent, the changes took effect on 1 January 2020. For new contracts outside collective agreements, the first-year floor was 515 euros a month for courses starting in 2020, then 550, 585 and 620 euros for starts in 2021, 2022 and 2023, with set percentage increases in later apprenticeship years. It also standardised higher-vocational titles, including “Bachelor Professional” and “Master Professional”.

On 6 June 2019 the heads of the federal and Land governments adopted the “Zukunftsvertrag Studium und Lehre stärken” in place of the Higher Education Pact 2020. From 2021 the Federation was to pay 1.88 billion euros a year through 2023 and 2.05 billion from 2024, matched at least equally by the Länder, to keep study places built under the earlier pact and to improve teaching, including through more permanent academic posts.

### Research policy and the Münster battery centre

On 28 June 2019 the ministry announced that Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia had won a national competition to host the Forschungsfertigung Batteriezelle, a research factory for battery-cell production. The bid, led by the MEET centre at the University of Münster with the PEM institute at RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, beat five others. About 500 million euros of federal money were planned for the build, and the Land more than 200 million. The Fraunhofer Society, which had run the contest, was to coordinate the plant at Münster’s Hansa Business Park, developing materials, cell concepts, processes and machinery toward series production of large cells; Karliczek said it should open in 2022.

The Joint Science Conference on 3 May 2019, and the heads of government on 6 June, also agreed a fourth Pact for Research and Innovation for 2021–2030, raising joint grants to the German Research Foundation and the Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz and [Max Planck](/organizations/max-planck-society) organisations by 3 percent a year—about 17 billion euros extra over the decade from that growth alone. On 19 July 2019 the Excellence Commission of international experts and federal and Land science ministers also selected ten universities of excellence and one consortium.

In 2019 the cabinet decided on a research tax allowance from 1 January 2020, alongside project grants. As Karliczek presented it, the credit was 25 percent of eligible personnel costs, capped in that decision at 500,000 euros per firm and year, payable even in a loss, and barred where the same costs were already project-funded. Firms were to claim it from the tax office after a separate body had certified the work as research or development, the certification task given to her ministry rather than the Federal [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance).

The site decision was sharply criticised. Münster is in the constituency next to Karliczek’s, and on 7 November 2019 the Bundestag Budget Committee asked the Bundesrechnungshof to examine the procedure. The report of 1 September 2020 found that the procedure “was not free of error”: the ministry had not sufficiently observed the ban on participation by interested parties or equal treatment, and its files were inadequate. Fraunhofer had been asked to run a competition in which it was also the future operator and some of its institutes were bidders; industry members of the founding commission had conflicts of interest, and that body’s meeting on 25 June 2019 ended without a recommendation. North Rhine-Westphalia had received detailed land and building requirements earlier than other Länder, and the auditors left open whether the faults changed the result. The ministry accepted weak records and conflict-of-interest handling, denied unequal treatment, and did not, the auditors concluded, refute the main criticisms. The Budget Committee criticised the search on 16 September 2020, and an FDP motion demanding an account of responsibility and of the decision not to rerun the contest was later rejected by the coalition in the education committee.

## Controversies during the ministerial term

### Public statements

In the winter of 2018–19 interviews drew replies from coalition partners, the opposition and colleagues in the Christian Democratic Union. On 20 November 2018, on n-tv’s *Klamroths Konter*, Karliczek returned to [same-sex marriage](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany), which she had voted against in the Bundestag in June 2017. She said the way the decision had been taken had polarised—“So, wie wir es gemacht haben, hat es eher für Polarisierung gesorgt”—and that social structures had been altered “mal eben so im Federstrich”. Effects on children growing up with same-sex parents were, she said, “eine spannende Forschungsfrage” to be studied “wirklich langfristig”: “Solange wir nicht wissen, ob es was verändert oder nicht, solange muss man diese Entscheidung doch nicht treffen.” She said the question was not whether those children were “glücklich” or “gut erzogen”, and that a child adopted by health minister Jens Spahn and his husband would be well looked after because she respected him—which, n-tv reported, was not her point. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* also recalled a 2017 line, offered as the mother of three, that children should experience “das emotionale Spannungsfeld zwischen Vater und Mutter”.

Family minister [Franziska Giffey](/people/franziska-giffey) (Social Democratic Party) answered that studies already showed children in same-sex partnerships develop as well as those raised by a mother and a father. Doris Achelwilm of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) called the stance an “ärgerliche Realitätsverweigerung”.

The next day, in a Reuters interview on the 5G auction, Karliczek said “5G ist nicht an jeder Milchkanne notwendig.” Nationwide 4G would already leave the country “sehr gut ausgestattet”; 5G could start at central sites, and “um in die Fläche zu gehen, können wir uns ein bisschen Zeit lassen.” SPD general secretary [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) tied the two episodes together in *Bild am Sonntag*: anyone who wanted children of same-sex couples investigated while cutting regions off from 5G “scheint noch nicht wirklich im Jahr 2018 angekommen zu sein.” Within the Union, Lower Saxony’s deputy minister-president Bernd Althusmann said fast internet was needed “bis an jede Milchkanne”, and Dorothee Bär of the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) said rural areas needed the greater effort. On 3 February 2019 Karliczek told ZDF’s *Berlin direkt* that both subjects had come across differently from what she intended, and that the milk churn was “nicht das richtige Bild”.

In a *Spiegel* interview reported on 10 February 2019, as the BAföG housing allowance was to rise from 250 to 325 euros, she said of rents in cities such as Munich and Hamburg: “Man muss ja nicht in die teuersten Städte gehen,” and pointed to strong universities where housing cost less. *Spiegel*’s bento site reported that the Deutsches Studentenwerk did not see equality of opportunity, or freedom of occupational choice, as assured.

On 15 February 2019, presenting the federal strategy on artificial intelligence, she said Germany would be guided by “unserem christlichen Menschenbild” and that every technological advance had to line up behind it, because artificial intelligence had to serve human dignity and freedom under the Basic Law.

### Academic employment and #IchBinHanna

In June 2021 the hashtag #IchBinHanna spread after researchers recirculated a 2018 ministry film. Built around a fictional biologist, Hanna, it treated turnover as promoting “Innovationskraft” and said fixed terms were needed so that “nicht eine Generation alle Stellen verstopft”. Researchers answered with accounts of short contracts.

On 24 June, in a Bundestag *Aktuelle Stunde* sought by the Left, she told Nicole Gohlke that the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz was meant to limit, not entrench, fixed-term qualification, and that without those limits fewer young researchers would get a chance. She called what people wrote under the hashtag moving, but said the statute was being made a scapegoat. She endorsed more permanent jobs after qualification, cited Länder commitments in the *Zukunftsvertrag* “Studium und Lehre stärken” and federal funding for 1,000 tenure-track professorships, and said the Länder carried the main responsibility—the line she had given the *Tagesspiegel*, which reported that she did not see the ministry as the right address. To Kai Gehring of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), she said an evaluation could not be done “wenn an Hochschulen im Moment gar nichts stattfindet,” citing the pandemic. GEW vice-chair Andreas Keller called the sentence a “Schlag ins Gesicht” for university staff.

### Pandemic policy and assessments of the tenure

In the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) the Kultusministerkonferenz asked her to open BAföG temporarily to students who had lost side jobs but were not already eligible, and rejected loans as inadequate. In a letter reported on 17 April 2020 she refused: a statutory change needed a bill, and “Die hierfür notwendige Zeit (…) haben wir nicht.” The lost jobs caused her “große Sorge”; she again offered interest-free loans. Gehring called the refusal an act of political irresponsibility.

A grant followed. On 15 June 2020 the ministry and the Deutsches Studentenwerk announced applications, via the Studentenwerke, for a non-repayable sum of up to 500 euros a month in June, July and August, with 100 million euros provided. Karliczek called it a second net beside the KfW student loan, interest-free until the end of March 2021 and opened to many foreign students, and said BAföG had already been adjusted for cancelled teaching and for pay from work classed as essential.

Separately, the Bundesrechnungshof told the budget committee on 7 May 2019 that the Hochschulpakt’s scheme for extra first-year students had missed important goals: supervision had worsened since 2007 despite federal money, it was unclear whether the funds had fully caused the extra admissions, and Länder co-financing could not be traced. The ministry, it wrote, had not checked that the money was used as intended, had allowed large unspent balances, and had breached rules on economy and specific appropriation. The Qualitätspakt Lehre, in the court’s view, had unclear aims and no broad success.

September 2021 assessments were mixed. The *Tagesspiegel* reported scientific discontent and hope of a change after the election, while noting longer science pacts, rapid vaccine funding and a rising budget. An unnamed senior official spoke of the ministry’s “Nicht-Gesprächsfähigkeit”; Humboldt president Sabine Kunst said, “Nicht alles, was gut gemeint ist, ist gut gemacht.” The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* wrote that lacking a scientific background need not be fatal, but that she had not convinced sceptics, and that not every round of mockery was fair. On the battery-research site near her constituency, treated elsewhere, it noted that auditors found no personal misconduct, “doch es blieb ein fader Nachgeschmack.”

## Electoral record in Steinfurt III

### The constituency

Steinfurt III is a Bundestag constituency in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was numbered 128 at the federal elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021, and 127 at the election of 23 February 2025. The 2025 scheme took effect on 14 March 2024. Population change had moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, so former constituencies 72 to 255 were renumbered; North Rhine-Westphalia kept 64 constituencies.

The territory did not change with the number. The 2021 and 2025 descriptions assign it the same fourteen municipalities of the district of Steinfurt: Emsdetten, Greven, Hörstel, Hopsten, Ibbenbüren, Ladbergen, Lengerich, Lienen, Lotte, Mettingen, Recke, Saerbeck, Tecklenburg and Westerkappeln. The rest of the district lies in Steinfurt I – Borken I and Coesfeld – Steinfurt II (124 and 127 in 2021; 123 and 126 in 2025). Eleven of the fourteen — Hörstel, Ibbenbüren, Lengerich, Tecklenburg, Hopsten, Ladbergen, Lienen, Lotte, Mettingen, Recke and Westerkappeln — are the Tecklenburger Land. Emsdetten, Greven and Saerbeck lie outside that region. At the end of 2023 the constituency covered 1,092.5 square kilometres and had 255,400 inhabitants, about 234 per square kilometre; vegetation and water made up 81.9 percent of the area and settlement and transport 18.1 percent.

### Results, 2013–2025

Anja Karliczek of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took the most first votes at each of the four elections, every time against Jürgen Coße of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). On 22 September 2013, turnout was 75.3 percent (146,050 of 193,909 people eligible to vote). Karliczek received 69,385 first votes, 47.9 percent of the valid ballots, and Coße 52,786 (36.5 percent). The CDU’s share of the second votes was 43.3 percent. On 24 September 2017, turnout was 78.0 percent (152,541 of 195,571). She won 67,678 first votes (44.8 percent) to his 45,797 (30.3 percent). The Greens took 6.5 percent of the first votes, [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) 6.3 percent, and the Free Democratic Party and Die Linke 5.6 percent each. The CDU second-vote share was 37.8 percent.

The margin was much smaller on 26 September 2021. Turnout was 79.6 percent (155,635 of 195,513). Karliczek’s 52,445 first votes (34.0 percent) led Coße’s 48,068 (31.1 percent) by 4,377 votes. The Greens rose to 15.5 percent of the first votes, the FDP to 7.4 percent and the AfD to 5.7 percent, while Die Linke fell to 3.0 percent. On the second votes the SPD, at 32.7 percent, finished ahead of the CDU at 27.5 percent.

The 2025 election was the first held under the 2023 reform of the Federal Elections Act, which fixed the Bundestag at 630 members. A candidate of a party who leads the first vote receives the constituency seat only if that seat is covered by the party’s second-vote entitlement in the Land, the rule known as Zweitstimmendeckung. Within each Land the constituency leaders of a party are ranked by first-vote share, and any lead beyond the party’s seat total goes unfilled. Nationwide, 23 candidates who led their constituencies did not receive a seat. In Steinfurt III, 165,562 of 194,178 eligible voters took part (85.3 percent). Karliczek received 62,253 first votes (37.9 percent), ahead of Coße with 41,397 (25.2 percent). The AfD took 15.5 percent, the Greens 11.8 percent, Die Linke 6.0 percent and the FDP 3.0 percent. The CDU’s second-vote share was 33.1 percent. In the final seat calculation her 37.9 percent ranked 19th among CDU constituency leads in North Rhine-Westphalia and was marked as covered. The result records her as elected in the constituency, and she entered the 21st Bundestag on that constituency seat.

## Parliamentary work since 2021

### Tourism spokesperson

Karliczek's term as federal minister for education and research ended when the cabinet of [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) was appointed and sworn in on 8 December 2021, and she returned to the CDU/CSU benches of the Bundestag. The 20th electoral term had opened with the constitutive sitting of 26 October 2021. For that term the Bundestag's biography records her, from 2021 to 2025, as tourism-policy spokesperson of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, an ordinary member of the Committee on Tourism and of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, and a deputy member of the Finance Committee.

The reduced rate of value-added tax on restaurant food was the measure she pressed in the chamber. A temporary cut from 19 to 7 percent on restaurant and catering services, excluding drinks, had applied since 1 July 2020. On 13 May 2022 she was listed among the speakers on a CDU/CSU motion (printed paper 20/1727) to make that rate permanent and to continue reduced beer duty for smaller brewers; the motion was referred to the Finance Committee. The group said the cut had relieved a sector hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and cited a reduced rate in 21 of 27 EU member states. It returned to the question with a bill to amend the VAT Act (20/5810). At first reading on 16 March 2023 the Bundestag sent the bill to committee, with the Finance Committee in the lead. The CDU/CSU argued that a permanent reduced rate would help gastronomy against higher energy and purchasing costs, put the revenue loss from 2024 at about 3.3 billion euro a year, and said 23 of 27 EU states taxed the sector at a reduced rate.

At second reading on 21 September 2023 the bill was rejected in a recorded vote, 367 to 284, with five abstentions. Speaking for the CDU/CSU, Karliczek said businesses needed to know before the end of 2023 what would apply from 1 January 2024, and called a one-year extension insufficient. She paired the tax demand with proposals for a more flexible Working Hours Act and tax relief on overtime, argued that restoring the higher rate would make meals at least 12 percent dearer before wage and food-price rises, and said the group wanted inns to remain "the campfires of the nation."

In a July 2022 interview with the Bundestag weekly *Das Parlament* she described labour shortages in tourism and hospitality after the pandemic, with the war in Ukraine and inflation adding further pressure. She called the statutory maximum of ten working hours a day too rigid for staff who would rather work longer days across fewer days, asked for digital tools to match visitors with transport and local supply, and criticised slow official preparation for staff shortages at airports, proposing a "flight summit" and short-term deployment of Federal Police officers. On sustainability labels she preferred extending existing certifications to creating new ones.

### Committees in the 21st Bundestag

The 21st Bundestag was elected on 23 February 2025 and held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025. On 21 May 2025, at the constitutive meeting of the Committee on Tourism, presided over for that sitting by Bundestag vice-president Josephine Ortleb (SPD), Karliczek was elected chair by secret ballot: 11 of 14 votes in favour, none against and three abstentions. The committee has 14 ordinary members, five of them from the CDU/CSU.

Her Bundestag biography lists her as chair and ordinary member of the Tourism Committee, ordinary member of the Finance Committee, and deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The member list of the body under section 80 of the Customs Investigation Service Act names her as an ordinary member. That nine-member body is briefed by the Federal Ministry of Finance on restrictions, imposed by the Zollkriminalamt, of the secrecy of letters, post and telecommunications under Article 10 of the Basic Law.

The Federal Agency for Civic Education lists her among the 22 Bundestag members of its board of trustees for the 21st electoral term. The trustees, drawn from the parliamentary groups in proportion to their strength, review the agency's work for effectiveness and political balance; Christina Stumpp of the CDU/CSU chairs the body. The same biography, which the Bundestag says rests on members' own statements, also records her since 2025 as vice-president of the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft. The Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion lists her as chair of its Münsterland district association.

## Catholic and civic roles

### Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund

On 22 October 2023 the federal delegates' assembly of the Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund (KDFB) in Bonn elected Anja Karliczek president. She succeeded Maria Flachsbarth, also of the Christian Democratic Union, who after twelve years could not stand again under the statutes. Founded in Cologne in 1903, the KDFB is one of Germany's two large Catholic women's associations and then reported about 145,000 members. The presidency was contested for the first time in decades. Karliczek stood against Ulrike Gerdiken, professor of media education at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences Mainz. *aus.sicht* later quoted Gerdiken as giving the result as 41 votes to 38 among about 80 delegates.

Karliczek, from Ibbenbüren, has described herself as a believing Catholic. After the election she named equal participation of women in politics, society and the church, combining family and employment, equal financial recognition of women's work, opening all ordained offices to women, and drawing in younger members. She told domradio that exclusion from ordination, not admission, had to be justified, and that Flachsbarth would remain for the KDFB on the synodal committee following the Synodal Way. In November 2023 she said a woman could feel called to the priesthood as a man could, and that she supported church blessings for same-sex couples, while noting that as a member of the Bundestag she had voted in 2017 against opening civil marriage to those couples.

The Central Committee of German Catholics lists her as a KDFB representative. On 18 October 2024 a statement issued in her name as president opposed deleting § 218 from the Criminal Code, defended compulsory pregnancy-conflict counselling as a setting for a decision free of pressure, called this a "double advocacy" for women's self-determination and the protection of unborn life, and urged that gaps in access to clinics under the existing law be closed.

### Foundations and disclosed posts

Besides the KDFB presidency, her Bundestag disclosure lists two unpaid seats. She is an honorary member of the supervisory board of Ledder Werkstätten gemeinnützige GmbH in Tecklenburg-Ledde, a diaconal workshop for people with disabilities. The Bundestag register dates it from 1 December 2023; the organisation said in April 2024 that the new members, Karliczek among them, had begun the unpaid role on 1 March. She is also an honorary trustee of the Josef + Irmgard Beermann Stiftung in Hörstel-Riesenbeck, a family foundation created in December 2021 which says it supports people in hardship, local community life, education and nature protection.

As federal minister of education and research she held seats that the organisations' own reports attach to that office. They name her on the Stiftungsrat of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (April 2021), the senate of the Max Planck Society as the federation's representative (2019), the senate of the Helmholtz Association ex officio (2019 report) and the senate of the Leibniz Association ex officio (as of 1 September 2021). These seats do not appear among her disclosed parliamentary side posts. From 1 January 2019 she was also a trustee and deputy chair of the VolkswagenStiftung, whose 14 members are appointed equally by the federal government and Lower Saxony. The foundation said her term ended on 1 March 2022, when Bettina Stark-Watzinger was among the new appointees, while the Bundestag disclosure ends the deputy chairmanship on 8 December 2021. That disclosure also lists the board of the [Deutsche Telekom](/organizations/deutsche-telekom) Stiftung in Bonn until 30 June 2023, at 10,000 euros gross a year.

## Political positions

### Family and social policy

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag held a recorded conscience vote on the Bundesrat bill opening marriage to same-sex couples. The plenary record lists Anja Karliczek among the CDU/CSU members voting no; the bill passed by 393 to 226, with four abstentions. She wrote four days later that Article 6 of the Basic Law, as read by the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), reserved marriage to a man and a woman, so an ordinary statute was in her view constitutionally doubtful, and that the short notice had risked drafting errors. The registered life partnership, including successive adoption, had already been aligned with marriage, she argued, so she saw no remaining legal discrimination: same-sex couples deserved recognition, but the traditional name of marriage should stay.

On abortion, a 2021 reply in her name restated the CDU/CSU line. The unborn child has its own rights and the state a duty of protection, best met by counselling that makes continuing a pregnancy easier, while a woman’s decision to end one is respected. It called the Pregnancy Conflict Act, with sections 218 and 219 of the Criminal Code, a compromise whose counselling should encourage continuation but stay open-ended.

### Economy, education and infrastructure

The Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion, the CDU/CSU body for business and the self-employed, lists Karliczek as chair of its Münsterland district. On 1 June 2017 she spoke for the Union on the law strengthening occupational pensions, arguing for more saving by people on low incomes and in small firms beside the statutory pension. She cited an allowance, then half the Hartz IV rate or 202 euros, kept from an extra pension even on basic income support; a subsidy letting employers pay up to 480 euros a year into a worker’s pension and reclaim 30 per cent through wage tax; a doubling, to 8 per cent of the contribution ceiling, of tax-favoured saving, which she said Mittelstand firms wanted; and an occupational opt-out as a prompt to save. That January she told the *Westfälische Nachrichten* that the statutory pension alone was insufficient, that funded private provision was needed, and that the double health and care levy on company pensions should end.

As education minister she treated vocational upgrading as equal to a degree. On the 2020 Aufstiegs-BAföG reform she called vocational education “just as important as academic education” and said the ministry would add 350 million euros that term, including more help for parents in further training, across three stages up to master’s level. On student BAföG, the ministry said the 2019 changes would spend 1.3 billion euros over the term, raise the away-from-home housing supplement from 250 to 325 euros and lift the maximum award to 861 euros by 2020. In August 2021 she told the *Augsburger Allgemeine* a later reform should loosen the maximum period of support, cover a degree after a vocational qualification, and help people starting after 35.

In September 2018 she backed the DigitalPakt Schule — about five billion euros of federal money over five years for school infrastructure, with the Länder organising teaching — and said that what was standard in a child’s bedroom had to be standard in the classroom. That November she told Reuters that 5G was “not necessary at every milk churn”, that nationwide 4G should come first, and that covering the whole country with 5G could wait. In January 2025, as CDU/CSU tourism spokesperson, she said the Union planned a tax package she expected to include one value-added-tax rate for processed and unprocessed food, and tax-free overtime so extra hours, including in hospitality, would be rewarded rather than replaced by state transfers.

## Dated facts

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## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/anja-karliczek