# Anja Weisgerber

# Anja Weisgerber

Anja Weisgerber (born 11 March 1976 in Schweinfurt) is a German lawyer and a politician of the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU). She sits with the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag, which records her profession as a lawyer (Rechtsanwältin), her denomination as evangelical Lutheran, and that she has two children. She was a member of the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament) from 2004 to 2013 and has represented the federal constituency of Schweinfurt, in Bavaria, since October 2013.

Weisgerber passed the Abitur in 1995 at the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Gymnasium in Schweinfurt. From 1995 to 2000 she studied law at the University of Würzburg and the University of Lausanne on a scholarship from the [Konrad Adenauer Foundation](/organizations/konrad-adenauer-foundation), and her first state examination focused on environmental law and economic administrative law. A further foundation scholarship supported doctoral study at Würzburg in 2000 and 2001 on parliamentary committees of inquiry of the Bundestag. She then completed a legal traineeship in Schweinfurt and Munich, passed the second state examination in 2003 with an emphasis on commercial law, and was admitted as a lawyer in 2004.

In the European Parliament's sixth term she sat with the European People's Party Group, then styled the Group of the [European People's Party](/organizations/european-people-s-party) ([Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats)) and European Democrats, and served on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. After moving to the Bundestag she was the CDU/CSU coordinator (Obfrau) on the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety from 2013 to 2017, the group's climate-policy representative from 2017 to 2021, and from 2021 to 2025 its spokesperson for the environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection. Since 2017 she has also been first deputy chair of the group's women members.

On 13 May 2025 the CDU/CSU Bundestag group elected a new executive and named Weisgerber a deputy chair for education, family, senior citizens, women and youth, and for culture and media. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, of the Committee on Culture and Media, and of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. At the 2025 federal election she held the direct mandate in constituency 249, Schweinfurt, with 70,455 first votes, 43.4 percent of the valid first votes.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Lower Franconia

Anja Weisgerber was born on 11 March 1976 in Schweinfurt, in Bavaria, Germany. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, gives her denomination as Evangelical Lutheran. She describes Schwebheim, a municipality in the district of Schweinfurt in Lower Franconia, as her home community (*Heimatgemeinde*). A *Main-Post* portrait published on 15 August 2013 described a three-generation household in a row house there: her parents, Elli and Karl-Heinz Weisgerber, ran a spice business (*Gewürzhandel*), and she was living in the same house.

From 1986 to 1995 she attended the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Gymnasium in Schweinfurt, and in 1995 she passed the *Abitur* there. The Bundestag biography records the same school and the same year. Her own curriculum vitae states that until 2000 she played competitive tennis and was more than once a Bavarian champion.

### Legal studies and doctorate

From 1995 to 2000 Weisgerber studied law (*Rechtswissenschaft*) at the University of Würzburg and the University of Lausanne, with a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The curriculum vitae of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) names the Würzburg university in full as the Bavarian Julius Maximilian University (*Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität*) and dates a semester in Lausanne to 1998, devoted to French law and European law. The Bundestag biography identifies the scholarship as the foundation's student programme, the *Deutsche Studenten- und Begabtenförderung*, and records that in 2000 she passed the first state examination in law (*Erstes Juristisches Staatsexamen*), with environmental law and economic administrative law (*Wirtschaftsverwaltungsrecht*) as her fields of emphasis.

She remained at Würzburg for doctoral research from August 2000 to October 2001, again as a scholarship holder of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The Bundestag biography names that award as the foundation's graduate programme, the *Deutsche Graduierten- und Begabtenförderung*. The Bundestag biography gives the subject shortly as parliamentary committees of inquiry of the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag). The dissertation itself is titled *Das Beweiserhebungsverfahren parlamentarischer Untersuchungsausschüsse des Deutschen Bundestages* (*The Procedure for Taking Evidence in Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry of the German Bundestag*). Peter Lang issued it as a dissertation in the series *Schriften zum Staats- und Völkerrecht*, volume 102: a 528-page paperback, with the imprint places Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, [New York](/organizations/new-york), Oxford and Vienna, dated 2003 (ISBN 978-3-631-50499-4). The bookseller Lehmanns dates the publication to 18 March 2003.

The book sets out to test whether the Investigative Committee Act (*Untersuchungsausschussgesetz*) passed by the Bundestag in April 2001, after thirty years of debate on reform, clarified disputed problems in how parliamentary inquiry committees take evidence. It examines those problems under the analogous application of the rules of criminal procedure, which Article 44(2), first sentence, of the Basic Law still required. The Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) later cited the study, dating it to 2002, on the point that a committee has neither discretion nor a prerogative of assessment when interpreting its investigative mandate.

### Referendariat and admission to the bar

The publisher's biographical note, written for the 2003 edition, states that Weisgerber had been a legal trainee (*Rechtsreferendarin*) in Schweinfurt since October 2001. Her *Referendariat* ran from 2001 to 2003 and, on the Bundestag biography, was served in Schweinfurt and Munich. The CSU curriculum vitae specifies Schweinfurt work at the local court (*Amtsgericht Schweinfurt*), the government of Lower Franconia (*Regierung von Unterfranken*) and a law firm in the town. The same account lists her in 2003 at Price Waterhouse Coopers Veltins Rechtsanwalts GmbH in Munich, under professional activity rather than as a named training station. In 2003 she passed the second state examination in law (*Zweites Juristisches Staatsexamen*), with commercial law (*Wirtschaftsrecht*) as the emphasis. She was admitted as a *Rechtsanwältin* (lawyer) in 2004. In the same year she entered the European Parliament, where she sat until 2013.

## Party career and local office

### Young Union and the CSU

Weisgerber joined the Junge Union (JU), the shared youth organization of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and the Christian Democratic Union, in 1995. The CSU biographical archive records that she was Geschäftsführerin of the JU in Lower Franconia from 1996 to 1999, and that in 1997 she joined the CSU and founded the JU local branch in Schwebheim, which she chaired until 1999. From 1997 to 2003 she was deputy chair of the JU in the Schweinfurt district association Schweinfurt-Land. From 1999 to 2009 she was deputy chair of the JU in Lower Franconia, and from 1999 to 2001 a member of the JU's national council, the Deutschlandrat.

The same record dates her first seat on a CSU district executive to 1999, on the Schweinfurt-Land Kreisvorstand. In 1999 she founded the Lower Franconia branch of the Arbeitskreis Umweltsicherung und Landesentwicklung (AKU), the CSU working group on environmental protection and regional development. From 2003 to 2011 she sat on the JU state executive in Bavaria and led the JU Bavaria AKU. The archive lists her as deputy state chair of the CSU's AKU from 2001; the working group's published state board now lists her as Landesvorsitzende.

### Schwebheim council and the Schweinfurt district council

CSU biographical records state that Weisgerber was a member of the Schwebheim municipal council from 2002 to 2008.

The Bundestag biography lists her as a Kreisrätin in Landkreis Schweinfurt since 2008 and records the Kreistag seat as honorary. District publications document her election in the three contests since then. At the Kreistag election of 16 March 2014 the CSU list won 30 seats. Weisgerber, entered as a lawyer living in Schwebheim, was second among those elected from that list, with 51,477 valid personal votes, behind State Secretary Gerhard Eck with 53,419. The official notice states that the order of those elected followed personal votes. In the election of 15 March 2020 she was again second on the CSU list, with 49,473 votes to Eck's 50,893.

In the final result of 8 March 2026, when turnout was 69.9 percent, she received 45,003 personal votes, the highest figure in the district's published ranking, ahead of the CSU candidates Martina Gießübel (39,641) and Gabriele Jakob (39,095). She had been nominated in third place on the CSU list and was elected, placed first by votes.

### District chair and state party bodies

The CSU archive dates the chair of Kreisverband Schweinfurt-Land to 2011, after membership of that executive from 1999. It also records a seat on the Lower Franconia CSU executive from 2003 and the deputy chair of that Bezirksverband from 2019. In June 2023 the *Main-Post* reported that a Kreisversammlung in Geldersheim had confirmed her as district chair for another two years; the paper said it was drawing on a CSU press release. On 14 May 2025 a further assembly in Niederwerrn re-elected her with 93.65 percent of the delegates' votes, according to the Kreisverband.

She has been a member of the CSU Parteivorstand since 2009. In November 2023 that board elected her to the Präsidium. The Kreisverband described the Präsidium as a 19-member body for current business, urgent matters and contact with the CDU, with some members sitting ex officio and others chosen by the Parteivorstand. The party's published leadership list still places her in both the Parteivorstand and the Präsidium. From 2022 the archive lists her as chair of the CSU Grundsatzkommission jointly with Gerhard Hopp; the 2023 Präsidium announcement referred to the same role as co-chair.

In the Frauen-Union, the CSU's women's organization, the archive lists membership of the Bavarian state executive from 2007, the chair of the Lower Franconia branch from 2009 to 2023, and a deputy state chair from 2011. A Frauen-Union board list dated 26 September 2025 still names her among the deputy state chairs, for Lower Franconia, for the 2025–2027 term. The archive also records a seat on the Mittelstands-Union state executive in 2009 and on the board of the CSU's Evangelischer Arbeitskreis, its Protestant working group, in 2010.

## European Parliament

### Elections of 2004 and 2009

At German elections to the European Parliament in this period, each voter cast one vote for a closed party list, and seats were filled in the order printed on that list. Most parties submitted a single nationwide list. The [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) used separate lists in the Länder other than Bavaria, and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) stood only in Bavaria, on a list of its own.

On 13 June 2004 the CSU list was headed by Ingo Friedrich, Angelika Niebler and Markus Ferber. Weisgerber, a lawyer from Schwebheim, was fourth, ahead of Albert Deß. The CSU took 2,063,900 votes — 57.4 percent in Bavaria and 8.0 percent of the valid votes cast in Germany — and nine of the 99 German seats, which reached her place. She was a member from 20 July 2004 to 13 July 2009, sitting for the CSU in the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats.

For the 2009 election, on 7 June, the CSU placed her third, behind Ferber and Niebler and ahead of [Manfred Weber](/people/manfred-weber), with Gabriele Stauner ninth. The party's Bavarian share fell by 9.3 points, to 1,896,762 votes and 48.1 percent, equal to 7.2 percent nationally, and its seats fell from nine to eight. She was returned, and from 14 July 2009 sat in the Group of the European People's Party.

### Environment, health and internal-market work

She was a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for both terms, including after the mid-term reconstitution of committees in January 2007 and again in January 2012. In the sixth term she was a substitute on Employment and Social Affairs and, from 19 January 2006, on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection; the internal-market substitute seat continued from 16 July 2009 until she left on 21 October 2013.

On ambient air quality, procedure 2005/0183(COD), Holger Krahmer of the [Alliance of Liberals and Democrats](/organizations/alliance-of-liberals-and-democrats) was the environment committee's rapporteur. In the debate of 25 September 2006 he thanked Weisgerber and the Dutch Socialist Dorette Corbey as shadow rapporteurs for the two largest groups. Corbey, rapporteur for the parallel report on the thematic strategy on [air pollution](/drivers/air-pollution), also named Weisgerber and [Anders Wijkman](/people/anders-wijkman) among the shadows she had worked with. For her group, Weisgerber described the text as a compromise and said that limit values would not clean the air unless emissions were cut at source, including through the proposed Euro 5 standard for vehicles. [Jonas Sjöstedt](/people/jonas-sjostedt), for the European United Left, urged the House not to accept a postponement of the kind backed by the committee or by Weisgerber and others. The file was enacted as Directive 2008/50/EC on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe. )

Her only report as lead committee rapporteur in the sixth term was the internal-market report of 30 May 2008 on type-approval of hydrogen-powered motor vehicles, amending the framework Directive 2007/46/EC (A6-0201/2008). On plant-protection products, procedure 2006/0136(COD), the environment committee's rapporteur was Hiltrud Breyer of [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens); Weisgerber drafted the internal-market committee's opinion, adopted on 18 April 2007, which was annexed to the lead report. &l=en) The same committee's opinion of 25 June 2008, also under her name, covered the Euro VI proposal on emissions from heavy-duty vehicles and access to repair and maintenance information. The act on authorising plant-protection products became Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009. &l=en)

In the seventh term the environment committee's report on carbon-dioxide standards for new light commercial vehicles, A7-0287/2010 of 12 October 2010, was drafted by Martin Callanan of the [European Conservatives and Reformists](/organizations/european-conservatives-and-reformists). Parliament's record lists Weisgerber as the shadow rapporteur on that report; Werner Langen, from her own group, drafted the opinion of the industry committee. On vehicle noise, procedure 2011/0409(COD), Miroslav Ouzký was the environment committee's rapporteur and Weisgerber the rapporteur for the internal-market opinion of 25 June 2012. ) Her only lead report in the term was the internal-market report of 22 March 2010, A7-0050/2010, on repealing eight older Council directives on metrology. She also drafted the environment committee's opinion of 8 November 2012 on the revision of the directive on recognition of professional qualifications.

### Reports, delegations and the move to national politics

Outside the committees, from 15 September 2004 to 13 July 2009 she was a member of the Delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly and a substitute on the Delegation to the EU–Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee. From 16 September 2009 until her departure she was a member of the Delegation for relations with the Mashreq countries and of the Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Union for the Mediterranean](/organizations/union-for-the-mediterranean), and a substitute on the Delegation for relations with Canada.

On 17 February 2009 the environment committee rejected, by a large majority, a resolution drawn up by Krahmer and Weisgerber which said the [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission) should not ban incandescent lamps. Under the scrutiny rules Parliament had until mid-March to oppose the implementing measure; the committee vote left the planned replacement of those lamps by more efficient types, running through to 2012, on course.

Michael Glos, the CSU member for Schweinfurt since 1976 and a former federal minister for economics, told a CSU New Year reception in the city in February 2012 that he would not stand at the 2013 Bundestag election. In October 2012 the *Main-Post* reported that Weisgerber was the CSU candidate to succeed him in the constituency. The constituency returning officer's final notice for 22 September 2013 recorded her election, with 76,548 first votes. Her European mandate ended on 21 October 2013, the day before the Bundestag's constitutive sitting, and Stauner, next on the 2009 CSU list, returned to the Parliament in her place. She did not stand at the [2014 European election](/facts/2014-european-parliament-election-in-germany). The CSU list adopted that January was headed by Ferber. A compilation of the German lists gives the following Bavarian places as Niebler, Weber, Monika Hohlmeier and Deß, and does not include Weisgerber.

## Member of the Bundestag

### Direct mandate for Schweinfurt

Weisgerber entered the Bundestag when the 18th term convened on 22 October 2013, one month after the federal election of 22 September. She had sat in the European Parliament from 2004 until that change of mandate, and she stood for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria in Schweinfurt after Michael Glos — a CSU member of the Bundestag since 1976 and federal minister for economics from 2005 to 2009 — said at a party reception in the city that he would not contest the 2013 election. She has held the constituency as a directly elected member in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st terms.

The seat was numbered 250 at the elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021 and 249 in 2025. In both numberings it comprises the independent city of Schweinfurt and the districts of Schweinfurt and Kitzingen, in Bavaria.

The constituency returning officer declared her elected with 76,548 first votes in 2013, 73,901 in 2017 and 63,697 in 2021. In the federal result those totals were 54.8, 47.9 and 40.9 percent of valid first votes. At the 2025 election the federal returning officer recorded 43.4 percent for her and 20.8 percent for [Bernd Schuhmann](/people/bernd-schuhmann) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, the runner-up.

### Environment committee and faction spokesperson roles

In the 18th term she was a full member, and the CDU/CSU *Obfrau*, of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, a full member of the subcommittee on European law, and a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. An *Obfrau* or *Obmann* is a parliamentary group's main contact with its leadership inside a committee: the post helps set the group's line and the committee agenda and keeps track of the detail of the committee's work.

After building policy was placed in its own committee, the archived record for the 19th term lists her as *Obfrau* and full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, as a full member of the Committee on Building, Housing, Urban Development and Local Government and of the subcommittee on European law, and again as a deputy member of the legal-affairs committee. The career summary on her Bundestag page, which the parliament prints from members' own information, also lists her as the CDU/CSU group's climate-policy commissioner (*Klimabeauftragte*) from 2017 to 2021 and, from 2017, as first deputy chair of the group's women's caucus, the *Gruppe der Frauen*.

In the 20th term that summary names her the group's spokesperson for the environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection, the remit of the committee on which the parliament listed her as a full member. She was a deputy member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy, of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government, and of the subcommittee on international climate and energy policy, and a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

### Deputy chair from 2025

On 13 May 2025 the CDU/CSU group elected a new executive for the 21st term, a week after Jens Spahn had been chosen as chair. Weisgerber was elected a deputy chair for education, family, senior citizens, women and youth, and for culture and media. On the same list, environment, climate action, nature conservation, nuclear safety, development cooperation and sustainability were assigned to Andreas Jung, while [Anne König](/people/anne-konig) and [Ottilie Klein](/people/ottilie-klein) were elected to chair the working groups for the education and the culture committees.

The Bundestag's current list of offices, kept separate from that self-reported summary, names her a full member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. She is a deputy, not a full, member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Committee on Culture and Media, and a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

## Environmental and climate policy

### Air quality, soil and vehicle emissions

In the Bundestag Weisgerber continued a line from her years on the European Parliament's environment committee: cut pollution at source, and avoid rules she described as ill fitted to local conditions. On 20 April 2012, after a resolution on the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020, she said the CDU/CSU had blocked demands from Alliance 90/The Greens for a comprehensive European soil directive. Soil should be protected, she said, by measures adapted locally, not by what she called a bureaucratic directive.

Nitrogen dioxide from traffic tested that line. On 27 February 2018 the Federal Administrative Court largely dismissed appeals by North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg in cases brought by Deutsche Umwelthilfe over the clean-air plans for Düsseldorf and Stuttgart (BVerwG 7 C 26.16 and 7 C 30.17). The annual limit of 40 micrograms per cubic metre, in force since 1 January 2010, had to be met as soon as possible. Sticker rules did not themselves authorise diesel bans, but had to be set aside where such a ban was the only suitable measure, subject to proportionality.

Weisgerber did not treat the judgment as a case for bans. On 12 November 2018 she wrote that hardware retrofits still needed approval from the Federal Motor Transport Authority, that Euro 4 diesels could not be retrofitted and that Euro 5 cars had to be checked individually. She opposed charging taxpayers as a whole: the aim, she wrote, was to keep individual mobility and stay proportionate. German manufacturers, Audi included, were offering trade-in discounts in cities such as Munich.

The Umweltbundesamt later reported that 2024 was the first year Germany met every limit in the EU air-quality directive, including the 40 µg/m³ nitrogen-dioxide mean. A revised directive, in force from 10 December 2024, lowers that limit to 20 µg/m³ by 2030, closer to but still above World Health Organization guidance.

### The 2019 climate package and the coal exit

The 2019 package was negotiated in the grand coalition of CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party under Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel). On 12 September 2019 *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported that the Union had chosen certificate trading rather than a carbon tax. In a Deutschlandfunk interview after the cabinet presented the programme, Weisgerber, then the group's climate representative, called it "far better than its reputation." What mattered, she said, was a corridor of 35 to 60 euros a tonne and, from 2026, a market price that could go higher, plus annual sector targets with quick corrective programmes if they were missed. The SPD wanted a fixed price; the Union would have moved sooner to quantity-based trading. Asked about the Potsdam Institute's 50-euro entry price and 180-euro end price, she said a market price could reach that level.

Greenpeace rejected that account. Lisa Göldner called the 20 September 2019 programme a "climate parcel": a "ridiculously low" carbon price would raise petrol and diesel by only a few cents, partly offset by a higher commuter allowance, and the government's own 2030 goal would be missed by a wide margin. Andree Böhling said overdue cuts were being postponed for years.

The Federal Climate Change Act of 12 December 2019 made a 55 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2030, against 1990, a statutory duty and set annual quantities by sector. On 24 March 2021 the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held those rules incompatible with fundamental rights where they failed to specify further cuts from 2031, because emissions allowed until then would narrow later freedom. It did not find a breach of the duty to protect life and property in the 2030 path itself, and it accepted the Act's use of the [Paris Agreement](/facts/paris-agreement) temperature goal as a reading of Article 20a of the Basic Law.

Coal was legislated alongside that Act. The cabinet draft, from economy minister Peter Altmaier and environment minister [Svenja Schulze](/people/svenja-schulze), followed the Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment: about 15 gigawatts each of hard coal and lignite by 2022, about 8 and 9 gigawatts by 2030, and an end by the close of 2038 at the latest. On 27 July 2020 Weisgerber wrote that she had voted for the Coal Phase-out Act. She called the exit legally secure, economically sensible and socially balanced. Several tens of thousands of jobs and whole regions depended on the industry, she wrote, and structural change could not be done overnight.

### Nuclear power, heating and criticism

The statutory nuclear phase-out collided with the energy crisis after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In July 2022 Weisgerber, by then the CDU/CSU environment spokesperson, told *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* that if every kilowatt-hour mattered for cutting gas-fired generation, shutting three safe reactors at year's end was negligent. In November, after the coalition under Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) had agreed operation into April 2023, she told the *Augsburger Allgemeine* that expecting the crisis to be over the next year was a fatal misjudgment. She asked for a third stress test for winter 2023/24 and said ordering fresh fuel was again being missed.

On 12 May 2023 she criticised the draft amendment of the Building Energy Act in the same terms. Constituents, she said, feared pensioners could not afford a new heating system. [Felix Banaszak](/people/felix-banaszak) asked whether the Union would drop claims he called false, including an immediate duty to replace working heaters. She answered that the draft did require replacement of 30-year-old systems in the existing stock, and that building-ministry guidance barred biomass heating in new buildings, contrary to the environment minister.

Her alternative was fuel-emissions trading, which she said she had helped negotiate as an extension of the EU emissions-trading system she had worked on in the European Parliament. Andreas Jung, she said, had pressed it at European level. Revenue should subsidise new heating and cars, not a per-capita climate payment she said the coalition had not introduced. She called the draft climate planning and paternalism, with fines of up to 50,000 euros and too little technical choice. [Kevin Kühnert](/people/kevin-kuhnert) asked what carbon price that model required and how any repayment would work.

On 26 April 2024 she called the 2019 Climate Change Act the core of German climate law and its amendment a "black day for climate protection." The coalition, she said, was dropping the duty to table immediate programmes when one sector left its path, a duty she said the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg had already enforced. Speakers for the Free Democrats and the Greens replied that a tonne of carbon dioxide is the same from any sector, and that the amendment looked to projections and a 2040 checkpoint rather than to blame after the fact.

## Family, education, culture and equality

### Women's group and votes on family law

The *Gruppe der Frauen* is the caucus of women in the CDU/CSU Bundestag group. [Mechthild Heil](/people/mechthild-heil) chairs it; Weisgerber, of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, is first deputy chair, an office her Bundestag biography dates from 2017.

On 30 June 2017, in the 244th sitting, the Bundestag held the second and third reading of a Bundesrat bill giving persons of the same sex a right to marry (Drucksachen 18/6665 and 18/12989). The result given in the chamber was 623 votes cast, 393 in favour, 226 against and four abstentions, and the bill was declared adopted. The division lists 75 CDU/CSU members, Heil among them, as voting yes, and Weisgerber among the CDU/CSU noes; the four abstentions were also cast by CDU/CSU members.

In a personal explanation printed with the stenographic report, Weisgerber wrote that she would not support the bill. Marriage between a man and a woman, she said, stood under special state protection because children could be born of it. Same-sex partners deserved respect, and she listed equalisations already enacted—the shared name, inheritance, income-tax splitting, maintenance, separation and dissolution, successive adoption and civil-service survivor benefits—while writing that she rejected discrimination but that the word “marriage” did not itself create equality of substance. She added that lawyers disagreed on whether the change required an amendment of the Basic Law and therefore a two-thirds majority, and she called the scheduling a rushed move beside the longer debates on earlier decisions of conscience, such as assisted dying. She also rejected the label “marriage for all,” because siblings may not marry and a marriage of one man with several women is not allowed.

### Education, seniors and youth from 2025

On 13 May 2025 the CDU/CSU group, under chair Jens Spahn, elected Weisgerber a deputy chair for education, family, senior citizens, women and youth, and for culture and media. The Bundestag lists her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth; Anne König chairs the group’s working party for that committee.

At the first reading on 22 May 2025 of a CDU/CSU–SPD bill extending the federal all-day investment programme (Drucksache 21/216), she said care often stopped between Kita and primary school, pushing mothers to cut their hours, and backed two further years for municipalities to draw the federal money. On 26 June 2025 the Bundestag adopted the bill unanimously on the education committee’s recommendation (Drucksache 21/630): funded projects may run until 31 December 2029 and be settled until 30 June 2030, and the related special fund until 31 December 2030, ahead of a phased legal entitlement to all-day support for primary grades 1 to 4 from the 2026/27 school year.

On 18 December 2025, in the first reading of a government bill on youth work in school holidays (Drucksache 21/3193), she called the all-day entitlement a social and family-policy milestone and said municipalities should be able to count independent providers toward it in the holidays, rather than shorten holidays. To [Corinna Rüffer](/people/corinna-ruffer) (Greens) she said families of children with impairments needed particular, financeable support, which she would examine with the minister, the Länder and the providers. The bill was referred to committee.

### Culture, media, film funding and Franco-German work

The biography lists her as a deputy, not an ordinary, member of the Committee on Culture and Media. Ottilie Klein chairs the CDU/CSU culture-and-media working group.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag, without debate, filled outside bodies. A joint CDU/CSU–SPD proposal for the Filmförderungsanstalt administrative board—[Melanie Bernstein](/people/melanie-bernstein) and [Martin Rabanus](/people/martin-rabanus) as members, Weisgerber and Nancy Faeser as deputies—passed unanimously, as did the CDU/CSU slate for the council of the Federal Foundation for Equality (Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung): Wolfgang Dahler, [Ralph Edelhäußer](/people/ralph-edelhausser), [Oliver Pöpsel](/people/oliver-popsel) and [Astrid Timmermann-Fechter](/people/astrid-timmermann-fechter) as members, and [Stephan Albani](/people/stephan-albani), [Ellen Demuth](/people/ellen-demuth), [Harald Orthey](/people/harald-orthey) and Weisgerber as deputies. The biography records both of her seats as unpaid from that date. The Bundestag described the foundation’s purpose as strengthening and promoting women and men in Germany; Family Minister Karin Prien chairs its council. The film board, of whose 36 members the Bundestag names three, promotes the German film industry and the creative quality of German film.

On 9 July 2026 the Bundestag accepted the CDU/CSU proposal and elected Johannes Volkmann as member and Weisgerber as deputy on the administrative board of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

In the first reading on 24 September 2026 of the Media Services Investment Obligation Bill (MedienInvestVG, Drucksache 21/7820), Weisgerber said firms doing good business in Germany should contribute to production there. She described an obligation of 8 per cent of the previous year’s net turnover, with an opening clause for a firm investing at least 12 per cent, and said she and SPD deputy chair [Wiebke Esdar](/people/wiebke-esdar) had called the coalition compromise “the best of both worlds.” Sub-quotas, she said, would direct a substantial share to new European works by independent producers, with weight on German-language originals. Legal opinions and the European Commission, she added, had warned of disproportionate intervention, so parliament still had to produce a legally secure, proportionate and unbureaucratic text. She put film-location employment at about 145,000 jobs. The bill was referred to the committees on the order paper.

The biography lists her as a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. At its eleventh plenary sitting, in Paris on 16 June 2025, she was elected with Inge Gräßle, [Klaus Mack](/people/klaus-mack) and [Norbert Röttgen](/people/norbert-rottgen) as a CDU/CSU substitute on the bureau, beside full members [Yannick Bury](/people/yannick-bury), Andreas Jung, [Thomas Silberhorn](/people/thomas-silberhorn) and [Roland Theis](/people/roland-theis). She also questioned the German and French energy ministers on supply security, hydrogen and small modular reactors.

## Electoral history

### The Schweinfurt constituency

The Bundestag constituency of Schweinfurt is in Lower Franconia, Bavaria. It was numbered 250 at the elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021, and 249 at the election of 23 February 2025. On the Federal Returning Officer’s delimitation for each of those elections the territory was the same: the independent city of Schweinfurt and the whole of both Landkreis Schweinfurt and Landkreis Kitzingen, and not Landkreis Haßberge.

Michael Glos (CSU), who had sat in the Bundestag since 1976 and had been federal minister for economics and chairman of the CSU’s Bundestag state group (Landesgruppe), said in February 2012, at a CSU New Year reception in Schweinfurt, that he would not stand at the 2013 federal election. In October 2012 the *Main-Post* reported that Anja Weisgerber of Schwebheim, then a Member of the European Parliament, was the CSU’s candidate to succeed him as the constituency’s Bundestag member.

### Results from 2013 to 2025

Weisgerber won the direct mandate at all four elections as the CSU candidate. The shares below are of valid first votes (*Erststimmen*). Totals are the Federal Returning Officer’s final results; the names of the constituency candidates are those in the notices of the constituency returning officer in Schweinfurt, whose recorded first-vote totals match the federal party figures. In 2025 the runner-up’s name is also given on the federal and Bavarian results pages.

| Election | No. | Eligible | Turnout | Weisgerber (CSU) | Runner-up |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 22 September 2013 | 250 | 200,150 | 70.6% | 76,548 (54.8%) | Ralf Hofmann (SPD), 32,190 (23.1%) |
| 24 September 2017 | 250 | 199,041 | 78.5% | 73,901 (47.9%) | Markus Hümpfer (SPD), 26,346 (17.1%) |
| 26 September 2021 | 250 | 196,710 | 80.0% | 63,697 (40.9%) | Markus Hümpfer (SPD), 29,037 (18.6%) |
| 23 February 2025 | 249 | 194,125 | 84.2% | 70,455 (43.4%) | Bernd Willi Karl Schuhmann (AfD), 33,832 (20.8%) |

On 22 September 2013, 141,275 people voted and 139,562 first votes were valid. Weisgerber’s 54.8% was 8.5 percentage points above the CSU’s first-vote share in the district in 2009. Hofmann, for the SPD, was second.

Turnout rose to 78.5% in 2017 (156,159 voters; 154,269 valid first votes). Weisgerber’s share fell by 6.9 points, to 47.9%. Hümpfer (SPD) was second and Christian Herbert Klingen (AfD) third, with 17,198 votes (11.1%).

In 2021, 157,357 of 196,710 eligible voters took part. Of 155,803 valid first votes, Weisgerber received 40.9%, down 7.0 points. Hümpfer was again runner-up. Schuhmann (AfD) was third with 15,468 votes (9.9%).

The 2025 contest, on the same territory but numbered 249, had 194,125 eligible voters and a turnout of 84.2% (163,446 voters; 949 invalid and 162,497 valid first votes). Weisgerber’s 43.4% was 2.5 points higher than in 2021. Schuhmann finished second on 20.8%, up 10.9 points, and the SPD fell to 21,834 votes (13.4%). On the party list the CSU took 39.4% of valid second votes in the constituency (64,166 of 162,845), four points below Weisgerber’s personal share.

Before the Bundestag she was elected from the CSU’s Bavarian list for the European Parliament: fourth on the list at the election of 13 June 2004, when the CSU won nine seats, and third on 7 June 2009, when it won eight.

## Personal life and other activities

### Family and residence

The Bundestag biography, compiled from Weisgerber's own statements, records that she was born on 11 March 1976 in Schweinfurt, is evangelical Lutheran, and has two children. She lives in Schwebheim. A *Main-Post* portrait of 15 August 2013 described a three-generation household in a row house there: Weisgerber, her husband, the physicist Carsten Deibel, their children Chiara and Nicolas, and her parents, Elli and Karl-Heinz, who ran a spice business. A *Main-Post* report dated 11 February 2013 stated that she had given birth that Monday to a son, Nicolas Jacob, and that a daughter, Chiara Marie, had been born in March 2011.

Deibel, born in 1975 in Wuppertal, has been professor of optics and photonics of condensed matter at Chemnitz University of Technology since March 2014. From 2005 to 2014 he was a scientific assistant at the University of Würzburg, where he completed a habilitation in experimental physics in 2011.

### Legal practice and disclosed outside roles

Weisgerber was admitted as a *Rechtsanwältin* (lawyer) in 2004. Her Bundestag disclosure, filed under the Members of the Bundestag Act, lists as professional activity before the mandate her membership of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and work as a lawyer at GSK Stockmann & Kollegen in Frankfurt. The same filing places "Rechtsanwältin, Schwebheim" under paid activities alongside the mandate. On her website she states that she has no income from that practice, takes on no client mandates, and concentrates on parliamentary work.

### Awards and civic memberships

On 9 May 2008 Markus Söder, then Bavarian minister for federal and European affairs, conferred the Medal for Special Services to Bavaria in a United Europe on ten people, Weisgerber among them, at the Tucherschloss in Nuremberg.

*Main-Post* quoted him as saying the state government had deliberately honoured her while she was still a young member of the European Parliament, citing work for Franconian winegrowers and the *Bocksbeutel* protection and her activity in the environment, internal-market and social-affairs committees.

On 20 October 2016 the then environment minister Ulrike Scharf presented her in Munich with the Bavarian State Medal for outstanding services to the environment, according to a press release Weisgerber issued the next day. The Bavarian environment ministry describes that medal as the Free State's highest distinction in the field, awarded each year to up to 15 people, associations or municipalities. The release quotes Scharf on her environmental work from the Junge Union through local office, a mediating role over the former US training area at Brönnhof, the European Parliament, and the Bundestag environment committee.

The disclosure marks several other offices as honorary. She sits on the regional council (*Rat der Region*) of Region Mainfranken GmbH in Würzburg and on the district council (*Kreistag*) of Landkreis Schweinfurt; the biography dates the district seat from 2008. From 18 September 2025 she is an honorary deputy on the administrative board of the Filmförderungsanstalt in Berlin and an honorary deputy on the council of the Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung. The film agency lists her among the Bundestag's alternates on the board that decides fundamental questions in its field and adopts its budget. The equality foundation states that the Bundestag elected the council that day, with Weisgerber as alternate to Astrid Timmermann-Fechter and Federal Minister Karin Prien in the chair. She is also an honorary trustee of DONUM VITAE Stiftung Bayern – Geschenk des Lebens, in Munich. The foundation, recognised on 15 September 2005 as a charitable foundation, raises endowment income for Donum Vitae's pregnancy counselling in Bavaria.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

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