# Dieter Stier

# Dieter Stier

**Dieter Stier** (born 29 June 1964 in Weißenfels) is a German agricultural engineer and a politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). He has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2009, sitting for Saxony-Anhalt. In the 21st Bundestag his seat comes from the state list, and he stood as the CDU candidate in constituency 72, Burgenland–Saalekreis.

He attended a polytechnic secondary school from 1971 to 1981 and, from 1981 to 1983, trained as a Zootechniker/Mechanisator, the livestock and mechanisation qualification used in the GDR. A distance course at the Fachhochschule Stadtroda and the Humboldt University of Berlin ended in 1989 with a Diplom-Ingenieur degree in agricultural sciences. From 1985 to 1989 he was a shift and department manager in the dairy unit at Reichardtswerben; he then managed Gut Storkau until 1991 and, from 1992 to 1995, led a working group in Saxony-Anhalt’s southern office for agriculture and land consolidation. Since 1990 he has headed the Weißenfels riding club and its riding, breeding and training stable at Markwerben, which includes a farm, and since 1997 he has run an agency for animal insurance.

Stier joined the CDU in 1999. He sat on the Weißenfels city council from 1999 to 2014, chairing the CDU group from 2000 to 2009, and on the district council from 1994 to 2019, chairing the council of the Burgenlandkreis from 2007 to 2019. Within the CDU district association he was deputy chairman from 2007 to 2018 and chairman from 2018 until May 2026.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland and of the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Work, and a deputy member of the Defence Committee and of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law. From 2013 to 2021 he was deputy chairman of the CDU’s Saxony-Anhalt state group in the Bundestag, and in the 19th electoral term he was deputy chairman of the sports committee. In October 2018 he was one of four members — with Andrea Nahles, Alois Gerig and Pascal Kober — who invited colleagues to a cross-party parliamentary circle on horses.

The *Mitteldeutsche Zeitung* reported that he again won constituency 73 in 2013, with 44.8 percent of the first votes. The federal returning officer recorded 54,544 CDU first votes (44.8 percent) against 31,300 (25.7 percent) for [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia). In 2021 he held the direct seat; the official count was 32,649 CDU first votes (26.3 percent) to 32,328 (26.0 percent) for the AfD. In the 2025 federal election the constituency, which covers the Burgenlandkreis and the Saalekreis municipalities of Bad Dürrenberg, Braunsbedra, Leuna, Merseburg and Schkopau, returned [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) candidate Martin Reichardt with 44.4 percent of the first votes. Stier, on 24.2 percent, was the runner-up and took his seat from the state list.

## Early life and professional career

### Education and training

Dieter Stier was born on 29 June 1964 in Weißenfels and is unmarried. From 1971 to 1981 he attended a Polytechnische Oberschule in the German Democratic Republic. Introduced in stages from 1959, that ten-year comprehensive school combined general education and communist upbringing with polytechnic lessons and production work.

From 1981 to 1983 he trained as a Zootechniker/Mechanisator. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, then records a distance course (Fernstudium) at the Fachhochschule Stadtroda and at Humboldt University of Berlin, completed in 1989 as Dipl.-Ing. agr. In a Mitteldeutsche Zeitung interview of 12 September 2013 he said he had grown up with an aunt in Nessa, now a locality of Teuchern, and had come to equestrian sport there; that a wish to study veterinary medicine had been refused; and that he qualified as a Zootechniker and then as a Pferdewirtschaftsmeister, in his telling one of very few and “a little out of protest.” The CDU in Saxony-Anhalt also lists that master craftsman’s title and study of animal production; the parliamentary biography does not.

### Farm management and public administration

From 1985 to 1989, while the distance course was still under way, Stier was a shift and department head at the ZBE Milchproduktion Reichardtswerben. Reichardtswerben, incorporated into Weißenfels on 1 September 2010, records an agricultural production cooperative, the LPG “Florian Geyer,” founded on 1 April 1955, full collectivization in 1960, and the opening in 1974 of a dairy unit of the “2,000-cow” type. A model statute for cooperative bodies of the LPGs, state farms (Volkseigene Güter) and related enterprises took effect on 1 January 1973. It provided for zwischenbetriebliche Einrichtungen (ZBE) involving state farms, and for inter-cooperative units, as crop and livestock production were separated and enlarged.

From 1989 to 1991 he managed Gut Storkau. Johannes Thimey had bought the manor in 1899 and concentrated on animal breeding, especially horses; the family was expropriated in 1945. In the GDR the breeding operation was expanded and farming continued, and the manor house also held a kindergarten and the municipal administration. The town history states that the heirs later regained much of the land and buildings after a long court case. The post coincided with German reunification. By 1993 four in five people working in agriculture and forestry in the former GDR had lost their jobs, and nearly three-quarters of a million agricultural jobs had gone from a workforce of 923,000.

From 1992 to 1995 he was a working-group leader at Saxony-Anhalt’s Amt für Landwirtschaft und Flurneuordnung Süd. The successor Ämter für Landwirtschaft, Flurneuordnung und Forsten, including a southern office, handle land consolidation and land ordering under the land-consolidation statute and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, village renewal and other rural measures, and the granting of agricultural aid.

### The Markwerben stable and insurance work

Since 1990 Stier has been managing chair of the Weißenfelser Reitverein and head of its riding, breeding and training stable at Markwerben, listed in the Bundestag biography together with a farm. Markwerben lies northwest of Weißenfels in a landscape-protection area and was incorporated into the town in 2010; the municipal list of associations includes the club.

On 29 December 2006 the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported that Stier had started riding at six and that, at twelve, he drove a one-horse carriage through the town while a stable was built onto a small barn with stone from the Pettstädt brickworks. The paper wrote that in 1973 he and his brother saw a fire it called arson, after which only part of the stable could still be used; the club spent three years in temporary quarters before moving to Markwerben. In 1990 the SG Pferdesport der Kooperation Burgwerben became the Weißenfelser Reitverein and took the site from the liquidation assets of the GDR sports federation. Stier told the paper that the club then bore the costs itself.

It then had about 40 members and 15 horses, five of them privately boarded, gave riding lessons, took school placements, and had two apprentices and one person in retraining. A grant application filed in Magdeburg in 2003 for a riding hall, which the paper associated with spending of 1.2 million euros, was still pending; Stier said customers stayed away without winter riding space.

The biography dates an agency for animal insurance from 1997. In the register of members’ interests, his work before the mandate is given as owner of an R+V Versicherung agency in Weißenfels/Saale and as head of the Markwerben stable. As paid activity beside the mandate the same register lists insurance brokerage for R+V Allgemeine Versicherung AG in Hanover and continued leadership of the stable.

## Local government and party roles

### Weißenfels city council

Stier joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in 1999 and, in the same year, the city council (Stadtrat) of Weißenfels. The biography published by the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag), which rests on members’ own statements, lists him as a city councillor until 2014 and as chair of the CDU group on that council for the span given there as 2000/09. It records no later office on the Weißenfels council. The same text places a district mandate earlier than party membership: he is listed as a member of a Kreistag from 1994 to 2019, without naming the pre-2007 district.

### The Burgenlandkreis council

On 1 July 2007 a district reform in Saxony-Anhalt reduced the number of rural districts from 21 to 11, under a statute of 11 November 2005 as amended in December 2006. The Landkreis Weißenfels and the predecessor Burgenlandkreis were combined. At 31 December 2005 those predecessors had 33 and 87 municipalities, 372 and 1,041 square kilometres, and 74,077 and 133,650 inhabitants; the merged district had 120 municipalities, 1,414 square kilometres and 207,727 inhabitants. The law’s original name for the new body was Landkreis Burgenland, and the seat was fixed at Naumburg. A constitutional complaint by the city of Weißenfels against that choice of seat failed.

At its constitutive sitting in Naumburg on 16 July 2007 the new council voted to keep the name Burgenlandkreis from 1 August. The motion received 42 votes, one more than the two-thirds majority of 41 that was required, and replaced the statutory name Landkreis Burgenland. A proposal to call the district Saale-Unstrut-Kreis received 20 votes. The same sitting, opened by the oldest member, 71-year-old Dr Helmut Richter of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), elected Stier chairman. No other candidate was proposed, and only four votes were cast against him. Stier said he would put practical work first: “Democracy means an exchange of views and argument. Even so, the common good, not individual councillors’ desire to raise their own profile, should decide every question.” The Bundestag biography dates his chairmanship of the Burgenlandkreis council from 2007 to 2019.

After the municipal election of 25 May 2014, 54 honorary councillors opened the new term in Naumburg on 7 July and again chose Stier. A first ballot had to be reprinted because Hans Püschel of the NPD had also been nominated and the papers carried four boxes instead of two. In the repeated vote Stier received 47 votes. Siegfried Hanke of the Social Democratic Party (48 votes) and Horst Heller of Die Linke (47) became deputies. Stier said he would put factual work for the region first and asked councillors to serve what he put at 186,000 inhabitants.

He did not continue into the following term. On the evening of 1 July 2019 the new council elected Andy Haugk, mayor of Hohenmölsen, as chairman, with one vote against and no opposing candidate. Haugk said Stier had conducted the office with assurance for many years and had “left a large chair”. Uwe Kraneis of the SPD became first deputy, also without an opposing candidate.

### CDU offices

From 2007 to 2018 Stier was deputy chairman of the CDU district association (Kreisverband) for the Burgenlandkreis, and from 2018 until May 2026 its chairman. The Bundestag biography also lists work in the agriculture committee of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt (Landesfachausschuss Landwirtschaft).

The 2018 change followed a decision by Landrat Götz Ulrich. In late December 2017, after eleven years as district party chairman, Ulrich said he would not stand at the Kreisparteitag set for 26 January. He cited the time the party office took and his view that a Landrat, who had to represent the whole district, could not easily lead one party as well. He named Stier, then a Bundestag member and Kreistag chairman, as a possible successor.

The state CDU reported on 11 May 2022 that the district association had re-elected Stier with almost 95 percent of the vote, with Jana Schumann and Thomas Pleye as deputy chairs. At a members’ meeting on 19 October 2024 in the Hotel “Schöne Aussicht” in Leißling he was confirmed with three votes against. Schumann, mayor of the Unstruttal association municipality, and Pleye, president of the state administration office (Landesverwaltungsamt), remained deputies. In May 2026 he did not stand again. The *Mitteldeutsche Zeitung* reported on 12 May that Daniel Sturm, from Naumburg, had been elected to succeed him at a district party congress the previous week. Sturm was already a CDU member of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt for the district.

## Bundestag candidacies and election results

### The Burgenland–Saalekreis constituency

Dieter Stier has stood in southern Saxony-Anhalt at every Bundestag election since 2009. In 2009 the district was constituency 74, Burgenland–Saalekreis: the whole Burgenlandkreis and, from the Saalekreis, Bad Dürrenberg, Braunsbedra, Leuna, Schkopau and a number of smaller municipalities that the later boundary descriptions no longer list separately. From 2013 to 2021 the same core was constituency 73, defined as the Burgenlandkreis plus Bad Dürrenberg, Braunsbedra, Leuna and Schkopau, with the rest of the Saalekreis split between the Halle and Mansfeld seats. For the election of 23 February 2025 the state’s constituencies were renumbered from nine (66–74) to eight (66–73), and the seat became constituency 72. It still takes in the entire Burgenlandkreis and, from the Saalekreis, Bad Dürrenberg, Braunsbedra, Leuna, Merseburg and Schkopau.

Merseburg was the main territorial addition in 2025. Weißenfels, Naumburg and Zeitz were already inside the district, and MDR described the 2025 seat as covering more than 256,000 residents, of whom more than 200,500 were eligible to vote. The official electorate was 214,081 in 2009, on about 1,710 square kilometres with 250,467 inhabitants at the end of 2008; it was 201,043 in 2013, 191,636 in 2017 and 184,352 in 2021, then 203,597 in 2025 after Merseburg was added.

### Direct mandates, 2009–2021

At the election of 27 September 2009 Stier, then chairman of the Burgenlandkreis council, won constituency 74 for the CDU with 41,281 first votes (33.0 percent). Roland Claus, the direct candidate of Die Linke, received 39,610 votes (31.7 percent), 1,671 behind; the SPD candidate Maik Reichel, who had held the seat, was third with 18.9 percent. Turnout was 59.6 percent. On second votes the order reversed: Die Linke 39,876 (31.9 percent), the CDU 39,777 (31.8 percent) and the SPD 15.6 percent. The constituency win was the mandate with which Stier entered the Bundestag.

On 22 September 2013, in constituency 73, the gap widened. Stier took 54,544 first votes (44.8 percent) to 31,300 (25.7 percent) for Die Linke; the *Mitteldeutsche Zeitung* again named Claus as that party’s candidate. Turnout was 61.6 percent of 201,043 eligible voters, and the CDU also led the second vote, with 42.8 percent against 23.7 percent for Die Linke.

The runner-up in 2017 was the AfD. Stier held the seat with 43,254 first votes (33.6 percent); the AfD received 30,112 (23.4 percent). The *Mitteldeutsche Zeitung* identified the AfD candidate as Uwe Gewiese and reported, on election night, that he reached 26.7 percent of first votes in his home town of Zeitz, against 29.7 percent for Stier. Second votes in the constituency were 29.9 percent for the CDU and 24.6 percent for the AfD. Turnout was 68.5 percent of 191,636 eligible voters.

In 2021 the direct mandate was decided by 321 votes. Stier won with 32,649 first votes (26.3 percent); Martin Reichardt, the AfD’s lead candidate in the state, had 32,328 (26.0 percent). The SPD’s Jens Wojtyschak was third on first votes with 21.9 percent. On second votes the AfD led, with 24.9 percent, ahead of the SPD on 22.8 percent and the CDU on 21.3 percent. Turnout was 68.3 percent of 184,352 eligible voters.

### The 2025 election and the state list

On 23 February 2025 Stier lost the constituency. In constituency 72, Reichardt took 69,074 first votes (44.4 percent) and Stier 37,721 (24.2 percent), with turnout at 77.3 percent of 203,597 eligible voters. Second votes went to the AfD on 42.3 percent, the CDU on 18.8 percent, the BSW on 11.6 percent, the SPD on 9.1 percent and Die Linke on 8.7 percent. MDR reported eight approved direct candidates in all: alongside Reichardt and Stier, Michael Scholz (Die Linke), Norman Steigleder (SPD), Rebecca Resch ([Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters)), Moritz Eichelmann (FDP), Enrico Gemsa (Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens)) and the independent Matthias Senftleben.

The election was the first under the 2023 reform of the federal electoral law. A party candidate now wins a constituency seat only with both a plurality of first votes and coverage by the party’s second votes in that Land, the rule known as *Zweitstimmendeckung*: winners are ranked by their share of the first vote, and any seats beyond those due to the party are left vacant. The second vote alone determines how many seats a party receives. Overhang and compensatory mandates were abolished, and the Bundestag was fixed at 630 members, against 736 in the outgoing term.

In Saxony-Anhalt the AfD led both the first vote (38.8 percent) and the second vote (37.1 percent) and took the plurality in all eight constituencies. Seven of those winners were seated. Constituency 71 (Halle) remained vacant because the AfD’s 30.6 percent plurality was not covered by second votes; the CDU, on 22.3 percent, was the runner-up there. The CDU won no Saxony-Anhalt constituency. With 19.2 percent of second votes statewide, its members came from the state list. On 30 November 2024, about 100 delegates meeting in Zerbst placed Sepp Müller first and Stier second. The federal returning officer recorded four CDU members elected from that list — Müller, Stier, Anna Aeikens and Tino Sorge — and recorded Reichardt as the member for constituency 72, elected with 44.4 percent of the first vote.

## Work in the Bundestag

Dieter Stier has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2009, from the 17th electoral term onward, in the joint parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU). Permanent committees prepare the chamber’s decisions: after a first reading, a bill goes to a lead committee and, where the plenary so decides, to other committees for an opinion, and the lead committee returns a recommendation on which the plenary votes. Each full member has one vote; a substitute may attend every sitting but votes only when standing in for an absent full member of the same group.

### Agriculture, food and homeland

The agriculture committee has been Stier’s main legislative seat. Near the end of the 17th term the Bundestag biography recorded him as a full member of the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. From the 18th term through the 20th he was a full member of the renamed Committee on Food and Agriculture. In the 21st term, constituted on 21 May 2025, he is one of 30 full members of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland, ten of them from the CDU/CSU; [Hermann Färber](/people/hermann-farber) (CDU/CSU) was elected chair. The minutes state that *Heimat* had passed from the Interior Ministry to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Homeland, and therefore into the committee: rural and urban areas and the relationship between them, alongside food supply and health-related consumer protection. The committee also describes its field as including agriculture and forestry, hunting and fisheries, environment and climate, animal welfare, and rural areas.

Agendas name a rapporteur from each group. The agenda of 22 November 2022 listed Stier as CDU/CSU rapporteur for the bill amending the Veterinary Medicinal Products Act to collect data on antibiotic medicines (printed paper 20/3712). The minutes of 16 October 2024 again named him CDU/CSU rapporteur for the bill on enforcement of EU animal-health and certain control rules (printed paper 20/12782), on which the agriculture committee was in the lead.

### Sport and voluntary work

He has sat on the sports committee in every term since 2009. Near the end of the 17th term the biography lists him as a full member of the *Sportausschuss* and as a substitute on the subcommittee on civic engagement (*Unterausschuss „Bürgerschaftliches Engagement“*); in the 18th term he was a full member of both. A members’ list archived in September 2016 names him deputy chair, with Dagmar Freitag of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as chair, and the end-of-term biography records the same post. In the 19th term the biography again lists him as deputy chair and as a full member. The current biography, whose narrative rests on members’ own statements, mentions that deputy chairmanship for the 19th term.

He remained a full member, no longer a deputy chair, in the 20th term. Minutes of 15 December 2021 place him among five CDU/CSU full members of a 19-member *Sportausschuss* chaired by [Frank Ullrich](/people/frank-ullrich) (SPD). On 21 May 2025 the body was reconstituted as the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Work, with 14 full members; Stier is again one of five CDU/CSU full members, and [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) (SPD) was elected chair. Election of a deputy chair was still outstanding, and the minutes record Özoğuz saying the committee would also deal with voluntary work.

### Defence, the Joint Committee and the parliamentary group

On defence, the recorded role has been that of a substitute. The 18th- and 19th-term biographies list him as a substitute on the Defence Committee. Article 45a of the Basic Law requires the Bundestag to appoint that committee and gives it, alone among Bundestag committees, the power to constitute itself as a committee of inquiry. On 30 January 2019 it constituted itself, on a motion from the FDP, The Left and Alliance 90/The Greens, to inquire into external advice in the Defence Ministry after reports by the Federal Court of Audit; the 19th-term biography lists Stier as a substitute on that inquiry. The archived 20th-term biography does not record a defence seat. In the 21st term the committee has 38 full members and as many substitutes; the current biography again lists him as a substitute. The committee prepares defence bills for the plenary and supports oversight of the government and the Bundeswehr.

He is also a substitute on the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law. That body is not an ordinary committee: it has 48 members, two-thirds from the Bundestag and one-third from the Bundesrat, and is the emergency parliament for a state of defence if the Bundestag cannot meet in time. On 26 June 2025 the groups tabled a nomination (printed paper 21/595) of members and an equal number of substitutes; Stier was among the eleven CDU/CSU substitutes. The same parliamentary report recorded that the Joint Committee, introduced with the 1968 emergency amendments, had never met.

Inside the CDU/CSU group, the Bundestag biography states that Stier was deputy chair of the CDU *Landesgruppe* of Saxony-Anhalt from 2013 to 2021; the 18th-term biography already described him in that post. The group’s profile for the 21st term places him in its working groups on agriculture, food and homeland and on sport and voluntary work, and also in the group of expellees, resettlers and German minorities and in the Parliamentary Circle on Small and Medium-Sized Business (*Parlamentskreis Mittelstand*).

## Agricultural and rural policy

### Livestock, animal welfare and food

In the Bundestag, Dieter Stier has taken the CDU/CSU line that national herd caps are the wrong tool and that livestock rules must stay payable and enforceable. On 15 January 2015, as the International Green Week opened, he called a motion from Alliance 90/The Greens for species-appropriate, land-tied husbandry another “general attack” on the food economy. Stocking, he said, might be too high in places, but not everywhere: Saxony-Anhalt already had a clearly lower rate than 25 years earlier, with room for jobs in livestock and processing. Abuses existed, yet animal-welfare law was strict enough to enforce, as in the Straathof pig farms; husbandry was, he said, a compromise between animals’ needs and economic requirements, and meat need not be daily. He also attacked that morning’s ARD item on a vegan “leather whip” made from bicycle tubes, the passage *Die Welt* said travelled while his stock figures did not. Friedrich Ostendorff, for the Greens, cited slurry and antibiotics; Kirsten Tackmann of Die Linke wanted herd caps and blamed supermarket prices.

On 17 September 2014 Stier, the group’s animal-welfare rapporteur, and Franz-Josef Holzenkamp backed agriculture minister [Christian Schmidt](/people/christian-schmidt)’s “Eine Frage der Haltung”: non-therapeutic beak and tail docking should end, and research and keeper training grow, but first by voluntary agreement. Higher standards, they wrote, had to be paid by retailers and shoppers; “survey pledges alone” would not keep a farm, least of all a small one.

On 26 June 2025 Stier proposed delaying for a year two eco-schemes in the Common Agricultural Policy direct-payments law—pasture on dairy farms, and the siting of biodiversity areas—calling them rushed leftovers of the previous coalition, unworkable in time and beyond what the Länder could administer. The CDU/CSU and the SPD passed the delay; the AfD, the Greens and the Left voted against. [Karl Bär](/people/karl-bar) said about €29 million should reward farmers who grazed cattle or linked habitats, not go out as a flat area payment under minister Alois Rainer; Stier said that misread the bill. [Zoe Mayer](/people/zoe-mayer) argued for a levy or a VAT change, as the Borchert commission had urged, and Stier’s interjection was “No.” SPD speaker Franziska Kersten said the label should slip by months and then cover processed food, catering, cattle and poultry, not be scrapped.

On 15 January 2026 Stier asked to move compulsory husbandry labelling from 1 March 2026 to 1 January 2027 while a reform in the coalition agreement was prepared. He wanted consumer transparency with planning certainty and “only the absolutely necessary minimum of bureaucracy,” and said he personally thought a statutory label dispensable. Mayer called a binding mark the minimum against packs showing contented animals. [Ina Latendorf](/people/ina-latendorf), for the Left, called a label of a fraction of an animal’s life a fig leaf—1.1 square metres for a grown pig under “Stall+Platz”—and said some systems should be banned rather than marked. The delay passed with the CDU/CSU, the SPD and the Left; the Greens voted no and the AfD abstained, its speaker Stefan Schröder demanding repeal rather than another date. The same afternoon another Union speaker, [Benedikt Büdenbender](/people/benedikt-budenbender), said the nutrient-flow balance duty had already been dropped and that the fertiliser ordinance would be revised in light of the Federal Administrative Court.

### Rural structure in southern Saxony-Anhalt

The seat joins the Burgenlandkreis to part of the Saalekreis. At the end of 2024 the Burgenlandkreis had 173,684 inhabitants on 141,369 hectares; Weißenfels, where Stier lives, was the largest town, with 37,929 people. The district holds the last working lignite mine in the Central German district, MIBRAG’s Profen pit, while the Saalekreis still contains the chemical sites at Leuna and the former Buna works at Schkopau. Merseburg entered the constituency in 2025, which Stier called “new topics one has to look after.”

In January 2018, after MIBRAG had described high costs at Profen and a wish to generate into the 2040s, Stier told an FDP reception in Weißenfels not to talk structural change into being: it unsettled workers and investors, and “we too often lay the axe to the root of our prosperity.” By the 2025 campaign Stier put structural change first and said that, from opposition, he had worked to bring the money in—repairs at Schloss Neu-Augustusburg and the planned Wethau bypass—and that other regions envied the sums. He also wanted a southern bypass of Weißenfels and less of the paperwork he said reached his own farm, and he preferred the SPD to the Greens, “above all with a view to agriculture,” without what he called “green planned economy.”

In 2023 the state and the five central-German authorities in Saxony-Anhalt split €1,544.5 million in federal financial aid: the Burgenlandkreis received 28 per cent, €432.5 million, and the Saalekreis 20 per cent, €308.9 million. MDR put the wider package, adding a federal pillar and the EU Just Transition Fund, at about €5.26 billion, of which about five per cent had been paid by July 2024. About two-thirds of the state’s own pillar was planned for business sites, including Leuna, rather than research or everyday services. District administrator Götz Ulrich said the grants did not repair the social budget but made large projects possible at all. About 2,000 people still worked in lignite, against roughly 300,000 residents aged 55 to 64 and about 180,000 aged 10 to 19 across the central district; in 1991–93, MDR Data recalled, tens of thousands of lignite jobs went and about 30,000 young adults left. IWH economist Mirko Titze told MDR he did not see a repeat of that unemployment, but a shortage of skilled workers if the money bought sites and not training.

## Horses in politics

### Riding associations

Since 1990 Dieter Stier has been managing chair of the Weißenfelser Reitverein in Weißenfels and head of the riding, breeding and training stable at Markwerben, run with a farm, according to the Bundestag biography compiled from members’ disclosures. The stable is listed as paid work beside the mandate; the club chairmanship and the first chairmanship of the Kreisreiterverband Burgenlandkreis are honorary.

In a Mitteldeutsche Zeitung interview of 12 September 2013 he traced his riding to childhood with an aunt in Nessa, in Saxony-Anhalt, said veterinary study had been refused, and said that, having qualified as a Zootechniker, he became a Pferdewirtschaftsmeister — “a little out of protest,” and in his telling one of very few. The Bundestag biography lists 1981–83 training as Zootechniker/Mechanisator and a 1989 agricultural diploma, not that master title.

The Deutsche Reiterliche Vereinigung (FN), the federal association for equestrian sport and breeding, said in 2018 that it covered 7,521 riding and driving clubs and nearly 700,000 members. Its own estimates were almost four million riders, about 1.3 million horses and turnover of about 6.7 billion euro.

### The Parliamentary Circle on the Horse

In October 2018 an invitation to Bundestag members, signed by Andrea Nahles of the Social Democratic Party, Pascal Kober of the Free Democratic Party, Alois Gerig of the Christian Democratic Union and Stier, also of the CDU, proposed a cross-party Parliamentary Circle on the Horse. Its stated aim was to inform colleagues interested in the horse, across the groups, about current topics from the horse world. Work was to begin on 20 November 2018. The text said no other animal had shaped humans as the horse had, over 5,000 years of transport, agriculture and the military.

It arrived after a heavy SPD defeat in Bavaria and before the Hesse election. Der Spiegel reported doubts in the party about whether the chair should be occupied elsewhere. A spokeswoman said Nahles had never hidden that she rides, an interest put at 1.6 million people; Kober said he had asked her because she kept a Friesian gelding, called the timing a coincidence, and Spiegel noted existing circles such as one on automobiles as cultural heritage. n-tv reported her reply to Bild am Sonntag that nearly four million people in Germany ride, that she was one of them, and that members should keep contact with every part of society. It called the plan Stier’s initiative and reported an ironic SPD remark that there were at least more horses than SPD voters in Bavaria.

The FN’s account of 21 November 2018 spread the initiative across the four. Gerig, then chair of the Bundestag agriculture committee, had said at an FN evening in March 2018 that the horse deserved more attention; Stier, then deputy chair of the sports committee, and Kober, who took the lead, announced the circle at an FN board meeting. Defence Minister [Ursula von der Leyen](/people/energy-ursula-von-der-leyen) attended the founding meeting in Berlin. Bernhard Feßler of the FN’s capital office represented the federation. Almost 40 members from the CDU, SPD, FDP and Alliance 90/The Greens were on an interest list.

It remained an informal interest group, not a Bundestag committee. On 15 February 2019 the chairs of the Vereinigung der Freizeitreiter und -fahrer, Hanspeter Hartmann and Christine Garbers, discussed it in Berlin with Stier, who had invited them, and with Kober. On 30 November 2023 Deutscher Galopp’s president, Michael Vesper, and managing director Daniel Krüger spoke to a meeting that the association described as chaired by Kober and made up of 35 members from all groups. With [Silvia Breher](/people/silvia-breher) and Stier present, they raised thoroughbred breeding and racing, animal welfare, an unfinished 2020 betting-tax reform, and veterinary fees. On 19 March 2026, in the Paul Löbe House, FN president Martin Richenhagen and breeding director Klaus Miesner met Stier, [Franziska Kersten](/people/franziska-kersten) of the SPD, Hermann Färber, [Artur Auernhammer](/people/artur-auernhammer), Caroline Borsbach and [Johannes Winkel](/people/johannes-winkel). The agenda also covered wolves and herd protection, genomic selection, an Olympic bid and falling numbers in sport, breeding and keeping.

### Veterinary fees and the legal status of horses

The recurring dispute was the veterinarians’ fee schedule, the Gebührenordnung für Tierärztinnen und Tierärzte (GOT), in the version applied from November 2022. Agrarheute reported a new visit charge, item 40, except for agricultural livestock: 34.50 euro at the single rate and up to two or three times that, on top of mileage, and not divisible when several owners share one appointment. For horses, examination in the home stable is the usual case.

A joint working group of the Bundestierärztekammer and the Bundesverband Praktizierender Tierärzte said horses had not been omitted by mistake. Its note calls the GOT a binding federal ordinance that only the legislature can change, with the Bundesrat also required, and says the lead ministry then planned no amendment. On its reading, agricultural livestock are animals that serve the holder’s gainful activity. For horses it accepted that description only for mares kept for milk, horses kept for meat (not merely a food-producing mark in the equine passport), a farm broodmare and her offspring for at most two years while they stay on the farm, and horses that contribute to farm income, such as logging horses — not animals in private or commercial livery, training or a riding school. A holding number was not enough, and the fee is charged per keeper rather than split like mileage.

The FN disagreed. Agrarheute reported in January 2023 that the federation called the visit fee a mistake and classed the horse with cattle, pigs and sheep, because horses, like cows, are usually examined in the stable; the chamber replied that horses in general are not exempt. Stier did not table a rewrite. As question 55 in printed paper 20/8109 he asked which EU countries impose a state schedule like the GOT and which leave veterinary pay to contract. On 24 August 2023 parliamentary state secretary [Ophelia Nick](/people/ophelia-nick) answered that the agriculture ministry had no information. Deutscher Galopp told the November 2023 meeting that the schedule had been issued without hearing horse associations and had raised owners’ costs sharply. In March 2026 Richenhagen said owners were overstretched and that breeding and sport were falling. Miesner asked for a full reconsideration of the GOT and for one legally secure European and national classification of the horse as agricultural livestock, on the ground that many keeping rules already match those for other farm animals while the fee schedule does not.

## Outside activities and transparency

### Disclosed side activities

Members of the Bundestag must notify the President of the Bundestag of outside interests under the code of conduct in sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz). The duty covers the last occupation before the mandate, paid work alongside it, company-board seats and leading offices in associations that are not purely local. Notices are due within three months of taking the seat and of any later change. If income from a notifiable activity exceeds 1,000 euro in a month or, failing that, 3,000 euro in a calendar year, the gross amount must be stated. The particulars are published on the Bundestag website. Those rules, not a private organisation’s score, are the legal standard.

The published biography of Dieter Stier, of the CDU, lists as pre-mandate work ownership of an agency of R+V Versicherung in Weißenfels and the headship of the riding, breeding and training stable at Markwerben for the Weißenfelser Reitverein. The same two roles are listed as paid work alongside the mandate: brokering insurance for R+V Allgemeine Versicherung AG in Hanover, and continuing as head of the Markwerben stable. Both are marked as remunerated, but no euro figure is given for either; under the Act a figure is required only once those thresholds are crossed.

Among company posts, the biography records an honorary seat on the advisory board of Mitteldeutsche Basketball Marketing GmbH in Weißenfels, and membership of the supervisory board of the Wohnungsgenossenschaft Unstruttal eG, a housing cooperative at Freyburg on the Unstrut. The cooperative fee is given as 2,000 euro gross a year, plus irregular gross payments of 500 euro in 2025 and 400 euro in 2026.

Separate from the paid stable post, two association offices are published as honorary: first chairman of the Kreisreiterverband Burgenlandkreis, and managing first chairman of the Weißenfelser Reitverein. Abgeordnetenwatch reproduces these categories from the parliamentary notifications. The entries are notifications under the Act; neither the Bundestag page nor the regional reporting below records a sanction or a finding that any activity was withheld.

### Questions, watchdog grades and Stier’s response

Abgeordnetenwatch, run by the association Parlamentwatch, publishes citizens’ questions to members of parliament and has issued school-style grades for the share answered on its site. On its stated method, standardised replies that do not address the question and instead point to another channel do not count. The grades are the organisation’s own score, not a finding under the Members of the Bundestag Act.

The Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported in July 2015 that Stier and Roland Claus of Die Linke had been marked “ungenügend”, Stier for five unanswered questions, against an average of 2.2 for members from Saxony-Anhalt. Karamba Diaby had answered all 13 put to him. Stier said he did answer questions, but would not be compelled onto a platform such as abgeordnetenwatch.de: questioners received a standard offer of an appointment, a call or an email, and he needed no internet portal as intermediary and did not want to be questioned anonymously. Sandra Lang of Abgeordnetenwatch said questions were not anonymous, were screened before publication, and were meant to stay publicly traceable. The paper noted a similar stance by [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel), the then Bundestag president [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert) and interior minister Thomas de Maizière.

In July 2019 the newspaper reported a grade of 6, the lowest in the state delegation, for three unanswered questions. Stier said the portal tried to force politicians onto its side, that he would not be forced—citing Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen, who had also received the worst mark—and that he regarded it as a commercial portal. The paper reported that Parlamentwatch calls itself non-partisan and institutionally independent and that, of income then totalling 909,212 euro, most came from supporting contributions and donations, with a small share from foundations. Anyone who wanted contact, he said, received it by telephone or email; a notice on the site, that he did not use internet portals because they could present a situation only in shortened form, had not been counted as an answer. Grades, he added, are given by the voter at the ballot box.

Abgeordnetenwatch’s release of 15 July 2020 again placed him last among the state’s members: the only one to leave every question unanswered, six in all, and again graded 6, in a year when the state average was 2.2. Its profile for the 2025–2029 term later showed none of four questions answered; only questions during the current candidacy or mandate are counted.

## Public profile and reception

### Regional press

The Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, the daily for southern Saxony-Anhalt, has covered Dieter Stier chiefly as a Weißenfels CDU politician. After the 2021 federal election it reported a 321-vote margin over Martin Reichardt of the AfD and called the win close to a surprise given election night. Before his sixth candidacy in 2025 the paper quoted him as “traurig” about that margin and hoping for a wider gap. He said he had always polled ahead of his party; the interview stayed on structural-change money, roads and farm paperwork.

MDR Sachsen-Anhalt reported the result in plain figures: the AfD took constituency 72 with 44.4 percent of the first votes, the CDU followed on 24.2 percent, and the direct mandate went to Reichardt. It identified Stier, then 60, as the member who had entered the Bundestag in 2009 and still held the seat in 2021. In May 2026 the MZ reported that he did not stand again as CDU chairman in the Burgenlandkreis; Daniel Sturm of Naumburg succeeded him, leaving the chairman’s initials unchanged.

His abgeordnetenwatch.de marks were a local story there too. In July 2015 the MZ reported an “ungenügend” for five unanswered questions and his refusal to use the site: questioners, he said, were offered a meeting, a call or an email. Sandra Lang of the project said the point was public replies; the paper noted that Angela Merkel had argued similarly. In July 2019 it led with a 6, the state’s worst mark that year. Stier called the portal commercial, likened the grade to those of Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen, and said “Noten verteilt der Wähler”.

### National coverage and satire

Wider notice has been intermittent and has clustered on horses. On 16 January 2015, during the Green Week, [Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt) reported a Bundestag speech attacking ARD’s *Morgenmagazin* for discussing a vegan whip made from bicycle inner tubes instead of a farm. Welt recorded laughter and a shout of “Was dagegen?”, and wrote that the clip became an internet hit while the rest, on farmland and livestock, drew less notice. It also played on his name (“Nomen est omen”).

In October 2018 the planned Parliamentary Circle on the Horse drew sharper copy, aimed mainly at Andrea Nahles. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported SPD unease: one member had first taken the invitation for a ZDF *heute-show* gag, and colleagues were quoted as saying there were at least more horses than SPD voters in Bavaria. The agency said the circle had been announced in March above all by Stier. [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel), in Lisa Duhm’s “Diese Abgeordneten wollen vom Pferd erzählen” (18 October), opened with “Das Wiehern gewinnt” and reported questions inside the SPD about Nahles’s priorities. Pascal Kober told Spiegel he regretted the “Häme” against her and called the timing “eine reine Zufälligkeit”. Stier was named as a founder alongside Kober and Alois Gerig.

Die Zeit’s magazine, on 20 November 2018, asked whether the circle was politics or “nur zum Wiehern”; it centred Nahles, not Stier. The satire column of Die Tageszeitung, “Auf dem Fallschirmpferd” (5 November), invented a sketch on his surname. In January 2019 the MZ reported that Urban Priol, on ZDF, had called him a “CDU-Hinterbänkler” and mocked the circle “in Zeiten niedriger Löhne, mickriger Renten und steigender Kinderarmut”. The paper added that he did not seek the spotlight and could not be reached. A Zeit portrait in 2025 (issue 45) called him “der Mann, der die Pferde versteht”, and described him slipping past a crowd into the members’ restaurant to sit at table 12, after saying he rarely gave interviews and that “Medienrummel” was not his thing.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/dieter-stier