Artur Auernhammer

Artur Friedrich Auernhammer (born 9 March 1963 in Oberhochstatt, a locality of Weißenburg in Bayern) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and a master farmer (Landwirtschaftsmeister). He has sat in the Bundestag for the Ansbach constituency in Bavaria since 22 October 2013, after a first term from 29 July 2004 to 18 October 2005, and has held the seat as a directly elected member since 2017.

He trained at the vocational and advanced agricultural schools in Ansbach, completed a farming apprenticeship, and continued at the agricultural school in Weißenburg and the higher agricultural school in Triesdorf, with a further course on agriculture and interest representation at the German Rural Youth Academy in Bonn-Röttgen. In 1995 he took over his parents' farm in Oberhochstatt, where he remains self-employed as a farmer. From 1988 to 2017 he sat on the district board of the Bavarian Farmers' Association and was local chairman from 2002 to 2016. He was an honorary judge at the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court, on the land-consolidation bench, until he entered the 18th Bundestag, and from 2012 to 2016 an honorary judge in the agricultural senate of the Higher Regional Court in Nuremberg. The Bundestag publishes these biographical details as supplied by the member.

Auernhammer joined the CSU in 1994. He has been a member of the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district council since 1996 and of the Weißenburg city council since 2002. The federal election of 23 February 2025 returned him in constituency 240 (Ansbach) with 84,723 first votes (41.8 percent), ahead of Stefan Wigler of the Alternative for Germany on 21.3 percent; turnout in the constituency was 84.4 percent. In 2021 the federal returning officer recorded him as elected in the then constituency 241 with 73,312 first votes (38.4 percent), 5.9 points below the 2017 result. In 2017 the CSU took 81,431 first votes in that constituency (44.3 percent), with the Social Democratic Party of Germany second on 18.4 percent; in 2021 the Social Democrats were again second, on 17.7 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the committees on agriculture, food and Heimat and on sport and volunteering, Obmann for the CDU/CSU on the latter, a member of the Council of Elders and a parliamentary secretary. He is a deputy member of the environment committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the subcommittee on arms and proliferation control. Since 2019 he has been the CSU Landesgruppe's agricultural-policy spokesperson, listed as its specialist spokesperson for agriculture and Heimat and as one of the group's deputy chairs. He chaired the German Bioenergy Association for nine years until its members' meeting on 22 November 2024, when he stood down, was named honorary chairman, and Marlene Mortler was elected to succeed him.

Early life and education

Childhood in Oberhochstatt

Artur Auernhammer was born on 9 March 1963 in Oberhochstatt, a village in Middle Franconia, Bavaria. Bundestag biographies, which the parliament notes are based on members’ own statements, place the birth in Oberhochstatt, in the town of Weißenburg in Bayern, and give his confession as Protestant-Lutheran. Oberhochstatt was then still a municipality of its own. On 1 May 1978 it was incorporated into Weißenburg together with Kehl, Niederhofen, Gänswirtshaus and Kreuzwirtshaus. Since 1972 the town has been a Große Kreisstadt and the seat of the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia.

The Protestant parish church of St. Martin in the lower part of Oberhochstatt.

The town describes Oberhochstatt as a village on the Jura slope, first named in a document of 899 as “Hohenstat,” a high-lying settlement at the end of the Rohrbach valley. The older, lower part lies around the late-medieval church of St. Martin, about 70 metres below a later upper village on the plateau, where older Jura farmhouses, some still with flat stone-slab roofs, remain. A coat of arms approved for the municipality in 1970 set a black plough beneath the arms of Wülzburg abbey, referring to a local economy that was then still mainly agricultural.

On his 60th birthday in 2023, the Nürnberger Nachrichten wrote that his path had begun on a farm in Oberhochstatt. Official biographies state that the parental holding there passed to him in 1995. His general schooling, as given in the biography for the 15th electoral term, was primary school and the Hauptschule in Oberhochstatt and Weißenburg.

Agricultural training

From that schooling he moved into agricultural vocational education. He attended the Berufsfachschule and the Berufsaufbauschule for agriculture in Ansbach, then served an apprenticeship on training farms in Regensburg and Traunstein. Further full-time schooling followed at the Landwirtschaftliche Fachschule in Weißenburg and at the Höhere Landbauschule in Triesdorf. The current Bundestag text and the biography of the CSU Landesgruppe shorten the apprenticeship to “agricultural training”; the farms in Regensburg and Traunstein are named in the longer biographies published for the 15th and 18th electoral terms.

He also took the study course “Landwirtschaft und Interessenvertretung” (agriculture and the representation of agricultural interests) at the Deutsche Landjugendakademie in Bonn-Röttgen, in Bonn. The biography for the 15th electoral term records the qualifications attached to this training as staatlich geprüfter Landwirt (state-certified farmer) and Landwirtschaftsmeister (master farmer). The CSU Landesgruppe still gives his occupation as Landwirtschaftsmeister. None of these accounts dates the master examination or assigns either title to a particular school.

A profile published by nordbayern.de on 22 September 2017, two days before that year’s federal election, summarized the same preparation: a master farmer who had trained at institutions including those in Ansbach and Triesdorf, and who in 1995 took over the parental farm.

Farming and professional career

The family farm

In 1995 Artur Auernhammer took over his parents’ farm in Oberhochstatt, part of the town of Weißenburg in Bayern in Middle Franconia. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members’ own statements, records that step after agricultural schooling; the CSU Landesgruppe lists his occupation as Landwirtschaftsmeister (master farmer), the qualification his September 2013 parliamentary biography records as a Meisterprüfung and which a December 2013 Bundestag profile describes him as having trained for. In that profile he said the holding had been in the family for centuries, that he had never wanted any occupation other than farming, and that his brother had taken the same path.

The same account presented him, then aged 50, as a dairy farmer who the day before a parliamentary-group meeting had been in the barn with a calf just born to one of about 40 cows. He described the farm, at about 50 hectares, as comparatively small, said he had until then worked on it around the clock, and said he would keep it while sitting in the Bundestag—because a mandate could end—with his brother, his parents and relief workers from the local machinery ring covering the work. A profile published on nordbayern.de on 22 September 2017 likewise described the parental holding taken over in 1995 as centred on dairy cattle.

He has continued to declare self-employed farming in Oberhochstatt as paid work alongside the mandate. The current filing lists “Landwirt, Oberhochstatt” as his occupation before membership and “Landwirt, selbstständig, Oberhochstatt” as a sideline, and abgeordnetenwatch, which republishes those disclosures, carries the self-employed farming entry for the mandates from 2013 onward. A 2013 disclosure of farming income names the dairy Molkerei Neuburg as the counterparty, consistent with milk sales in the year of the dairy-farm portrait. Later official biographies still record only the 1995 takeover of the parental farm and do not restate a herd size or enterprise type, so they do not themselves document whether dairying continued or the holding later changed.

Farmers’ association and honorary offices

From 1988 to 2017 he sat on the district board of the Bayerischer Bauernverband, the farmers’ association in Bavaria, for Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, and from 2002 to 2016 he was its Ortsobmann, the local chairman. The Bundestag biography captured in September 2013 also described him as stellvertretender Kreisobmann, deputy district chairman of the association. In the register of outside activities that post is recorded as having ended on 1 January 2017.

The 2013 biography named him chairman of the Maschinen- und Betriebshilfsring Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, the district cooperative for shared machinery and farm-relief labour. The ring’s own account of its members’ assembly in Dittenheim on 23 February 2023 thanks him as the outgoing chairman; Tobias Meyer of Westheim was elected chairman and Michael Schneider of Pfraunfeld deputy. The side-activity register gives 23 February 2023 as the end of that honorary chairmanship of the board. A Nürnberger Nachrichten report of 14 March 2023 stated that the leadership had changed and published a photograph of Auernhammer with other officers.

Officers of the Maschinen- und Betriebshilfsring Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen holding certificates that name Artur Auernhammer, pictured with the 2023 change of the ring’s chairmanship.

Until he entered the 18th Bundestag on 22 October 2013, the biography states, he was an honorary judge at the Bavarian Higher Administrative Court (Bayerischer Verwaltungsgerichtshof) on its Flurbereinigungsgericht, the land-consolidation court. From 2012 to 2016 he was an honorary judge on the agricultural senate (Landwirtschaftssenat) of the Oberlandesgericht in Nuremberg. The side-activity register records a judgeship at that court ending on 31 December 2016.

Party and local politics

Entry into the CSU

Artur Auernhammer joined the Junge Union and the Christian Social Union's agricultural working group, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Landwirtschaft (AGL), in 1993, and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) itself in 1994. The CSU statute lists the Junge Union Bayern as the party's youth organization, with the particular task of drawing the younger generation into political life and into work in the party. Working groups in general are to spread the party's ideas in their field, recruit members and take part in settling the questions that concern them. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, records the 1994 entry into the CSU but not the 1993 affiliations.

District and city councils

He has sat on the Kreistag of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen since 1996 and on the Stadtrat of Weißenburg in Bayern since 2002. Under the district code of Bavaria, the Kreistag represents the district's citizens, decides the important business of the district administration and supervises that administration; its councillors serve in an honorary capacity. In a town the municipal council is styled Stadtrat. Its members are elected on an honorary basis, represent the town's citizens and decide matters not assigned to committees, and they too supervise the administration. Councils chosen at the regular municipal and district elections serve six years, beginning on the 1 May after the vote.

At the 2014 district election the CSU took 44.24 percent, 0.73 points less than in 2008, and 27 of 60 seats, one fewer than before and short of the absolute majority of 32 it had held before 2008. On the same count the SPD had 25.58 percent and 15 seats, the Free Voters 12.01 percent and seven, the Greens 9.40 percent and six, the ÖDP 3.36 percent and two, the FDP 3.10 percent and two, and the Left, in a list association with the Pirates, 2.31 percent and one. Auernhammer was one of only two CSU councillors from Weißenburg. He did not sit on the Kreisausschuss, the district's main committee; the Weißenburger Tagblatt reported in May 2014 that, as a Bundestag member, he already had enough to do in Berlin.

On 8 March 2026 he was returned to both councils. In the district he stood second on the CSU list, received 37,421 votes—behind Dr. Dr. Kristina Becker, also of the CSU, on 37,573—and was elected. The CSU polled 972,272 votes, 37.7 percent, down 6.5 points, and 23 of 60 seats; turnout was 67.2 percent, with 50,685 voters. In Weißenburg, whose council has 24 voting members, the CSU took 78,709 votes, 40.3 percent, down 0.4 points, and 10 seats. Auernhammer, second on that list, received 5,903 votes and was elected; turnout was 63.5 percent among 9,044 voters. The town's list of councillors names him as a CSU member from Oberhochstatt.

Agricultural and energy working groups

Inside the AGL he chaired the Middle Franconia Bezirksverband from 1998 to 2013 and sat on the state executive in that period; the same register lists him as deputy chairman of the AGL from 2008. Founded in 1963, the group was renamed the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten (AG ELF) on 18 March 2018. The party's historical account describes it as the representation of farming interests within the CSU. The AG ELF executive published by the party, chaired by Petra Högl since March 2025, names Karina Fischer, Martin Schöffel, Stefan Köhler and Claudia Leitner as deputy chairs and does not include Auernhammer.

The CSU congress of 7 and 8 October 2011 voted to create an Arbeitskreis Energiewende (AKE) so that the Energiewende would be handled inside the party, against the motions committee's recommendation. The executive approved the circle's rules on 7 November 2011 and named Siegfried Balleis provisional state chair. At the founding meeting in Munich on 10 December 2011, Balleis was confirmed, and the deputies elected included a member recorded as Arthur Auernhammer—the spelling in that account—with Tobias Reiß, Arno Zengerle and Melanie Huml. The biographical register dates Auernhammer's AKE deputy chairmanship to 2011–2017. Working circles, which the executive may found or dissolve, are to prepare the issues of their fields for discussion inside the CSU and to spread the party's ideas there. The AKE describes itself as an official CSU body whose positions feed into internal decisions and into opinion-forming on energy, the environment and climate protection.

Bundestag elections

First term as a successor, 2004–2005

Auernhammer entered the Bundestag on 29 July 2004, in the 15th electoral term, which had been elected on 22 September 2002. He later told the parliament's press service that in 2002 he had been asked to stand for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and had agreed only to a low place on the Bavarian state list, and only on the condition that he would not be elected. On 19 July 2004 the CSU member Albert Deß resigned his seat. The Bundestag's data handbook records that Deß then sat in the European Parliament, and names Auernhammer as his successor from 29 July 2004. The biography issued during that term states that he entered on 29 July 2004 for the member who had left by resignation.

He was not re-elected in 2005. At the election of 18 September 2005 he stood for the CSU only on its state list in Bavaria, in 29th place; the Federal Returning Officer's directory of candidates assigns him no constituency. The 16th Bundestag was constituted on 18 October 2005. Biographies published by the Bundestag place his membership in 2004–2005 and again only from 2013.

Return on the state list, 2013

At the election of 22 September 2013 Auernhammer did not contest a constituency. He was placed 34th on the CSU state list in Bavaria. When the Federal Electoral Committee settled the final result on 9 October 2013, it included Artur Friedrich Auernhammer among the candidates elected from state lists, at list place 34. The biography for the 18th term records him as elected via the state list, with membership from October 2013. The 18th Bundestag was constituted on 22 October 2013.

The direct mandate in Ansbach, then constituency 241, was not his. Josef Göppel of Herrieden had been the CSU's constituency candidate at every federal election from 2002 until the party nominated Auernhammer for 2017. In 2013 the CSU received 87,922 first votes there, 53.3 percent, 6.0 points more than in 2009. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was second with 38,331 votes, 23.2 percent. Turnout was 68.4 percent of 243,643 eligible voters.

Direct mandates in Ansbach

The Federal Returning Officer's division of constituencies lists the same territory for Ansbach in 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025: the independent city of Ansbach, the district of Ansbach and the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen. The constituency was numbered 241 through the 2021 election and 240 in 2025.

A CSU assembly in Ansbach's Onoldiasaal nominated Auernhammer as direct candidate for 2017, in succession to Göppel. He defeated Manfred Scholl of Dinkelsbühl in a runoff by 85 votes to 73, after a first ballot in which Scholl led by 69 votes to 68 and Christine Reitelshöfer of Petersaurach received 21.

On 24 September 2017 the CSU took constituency 241 with 81,431 first votes, 44.3 percent, 9.0 points below its 2013 share. Turnout was 76.3 percent of 243,760 eligible voters. The SPD, whose direct candidate Nordbayern identified as Lutz Egerer, received 33,755 first votes, 18.4 percent. The biography for the 19th term records Auernhammer as directly elected in constituency 241.

He defended the seat on 26 September 2021 with 73,312 first votes, 38.4 percent, 5.9 points less than in 2017. Turnout was 79.2 percent of 243,174 eligible voters. Der Spiegel reported Harry Herbert Scheuenstuhl of the SPD in second place on 17.7 percent; the official SPD total was 33,819 votes. The biography for the 20th term again lists him as directly elected in constituency 241.

At the election of 23 February 2025, in constituency 240, the official result names Artur Friedrich Auernhammer of the CSU as elected, with 84,723 first votes, 41.8 percent, 3.4 points above the 2021 share. Stefan Wigler of the Alternative for Germany is recorded as runner-up on 21.3 percent; the AfD's first-vote total was 43,100. Turnout was 84.4 percent of 241,618 eligible voters. The current biography lists a constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 240, Ansbach, in Bavaria. The 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025.

Parliamentary offices

Committees, the Council of Elders and the secretariat

In the 21st Bundestag, Artur Auernhammer of the CDU/CSU is an ordinary member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat and of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering, and the group's Obmann on the latter. He also sits as an ordinary member of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat) and as a secretary of the House (Schriftführer). As a deputy member he is assigned to the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and that committee's subcommittee on arms and proliferation control, non-proliferation and international disarmament. His Berlin office is at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin; the constituency office is at Bahnhofsplatz 1, 91522 Ansbach.

Each group names one Obmann or Obfrau per committee. These Obleute are its main contacts with its leadership: they help fix the group's line, state its interests, settle agendas and follow the detail of the committee's work. A Schriftführer is elected, on a group's proposal, to assist the President. The 21st term has 64 secretaries, rotating on sitting days. Two of them, usually one from the government side and one from the opposition, form the sitting's board with the presiding officer, take motions and requests to speak, keep the speakers' list and establish the result of votes. The Council of Elders comprises the President, the vice-presidents and further experienced members, including the parliamentary business managers, with seats by group strength. Meeting each sitting week under the President, with a government representative present, it supports the conduct of business, sets the calendar of sitting weeks, recommends plenary agendas without binding the plenary, mediates between groups—including the first allocation of committee chairs—and decides internal questions such as rooms and the Bundestag's own budget estimate.

The earlier terms show the same cluster of subjects. In the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture, both an ordinary member and deputy chair of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, and a deputy member of the Sports Committee. In the 19th term (2017–2021) he was an ordinary member of the food-and-agriculture committee and of the Sports Committee, and a Schriftführer; the archived biography lists no Council of Elders seat. In the 20th term (2021–2025) he remained an ordinary member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture and a Schriftführer, and was that committee's CDU/CSU Obmann. The group elected him to the Obmann post in a secret ballot; the Bayerisches Landwirtschaftliches Wochenblatt reported the result on 13 January 2022. The archived biography records one deputy-committee seat in that term, which the membership register of abgeordnetenwatch.de identifies as the Sports Committee. After the 2025 election the agriculture-committee Obmann role passed to his CSU colleague Alexander Engelhard.

On the CDU/CSU side he is deputy chair of the working group on sport and volunteering and a member of the working groups on agriculture, food and Heimat and on sport and volunteering, of the local-government working group (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kommunalpolitik), and of the parliamentary circle on small and medium-sized business (Parlamentskreis Mittelstand). His Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, also lists the group's discussion circles on agriculture and on hunting, fisheries and nature.

Roles in the CSU Landesgruppe

Within the Christian Social Union Landesgruppe—the CSU's members in the Bundestag—Auernhammer has been the agricultural-policy spokesperson since 2019. On Monday 9 September 2019 the group elected him chair of its working group on food and agriculture, the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety, in succession to Marlene Mortler, who had moved to the European Parliament; that chairmanship was the agricultural spokespersonship. On the evening of 27 January 2022 the Landesgruppe chose its specialist spokespersons for the 20th term and assigned him agriculture and rural development. The deputy chairs elected the same evening were Hansjörg Durz, Susanne Hierl and Katrin Staffler, not Auernhammer.

In the 21st term the Landesgruppe lists him as one of three deputy chairs, with Florian Oßner and Hülya Düber, under Alexander Hoffmann, chair since 2025. Its historical register dates the deputy chairmanship from 2025 and the brief, retitled that year, as specialist spokesperson for agriculture and Heimat, after agriculture and rural development in 2022–2025. The Wochenblatt reported on 26 June 2025 that the CSU had again elected him agricultural spokesperson. The group's chronicle places the election of ten specialist spokespersons, including his Heimat brief, in July 2025.

Agricultural and energy policy

Farming, fertilizer and rural areas

Auernhammer has been agricultural-policy spokesman of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) group in the Bundestag since 9 September 2019, when the Landesgruppe chose him to succeed Marlene Mortler as chair of its working group on food, agriculture and the environment. The dispute that dominated that brief in the winter of 2023–24 was the tractor protests over planned farm cuts. The coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Finance Minister Christian Lindner had planned to end both the partial refund of energy tax on agricultural diesel, 21.48 cents a litre, and the vehicle-tax exemption for farm and forestry machines. On 4 January 2024 the government kept the vehicle-tax exemption and stretched the diesel cut: 40 percent less relief on 2024 consumption, falling so that no subsidy would remain from 2027, while the refund for fuel used in 2023 stayed intact. The German Farmers' Association called that insufficient and said both cuts still had to go.

On 18 January 2024 Auernhammer thanked the police and the farmers' association for largely peaceful demonstrations and said the protests showed that the government had forgotten rural areas. The diesel refund, he argued, would not touch the 2024 federal budget and was a placeholder for further cuts. He asked Scholz to call a farm summit of the kind Angela Merkel had held in 2019, and to take up the Borchert Commission proposals on livestock and those of the Zukunftskommission Landwirtschaft.

On 5 July 2024 he said farmers would see the coalition's agricultural package as an attempt to string them along: diesel relief was ending in stages, tax smoothing would also fall on the Länder and municipalities, and changes to the law on agricultural organisations largely continued the status quo. He said the coalition had opposed suspending GLÖZ 8, a Common Agricultural Policy rule on non-productive land, and was now claiming credit for it. He put the diesel saving at about €450 million and, on 27 June, rejected the ministry's claim that other measures would more than offset it; Cem Özdemir had said in Kiel in September 2023 that dropping GLÖZ 8 would not raise incomes. Ending duplicate ear tags, he added, was minor beside new rules on nutrient balances, fertiliser and animal welfare, while eco-schemes for grazing would penalise Länder already paying for grassland, and protection from wolves was still unfinished.

On glyphosate, in the Bundestag on 30 November 2023, he argued that public fear outran the European assessments and that, used correctly, the herbicide was a reasonable product. He defended the 2017 renewal vote of then agriculture minister Christian Schmidt and said steep-slope viticulture, and control of couch grass, depended on keeping a herbicide available. Days earlier the member states had again failed to find a qualified majority; the European Commission, citing the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency, said it would renew the approval for ten years, banning pre-harvest desiccation and requiring protection of non-target organisms, while national authorisations stayed with the member states. Auernhammer expected the coalition to transpose that decision. After the EU Court of Justice held on 1 October 2019 that the pesticide rules and the previous five-year renewal were lawful, he said he hoped an "ideologically conducted campaign" against chemical crop protection was over.

He also criticised how nitrate "red areas" were drawn under the fertiliser ordinance. At a slurry field day in Triesdorf in May 2019 he called the ordinance a reckoning with past mistakes. In August 2020 he joined CDU/CSU spokespeople Gitta Connemann and Albert Stegemann in asking agriculture minister Julia Klöckner for narrower designations, a denser monitoring network, a nitrate limit that allowed for denitrification, a 2022 review, exemptions for farms shown to protect water, and a looser phosphorus test. Klöckner rejected every point before the cabinet adopted the rules on 12 August 2020, citing European requirements and the ordinance itself.

Bioenergy

From 9 December 2015 until 22 November 2024 Auernhammer was also chairman of the Bundesverband Bioenergie (BBE). The members elected him unanimously to succeed Helmut Lamp, who after 18 years did not stand again and became honorary chairman. The association, founded in 1998, describes itself as the umbrella for bioenergy in electricity, heat and transport fuels. He held that post together with the CSU agricultural brief. On 22 November 2024 he did not stand again and was named honorary chairman; Marlene Mortler was elected chair unanimously.

At the association's parliamentary evening on 5 June 2024 he called draft biomass strategies misguided and said another strategy paper was unnecessary. Biogas plants, he argued, needed a path after their 20-year payments under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG); auction volumes and the flexibility premium were too low, and flexible power and heat would otherwise be lost as wind and solar output varied. He also demanded action against what he called fraudulent imports of supposedly advanced biodiesel and falsified upstream-emission certificates from China, and equal treatment of wood energy in heat uses beyond the Building Energy Act.

On 11 December 2024 the cabinet adopted a package that, as agrarheute reported, set biomass auctions at 1,000 megawatts for 2025 and 800 for 2026, lengthened follow-up support from ten to twelve years and raised the flexibility surcharge from €65 to €85 per kilowatt, while cutting eligible operating hours and the maize cap. The Fachverband Biogas had asked for 1,800 megawatts and €120 per kilowatt, warning that about a tenth of roughly 10,000 plants could leave electricity production in 2025. Auernhammer called the package a "Schnellschuss" that would do the sector more harm than good, and backed 1,800 megawatts as a bridge. Short of a majority, the coalition faced a Union refusal to support the draft, which agrarheute judged likely to stall.

Sport, volunteering and other portfolios

Sport and civic engagement

In the 21st Bundestag, Artur Auernhammer of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), the member for Ansbach, is an ordinary member of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering (Ausschuss für Sport und Ehrenamt) and the CDU/CSU Obmann there. Obleute set their group’s line in a committee, agree agendas and report the state of the work to the group leadership. In the CDU/CSU group he is deputy chair of the working group on sport and volunteering, chaired by Stephan Mayer.

The committee’s main bill was the government’s Sportfördergesetz, to put federal elite-sport funding on a statutory basis and to create a Spitzensport-Agentur. The report of 8 July 2026, Drucksache 21/7006, names Auernhammer as the CDU/CSU rapporteur. The committee recommended the draft as amended by the CDU/CSU and SPD; those groups, the Alternative for Germany and the Greens voted for it, and the Left against. At the hearing on 24 June 2026 he asked whether Germany offered competitive conditions for performance coaches and what the agency might do for them. Holger Hasse of the coaches’ association said it did not, and that adequate pay was still missing from the draft.

On 9 October 2025 he opposed an AfD motion for a 40-billion-euro nationwide renovation of sports facilities, calling the sum unfunded, noting Länder responsibility—and Bavaria in particular—and saying a coalition “Sportmilliarde” should reach clubs without complicated procedures. He also pointed to a possible bid for the Olympic Games, including a Munich vote on 26 October 2025. On 21 May 2026, in the debate “Zusammenhalt durch Engagement – Das Ehrenamt als Rückgrat unserer Gesellschaft”, he treated a first “Ehrentag” on 23 May, the anniversary of the Basic Law, as a prompt to volunteer, and said rural clubs, shooting associations and volunteer fire services were weighed down by rules for events such as fire-brigade festivals.

From 17 to 20 November 2025 he joined a delegation led by committee chair Aydan Özoğuz to Switzerland for talks on elite-sport finance and volunteering at major events with the National Council commission on sport and with bodies including FIFA, the International Olympic Committee and UEFA. The Federal Office of Sport reported that committee representatives visited its centre at Magglingen on 18 November, with Jugend+Sport on the agenda.

From 1 November 2025 the Bundestag’s register of interests lists him on the board of trustees of the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt in Neustrelitz. The foundation calls the 22-member board its central supervisory body and lists him with the Bundestag committee for food and agriculture, not the seat filled from the sport and volunteering committee.

Environment, foreign affairs and arms control

He is a substitute member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and of its Subcommittee on Arms and Proliferation Control, Non-Proliferation and International Disarmament. Groups nominate both full members and substitutes; a substitute may move a committee motion only when standing in for a member of the same group. No plenary speech, written question or public hearing contribution by him on those three bodies turned up in the 21st-term record consulted here; his documented floor speeches concern sport, volunteering and agriculture.

Outside interests and public debate

Disclosed activities

Members of the Bundestag must notify its President, under sections 45 onwards of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), of their occupation before the mandate, paid outside work, and posts in companies, public-law bodies, associations and foundations. The first notice, and any later change, is due within three months and is published if required. Side income above €1,000 in a month or €3,000 in a year must be stated to the cent.

Artur Auernhammer’s biography lists him as a farmer in Oberhochstatt before the mandate and as a self-employed farmer there alongside it, with no sum. It also lists the district council of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, the city council of Weißenburg in Bayern, and, from 1 November 2025, the board of trustees of the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt in Neustrelitz, none with a published payment. From 18 November 2025 he sits on the advisory board for fundamental savings-bank questions at the Sparkassenverband Bayern; the published fee is €1,250 gross each half-year from 1 July 2026, plus €400 gross in irregular payments in 2026.

Earlier filings, as republished by Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de), give farming income in bands: €7,000–15,000 in 2013 from both Molkerei Neuburg and NVG-bovex GmbH, and €3,500–7,000 up to €30,000–50,000 from payers labelled Vertragspartner 1, 2 and 3 from 2014 to 2020, with Vertragspartner 3 in the top band in 2014, 2015 and 2017–2020. The chairmanship of the Bundesverband Bioenergie (BBE) is listed as honorary, with no fee, for the 2013–2017 and 2017–2021 terms, then until 22 November 2024 at €500 gross a month, €17,500 gross by 30 September 2024.

Debate over dual roles

In July 2022 Die Zeit and abgeordnetenwatch described members who led interest groups while in parliament, including Auernhammer as BBE chair while agricultural spokesperson of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and a member of the agriculture committee, which dealt with biomass for bioenergy. He told them that over five years he had represented the association at at least 21 parliamentary breakfasts, lunches and evenings. Die Zeit quoted his aim, stated at the association the year before, of bringing the BBE closer to decision-makers, and his reply that the two roles were “strictly separate” and that he did not lobby. Abgeordnetenwatch reported almost a quarter of a million euros of BBE spending on interest representation in 2020, against an expense allowance it then put at €3,000 a year, and noted publications that identified him at once as an MP and as BBE chair, including before the European Parliament. Sophie Schönberger called this a grey area: the free mandate excludes legal bias, but she saw a problem where money is paid, and the Act forbids paid representation of third parties beside the mandate.

In June 2023 abgeordnetenwatch reported what it presented as rules made in a member’s own cause. On 18 January the agriculture committee discussed a CDU/CSU motion he said he had helped to draft, seeking exemptions for farms in “red areas”, where groundwater nitrate is high and fertiliser use is tightly limited. By the minutes, as the outlet reported them, he said his whole farm lay in such an area and stayed in the debate; he told the site that a rapporteur being affected was inevitable if committees kept their specialists. Conflicts of that kind, the site noted, are recorded in a footnote and do not bar participation, and no sanction was reported.

In March 2025, during Union–SPD coalition talks, LobbyControl described him as the CSU’s lead negotiator in the working group on rural areas, agriculture, food and the environment, and argued that farmers and agrarian lobbyists outweighed other interests. It wrote that he remained honorary BBE chair after November 2024, cited warnings from groups such as NABU about bioenergy, and recalled his part in fertiliser exemptions for “red” land that included his own farm—an imbalance, in LobbyControl’s account, not a finding of an offence.

On 20 October 2026 Greenpeace said four samples its toxicologist Julios Kontchou took from rivers and streams in Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, inside the Ansbach constituency Auernhammer represents, all exceeded the 11 mg/l surface-water target. Greenpeace called the results ecologically concerning, blamed fertiliser, and said official figures showed the surface-water target exceeded at all 22 stations in the constituency and the 50 mg/l groundwater limit at 29 of 74 stations (39 percent), against 22.7 percent in Bavaria. Campaigner Vera Baumert called CSU fertiliser policy since 2025 “organised irresponsibility”, demanded a farm-gate nutrient balance, and noted that Bavaria had lifted red-area rules in autumn 2025 after a court ruling; the release records no reply from Auernhammer.

On 17 May 2021 a constituent asked him on abgeordnetenwatch about the 4 May edition of the ZDF satire Die Anstalt, which the questioner said had named him amid scandals of the Union parties, corruption and lobbying. He replied on 25 June 2021 that the programme had listed him as a member of the committee on food and agriculture, in a passage on the farm lobby, glyphosate, over-fertilisation and nitrate, and that he would not sue. Meeting associations was part of the job, he wrote, naming the farmers’ association, the German association for landscape care, WWF, NABU and Bund Naturschutz, and satire was allowed to exaggerate.

Personal life

Residence and religion

Artur Auernhammer was born on 9 March 1963 in Oberhochstatt, part of the town of Weißenburg in Bayern. Biographies published by the Bundestag list his confession as evangelical Lutheran. The biography from the 15th electoral term, preserved in a March 2006 archive, used the shorter label “evangelisch” and described him as unmarried (ledig); the text online in October 2013, at the start of the 18th electoral term, again read “evangelisch-lutherisch; ledig.”

He farms in Oberhochstatt, the village where he was born. The Bundestag biography states that he took over his parents’ farm in 1995. In the register of activities members must disclose, the occupation before he entered parliament is given as “farmer, Oberhochstatt,” and self-employed farming in Oberhochstatt is listed as paid work carried on alongside the mandate. The archived biography for the 19th electoral period records the same place for that activity (“Landwirt, selbständig, Oberhochstatt”). His constituency office is at Bahnhofsplatz 1 in Ansbach, for Wahlkreis 240 (Ansbach); the Berlin office published with the biography is at Platz der Republik 1.

Published biographies from the 19th electoral period onward still give the date and place of birth and the evangelical Lutheran confession, but they no longer state a marital status. They do not name a spouse or children.

Public profile

On 9 March 2023, Auernhammer’s 60th birthday, the Nürnberger Nachrichten reported that the Weißenburg member of the Bundestag for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria represents the region in Berlin, that his career began on a farm in Oberhochstatt, and that he still liked to sit on the tractor. The same day the CSU city association in Weißenburg went to Oberhochstatt with gifts. Its chairman, Klaus Drotziger, said—smiling, and referring to a siren test then under way across Bavaria—that the group had “spared neither cost nor effort” in order to make the round birthday publicly known.

The Bundestag biography also lists a personal website and Facebook and Instagram profiles, under the names AuernhammerMdB and arturauernhammer, as his public internet profiles.