# Anja Reinalter

# Anja Reinalter

Anja Margrit Reinalter (born 1 May 1970 in Laupheim, Baden-Württemberg) is a German educationalist, professor of social work and politician. The Federal Returning Officer lists her as Dr. Reinalter, Anja Margrit, born in 1970, of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). She has been a member of the Bundestag since the 20th electoral term, which opened with the constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, and was seated again for the 21st term on the Baden-Württemberg state list in eleventh place, while also standing in constituency 292, Biberach. In that constituency in 2021 the Green first-vote total was 17,912 (13.6 percent) and the second-vote total 18,070 (13.7 percent), with the direct seat going to the CDU on 35.1 percent; in 2025 the Green totals were 14,819 first votes (10.3 percent) and 14,064 second votes (9.8 percent), and Wolfgang Jochen Dahler of the CDU won the direct mandate with 40.9 percent.

Reinalter took the Abitur in 1989 in Laupheim at what is now the Carl-Laemmle-Gymnasium, studied educational science at Goethe University Frankfurt and received a doctorate in philosophy (Dr. phil.) there. She then worked as an officer in adult education, as a vocational-school teacher for nursing and education occupations, and as a lecturer at the Ravensburg-Weingarten University of Applied Sciences and at the Catholic Foundation University of Applied Sciences Munich. Since 2020 she has been professor of social work with a focus on youth work at Kempten University of Applied Sciences. The university lists her in the Faculty of Social Affairs and Health as a professor on the youth-work degree track and as academic adviser for the bachelor’s programme in social work with that focus.

She has been a local politician since 2009, on the Laupheim town council and the Biberach district council, and in 2011 received the Helene Weber Prize for voluntary municipal office. From 2019 to 2022 she was first chair of the Landesfrauenrat Baden-Württemberg. In the Bundestag she is parliamentary business manager of the Green parliamentary group, a post she held through her first year in parliament, and from 2024 to 2025 she was the group’s spokesperson for education, research and technology assessment. In the 21st Bundestag she is an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, and the Council of Elders.

She is married, has three children and lives in Laupheim. She keeps the Kempten professorship beside the mandate. The Bundestag’s disclosure of outside earnings lists gross pay from Hochschule Kempten of €2,353.92 a month from 1 April to 30 November 2025 and €1,983.17 a month from 1 December 2025, plus a one-off €1,536.89 in 2025.

## Early life and education

### Upbringing in Laupheim

Anja Margrit Reinalter was born on 1 May 1970 in Laupheim, according to her Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from the member's own information. The Federal Returning Officer's list of members elected in 2025 records her as Dr. Reinalter, Anja Margrit, born in 1970. The German National Library authority record gives the preferred name Anja Reinalter, the birth year 1970, Laupheim as the place of birth, the degree Dr. phil. and the occupational heading Pädagogin. The current Bundestag biography says that she is married and has three children; the archived biography for the 20th electoral term, likewise based on her own statements, also describes her as Roman Catholic.

On 10 November 2022 the *Stuttgarter Zeitung* published Lisa Welzhofer's article on how Ludwig Reinalter of Laupheim learned what had happened to his father, also named Ludwig Reinalter, at the end of the Second World War. The standfirst says he had long not known his father's fate; a caption identifies Anja Reinalter as his daughter and shows the two of them in front of the family's former house in Laupheim, where he grew up. Captions with the article state that the elder Ludwig Reinalter served in the Luftwaffe, lived through the war from its first day and died on its last day, at a bridge by the mill in Nentmannsdorf, a few kilometres from Burkhardswalde in Saxony, where he was first buried and later reburied. They further state that a previously unnamed grave in the Burkhardswalde cemetery received a headstone in May 2022 bearing the name of Ludwig Reinalter of Laupheim; the article summary says the family had been contacted about two years earlier by a small place in Saxony, which answered the question of his fate.

Reinalter took the Abitur in 1989 at the Laupheim school that parliamentary biographies call the present-day Carl-Laemmle-Gymnasium. At the school's Abitur ceremony in July 2019, head teacher Petra Braun said the institution had begun in 1869 as a Latin school, that the designation Gymnasium came only much later, and that it had carried the name of the Laupheim-born film producer Carl Laemmle for 25 years, which places the renaming after Reinalter's Abitur.

### Studies and doctorate

The archived Bundestag biography places a stay in southern England after the Abitur and before university, without stating how long it lasted or what she did there. She then studied Erziehungswissenschaften, educational science, at Goethe University Frankfurt and was awarded a Dr. phil. in that field. In the faculty newsletter of Kempten University of Applied Sciences for July 2020, she wrote that after the course of study and the doctorate in Frankfurt am Main she had put down roots in Upper Swabia. Published biographies do not name a first degree such as a Diplom or Magister, or give the year in which undergraduate or graduate study was completed.

The doctoral thesis is the 2017 dissertation catalogued by the German National Library as a work of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main, 327 pages with diagrams. Its title is *"Doing birth" – Entscheidung zwischen klinischer und außerklinischer Geburt im Spannungsfeld von Selbstbestimmung und Sicherheitsbedürfnis: explorative Analyse und vergleichende Untersuchung von Kriterien für Geburtsvarianten im ländlichen Raum zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts* — an exploratory analysis and comparative study of how people choose between clinical and out-of-hospital birth, in the tension between self-determination and the need for safety, in rural areas at the start of the twenty-first century. The catalogue record classes the book under medicine and health and indexes it with the headings birth, hospital birth, pregnancy, obstetrics and programmed birth.

The deposited table of contents divides the thesis into a literature review and an empirical study. The review runs from the history of obstetrics and midwifery through the postwar shift to hospital birth, programmed birth, and criticism associated with the women's movement. The empirical chapters place the fieldwork in "mittleres Oberschwaben" (middle Upper Swabia), with separate sections on Baden-Württemberg and the districts of Biberach, the Alb-Donau-Kreis and Ravensburg. They describe qualitative interviews and two quantitative survey waves, in 2003–2005 and 2013–2015. Headings in the later results chapters refer to a combined group of 301 cases, 232 of them clinical births and 69 out-of-hospital births.

## Professional and academic career

### Adult and vocational education

Before the Kempten appointment, Anja Reinalter worked in education and in the training of care and education occupations in Upper Swabia. In the July 2020 issue of *EinBlick*, the newsletter of the Faculty of Social Affairs and Health at Kempten University of Applied Sciences, she wrote that after studying educational sciences and completing a doctorate in Frankfurt am Main she had settled in Oberschwaben. In the same note she described work as a pedagogue in girls' and youth work, as an adult-education officer (*Bildungsreferentin*), as a teacher training educators (*Erzieherinnen* and *Erzieher*), and as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten in a module on social work and the family.

The Bundestag biographies, which the parliament says rest on members' own information, name employers the newsletter does not. The entry for the 20th electoral term lists her as education officer for Catholic adult education in Ravensburg, attached to the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart; as a teacher at vocational schools for the regional council in Tübingen (*Regierungspräsidium Tübingen*), with the training of educators and nursing staff as the focus; and as an adjunct lecturer both at Ravensburg-Weingarten and at the Katholische Stiftungshochschule München, on its campus in Benediktbeuern. The biography for the 21st electoral term compresses that sequence to adult-education officer, vocational-school teacher for nursing and education occupations, and teaching appointments at Hochschule Ravensburg/Weingarten and the Catholic foundation university in Munich, and then the Kempten professorship from 2020. Neither entry gives year-by-year dates for the posts before 2020. A German National Library authority record created in 2017 lists her occupation as *Pädagogin* and the degree as Dr. phil., with pedagogy among the linked fields.

### Professorship at Kempten University of Applied Sciences

In the July 2020 faculty newsletter Reinalter wrote that she had been at the Hochschule Kempten since March 2020 and that her post was the professorship "Soziale Arbeit mit dem Schwerpunkt Kinder- und Jugendhilfe" (social work with a focus on child and youth welfare). She added that, because of COVID-19, she had so far met the university, its students, and her colleagues almost only online.

The university's staff directory lists her as a professor in the Faculty of Social Affairs and Health for the program abbreviated SJ, and as academic adviser (*Fachstudienberaterin*) for the bachelor's degree in social work with a focus on youth work. The current Bundestag biography uses that later wording: professor of social work with a focus on youth work (*Schwerpunkt Jugendarbeit*) since 2020. The part-time course for which she is the faculty adviser is described by the university as a Bachelor of Arts with a standard duration of seven semesters and 210 ECTS credits, run with the Bavarian Youth Ring (*Bayerischer Jugendring*) and the Institut für Jugendarbeit in Gauting. Admission is aimed at people who already hold a state-recognized qualification as an educator or as a *Heilerziehungspfleger* (a care qualification in disability support), or a comparable qualification, and who want to keep working while they study.

She kept the professorship after entering the Bundestag in 2021. In a reply published on Abgeordnetenwatch on 25 July 2022 she wrote that she had been professor of social work at Kempten since 2020, that she still did the work alongside the mandate because exchange with young people mattered to her, and that the salary was set off against the parliamentary allowance (*Diät*). The Bundestag register of members' interests lists the Kempten professorship as her occupation before membership, noting a right to return and protection against dismissal, and lists it again as paid work carried on beside the mandate. The university directory has continued to show her as professor and program adviser, with a campus office and consultation by email appointment.

### Research on birth and family

The doctorate is the 2017 Dr. phil. The archived Bundestag biography, again a member's own account, calls it a doctorate in educational sciences (*Erziehungswissenschaften*) at the University of Frankfurt am Main and prints the full title. The German National Library catalogues the work as a university thesis (*Hochschulschrift*) of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, 2017, submitted by Anja Reinalter. The title is *"Doing birth" – Entscheidung zwischen klinischer und außerklinischer Geburt im Spannungsfeld von Selbstbestimmung und Sicherheitsbedürfnis*, with the subtitle *explorative Analyse und vergleichende Untersuchung von Kriterien für Geburtsvarianten im ländlichen Raum zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts* (an exploratory analysis and comparative study of criteria for forms of birth in rural areas at the beginning of the twenty-first century). The record describes a German text of 327 pages with diagrams, 30 centimetres in height, noted as a paperback (*Broschur*). Catalogue subject headings include birth (*Geburt*), hospital birth (*Klinikgeburt*), pregnancy (*Schwangerschaft*), obstetrics (*Geburtshilfe*), and programmed birth (*programmierte Geburt*). The entry does not record a commercial publisher.

The table of contents deposited with the library divides the thesis into a literature part and an empirical part. The literature chapters follow midwifery and obstetrics from communal help and the medieval office of the midwife through the turn of birth assistance into medicine, the postwar move toward hospital delivery, programmed birth, criticism of modern obstetric medicine associated with the women's movement, and the conditions and motives set out for out-of-hospital birth and for hospital birth. The empirical chapters locate the study in "mittleres Oberschwaben" in Baden-Württemberg and name the districts of Biberach, Alb-Donau, and Ravensburg. They describe a qualitative interview study, then two quantitative survey waves, 2003–2005 and 2013–2015, with results grouped under pregnancy, birth, the period after birth, and self-assessment, and with a comparison of the two waves. Headings in that contents list give a clinical group of 232 and an out-of-hospital group of 69 within an overall collective of 301. A closing section returns to the tension between self-determination and the need for security and notes methodological and substantive limits. The catalogue record itself does not include an abstract of the statistical findings.

## Local politics

### Laupheim municipal council

Reinalter has sat on the municipal council of Laupheim, in Baden-Württemberg, since 2009, for the Offene Liste für Laupheim, a local voters' association rather than a party slate. A report published the day after the 2011 Helene Weber ceremony described her as deputy chair of that group from 2009. In December 2010 she criticized an administration draft that would have raised kindergarten fees and, with the CDU and SPD groups, asked for a working group; the council then deferred the increase by 13 votes to 12 on a motion from the [Freie Wähler](/organizations/free-voters). She later spoke for the Offene Liste until 1 October 2022, when Mario Fischer took over, saying she was heavily committed in Berlin as a member of the Bundestag. The town's current council page lists Fischer as Fraktionsvorsitzender and Reinalter as a member of the Offene Liste.

Parent representation ran in parallel with the council seat. In August 2013, as chair of the joint parent council of Laupheim's schools and as a representative of the Anna-von-Freyberg primary school, she argued that the town had brought parents into the school-development plan, and into the debate over a Gemeinschaftsschule, too late.

At the municipal election of 9 June 2024, 10,340 of 17,724 eligible voters cast ballots. The Offene Liste received 35,642 votes and six seats, two of them compensatory seats under the uneven residential-district system (unechte Teilortswahl), and placed third behind the Freie Wähler (ten seats, 58,993 votes) and the CDU (eight seats, 47,551 votes). Reinalter polled 3,897 votes in the Laupheim residential district, the highest figure on her list, and was re-elected; compensatory seats enlarged the council from a base of 27 to 33. The Bundestag's published disclosure continues to list the Laupheim council seat as honorary.

### Biberach district council

Her Bundestag biography dates membership of the Kreistag of the district of Biberach from 2009 as well, alongside the town council. She has described entry to the district council as following from parent representation and from chairing Laupheim's joint parent council. On the Kreistag she sits for Alliance 90/The Greens, a different ticket from the Offene Liste in the town.

In the district election of 9 June 2024 she was returned for Wahlkreis III, the town of Laupheim, with 2,710 votes; the Greens won seven seats in all. The council elected that day has 64 members — 54 regular seats plus compensatory seats — and a five-year term, of whom 14 are women and 50 men. As with the town mandate, the district seat is recorded as honorary and has been retained beside the Bundestag mandate.

### Helene Weber Prize

The Helene Weber Prize is conferred by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth on women in municipal politics. It is named for Helene Weber, described by the ministry as one of the four "mothers of the Basic Law", who had pressed in the Parliamentary Council for women's rights to be written into the constitution.

The ministry first awarded the prize in 2009. At the second ceremony, on 7 December 2011 in Berlin, Family Minister Kristina Schröder honored 15 local office-holders from across Germany, selected by an independent jury from names put forward by members of the Bundestag. The award was limited to women in a first or second term. The ministry pointed to women's share of seats, then about 30 percent in the federal and state parliaments and about a quarter in municipal councils. Only the main prize was endowed, with 10,000 euros for a local project, and it went to Sylvie Nantcha, a councillor in Freiburg. All 15 recipients, Reinalter among them as a councillor in Laupheim, were offered a three-day training programme and individual coaching by the Europäische Akademie für Frauen in Politik und Wirtschaft; the same occasion launched the Helene Weber Kolleg, a mentoring scheme built around the laureates of 2009 and 2011.

Reinalter's nomination came from Josef Rief, the CDU member for Biberach, out of nearly 100 proposals. Schröder handed her a certificate. Reinalter told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* that the recognition encouraged her to continue in municipal politics and that she accepted it also on behalf of other women active in Laupheim.

## Party offices and women's organizations

### Alliance 90/The Greens in Baden-Württemberg

Reinalter’s offices in Alliance 90/The Greens in Baden-Württemberg, before and alongside her Bundestag mandate, were at district and state level. The district association in Biberach reported her election to its executive (Kreisvorstand) for a two-year term as the association entered a federal campaign in which she was already the constituency candidate, and later a further election to the executive at an annual meeting in Warthausen. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, also lists that district role. At the state delegates’ conference in Heidenheim an der Brenz, the results of which the state party published on 18 December 2017, she was one of seventeen people elected to the Parteirat. The same biography states that she remained a member of the Landesvorstand until December 2021 and was, until then, women’s-policy spokesperson on the state party council; a Heinrich Böll Foundation profile repeats both roles and the end date. The posts overlapped her chairship of the Landesfrauenrat and ended after she took her Bundestag seat in September 2021.

### Landesfrauenrat Baden-Württemberg

The Landesfrauenrat Baden-Württemberg is not a Green body. Founded in 1969, it is an independent, non-partisan and non-denominational umbrella of women’s associations and of women’s groups inside mixed organizations. A January 2020 self-description called it the state’s largest women’s-policy alliance: 50 member associations and, through them, more than two million women, from Protestant, Catholic and rural women’s groups to trade unions, professional associations and the women’s organizations of several parties, including the Green Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft that delegated Reinalter. It works mainly at Land level from an office in Stuttgart, is financed chiefly from the state budget, and between assemblies is run by a nine-member honorary board elected for three years; in 2020 the office had two part-time staff.

On 15 November 2019, at the Literaturhaus in Stuttgart, delegates filled the term running to 31 December 2020 after Charlotte Schneidewind-Hartnagel resigned the first chair because she had entered the Bundestag. Reinalter, nominated by the Green women’s group, and Luisa Boos, of the Social Democratic women’s working group, stood; Reinalter won on the first ballot. Saskia Ulmer of Evangelische Frauen in Württemberg, then second chair, opened the meeting. The council later recorded that Reinalter was confirmed for the term beginning in 2021, served as its press contact, and resigned early after taking her Bundestag seat in September 2021. At the delegates’ assembly on 1 April 2022, Ute Mackenstedt of the Verband Baden-Württembergischer Wissenschaftlerinnen was elected first chair, and Verena Hahn, of Sisters – für den Ausstieg aus der Prostitution, became second chair after Hildegard Kusicka resigned for personal reasons. The board thanked Reinalter especially for work on reform of the state electoral law.

After a retreat in January 2020 the board put the March 2021 Landtag election at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of its work and prepared a transparency campaign, “Die Hälfte der Macht,” asking whether parties were nominating women and campaigning on equality. The Landeszentrale für politische Bildung notes that the council had argued for decades that the single-vote system, which filled the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg from constituency results and had no statewide list, made zipper lists impossible. The election of 14 March 2021 returned 45 women and 109 men, 29.2 percent. On 6 April 2022, days after Reinalter left the chair, the Landtag adopted by the required two-thirds majority a two-vote system with closed state lists and voting from the age of 16, used for the first time in 2026. The civic-education centre records that the council welcomed the change at once, and that the share of women then rose only to 33.8 percent, 53 of 157 members.

The November 2019 assembly shared its date with the conference “Worte schaffen Werte,” on right-wing antifeminism, hate speech, hostility to women politicians, and equality work in municipalities, associations and education. In the March 2020 newsletter Reinalter wrote that the far-right attack in Hanau the previous month had shown how speech can prepare violence, and that the conference had found a continuing need to act. On 22 October 2021 the council held a digital conference, “Gegen Gewalt an Frauen,” on the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe)’s [Istanbul Convention](/facts/istanbul-convention); refuge workers described underfunded shelters and children who witness domestic violence, and the council restated its demand that the convention be carried out. On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2022, still speaking as first chair, she said the pandemic had slowed equality and had meant a “Rolle rückwärts,” a step backwards, for many women, above all mothers combining paid work with home office, homeschooling and housework. The council’s newsletter also quotes her that day on protection from violence, equal pay, and solidarity with women fleeing the war in Ukraine.

## Bundestag elections

### 2021 federal election

Anja Reinalter stood for Alliance 90/The Greens at the election to the 20th Bundestag on 26 September 2021, as the party’s candidate in constituency 292, Biberach, and in 18th place on its state list in Baden-Württemberg. The Federal Returning Officer’s register of candidates listed her as Prof. Dr. Reinalter, Anja Margit, born in 1970 in Laupheim, with the occupation professor of social work. The same register named Josef Rief as the candidate of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) and [Martin Gerster](/people/martin-gerster) as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party.

Of 169,147 eligible voters, 133,345 cast a ballot, a turnout of 78.8 percent, the same rate as in 2017. On 132,171 valid first votes, Reinalter received 17,912 (13.6 percent), unchanged from the Green share in the constituency in 2017. Rief won the direct mandate for the CDU with 46,458 votes (35.1 percent, down 9.3 points); Gerster was second with 24,567 (18.6 percent). On second votes the Greens polled 18,070 (13.7 percent, up 2.4 points), behind the CDU on 40,472 (30.6 percent), the SPD on 23,152 (17.5 percent) and the Free Democratic Party on 19,163 (14.5 percent).

In Baden-Württemberg the Greens won 1,022,226 second votes, 17.2 percent, and 18 seats, four of them constituency seats and 14 list seats. The 14 list seats were allotted to list places 3 to 11, 13 and 15 to 18; candidates already elected in a constituency were passed over, which is why places 1, 2, 12 and 14 do not appear in that allocation. Place 18, the last place reached, was Reinalter’s, so she entered on the state list rather than with the Biberach direct mandate. The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, the date on which that electoral term began.

### 2025 federal election

On 27 December 2024 the Federal President dissolved the 20th Bundestag, and the election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025, ahead of the autumn date that had been set for a regular election. Reinalter again stood in constituency 292. The roll of members elected in 2025 lists her as Dr. Reinalter, Anja Margrit, born in 1970, of the Greens, returned from place 11 on the Baden-Württemberg state list and also a candidate in Wahlkreis 292.

Turnout rose to 85.1 percent: 144,530 of 169,789 eligible voters took part, 6.3 points more than in 2021. The Greens received 14,819 first votes (10.3 percent, down 3.2 points) and 14,064 second votes (9.8 percent, down 3.9 points). Wolfgang Jochen Dahler of the CDU won the direct mandate with 58,651 first votes (40.9 percent, up 5.7 points). Paula Agathe Gulde of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany was the runner-up, with 32,077 first votes (22.4 percent, up 12.2 points), and the SPD fell to 18,225 (12.7 percent). On second votes the CDU led with 55,026 (38.3 percent), ahead of the AfD with 33,316 (23.2 percent), the SPD with 14,951 (10.4 percent) and the Greens in fourth place.

Under the Federal Elections Act as amended by the statute of 8 June 2023, a candidate of a party wins a constituency seat only with a plurality of first votes and only if that seat is covered by the party’s second-vote entitlement in the Land, a rule termed *Zweitstimmendeckung*. Seats that remain after that coverage are filled from the party’s closed state list in the order the party has fixed. Reinalter did not finish first in Biberach, and the seat recorded for her in the 21st Bundestag is the list seat at place 11.

### The Biberach constituency

Constituency 292, Biberach, is in Baden-Württemberg and was drawn on the same lines for the 2021 and 2025 elections. It contains the whole district of Biberach and, from the district of Ravensburg, the municipalities of Aichstetten, Aitrach, Bad Wurzach and Kißlegg; the other municipalities of that district form constituency 294, Ravensburg.

On 31 December 2023 the constituency comprised 49 municipalities and 1,748.1 square kilometres, with a population of 237,000 and 135.6 inhabitants per square kilometre. The seat is that district together with the four Ravensburg municipalities on the boundary with constituency 294. In both federal elections the CDU candidate finished well ahead of the next constituency candidate, by 35.1 percent to 18.6 percent in 2021 and by 40.9 percent to 22.4 percent in 2025, while the Green first-vote share went from 13.6 percent to 10.3 percent. Reinalter’s mandate in each term was a Baden-Württemberg list seat—place 18 in 2021 and place 11 in 2025—rather than the direct mandate for the constituency in which she stood.

## Parliamentary roles

### Parliamentary business manager of the Green group

The Bundestag biography and the profile of the parliamentary group of Alliance 90/The Greens both describe Anja Reinalter as a parliamentary business manager (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin), an office the biography dates from her entry to the Bundestag in 2021. Every Bundestag group has such managers. With the group chair, they prepare plenary sittings, agree agendas with the other groups and in the Council of Elders, gather members for important votes, help fill committees, and act as intermediaries with the federal government, the Bundesrat, their party and associations.

In the Green group the post is part of the executive, which plans the group's work. On 24 March 2025 the group re-elected [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge) and [Britta Haßelmann](/people/britta-hasselmann) as chairs and confirmed [Irene Mihalic](/people/irene-mihalic) as first parliamentary business manager; the rest of the executive was elected on 29 April 2025, with Claudia Müller, [Filiz Polat](/people/filiz-polat) and Reinalter listed as the further parliamentary business managers. Business managers of the groups meet in advance in so-called PGF rounds. The Bundestag states that those understandings feed into the Council of Elders, whose additional seats are distributed according to group strength and whose members regularly include the business managers.

### Committees and the Council of Elders

In the 20th Bundestag, from 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025, the archived membership list records Reinalter as a full member of the then combined Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, and as a deputy member of the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure and of the Joint Committee. Under Article 53a of the Basic Law, the Joint Committee has 48 members, two-thirds from the Bundestag and one-third from the Bundesrat, and serves as an emergency parliament in a state of defence if the Bundestag cannot meet in time.

Committee remits were redrawn for the 21st Bundestag. From 25 March 2025 she has been a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, and the Green group's page lists the same two committees. Education was joined in this term to the former family, senior citizens, women and youth committee; the Bundestag reported that committee's constitutive meeting for 21 May 2025, with 38 full members and the SPD's [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) in the chair. The research committee deals with research and technology policy, including spaceflight, and under section 56a of the rules of procedure commissions technology-assessment studies for the whole parliament, carried out by the Office of Technology Assessment at the Bundestag.

She is a full member of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat) in the 21st Bundestag, from 25 March 2025. The Council consists of the President of the Bundestag, the vice-presidents and further members, experienced parliamentarians rather than necessarily the oldest. It assists the president, sets sitting weeks and the next plenary agenda—as an advisory body, whose proposals the plenary may still alter—and mediates between the groups. On internal affairs not reserved to the president or the Presidium it decides: it draws up the Bundestag's budget estimate, from which the Budget Committee may depart only after consulting it, and it allocates rooms and handles matters concerning members' staff, with commissions preparing those decisions. It meets in each sitting week under the president, with a representative of the federal government attending.

The 20th-term membership list does not record a seat on the Council itself. In September 2023 the regional paper *Wochenblatt* reported that she had gone to Windhoek, Namibia, in mid-August as a member of the Council's commission on internal affairs and as rapporteur for international exchange programmes, for selection interviews for the International Parliamentary Scholarship. The current biography does not list that commission.

### Spokesperson for education, research and technology assessment

From 2024 to 2025 Reinalter was also the Green group's spokesperson for education, research and technology assessment, held together with the business-manager post. The archived biography dates the spokespersonship from March 2024. The personnel journal *politik&kommunikation* reported on 26 March 2024 that she had held it since 19 March, succeeding Nina Stahr, who left the Bundestag after the partial repeat of the 2021 election in Berlin. The group's current profile lists parliamentary business manager, not the spokespersonship, as her function in the group.

### Boards, foundations and parliamentary friendship groups

The Bundestag lists her as deputy chair of the German–Indian Parliamentary Group, one of the bilateral parliamentary groups maintained by the house.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a deputy member of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung). The board comprises 22 members of the Bundestag, appointed by the President of the Bundestag on the proposal of the parliamentary groups, and oversees the agency’s work for effectiveness and political balance.

Separate from those parliamentary bodies, members disclose certain outside offices. The 20th-term disclosure records her, from 1 January 2024, as a member of the Senate of the Fraunhofer Society; Fraunhofer's own list still places her among senators from science, business and public life. The Senate has up to 26 members from science, business and public life, the federal government, the Länder and its scientific-technical council; it supervises and advises the executive board, appoints the president and other board members, and adopts the economic plan. The same disclosure records, from 13 December 2023, membership of the continuing-education advisory board of the German Adult Education Association (Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband), which advises the association on adult and continuing education in Germany and internationally, and, from 24 July 2024, a seat on the advisory board of ITZ Plus Biberach GmbH in Biberach an der Riß.

At the [Heinrich Böll Foundation](/organizations/heinrich-boll-foundation), which describes itself as the green political foundation, the 20th-term disclosure listed the general assembly from 19 September 2022 and that assembly's statutes commission from 2 December 2023; the current disclosure still lists the statutes commission. The current biography also lists the board of trustees of Initiative Zukunftsbildung gGmbH in Heilbronn from 12 September 2025, the #SheTransformsIT steering circle from 18 July 2025, the advisory board of Initiative Jugendparlament e.V. in Hamm, and the board of trustees of the Kompetenzzentrum Technik-Diversity-Chancengleichheit in Bielefeld from 14 July 2025. #SheTransformsIT reported that a reconstituted steering circle, with members from business, politics, science and civil society, met on 30 October 2025 and included Reinalter among three new members.

## Policy positions and legislative work

### Education, vocational training and equal opportunity

On 23 June 2022 Reinalter told the Bundestag that vocational and academic education were of equal worth against the shortage of skilled workers. Debating changes to BAföG and the 2022 vocational-education report, she cited 24,000 pupils without a training place the year before and 63,000 places unfilled in 2021, and called the gap older than the pandemic. She proposed careers guidance with the Länder and municipalities, saying a one-week placement in year nine was too short; more youth-career agencies, after applications fell when pupils could not be reached in person; and a training guarantee where places were scarce.

Later that day she cited 2.3 million people aged 20 to 34 — 15.5 percent of that group — with no educational qualification in 2021. She contrasted current equipment at her former vocational school in Biberach with schools still on copper cable and overhead projectors, said only a fifth of DigitalPakt funds had been spent after three years, and defended that morning’s BAföG rise for apprentices as well as students: “more master’s degrees and more master-craftsman qualifications.”

On 14 June 2024 she supported the Vocational Education Validation and Digitalisation Act as a route from informal skills to a formal qualification. She referred to more than four million people without a vocational certificate, to validation for people with disabilities, and to giving the German Qualifications Framework legal force so academic, vocational and foreign awards could be compared. From 19 March 2024 she was the Alliance 90/The Greens Bundestag group’s spokesperson for education, research and technology assessment, succeeding Nina Stahr.

### Family, women, youth and social policy

UNICEF Report Card 20, presented by UNICEF Germany on 17 May 2026, ranked Germany 25th of 37 wealthy countries. It reported child poverty stuck at 15 percent and only 60 percent of 15-year-olds at minimum reading and mathematics standards, with Germany 34th of 41 on academic and social skills. UNICEF Germany recommended a cross-government anti-poverty package, access to services, stronger representation of children, and better monitoring.

In a *Schwäbische Zeitung* essay on 23 May 2026, which the paper said was solely her view, Reinalter restated that rank and cast the education result as four in ten young people missing basic standards — often not even one in two children from poor families, against almost all privileged pupils. Proposals of hers, not findings of the report, were a national education drive; early education, citing Baden-Württemberg’s planned compulsory last kindergarten year and binding language support; a federal daycare-quality bill from Education Minister Karin Prien; extending Startchancen to kindergartens; help with all-day running costs; and measurable national targets. She wrote that more than 64,000 young people a year left school unqualified, and that saving on children was saving on Germany’s future.

On 30 July 2026 she rejected any further automatic link of the pension age to life expectancy. The age was already set to reach 67 by 2031 under a 2007 law, a rise she said outpaced longevity; she preferred healthy work until the regular age. On 2 April 2026 she wrote that income types were not taxed alike and that very large fortunes could be taxed more lightly than wages. She favoured closing that gap, including on very large inheritances, but called it legally difficult to treat borrowing against assets as taxable income, since a loan must be repaid.

On 8 October 2026 she voted against the Finance Committee’s recommendation to reject a Green motion ending an inheritance and gift tax preference for firms with more than 300 rented homes. The recommendation passed, 445 to 132. The same day she voted for Green bills abolishing the extended trade-tax reduction for property-letting companies and taxing gains on homes that are not owner-occupied whatever the holding period; both lost, 131 to 446. On 23 July 2026 she said she would not back changes to the [Freedom of Information Act](/facts/freedom-of-information-act) that sharply limited access to official information, and that the Greens would move to turn the Act into a federal transparency law.

### Research, technology and rural Upper Swabia

The *Schwäbische Zeitung*, using her press release, reported early-2024 visits in Upper Swabia to the Mayr joinery in Schwendi, named a top trainer by the Ulm Chamber of Crafts, and the Mast bakery in Untersulmentingen. She was quoted that good training was the condition for securing skilled workers, and that placements abroad and extra qualifications were a step toward parity of vocational and academic education.

On 3 June 2025 she wrote that rooftop photovoltaics on a detached house paid off ecologically and economically, and that sunny-weather grid shutdowns in the Upper Swabia–Lake Constance area were rare, short and usually under 1 percent of output; she pointed readers to consumer advice and a Fraunhofer ISE fact sheet. On 16 October 2026 she voted against holding the national carbon price on motor and heating fuels in 2027 inside the 2026 band of €55 to €65 a tonne, ahead of the EU emissions-trading system for buildings and road transport due in 2028. The text passed 303 to 210, with 52 abstentions; expected losses for the Climate and Transformation Fund were put at about €400 million.

On 15 October 2026 she voted to extend the Bundeswehr part in the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to the end of October 2027 — up to 50 soldiers, about €900,000 — which passed 496 to 73. She abstained on extending the European Union operation EUNAVFOR Aspides in the Red Sea and nearby waters, up to 350 soldiers and about €18.9 million, which passed 421 to 66 with 90 abstentions.

## Outside income, public profile and reception

### Declared outside activities

Members of the Bundestag must notify the President of the Bundestag, within three months of taking their seats and of any later change, of the occupation held before the mandate — including a right of return or protection against dismissal — and of paid work continued alongside it. Once income from a notifiable activity exceeds 1,000 euros in a month or, if it does not, 3,000 euros in a calendar year, the sum is published on the member’s page to the euro and cent and labelled as gross or as profit before tax. University teachers may keep up research, teaching and supervision of doctoral and postdoctoral work; the pay must follow the work actually done and may not exceed 25 per cent of the salary the academic post would otherwise bring.

Reinalter’s entry lists the pre-mandate post as professor at Kempten University of Applied Sciences, with a right of return and protection against dismissal. For the professorship kept alongside the mandate, the Bundestag and Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de) both give gross figures of 2,353.92 euros a month from 1 April to 30 November 2025, 1,983.17 euros a month from 1 December 2025, and a single payment of 1,536.89 euros in 2025. In July 2022 she wrote there that she continued the post because exchange with young people mattered to her, and that the salary was set off against her parliamentary remuneration. Other reduced academic posts are published in the same form: [Reza Asghari](/people/reza-asghari) of the CDU is listed as a university teacher at TU Braunschweig at 1,417.00 euros gross a month until November 2025 and 1,774.14 euros from December 2025, with a right of return, and [Daniel Zerbin](/people/daniel-zerbin) of the AfD at 607.09 euros gross a month from the NBS Northern Business School in Hamburg, also with a right of return and protection against dismissal. Board and advisory seats without a published fee appear in the same disclosure, which marks her seats on the Laupheim municipal council and the Biberach district council as honorary; she said in 2022 that those offices carried an expense allowance under the local statutes.

### Media coverage and constituency work

What the regional press has published is interviews and constituency work, not a personal controversy or a dispute over the disclosed pay. In January 2022 the *Schwäbische Zeitung* described her as the first woman from the Biberach constituency in the Bundestag; she said she was already employing office staff, still supervising bachelor theses at Kempten, and combining the mandate with the journey between Berlin and Laupheim and with her local offices. In October 2022 she said she had “got used to the pace and the greater responsibility,” in a first year the paper set against the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, energy prices and shortages of skilled workers, and against her role as parliamentary business manager of the Green parliamentary group.

About a hundred days into the CDU–SPD government, she told the paper in August 2025 that the record was sobering. She called the chancellor’s election and the failed election of constitutional judges serious, avoidable mishaps, and said Alliance 90/The Greens — in her words the largest democratic opposition party — would scrutinise the government and still back proposals they considered sound. She also spoke of Laupheim’s vocational school, of what she called very hard campaign experiences, and of repeating a “democracy tour” of schools with Wolfgang Dahler (CDU) and Martin Gerster (SPD). On 8 May 2025 the *Wochenblatt*, after her re-election as business manager, reported her argument that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s classification of the AfD required a debate on civil-service, teaching and police posts, and noted that the office said later that day it would not publicly use the “confirmed right-wing extremist” label until a court ruled on an urgent application.

In September 2026 the *Schwäbische Zeitung* reported a dialogue in which she invited people across Upper Swabia, including non-Green voters, to conversations and short questionnaires on [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion), calling democracy “not a spectator sport.” On Parliamentwatch she had answered all five questions recorded for the current mandate.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

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