Awet Tesfaiesus

Awet Tesfaiesus (born 5 October 1974 in Asmara, Eritrea) is a German lawyer and a politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021 for Hesse, and after the 2025 election again held a list seat while being associated with the constituency of Werra-Meißner – Hersfeld-Rotenburg. On 27 October 2021 the Berlin daily taz reported that she had taken her seat and described her as the first Black woman in the Bundestag in the parliament's then 72-year history; the Tagesspiegel used the same description as she entered via the Hesse Green list.

The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, records that she studied law at Heidelberg University, completed her legal traineeship at the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main (Kassel branch), was admitted as a lawyer (Rechtsanwältin) in 2006, and from 2007 to 2021 kept her own practice in Kassel in asylum and social law. The same biography states that she is married and has one child. taz reported that she was born in Eritrea and came to Germany as a child.

She joined the Greens in 2009, was a member of the Kassel party executive from 2012 to 2015, and served on the Kassel city council from 2016 to 2021, latterly as deputy chair of the Green group. In a July 2021 interview she said that after the Hanau shootings she and her husband considered leaving Germany, and that she then decided to run for the Bundestag. taz reported that the attack, on 19 February 2020, killed nine people with a history of migration. At the 2021 federal election she was the Green candidate in the constituency then numbered 169, where the Green first-vote total was 8,032 (6.2 percent) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany won the direct seat with 43.7 percent. Placed ninth on the Hesse list, she entered after Omid Nouripour won a direct mandate and released a list place; taz reported that the Hesse Greens' 15.8 percent of second votes produced eight seats.

For the legislative term whose Bundestag roles are dated from 25 March 2025, her official profile lists her as a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media and of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and as a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, its subcommittee on foreign cultural and educational policy, the subcommittee on European law, and the committee that proposes judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. The same disclosure of outside offices lists her as a member of the board of the Humboldt Forum foundation in the Berlin Palace. A Hesse Green party congress in Marburg in December 2024 placed her fifth on the state list for the early federal election. She stood again as the Green direct candidate in constituency 168; the Federal Returning Officer recorded 7,357 Green first votes there (5.4 percent), and Wilhelm Gebhard of the CDU won the constituency with 32.3 percent. She returned to the Bundestag on the state list.

Early life and education

Flight from Eritrea

Awet Tesfaiesus was born on 5 October 1974 in Asmara, then part of Ethiopia and now the capital of Eritrea. The Eritrean War of Independence lasted nearly three decades; Eritrea became a sovereign state in 1993. A 1991 Human Rights Watch report found that Mengistu Haile Mariam’s government was directly responsible for the deaths of at least half a million civilians: the Ethiopian army and air force killed tens of thousands, and indiscriminate violence against rural populations, especially in Eritrea and Tigray, matched the urban Red Terror of 1977–78.

Tesfaiesus spent her first ten years there with her parents and siblings and came to Germany in 1984, at the age of ten. The family sought asylum in West Germany after Ethiopian police came looking for her father, a supporter of Eritrean independence. She has said that she remembers little of the journey except a night ride by camel through the desert, seated between her mother and an older sister, at a time when Eritrea was not yet a state. In ZEITmagazin she said the family had fled that war and spent the first year in a camp in the Black Forest.

Schooling in Baden-Württemberg

They then moved to Heddesheim, a village on the Bergstraße in Baden-Württemberg, near Heidelberg. She has called the Rhine-Neckar region one part of home alongside Eritrea, and has said that hearing the local Kurpfälzisch dialect still makes her feel at home.

As a newly arrived child she was expected to attend a Hauptschule, the lower secondary track. Her father objected, arguing that she could keep up in every subject once she learned German, and she entered the fifth grade of the Carl-Benz-Gymnasium in nearby Ladenburg. A 2023 portrait in Politik & Kultur states that she attended neither a Grundschule nor a Hauptschule and went straight into that class because of his persistence. With the head teacher, Herr Koch, her father agreed that in the fifth and sixth grades she would be marked only in mathematics and English.

At home the family spoke English and Tigrinya, and she had German tutoring for the first two years. She later summarized her father’s case by saying that language alone is not evidence of cognitive ability. Apart from her sister she was the only Black girl at the school: she reported no open hostility, but described herself as “exotic” and different. Reading Max Frisch’s novel Stiller there became, in that account, a reference for the question of where she belonged.

Her childhood in Germany fell in the West German 1980s, and she has said that for a long time she did not feel German. She stayed up for Yo! MTV Raps because Black people appeared on it, something she did not find on German television until the presenter Arabella Kiesbauer. As a schoolgirl she watched coverage of the arson attacks in Mölln and Solingen and later said she had decided to study abroad and stay away, though she could not have afforded to. She has dated another shock of that decade to an asylum hostel burning while people applauded, after which she resolved to leave Germany.

Legal studies

She has placed her Abitur years in the 1990s and said she was offered a university place in eastern Germany, turned it down for reasons of safety, and waited a semester. She then studied law at Heidelberg University, close to her family. She has said that, with many United States Army personnel then in Heidelberg, being Black was more often associated in shops and restaurants with a student, an American, or a tourist. A grandfather who had been a judge, and her habit of leading arguments, including for her older sister, had already inclined her toward law. Before finishing school she had chosen a legal career so that she could return some of the help she had received from teachers and church groups, intending to work on refugee cases.

She passed the first state law examination at Heidelberg in 2001 and the second in 2006 at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main; the Munich bar association admitted her as a lawyer that year. As a student and during the Referendariat, the practical training between the two examinations, she worked in voluntary and advisory bodies on migration law. She is Protestant, and has described her father as Protestant and her mother as Orthodox, with other relatives Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, or not religious. She lists German, English, and Tigrinya among the languages she speaks, together with Arabic and French.

Legal practice

Asylum and social-law work in Kassel

Awet Tesfaiesus studied law in Heidelberg and passed the first state examination in 2001. She completed the Referendariat, the required practical training in Germany, at the Kassel branch of the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt, and in 2006 passed the second state examination there. The Bundestag records that she was admitted as a Rechtsanwältin the same year. She states that the Munich bar, the Rechtsanwaltskammer München, granted that admission.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own statements, says that from 2007 to 2021 she practised in an office of her own in Kassel, in Hesse, for asylum and social law. Its register of outside interests names her pre-mandate occupation as lawyer and managing director of GfP Gesellschaft für Prozessführung Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbB in Kassel. For the 20th electoral term the same register listed, among paid activities alongside the mandate, her role as lawyer and managing director of Bockamp & Tesfaiesus Rechtsanwälte PartG mbB, also in Kassel.

In July 2021 the Berlin daily taz identified her as a lawyer for asylum law, and she said hostile letters might also have been connected with that work. In October 2021 she told ZEIT’s ze.tt that she had worked for many years in foreigners’ and asylum law. In a June 2024 career podcast she said she had aimed at migration law from the start of her studies, that an office of her own was a serious financial strain, and that few other lawyers worked in the field. She said her own experience and languages helped but were not required.

Asylum claims are decided by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. It describes the personal interview as the central appointment: a decision-maker hears the account of persecution, life history and route of travel, with an interpreter, and a lawyer may attend. Missing the interview without a timely excuse can lead to refusal or to the claim being treated as withdrawn. A negative decision can go to an administrative court, generally within a short period set out in the decision. A lawyer may be instructed but is not required. The action usually suspends removal, though not in some cases, including accelerated procedures, a deemed withdrawal and certain findings of inadmissibility, where staying in the country depends on an emergency application.

The social-law side concerns subsistence rather than protection status. The Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act covers people in the asylum procedure, people with a toleration (Duldung) and others obliged to leave, if they are in need. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs states that people entitled under that Act, in particular asylum applicants, are generally excluded from citizen’s benefit under Book II of the Social Code. The Informationsverbund Asyl und Migration explains that the Act’s rates sit below basic support under Books II and XII: basic benefits usually apply for the first 36 months, with analogous benefits after that, paid in kind, in cash, by voucher or on a payment card.

Tesfaiesus took her Bundestag seat on 26 October 2021. She states that she remains a member of the Kassel bar, exempt from the duty to keep an office under section 29 of the Federal Lawyers’ Act — a position she calls that of a Statusrechtsanwältin — and that she does not practise for pay. Section 29 allows a bar to grant that exemption in the interest of the administration of justice or to avoid hardship, and to revoke it. As of 27 October 2026 the 21st-term disclosure still lists “Rechtsanwältin, Kassel” under paid activities beside the mandate, with no euro figure. Income from a side activity is published to the cent only above €1,000 in a month or €3,000 in a calendar year.

Professional associations

On her website Tesfaiesus lists membership of the Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (RAV), the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) and the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD). Those affiliations are not among the offices in her Bundestag biography.

The RAV, founded in 1979, is a political association of lawyers, not a statutory bar. It was set up alongside criminal-defence associations during proceedings against lawyers in political cases, and it describes its purpose as using the law for people with less power. It co-publishes the annual Grundrechtereport and campaigns for equal rights and against what it calls a racist asylum and foreigners’ law.

The GFF, a Berlin association, has since 2015 brought strategic cases, including before the Federal Constitutional Court, on fundamental and human rights. It says it takes no public money and is financed by members and donors; its stated fields include discrimination, migration and social participation.

The ISD began in 1985 as a self-organization of Black people in Germany; since 2001 ISD Bund e.V. has been an umbrella for local groups. It works against institutional and structural racism and calls for an anti-racist approach in residence, citizenship and asylum law.

Municipal politics

Joining the Greens

Awet Tesfaiesus joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2009. In the biography she supplied to the Bundestag, published by the parliament as the member's own account, she states that from 2012 to 2015 she was a Beisitzerin, an ordinary member, of the board of the Greens in Kassel.

She has tied the move from that office onto a council list to the 2016 campaign. In a 2021 interview with die tageszeitung she said her legal practice had long seemed to rule out a heavier political role, but that once it was clear the Alternative for Germany (AfD) would enter the city parliament she wanted a Black person, and the perspective of a person of colour, in the chamber. Before the 2021 local election the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) reported the same account of the AfD's rise in 2016.

Kassel city council

Kassel elected its 71-member Stadtverordnetenversammlung on 6 March 2016. On the city's preliminary official final result, as carried by Die Welt, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) remained largest, with 29.46 percent and 21 seats, down 6.89 points. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) took 20.71 percent and 15 seats, the Greens 18.01 percent and 13 (also down 6.89 points), and the AfD, standing for the first time, 10.97 percent and eight. Die Linke won 10.63 percent and seven seats, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 5.63 percent and four, with two seats for the Free Voters and one for the Pirate Party. The previous SPD–Green majority disappeared. SPD and CDU together would have had 36 of 71 seats; SPD, Greens and FDP, 38. Tesfaiesus was one of the 13 Greens returned. HNA's list of the new council named her with Eva Koch, Dieter Beig and Boris Mijatović; the constitutive sitting was set for 11 April 2016.

From 2016 she was the Green group's spokesperson for integration and equality. The Bundestag biography adds that from 2019 to 2021 she was also a deputy group chair and, at the end of that period, its spokesperson on anti-discrimination. In the 2016–2021 term those subjects went through the Committee for Law, Security, Integration and Equality, chaired by the CDU's Stefan Kortmann, on which she sat. On 18 June 2019 the committee, with her present, unanimously recommended the magistrate's revised integration concept, "Integrationskonzept der Stadt Kassel – Neue Akzente 2019". Die Linke was marked absent. The rapporteur was Günther Schnell of the SPD.

On 18 September 2019 it took a joint SPD–Green motion, also signed by councillor Andreas Ernst, citing the murders linked to the National Socialist Underground and the killing of Walter Lübcke. The motion asked for a yearly briefing on right-wing extremist threats, with authorities and the Mobile Advice Team Hesse invited in. Tesfaiesus, with the applicants' consent, deleted a sentence ranking that threat above organised crime and Islamist extremism. The committee recommended the amended text. The AfD voted against; the CDU abstained on the opening paragraphs and backed the briefing.

On 14 March 2021 the Greens, with Tesfaiesus heading the list — she described a dual lead with Mijatović in second place — became the largest group in the Rathaus for the first time. HNA reported 28.7 percent and 20 of 71 seats, seven more than in 2016. The SPD fell to 24.6 percent and 17 seats, the CDU to 19.2 percent and 14, and Die Linke rose to 11.6 percent and eight. The AfD kept four seats, half its previous total. With cumulative voting and vote-splitting, Tesfaiesus received 39,274 personal votes, the most of any candidate. The new assembly was to meet on 19 April.

That day the council unanimously adopted a joint motion of the Greens, SPD, CDU, Die Linke and the FDP creating the term's committees under section 62 of the municipal code of Hesse, seats divided by the Hare–Niemeyer method. One 13-member body was the Committee for Opportunities, Equality, Integration and Petitions (Ausschuss für Chancen, Gleichstellung, Integration und Eingaben). Tesfaiesus chaired it. On 9 June 2021 she opened a sitting on a Die Linke inquiry into deportations from Kassel in 2020 and early 2021, answered by mayor Ilona Friedrich, and on a citizen petition to treat any use of "Mohr" for a person of African descent as racist, in line with the United Nations Decade for People of African Descent. The committee recommended approval, Greens, SPD and Die Linke for and CDU, FDP and AfD against. A CDU call for an expert hearing first failed on the same division. On 8 September she chaired a sitting on language courses and integration posts; staff of the Amt für Chancengleichheit attended.

After the Bundestag election of 26 September 2021, Tesfaiesus and Boris Mijatović told HNA they would give up their council seats on taking federal mandates, to avoid holding both. The Green group, by then the largest in the assembly, would lose its chair and one deputy chair. She said she was glad the Greens had, in coalition talks with the SPD, secured the new committee and the Amt für Chancengleichheit.

Bundestag candidacies and elections

2021 federal election

Awet Tesfaiesus stood for Alliance 90/The Greens at the election to the 20th Bundestag on 26 September 2021, as the party's direct candidate in constituency 169, Werra-Meißner – Hersfeld-Rotenburg, and in ninth place on its state list in Hesse. A state members' assembly ordered that list with Bettina Hoffmann first and Omid Nouripour second; Tesfaiesus was nominated by the Kassel city association. She told taz that she had sought a Bundestag candidacy after the racist Hanau shootings of 19 February 2020, in which nine people were killed, because work in the city council no longer seemed enough.

The seat she eventually took was a list seat. taz described the rule that decided it: a candidate who wins a constituency does not also occupy a state-list place, so the next person on the list moves up. The Greens polled 521,411 second votes in Hesse, 15.8 percent. The Frankfurter Neue Presse counted nine Green members from the state: Nouripour, who won a constituency in Frankfurt, and eight others elected on list places, Tesfaiesus among them. taz reported that the outcome was certain only in the early morning. Nouripour, second on the list, had taken a direct seat from the CDU; had he not done so, that list place would have been used and Tesfaiesus, in ninth place, would not have been elected.

The constituency count itself did not elect her. Of 171,886 people eligible to vote, 76.2 percent turned out. On first votes the SPD received 56,383 (43.7 percent), the CDU 34,527 (26.8 percent), the AfD 14,204 (11.0 percent) and the Greens 8,032 (6.2 percent), ahead of the FDP with 7,135 (5.5 percent). Reports of the count named Michael Roth of the SPD, who had also won the seat in 2017, as the constituency member, and Wilhelm Gebhard of the CDU as runner-up. Tesfaiesus finished fourth, behind the AfD candidate as well. On second votes in the district the Greens took 11,595 (9.0 percent), against 48,579 (37.7 percent) for the SPD. The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, the start of the term in which she took her seat. taz described her as the first Black woman to sit in the Bundestag.

2025 federal election

On 27 December 2024 the federal president, at the chancellor's request, dissolved the 20th Bundestag. The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. At a Green state party congress in Marburg on 14 December 2024, Tesfaiesus was placed fifth on the Hesse list. Osthessen-News reported the ranking as one that gave the sitting member a realistic prospect of returning.

The district was now numbered constituency 168. She again stood as the Green direct candidate. Of 167,770 eligible voters, 82.6 percent turned out, 6.5 points higher than in 2021. Gebhard (CDU) won the direct mandate with 44,173 first votes (32.3 percent). Daniel Iliev (SPD) was second with 38,010 (27.8 percent). The AfD received 30,926 (22.6 percent) and the Greens 7,357 (5.4 percent), down 0.9 points and just ahead of Die Linke on 7,246 (5.3 percent). The returning officer's final table names Gebhard as elected and Iliev as the leading unsuccessful candidate. An election-night count in the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine, with every precinct in, placed Tesfaiesus fourth on 5.37 percent, in line with the official Green total.

On second votes the CDU led the district with 38,984 (28.4 percent), followed by the AfD with 31,857 (23.2 percent) and the SPD with 30,447 (22.2 percent). The Greens received 9,948 (7.3 percent), 1.7 points below 2021. The direct-mandate swing was much larger than the Green result: the SPD's first-vote share fell 15.9 points and the AfD's rose 11.6. Hessenschau reported that the Greens, unlike in 2021, won no Hessian constituency, and that all seven of their members from the state entered on the list. The federal returning officer records Tesfaiesus at list place 5, between Tarek Al-Wazir and Boris Mijatović, as elected for constituency 168, and records Gebhard as directly elected there with 32.3 percent. After the count she told Osthessen-News that she would continue to represent the constituency, congratulated Gebhard on the direct mandate, and said the AfD vote had left many people in the district worried.

Constituency

In both elections the constituency covered the whole of Landkreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg and the Werra-Meißner-Kreis, in northeastern Hesse. It was numbered 169 in 2021 and 168 in 2025; the federal returning officer's boundary descriptions list the same two districts. The direct mandate was held by Roth for the SPD in 2021 and by Gebhard for the CDU in 2025. Tesfaiesus's mandate in both terms was a Hesse list seat associated with the district, not a plurality in it. The Bundestag's biography for the 21st term lists her as elected on the Hesse state list and as the Green candidate in constituency 168.

The same biography lists two constituency offices: one for Werra-Meißner at Kirchstraße 22–24 in Hessisch Lichtenau, and one for Hersfeld-Rotenburg at Marktplatz 12 in Rotenburg an der Fulda. The Lichtenau office opened in September 2022. The Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine described it as a contact point for people in the constituency, near her former home, and reported that it was staffed on Thursdays and Fridays from 9:30 to 14:30, though not always attended because of appointments elsewhere.

Work in the Bundestag

Committees

Awet Tesfaiesus has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021, in the 20th legislative term (2021–2025) and in the 21st, which constituted itself on 25 March 2025. She sits for the Hesse state list of Alliance 90/The Greens, having stood in Werra-Meißner – Hersfeld-Rotenburg (constituency 169 in the 20th term, 168 in the 21st).

In the 20th term the archived biography lists her as a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media, of the Legal Affairs Committee (Rechtsausschuss) and of that committee's Subcommittee on European Law. She was a deputy member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, of the Wahlausschuss, which proposes the Bundestag's candidates for the Federal Constitutional Court, and of the Wahlprüfungsausschuss, the committee that scrutinizes elections. The same file lists her as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin). On 22 February 2024 the plenary elected her to that office, on a proposal from the Green group, to succeed Denise Loop. Secretaries sit beside the presiding officer, take requests to speak and motions, keep the speakers' list and record vote results. She is not among the 64 secretaries published for the 21st term.

For the 21st term she is a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media and of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, of the Subcommittee on European Law and of the Wahlausschuss. The European-law seat has thus moved from full to deputy membership, a Foreign Affairs deputy seat has been added, and the 20th-term deputy seats on family affairs and election scrutiny are no longer listed.

Culture and media portfolio

In the 20th term Tesfaiesus was the Obfrau of the Green group on the Committee on Culture and Media. An Obfrau or Obmann is the member who, in a given committee, is the main contact for their parliamentary group's leadership, helps set that group's line and agrees the agenda with the chair.

The committee is the Bundestag's body for federal cultural and media policy. With 18 full members, its remit includes oversight of federal cultural funding and questions concerning Deutsche Welle, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, national film support and historical sites of national importance. At the constitutive sitting on 21 May 2025, opened by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, it elected Sven Lehmann of the Greens as chair by 13 votes to three, with one abstention. Lehmann held only a deputy seat; Klöckner noted, after a question from the AfD group, that the rules of procedure do not forbid electing a deputy member as chair. The Green full members named that day were Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Tesfaiesus.

The committee's later list still shows Tesfaiesus as a full member, but names Marlene Schönberger, not Tesfaiesus, as the Green Obfrau, with Göring-Eckardt as a deputy. The Green group in the Bundestag separately calls Tesfaiesus its spokesperson for culture and media, a group function distinct from the Obfrau office inside the committee. In both terms she has also been a deputy on the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, the first subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee. It covers foreign cultural and education policy, including the Goethe-Institut and the German Academic Exchange Service, cultural-property agreements that need the Bundestag's consent, and intercultural relations.

Interparliamentary and advisory bodies

In both terms she is a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, made up of 50 members of the Bundestag and 50 of the National Assembly of France. Under the Franco-German parliamentary agreement of March 2019 it is to meet at least twice a year, alternating between the two countries.

The 21st-term biography lists her as chair of the parliamentary group for southern Africa. Such groups are cross-party bodies for contacts with parliaments abroad. In June 2025 the Council of Elders provided for 47 such groups, covering about 180 countries.

She is a deputy member of the Wahlausschuss in both terms. The Bundestag and the Bundesrat each elect eight of the sixteen judges of the Federal Constitutional Court; the Bundestag's eight are chosen on a proposal from this twelve-member committee, on which the Greens hold one full seat in the 21st term.

The register of offices members must disclose lists cultural trusteeships alongside the committee seats. From the 20th term she has sat on the council (Stiftungsrat) of the Foundation for the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace from 21 June 2022, on the board of trustees of the German Historical Museum from 24 January 2023, and on the broadcasting council of Deutschlandradio from 12 April 2024. The 21st-term register still lists those posts, the Deutschlandradio entry with remuneration recorded through 31 December 2025, plus a deputy seat on the council of the Federal Cultural Foundation, membership of the council of the foundation Orte der deutschen Demokratiegeschichte, a deputy place on the jury of the German Short Film Award and a place on the jury of the German Hörfilm Award. Deputy seats at the Film Promotion Agency and on the council of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation are recorded as ending on 18 September 2025, and a deputy seat at the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany on 19 March 2026. From autumn 2025 the register adds the Federal Music Association for Choir and Orchestra, the Federal Foundation for Live Culture, the German Africa Foundation and the Cultural Policy Society.

Law, migration and anti-discrimination

Asylum and residence law

In the 20th Bundestag, where she sat on the Committee on Legal Affairs, Awet Tesfaiesus argued that residence policy should not buy fewer arrivals by cutting basic rights. On 18 January 2024, in a speech placed in the record on the bill to speed returns, she backed longer titles for people with subsidiary protection and counsel in detention, and rejected the rest: custody pending departure raised from 10 to 28 days, wider deportation detention, removals without notice, entry into other residents’ rooms, prison for a single missed reporting duty, and reduced benefits for 36 months rather than 18. She wrote that she could not support the law.

She also broke with the coalition on Europe. In June 2023, before European Union interior ministers took up the Common European Asylum System, she joined 23 other members from Alliance 90/The Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Germany on a paper warning that the plans could weaken asylum. Started by Brand New Bundestag, it criticised blanket border procedures as likely to mean detention-like conditions, and “safe third countries” that would let the route, not the reasons for flight, decide a case. Distribution had to be binding. Green ministers Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck had called border procedures problematic but the available path if children and families were exempt.

On 27 June 2024 she opposed a CDU/CSU motion premised on protection through Europe not meaning protection in Europe. Sending refugees to Rwanda, she said, would outsource a duty in the Basic Law. Earlier attempts had failed, from Otto Schily’s North Africa camps and court-rejected Rwanda plans in Israel and Britain to Dublin, the EU–Turkey deal and shifts toward Libya. Paying an autocrat, she said, would repeat dependence on Turkey. People without a claim should be returned; where a claim existed, the state itself had to meet it. Such debates, she added, fell on people who “supposedly look foreign,” while racist attacks had risen sharply. Detlef Seif of the CDU/CSU replied that the Turkey deal had removed the pull factor and that the coalition blocked limits.

Equality, citizenship and security

The Hanau shootings are the attack she has most often connected to who counts as safe in Germany. The Federal Prosecutor found that Tobias R. acted alone and from a racist motive: on the evening of 19 February 2020 he shot nine people dead in Hanau and wounded others, then killed his mother and himself with legally held guns. The case was closed in December 2021 for lack of evidence of accomplices. In October 2021 she said a law practice and citizenship had not set her apart: “When people see me on the street, they see a foreigner. That means I am not safe from racist attacks.” After thinking of leaving, as she had after Mölln and Solingen, she sought a Bundestag seat and called for association standing to sue so a refused tenant would not have to go to court alone.

Multiple citizenship was, for her, part of the same argument. In July 2022 she wrote that accepting more than one nationality was a central Green project; the war in Ukraine had delayed a cabinet decision still expected that year, and she hoped the change could take effect in the first half of 2023. The bill passed on 19 January 2024 by 382 votes to 234, with 23 abstentions. The SPD and the Greens recorded no votes against; the CDU/CSU and the Alternative for Germany recorded none in favour. From 27 June 2024 naturalization no longer generally required renouncing another citizenship, though applicants still had to support themselves, and antisemitism, racism or other contempt for human beings barred a passport.

On 11 June 2026 she led for the Greens on an amending bill to the 2006 General Equal Treatment Act and on the motion “Equal rights for all,” which she headed. Discrimination was routine, she said, from refused flats and medical care to repeated checks, and she cited about 11,000 requests to the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency the year before. Four months to sue, up from two, was still “ridiculous.” She accepted a wider ban on sexual harassment but not exclusions for the self-employed and board members. Hospitals, police and jobcentres had to be covered, associations needed standing to sue, and automated decisions on jobs, housing and credit could not be ignored. The motion asked that public administration be bound and that the agency, associations, works councils and unions be able to sue for a declaration. Carmen Wegge, for the SPD, said her party had wanted association standing but would take the longer deadline and the harassment rules as progress. Susanne Hierl, for the CDU/CSU, wanted EU law copied without new bureaucracy. Fabian Jacobi, for the AfD, called for repeal.

The 2024 Solingen stabbing drew the same line. On 23 August 2024 a knife attack at a festival killed three people and wounded eight. An arrest warrant accused the Syrian national Issa Al H. of three murders, further attempted murders and Islamic State membership, alleging he had set out to kill as many people as possible whom he saw as unbelievers. On 18 October the coalition’s security and asylum bill passed by 357 votes to 289. Tesfaiesus voted no. With Stephanie Aeffner and Sabine Grützmacher she called for money, usable powers and prevention, not suspicion by origin. The bill limited “Dublin cases”—people another EU state was supposed to take back—to two weeks of reduced support and then none. Transfers, they wrote, usually failed for lack of cooperation, notably from Italy, and that failure should not leave people homeless or below subsistence. Josef Oster of the CDU/CSU called it a rotten compromise that still refused turnbacks at the border.

Culture, media and memory policy

Broadcasting, press and copyright

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) Tesfaiesus was the Alliance 90/The Greens Obfrau on the Committee on Culture and Media and a full member of that committee and of the Committee on Legal Affairs. In the 21st term she stayed on both committees, and the Green group named her its spokesperson for culture and media. Since April 2024 she has sat on the Hörfunkrat of Deutschlandradio as a representative of the federation.

Public broadcasting in Germany is a matter for the Länder. On 15 September 2026 the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Wolfram Weimer, the non-party minister of state for culture and media, had suggested at a closed Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference that ZDF might be privatized and ARD stations consolidated into four or five organizations. On 17 September Tesfaiesus called that "the completely wrong approach." She said ARD and ZDF should become more efficient and meet their remit, but that putting public broadcasting "fundamentally at disposal" would weaken a pillar of the democratic public sphere, and that Weimer should help the Länder rather than speculate about abolition or privatization.

On 12 November 2025, in an AfD Aktuelle Stunde on alleged copyright infringements and conflicts of interest of the culture minister, she said the Greens would criticize Weimer where they disagreed—including on the memorial-sites concept adopted that day—but would not join what she called an attempt to discredit him for opposing US technology companies. She argued for a digital levy (Digitalabgabe) as "cultural justice," so that those who earn from creative work return something to its makers, and said generative artificial intelligence required copyright to be rethought: if models are trained on billions of protected works, authors should not "end up empty-handed." She asked for new exploitation rights for digital use. A Green motion of 23 June 2026, Drucksache 21/6657, introduced by Anna Lührmann, Tesfaiesus and others, asked the government to tax large platforms' online-advertising turnover and to put the money into a state-distant media fund for local journalism, innovation and public-interest digital infrastructure. Its preamble said firms such as Google and Meta take much of the advertising market and use news content without payment, including for AI, while local newsrooms close.

Remembrance and cultural heritage

As a deputy member of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy, Tesfaiesus has treated colonial collections as both cultural and foreign policy. She sits on the foundation council of the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, which operates the Humboldt Forum in the reconstructed palace in Berlin, as a Bundestag representative alongside members of other groups.

On 12 May 2023 she spoke in an AfD Aktuelle Stunde on what that group called the government's failure over the Benin Bronzes. Quoting Julius Nyerere's line that a stolen jacket remains its owner's, she said the Civil Code already bars acquiring title to stolen goods—an FDP interjection disputed that—and that restitution meant an unconditional transfer of ownership and of the power of disposal. She described the British looting of Benin in 1897, later sales to European museums, and Nigeria's transfer of restituted pieces to the Oba. She called AfD and CDU/CSU criticism of that step a racist double standard and said the objects belonged with the Nigerian state. Dorothee Bär (CDU/CSU) called the speech arrogant; Ansgar Heveling said return should follow an understanding with the country of origin, not precede it. Tesfaiesus interjected: "No, at the beginning."

On 10 July 2025 she, Claudia Roth, Jamila Schäfer and other Greens asked how the government was addressing colonial crimes, including the killing of Herero, Nama, Damara and San in present-day Namibia in 1904–1908 and the Maji-Maji war of 1905–1907 in present-day Tanzania, and the return of objects and human remains. Deutsche Welle reported on 16 August 2025 that the reply treated reparations as not legally required, because no such duty had existed at the time, and pointed to a joint declaration with Namibia and to returns such as the Benin Bronzes. Tesfaiesus told the Tagesspiegel that Germany should not "hide behind formal-legal arguments—especially not in a republic whose Basic Law places inviolable human dignity at the centre of its statehood." Roth, quoted by dpa, called for empathy rather than "formal-legal refusal."

The memorial-sites concept decided in November 2025 did not place German colonialism alongside Nazi and GDR crimes; the government instead promised a separate concept and a memorial site named in the coalition agreement. Tesfaiesus had already, on 12 November 2025, cited that concept as a disagreement with Weimer. On 8 May 2026 she, Roth and Schäfer asked about the timetable, the role of societies of origin and the diaspora, and a restitution statute, noting that joint guidelines still had no legal basis. The culture ministry answered on 3 June 2026 that a paper on the main fields of action was aimed for autumn 2026; that a colonial restitution law was neither in the coalition agreement nor part of talks on a law for Nazi-looted art; and that returns followed guidelines of 14 October 2025. It reported €600,000 in the 2026 culture budget for interstate returns and said it could not yet judge whether that was enough.

Public reception

Election as the first Black woman in the Bundestag

After the September 2021 election, the New York Times wrote that Awet Tesfaiesus of Alliance 90/The Greens was "the first Black woman in Germany to ever win a seat in the Bundestag." Der Tagesspiegel, Die Zeit's ze.tt and, in February 2022, Der Spiegel used the same description. taz added on 27 October that in 72 years the parliament had not had a Black woman member.

Reports set that description against an earlier record for Black men. In September 2013 The Guardian wrote that Karamba Diaby of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Charles M. Huber of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany were Germany's first two Black members, a step it said equality campaigners called historic. Mediendienst Integration likewise counted them as the first two Afro-German members. Huber was not among those named in 2021. taz wrote that Diaby had sat since 2013 and that, with Tesfaiesus and Armand Zorn, who won a Frankfurt constituency for the SPD, Black members rose to three. ze.tt, citing an Afrozensus figure of more than a million people of African origin, asked whether three seats were enough. Deutsche Welle in June 2022 described those three as lawmakers of African descent, and Diaby as the first member with African roots.

Tesfaiesus told taz it was an important step for Black people in Germany, that among people of color "the men always come first," and that as a Black woman she was discriminated against twice. She told ze.tt that, when she was 19, a Black woman in politics "simply did not exist." Seeing Black performers on MTV, and later Arabella Kiesbauer on German television, had been rare points of identification; she hoped to be one for younger people, while expecting to become a surface for other people's views. "I will not change the world as the only Black woman in parliament," she said, "but it is an important step that had to be taken."

taz also noted limits. The new Bundestag was more female and younger, but only 11 percent of members had a history of immigration, far below the population share. Ninth on the Greens' Hesse list, she entered, the paper reported, only because Omid Nouripour's constituency win freed a list place. In Werra-Meißner–Hersfeld-Rotenburg she took 6.2 percent and fourth place, behind the Alternative for Germany.

Racism, media and political debate

Coverage tied the candidacy to the February 2020 Hanau shootings, which killed nine people, and to her account of having considered leaving Germany. The Times wrote that the day after a racist extremist fired on people he thought looked "foreign," law-firm colleagues carried on as usual. "I felt like my back was to the wall and I just couldn't continue," she said. She then campaigned on "courage to change"; the headline cast her as wanting to change the image of "Germanness." Spiegel quoted her saying entry felt like jumping onto a moving train, and used the line "I have to do this now." Tagesspiegel headlined her remark that after Hanau she had wanted to do more.

She told ze.tt that she had come from Eritrea as a child, had long not felt German, and had thought a practice and citizenship meant she had arrived—until Hanau. People on the street, she said, saw a foreigner, so qualifications did not protect her from racist attacks. Her first thought was to leave, as after Mölln and Solingen when she was a student; she then chose to stay and stand, for her child, rather than flee again. taz reported the same choice, made with her husband, over a German-born son. RTL quoted her calling Hanau a flashback to the 1990s and a feeling that nothing had changed.

She described such hostility as ordinary: heckling at a campaign stand, including questions about why she was running in Germany rather than in Africa, and online abuse she said she mostly did not read. She told taz she had seen the difference when she, rather than her husband—whom she described as white and German—went to a flat viewing. RTL quoted her saying she had to send him because their chances were better: "That is our everyday life," and a worry for her child. After the election she told taz that police stops and housing still showed discrimination after "integration" was long over, including refusal of a Berlin flat because of skin color. In June 2022 she told Deutsche Welle that shop security still watched her, unlike in the Bundestag, where people sought her out.

On representation, she told ze.tt that politics, the media and authorities did not mirror society, a gap she extended from Black people to people of color more broadly, disabled people, queer people and women. A quarter of society had a migration history, she said, yet much of it stayed excluded, with the sorting beginning in primary school; local politics had required her to cut her hours to 30 a week. She told taz she would not define the role against the AfD, which she said could not be reached, but would press for marginalized people to be included, and that discrimination should not be filed under integration.