# Dietmar Woidke

# Dietmar Woidke

Dietmar Woidke (born 22 October 1961 in Naundorf, near Forst (Lausitz)) is a politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) and, since 28 August 2013, minister-president of Brandenburg. On that day the Landtag of Brandenburg, meeting in Potsdam, elected the then interior minister with 59 of 87 votes—more than the 55 seats of the coalition of the SPD and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke)—and swore him in as successor to Matthias Platzeck, who had resigned after a stroke. Two days earlier a special party congress had made Woidke chairman of the Brandenburg SPD with more than 95 percent of the vote, and he has remained state party leader since 2013. The premiership has been held by the SPD without interruption since German reunification, by Manfred Stolpe, then Platzeck, then Woidke.

Woidke studied agriculture and animal production, including nutritional physiology, at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1982 to 1987 and graduated as a Diplom-Agraringenieur. From 1987 to 1990 he was a research assistant at the university’s Institute of Nutritional Physiology; in 1993 he received a doctorate in agricultural science. Between those years he headed the scientific department of Sano-Mineralfutter GmbH (1990–1992) and then the environment and agriculture office of the Spree-Neiße district (1992–1994). He joined the SPD in 1993 and has been a member of the Landtag without a break since 1994.

From 2004 to 2009 he was minister for rural development, the environment and consumer protection. He chaired the SPD group in the Landtag from November 2009 to September 2010, and he was minister of the interior from October 2010 until August 2013. From 29 January 2014 until 2022 he was the federal coordinator for German–Polish intersocietal and cross-border cooperation. From 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2020 he was president of the German Bundesrat.

At the 2019 state election the SPD fell to 26.2 percent, then its weakest Landtag result in Brandenburg, and Woidke continued in office at the head of a coalition with the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). Ahead of the [2024 Brandenburg state election](/facts/2024-brandenburg-state-election) he made his own future the stake of the campaign, saying on 1 August 2024 that his aim was to beat [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany and that if he lost to the AfD he would be “gone.” The official final result of 22 September 2024 put the SPD on 30.89 percent and the AfD on 29.23 percent, with turnout at 72.9 percent; the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance entered parliament with 13.48 percent. On 11 December 2024 the Landtag re-elected him only at the second ballot—50 votes, after 43 on the first, with 45 required—and he took office at the head of the first state government formed by the SPD and the BSW. That coalition ended on 6 January 2026, after three BSW members of the Landtag had left their group and the government had lost its majority. On 18 March 2026 ministers of a new SPD–CDU cabinet were sworn in, with Jan Redmann as interior minister and deputy minister-president; under the state constitution Woidke did not face a fresh election by the Landtag.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Naundorf

Dietmar Woidke was born on 22 October 1961 in Naundorf, a village near Forst (Lausitz) in the German Democratic Republic, in the Lower Lusatia region of what is now Brandenburg. The state government and the Social Democratic Party of Germany give the birthplace as Naundorf bei Forst. His own biographical note says he was born in Forst (Lausitz) and grew up on the parental farm in Naundorf, and the Bundesrat lists Forst. Naundorf was still a separate municipality in his childhood; it was incorporated into Forst on 6 December 1993.

He grew up there with a younger brother. The household kept dairy cows, horses, pigs, poultry and sheep, and a local account describes the holding as part of an agricultural production cooperative (LPG) of Type I, with his parents also helping on the grandparents’ farm. Egon Rattei, later economic head of that cooperative, told the *Berliner Morgenpost* that Woidke’s father was a locksmith and his mother the cooperative’s chief accountant. The same profile says the boy drove a tractor at home and could milk, joined in village festivals, liked school and was about 1.96 metres tall. Official biographies list him as Protestant.

Naundorf sits near the Lusatian Neisse. A 2013 visit found a place of 123 residents, a small church and two inns, with people living from farming and mining; Woidke’s parents were still in a house built in the 1940s, and his brother Thomas, a construction worker, was the local representative. Asked where he came from, Woidke would say Forst, “three trees before Moscow.”

### Schooling and military service

He went to primary school in nearby Sacro, then to the polytechnic secondary school (Polytechnische Oberschule) “Wilhelm Pieck” in Briesnig. From 1976 he attended the extended secondary school (Erweiterte Oberschule) “Rudolf Rothkegel” in Forst and passed the Abitur there in 1980. The SPD biography records military service in the National People's Army from 1980 to 1982; the *Morgenpost* describes it as eighteen months of basic service begun at 18. Woidke has written that a university place was difficult to obtain in the GDR and that he was pressed to become a professional soldier, which he refused.

### University and doctorate

From 1982 to 1987 he studied agriculture and animal production, specializing in nutritional physiology, at the agricultural faculty of Humboldt University of Berlin and graduated as a Diplom-Agraringenieur. From 1987 to 1990 he was a research assistant at the university’s Institute of Nutritional Physiology. Humboldt awarded him the doctorate in agricultural science (Dr. agr.) in 1993, three years after the assistantship ended. The dissertation, *Laboruntersuchungen zur Strohkonservierung mittels Harnstoff-Saccharose-Zusatz und zum Trockensubstanzabbau der Konservate nach der Nylonbeutel-Methodik*, reported laboratory work on conserving straw with a urea-sucrose additive and on the dry-matter breakdown of the treated material measured by the nylon-bag method. In 1994 he, H. Bergner and J. Lenk published a related article on storage trials with wheat straw treated with urea and carbohydrates in the journal *Das wirtschaftseigene Futter*.

## Early career and entry into the Landtag

### Agricultural research and district administration

In 1990, after three years as a research assistant in nutritional physiology, Woidke became head of the scientific department of Sano-Mineralfutter GmbH, a post he held until 1992./11263) He then moved into local administration in his home district. His Landtag biography, which rests on his own statement, lists him as head of the agriculture and environment office of the district of Forst from 1992 to 1993 and, in 1993, as head of the agriculture office of the district of Spree-Neiße./11263) The state government’s vita gives one title for the whole span: head of the office for the environment and agriculture of the Spree-Neiße district from 1992 to 1994.

The two accounts meet the 1993 reorganization of Brandenburg’s districts. A statute of 24 December 1992 formed one new district from the districts of Cottbus-Land, Forst, Guben and Spremberg. A law of 22 April 1993 named that district Landkreis Spree-Neiße and placed its administrative seat in Forst; both the name and the seat took effect at the end of the day of the next statewide election of district councils. He received his doctorate in agriculture in 1993, during this administrative period. The official register of candidates for the 1994 state election described him as a senior salaried employee (*Leitender Angestellter*) living in Forst.

### SPD membership and Landtag elections

Woidke joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1993. At the Landtag election of 11 September 1994 he was the SPD candidate in constituency 43, Spree-Neiße II, covering Forst (Lausitz) and the *Ämter* Döbern-Land, Hornow/Simmersdorf and Neuhausen/Spree. He won the direct seat with 9,330 first votes, 45.70 percent of the valid first votes. In the same constituency the SPD took 52.45 percent of the second votes, and turnout was 55.11 percent. The SPD won every one of the 44 direct seats, and Woidke has been a member of the Landtag in Potsdam without a break since October 1994./11263)

On 5 September 1999 he again carried Spree-Neiße II, with 9,850 first votes (43.42 percent), ahead of the Christian Democratic Union on 27.67 percent and the [Party of Democratic Socialism](/organizations/party-of-democratic-socialism) (PDS) on 18.76 percent. From 1998 to 2003 he also sat on the Forst city council (*Stadtverordnetenversammlung*), and from 1998 to 2004 on the Spree-Neiße district council (*Kreistag*)./11263)

The map was redrawn before the election of 19 September 2004. Forst, together with Guben, Schenkendöbern and Amt Peitz, became Spree-Neiße I. Woidke stood instead in the new Spree-Neiße II, constituency 42, comprising Spremberg, Welzow, Neuhausen/Spree, Haidemühl and Amt Döbern-Land. He finished third, with 6,392 first votes (26.49 percent), behind Birgit Wöllert of the PDS (7,783 votes, 32.25 percent), who took the seat, and Andreas Kottwitz of the CDU (6,941 votes, 28.76 percent). He remained a deputy through 21st place on the SPD state list. From 2004 he was minister for rural development, environment and consumer protection; he sat again on the Forst city council and the Spree-Neiße district council from 2008 until 2010./11263)

## Ministerial offices, 2004–2013

### Environment and consumer protection

On 13 October 2004 Matthias Platzeck named Dietmar Woidke, then 42, minister for rural development, environment and consumer protection in a new Social Democratic Party–Christian Democratic Union cabinet, at a ceremony in the Potsdam Landtag. He held the post until 6 November 2009, when an SPD–[Left Party](/organizations/left-party) government took office and his deputy membership of the Bundesrat ended./11263)

In a state powered largely by Lusatian lignite, Woidke said in 2007 that brown coal could not be fully replaced for the foreseeable future and that Brandenburg would remain an electricity exporter, but that Vattenfall would find further mining extensions harder than a decade earlier. He urged higher efficiency and use of waste heat at Jänschwalde, with a target of meeting at least half of electricity consumption from renewables by 2013/14.

The last clearance of the Sorbian village of Horno, already decided so that the Jänschwalde mine could advance, fell in his opening weeks. On 29 November 2004 Vattenfall blew up the village’s fieldstone church, more than 500 years old; the blast was not announced beforehand and took two attempts.

During the avian-influenza alert he defended, after first opposing it, an order to keep poultry indoors. In 2006 the ministry gave €21,470 for monitoring wolves entering from eastern Europe and ruled out releasing captive animals. A forestry cut of more than a third of the posts, sought by finance minister Rainer Speer, drew protests and was not carried through. When the ministry was split in the 2009 coalition change, *[Cicero](/people/cicero)* wrote that it was unclear whether that failure or a wish to keep EU-funded agriculture in SPD hands left Woidke without a cabinet seat.

### Parliamentary group leadership

In November 2009 the SPD group elected him chairman. Of the 28 members present, 27 voted for him and one abstained; the group held 31 seats. He remained chairman, and a member of the Landtag presidium, until October 2010./11263) A later *Spiegel* profile noted talk at the time that he had been sidelined as a sceptic of the alliance with the Left.

### Interior ministry

Speer resigned as interior minister on 23 September 2010, saying he wanted to limit damage to the office, the party and the coalition. The allegations concerned a land deal from his time as finance minister and reporting, drawn from a laptop stolen from his official car, about child-support payments. The state chancellery said Woidke would succeed him. On 6 October Platzeck handed him the certificate of appointment, and he took the oath in the Landtag the same morning.

He named Speer’s police-structure reform his first task, including a cut from about 8,900 posts to 7,000. On 16 December 2010 the Landtag passed, by 51 votes to 24 with one abstention, a law that from 2011 merged the Potsdam and Frankfurt (Oder) presidencies, parts of the interior ministry, the state criminal police office and the state operational unit into one presidium in Potsdam. Four directorates replaced 15 protection areas, and 50 full-time stations became 15 round-the-clock inspections plus 35 local stations, some open only by day. The CDU, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party voted no; a popular initiative had collected 97,000 signatures. *Cicero* later credited him with compromises that kept sites open, if not always around the clock, and with softening the staff cuts, and said inquiries into alleged former Stasi members in the police strained relations with the Left.

He also weighed a central office for the ministries’ personnel and technical work, which met resistance inside the government. In November 2011 Platzeck and finance minister Helmuth Markov set out further changes to school offices, prisons, universities and shared services, including tasks that might move to municipalities or be shared with Berlin, and put a working group under the interior minister in charge of them. Woidke stayed interior minister until August 2013./11263)

On 29 July 2013, after a mild stroke in June, Platzeck announced that he would leave the minister-presidency on 28 August and that Woidke would succeed him, take the state SPD chair and lead the party into the 2014 election. A special congress in Potsdam on 26 August elected Woidke chairman with 115 votes in favour and five against.

## Minister-President, 2013–2019

### Succession to Matthias Platzeck

Matthias Platzeck, minister-president of Brandenburg since 2002 and state chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) for 13 years, said in late July 2013 that he would leave office at the end of August. He had suffered a mild stroke in June and had made staying on dependent on a full recovery. The state party's executive and its group in the Landtag of Brandenburg treated Interior Minister Dietmar Woidke as the successor.

On 26 August, at an extraordinary congress in Potsdam, Woidke was elected SPD state chair. He was the only candidate: 115 delegates voted for him and five against, about 96 percent. Platzeck said he would stand again for the Landtag in the Uckermark but would not second-guess the new leadership, and he called Woidke the minister-president the state needed. Woidke promised to keep the coalition with Die Linke and named victory in the 2014 state election as the party's immediate aim.

On 28 August, before the agenda of the Landtag's 79th sitting, Platzeck formally resigned. In a secret ballot the chamber then elected Woidke, again unopposed, by 59 votes to 25, with three abstentions; 87 of 88 deputies took part. Landtag President Gunter Fritsch swore him in the same morning. The yes votes were four more than the SPD–Left coalition then held. The coalition itself stayed in place. The SPD's parliamentary leader, Ralf Holzschuher, was to take the interior ministry Woidke was leaving, while the other portfolios were to be filled again without change.

### 2014 election and red-red coalition

The Landtag election of 14 September 2014 was the first the SPD fought with Woidke as minister-president. It remained the largest party, with 31.9 percent of the second vote (315,202 votes; 31.92 percent in the final count) and 30 of 88 seats, down from 33.0 percent and 31 seats in 2009. Turnout was 47.88 percent, against 67 percent five years earlier.

Die Linke fell from 27.2 percent and 26 seats to 18.6 percent and 17. The Christian Democratic Union rose to 23.0 percent and 21 seats, from 19.8 percent and 19. The Alternative for Germany, on the ballot for a Brandenburg Landtag for the first time, took 12.2 percent and 11 seats. Alliance 90/The Greens won 6.2 percent and six seats, one more than in 2009. The Free Democratic Party fell to 1.5 percent and lost the seven seats it had held. BVB/[Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters), with 2.7 percent of the second vote, still won three seats after taking one constituency.

SPD and Left together had 47 seats, one more than the minimum for a majority in an 88-seat house. After exploratory talks with both the CDU and the Left, Woidke chose to renew the red-red coalition rather than change partners. On 5 November 2014 the Landtag re-elected him on the first ballot with 47 votes, the coalition's exact strength and two above the absolute majority of 45; 87 deputies voted. Landtag President Britta Stark administered the oath, and he then appointed the new cabinet. Karl-Heinz Schröter, previously Landrat of Oberhavel, became interior minister. That choice was disputed inside the governing parties because of his stance on asylum; the Left's parliamentary leader, Margitta Mächtig, had called his record an indefensible asylum policy.

The term's central project was the district reform written into the 2014 coalition agreement. The plan was to cut the number of district-level administrations—14 Landkreise and four independent cities since the 1993 map—toward about ten, and to absorb Cottbus, Frankfurt (Oder) and Brandenburg an der Havel into neighbouring districts, leaving Potsdam as the only independent city. Woidke argued that a large southern district would also give Lusatia one voice in managing structural change in the lignite region. Landräte, mayors and the municipal associations opposed the bills, as did many local [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats). A popular initiative backed by the CDU, BVB/Free Voters and the FDP, by then outside the Landtag, gathered nearly 130,000 signatures, far above the 20,000 required.

In November 2017, after a long hearing in the Landtag, Woidke and the coalition partner withdrew the drafts and dropped the planned vote. He said the hearing had shown that local government would not carry the reform in that form, and that the cabinet was "well advised to hold the state together" in the face of larger challenges. [Klara Geywitz](/people/klara-geywitz), SPD general secretary since 2013 and a firm supporter of the reform, resigned with immediate effect, describing the step as her own decision, taken out of responsibility for the state party. The 1993 district boundaries stayed. By the run-up to the 2019 election the abandoned reform was no longer a main campaign theme, but it remained the centrepiece the red-red government had not carried through.

## Third term, 2019–2024

### 2019 election and Kenya coalition

On 1 September 2019 Brandenburg elected the seventh Landtag, with turnout of 61.33 percent. On second votes the Social Democratic Party (SPD) remained largest, at 26.18 percent and 25 of 88 seats, narrowly ahead of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 23.51 percent and 23 seats. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took 15.57 percent and 15 seats, Alliance 90/The Greens 10.78 percent and 10, Die Linke 10.72 percent and 10, and BVB/Free Voters 5.05 percent and five.

The AfD’s rise, from 12.2 to 23.5 percent, ended the SPD–Left majority with which Woidke had governed. From the partners’ point of view, neither a conventional left nor a centre-right alliance still had a majority, so the SPD, CDU and Greens formed a Kenya coalition—named for the black, red and green of Kenya—with 50 seats. On 20 November 2019 the Landtag re-elected him minister-president by 47 votes to 37, with three abstentions: 47 of the coalition’s 50 members. The deputy minister-presidents were CDU interior minister Michael Stübgen and Green social-affairs and health minister Ursula Nonnemacher; [Britta Ernst](/people/britta-ernst) (SPD) was education minister.

In June 2024 Woidke called the government a fruitful marriage of convenience rather than a love match. Stübgen said differences with the Greens in particular were relatively large, from police powers and migration to environmental protection and a payment card for asylum seekers; a hunting law and an agricultural-structure law were still open. AfD, Left and Free Voters leaders called the term a failure, citing childcare and teacher shortages, rents, and projects blocked by ideological conflict.

### Bundesrat presidency

The Bundesrat elected Woidke its president unanimously on 11 October 2019. He took office on 1 November, succeeding [Daniel Günther](/people/daniel-gunther) of Schleswig-Holstein. Under the Königstein Agreement of 1950 the presidency rotates by the population of the Länder, not by party strength, on the basis of Article 52 of the Basic Law. Reiner Haseloff, minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt, was elected second vice-president as the designated successor.

The term ran to 31 October 2020 under the motto “Wir miteinander”, across the thirtieth anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of German unity. The [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) cancelled much of the planned travel. On 3 October 2020 Woidke still hosted the central German Unity Day ceremony in Potsdam, with guest numbers limited and the speech carried live by ARD. On 9 October he reviewed the year, and the chamber elected Haseloff to succeed him.

### COVID-19 pandemic

On 13 March 2020, after the minister-presidents’ conference with Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel), a special cabinet suspended regular lessons and childcare from 18 March until the end of the Easter holidays and delayed university teaching in person until 20 April. Emergency care from birth through grade 6 was kept for parents in medical care, administration and critical infrastructure. Nonnemacher said the aim was to slow the virus so hospitals would not be overwhelmed.

On 9 June 2020 the cabinet agreed that kindergartens would return to regular operation on 15 June and schools at the start of the 2020/21 year, with daily in-person classes and without a general 1.5-metre distance rule. On 3 November the government announced that Woidke had tested positive, with mild cold symptoms, after attending the opening of Berlin Brandenburg Airport on 31 October. He was the first member of the state government publicly known to have tested positive.

An AfD-requested inquiry into the early pandemic reported on 19 October 2023 after 21 sittings and 31 witness hearings, at a stated cost of 2.5 million euros. Chairman Daniel Keller (SPD) saw no cause for severe criticism. The AfD said citizens had been harmed and that, from April 2020, broad limits on basic rights were no longer proportionate. Die Linke criticised late information to the Landtag and shortages of protective equipment; the Free Voters cited strain on children and a rise in violence. In June 2024 Woidke said that, with later knowledge, he would have handled much of the pandemic policy differently.

## The 2024 election and later governments

### Campaign and result

The 2024 Brandenburg state election was held on 22 September 2024 for the 88-seat Landtag of Brandenburg. Dietmar Woidke, minister-president and lead candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, tied his continuation in office to finishing ahead of the Alternative for Germany. On 1 August in Potsdam he said his aim was to beat the AfD and that if he lost to it he would be “gone”; he would not negotiate from second or third place. The campaign, under the slogan “Es geht um Brandenburg”, avoided prominence borrowed from Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz). He also distanced the state party from the federal traffic-light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP, calling the national trend a “hurricane” against the state SPD and the coalition’s disputes corrosive of democracy, and saying the election was about Brandenburg.

The state election committee certified the result on 7 October. Turnout was 72.90 per cent of 2,076,920 eligible voters. On second votes the SPD won 30.89 per cent (463,800) and 32 seats, the AfD 29.23 per cent (438,904) and 30, the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) (BSW) 13.48 per cent (202,421) and 14, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 12.10 per cent (181,716) and 12. The Greens (4.13 per cent), [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) (2.98 per cent) and BVB/Free Voters (2.57 per cent) neither cleared five per cent nor won a constituency. The AfD took 25 of 44 direct seats and the SPD 19. Woidke lost Spree-Neiße I: AfD candidate Steffen Kubitzki received 11,563 first votes and Woidke 11,556, both 41.5 per cent, a margin of seven. Woidke entered on the SPD list.

### SPD–BSW coalition

With 46 seats, SPD and BSW were the only majority that excluded the AfD, cooperation with which both had ruled out. On 6 December 2024 a BSW congress in Potsdam approved the coalition agreement unanimously, all 32 members present voting yes. Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended, and state chair Robert Crumbach called it a compromise that still carried BSW positions, especially on diplomacy. An SPD congress approved the text almost unanimously the same day. The agreement created the first SPD–BSW government in Germany; the BSW took finance, transport and health, three of nine ministries.

On 11 December, the day after the treaty was signed, a secret first ballot gave Woidke 43 votes, short of the majority of 45, with 40 against, two abstentions and two invalid ballots; one AfD member was absent. No Brandenburg minister-president had failed a first ballot before. BSW deputy Sven Hornauf had said he would withhold his vote over plans to station the Arrow 3 system in the state. The second ballot produced 50 yes votes, 36 noes and one abstention—four more than the coalition’s 46 seats. CDU group leader Jan Redmann said his members had not voted for Woidke and alleged arrangements between the SPD and the AfD. Woidke called that an “infamous insinuation”. He took the religious oath and described the surplus as trust that now had to be justified.

In the fourth Woidke cabinet, Crumbach became deputy minister-president and finance minister. Detlef Tabbert (BSW) took infrastructure, and Britta Müller, non-party and nominated by the BSW, health and social affairs. SPD ministers included Katrin Lange (interior), Daniel Keller (economy), Benjamin Grimm (justice), Steffen Freiberg (education) and Manja Schüle (science). Agriculture minister Hanka Mittelstädt was sworn in later.

### Collapse and the SPD–CDU cabinet

On 5 January 2026 Crumbach left the BSW and its Landtag group. He called the step unavoidable if further damage to the state was to be avoided: disputes had impaired the government, parts of the party were opposing it from within, and a push to “clear up disorder” amounted to a purge. He rejected the party namesake’s description of a Bundestag majority as “despisers of democracy”, informed Woidke, and left the question of his ministry to him.

On 6 January two further BSW deputies left the group, and the coalition lost its majority. Crumbach and Jouleen Gruhn joined the SPD group. Woidke ended the alliance, saying cooperation was no longer possible. The SPD had demanded a loyalty pledge from all 14 BSW deputies; state chair Friederike Benda, group chair Niels-Olaf Lüders and the federal leadership refused, and Benda called for Crumbach’s dismissal and for the defectors to resign their seats. Ministers stayed in office. Woidke said he would govern de facto in a minority and open talks with the CDU, which with Crumbach would have a majority of one vote. He rejected the AfD’s call for a new election. BSW federal chair [Amira Mohamed Ali](/people/amira-mohamed-ali) said the decision was disappointing and that Woidke wanted a red-black government.

An SPD–CDU cabinet was sworn in on 18 March 2026. Woidke was not elected again: under Article 85 of the state constitution his term ends only when a new Landtag meets. Jan Redmann (CDU) became interior minister and deputy minister-president, [René Wilke](/people/rene-wilke) (SPD) minister for health and social affairs, Gordon Hoffmann (CDU) education minister and Martina Klement (CSU) economy minister. Crumbach, by then with the SPD, became transport minister and Keller finance minister. Mittelstädt, Schüle and Grimm kept their posts. The coalition had a majority of two votes. Müller, Tabbert and Freiberg had been dismissed the day before. The fifth Woidke cabinet set more teachers and police, relief for business and spending cuts as its first tasks.

## Economic and energy policy

### Lignite and structural change in Lusatia

Federal law closes the lignite units at Jänschwalde for good on 31 December 2028, after units A and B enter a stretched shutdown at the end of 2025 and 2027, and sets 31 December 2038 for Schwarze Pumpe and the newest Boxberg units. Woidke, of the Social Democratic Party, has held Lusatia to 2038. In November 2023 he called a 2030 exit “not realistic,” unlike the Rhenish deal that economy minister Robert Habeck also wanted for the east, and said the state should not “saw off the branch we are sitting on,” because only an orderly end would pay for the post-mining landscape and the regional water balance.

The Coal Regions Investment Act gives the affected states up to €14 billion in federal investment aid through 2038, 25.8 percent of it for Brandenburg. When the federal cabinet adopted the wider package in August 2019, Woidke’s government put Brandenburg’s share of a €40 billion programme at €10.32 billion—€3.612 billion for the state and €6.708 billion in federal projects, including rail around Cottbus and funds for medical training there. On 11 January 2024 he joined Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the opening of Deutsche Bahn’s ICE plant in Cottbus, planned to reach 1,200 training places and jobs, with a cooperation aimed at lignite workers at LEAG.

Climate groups have called 2038 too slow. Before a June 2023 protest at the Welzow mine, [Fridays for Future](/organizations/fridays-for-future), Greenpeace, BUND and the Grüne Liga said Woidke and Saxony’s [Michael Kretschmer](/people/michael-kretschmer) were clinging to coal and courting an uncontrolled break, and, citing the Europa-Universität Flensburg and DIW Berlin, urged a cap of 205 million tonnes on Lusatian extraction. In an open letter, 39 organisations and 43 individuals accused him of blocking the state’s climate plan. In April 2026 at Schwarze Pumpe he demanded the review of the phase-out law that had been due on 15 August 2022, and warned against ending coal “over the knee” after Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) questioned running plants past 2038.

### Tesla in Grünheide

Tesla, Inc. opened its Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg at Grünheide in March 2022, starting Model Y output with about 3,000 employees and projecting up to 12,000 jobs. Scholz said the east was “industrially out in front.” Minutes of a “Task Force Tesla,” released after a freedom-of-information lawsuit, record Woidke on 22 November 2019—ten days after [Elon Musk](/people/elon-musk) chose Brandenburg—ordering every ministry to treat the plant as the absolute priority.

The site lies partly in a drinking-water protection area. A freight yard, warehouses and a nursery on about 170 further hectares would have cleared more than 100 hectares of forest. In February 2024 a non-binding local poll went 3,499 to 1,882 against that plan, with turnout above 70 percent. Woidke told dpa that water should be saved “but Tesla is the wrong one to criticise,” pointing to the company’s stated plan to add no process water and to recycle wastewater. Tesla reported fresh-water use below 500,000 cubic metres the previous year; Wassertafel Berlin-Brandenburg still warned of groundwater damage that might appear only later. He called the plant a “very great gain” and proof that large projects could still be approved quickly, while asking for more candour, rejecting some of Musk’s politics, and criticising a forest protest camp as a fire risk.

On 5 March 2024 a pylon supplying the factory was burned near Gosen-Neu Zittau. Output stopped, Tesla spoke of losses in the millions, and nearby towns lost power. Police treated as genuine a claim by the far-left “Vulkangruppe”; federal prosecutors took over on suspicion of membership in a terrorist group, unconstitutional sabotage and arson. Works-council election lists reported by *Handelsblatt* and *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* showed 12,415 employees at the 2024 ballot and 10,703 later. Tesla said permanent staff were largely untouched and that temporary labour explained much of the drop. The same minutes show him denying special treatment in public while the closed sessions gave little time to permit breaches, spills and serious injuries, and more to complaints about critical coverage.

### Infrastructure and public finances

In September 2025 Woidke agreed to put about €460 million from the federal fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality into the state’s hospital reform, part of roughly €3 billion expected from that fund. District-association chair Siegurd Heinze said inpatient care must “not collapse.” The 2025 accounts still closed €363.9 million short, covered from the general reserve, which fell from €714.7 million to about €350.9 million and was to be used up in 2026; debt stood at €22.47 billion. A gap of nearly €7.7 billion for 2027–28 preceded a September 2026 double budget lifting spending from €17.43 billion in 2026 to €18.68 billion in 2028.

## Security, migration and political extremism

### Police and public order

As Brandenburg interior minister from October 2010 to August 2013, Woidke of the Social Democratic Party of Germany took over the "Polizei 2020" reform begun under Matthias Platzeck and Rainer Speer. A Landtag of Brandenburg law of 20 December 2010 merged the presidencies in Frankfurt (Oder) and Potsdam, the state criminal police office and the state operational unit into one Polizeipräsidium. In 2012 he moved to slow Speer's planned cuts after the reorganization had initially lowered the clearance rate. In January 2014, as minister-president, he secured an SPD decision that the Brandenburg Police keep at least 7,800 posts in 2020 rather than 7,000.

In January 2018, after attacks on shelter residents in Cottbus and knife assaults by young Syrians, interior minister Karl-Heinz Schröter stopped further assignments from the central reception centre and sent extra police. Woidke wrote that residents were unsettled, but that the public picture of the city was distorted.

### Migration and border policy

In May 2023 Woidke demanded stationary checks by the Federal Police (Germany) on the border with Poland, citing a Minister-Presidents' Conference decision and rising smuggling. Nancy Faeser first rejected fixed checks. The state Greens called them disproportionate; the CDU backed Woidke. After she notified checks toward Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland on 16 October 2023, he said illegal smuggling was unacceptable. Protection of the European Union's external borders, he argued, was decisive, and Berlin should speak with Poland's next government.

On 6 September 2024, after the attack at a festival in Solingen, he and local leaders adopted an 11-point statement. He said arrivals in the first half of 2024 were 39 percent lower than a year earlier and that checks should continue until the external borders worked. Brandenburg, he said, had a humanitarian duty but must not exceed its capacity. The text called for reporting duties, searches, suspended benefits for people required to leave, and wider returns, including refusals at the border. Refugee groups told the *taz* of turnbacks despite asylum claims. Federal Police figures given to the paper showed 3,456 refusals from October 2023 to May 2024, against almost none beforehand.

### Right-wing extremism

In the 2012 constitutional-protection report, Woidke opposed abolishing domestic intelligence after the murders of the National Socialist Underground had gone undetected for years. He acknowledged a "massive legitimacy crisis" but wrote that abolition would weaken "the defensibility of our democracy against political and violence-oriented extremism." Die Linke, then the SPD's partner, favoured dissolving the services. In January 2017 he froze destruction of right-wing-extremism files until the Landtag's NSU committee finished; the committee was not told at once.

On 15 June 2020, under Michael Stübgen, the state service classed the whole Brandenburg Alternative for Germany as a suspected case. A note of 14 April 2025 upgraded it to confirmed right-wing extremism. Interior minister Katrin Lange said she learned of this only on 5 May and the next day dismissed the service's head, Jörg Müller. Woidke said he had not known either, called the delay remarkable, and said he could not yet judge the evidence, though the party had moved further toward extremism. The AfD sued in Potsdam and withdrew its emergency application; the main case continued. In August 2025 he said extremists dominated the state AfD, and that expelling them was how it could become a "normal" party. A ban procedure, he said, should wait until courts confirmed the classification. BSW's Robert Crumbach rejected a firewall and a ban debate in favour of argument over policy.

## German-Polish relations

### Coordinator for cross-border cooperation

The post of Coordinator for German-Polish Intersocietal and Cross-Border Cooperation, at the [Federal Foreign Office](/organizations/federal-foreign-office), was created in 2004 and held by Gesine Schwan and then Cornelia Pieper before Dietmar Woidke. On 29 January 2014 Foreign Minister [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) appointed the Brandenburg minister-president, of the Social Democratic Party, the first state premier in the honorary role. The ministry dates his tenure to 2014–2022.

German-Polish rail summits in Potsdam in 2015 and Szczecin in 2016 took up a Dresden–Wrocław service, a Berlin–Wrocław culture train and a second track toward Szczecin. He visited the joint police centre at Świecko and backed agreements on rail, police, border and customs cooperation, and waterways. In 2016 the Bundestag raised Germany's annual payment to the German-Polish Youth Office by €1 million, to €6 million. On 25 July 2019 Poland gave him the Commander's Cross with Star of its Order of Merit.

In December 2021, after [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) of the Greens became foreign minister, Woidke said he would not continue. He wrote that he had served for two legislative periods and looked back "not without pride" on infrastructure, police work and the youth office, adding that coordinators are usually chosen by the minister from that minister's party. The cabinet appointed Dietmar Nietan on 9 March 2022.

### Borders, the Oder and regional partnerships

In August 2022, after Woidke had left the post, a mass fish die-off struck the Oder. He said fish had been dying on the Polish stretch for six days before they died on the German side "and we were not informed."

Polish and German reports of 29 and 30 September 2022 traced the deaths to a bloom of *Prymnesium parvum*, favoured by a sharp rise in salinity, heat, low water and sun. German experts could not identify the source of the salt. Environment Minister [Steffi Lemke](/people/steffi-lemke) called the disaster man-made, driven by salt discharges. No joint report appeared, and the German inquiry's coordinator later said contact with the Polish side had largely broken off.

The COVID-19 pandemic had already divided the border region. From mid-March 2020 Poland closed its European Union internal borders to foreigners and quarantined returning citizens for 14 days, cutting off commuters. After protests, including near Frankfurt (Oder), Woidke urged Warsaw to let them through. From 4 May, Prime Minister [Mateusz Morawiecki](/people/mateusz-morawiecki) exempted Polish citizens working or studying in Germany and several neighbours from quarantine on return—what Woidke called "a very good piece of news for many thousands of employees on both sides of the Oder and their firms." The borders with Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia reopened on 13 June.

On 16 October 2023 Germany notified temporary Schengen controls on the Polish, Czech and Swiss borders, citing smuggling and irregular entries. In March 2024 Woidke still defended the Polish-border checks, citing a fall in Brandenburg initial-reception arrivals from 2,438 people in September 2023 to 498 in January 2024, while arguing that the EU's external borders mattered more. From 7 July 2025 [Donald Tusk](/people/donald-tusk)'s government restored Polish checks on Germany and Lithuania in response to German policy toward migrants; queues formed on the Frankfurt (Oder)–Słubice bridge. In August Woidke told Ambassador Jan Tombiński the German checks had reduced irregular migration; Tombiński called them unjustified. Woidke suggested a pandemic-style local pass to spare residents and trade.

## Personal life and public image

### Family and private life

Woidke lives in Forst (Lausitz), in Lusatia; Land government and Landtag biographies list him as married, with one child, and as Protestant./11263) Press profiles identify the 2007 marriage as the second for both him and his wife, Susanne: they had known each other in youth, and each brought a daughter from an earlier marriage—his daughter Anne and her daughter Luise. He has said little about that life. Introducing him in 2013, *Der Spiegel* called him "not the homestory type." In June 2022 he confirmed that a grandson had been born two days earlier.

The Landtag also lists him as a member of FC Energie Cottbus and as president of the Brandenburgischer Radsportverband from 2006 to 2008./11263) In 2007, while environment minister, he passed the hunting examination after earlier failures; the *Berliner Kurier* reported that he had begun preparing soon after taking office in 2004.

### Honors, style and criticism

On 24 November 2023 Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier conferred on Woidke the Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany at Bellevue Palace, together with several other long-serving minister-presidents. Steinmeier called his manner unpretentious and without grand phrases—quiet, pragmatic and ready to compromise—and described him as an advocate of eastern German interests.

Since 2013 he has also held the Order of Merit of Brandenburg ex officio: the statute makes the minister-president a holder by virtue of office, not by a separate conferral. On 25 July 2019 Poland's ambassador Andrzej Przyłębski presented him in Berlin with the Commander's Cross with Star (Großkomturkreuz) of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, described by the Land government as the second-highest class Poland awards to foreign citizens. He said he accepted it for Brandenburg volunteers in cross-border work.

*Der Spiegel* had already described him in 2013 as a reserved, factual regional Social Democrat. In the 2024 campaign he kept his distance from the federal SPD: he refused joint appearances with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said he was sometimes glad to hear nothing from the federal government for a few days, and called the election "a decision about my person," tying his continuance in office to finishing ahead of the Alternative for Germany. The paper later reported that this SPD-versus-AfD framing strengthened his party while weakening other parties of the center, and left government dependent on the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.

Published criticism has followed the same line. At his 2013 inauguration Greenpeace left iron ochre from the Spree outside the Landtag under a banner reading "From today your lignite sludge, Mr Woidke," and a 2014 Greenpeace survey reported by the *taz* classed him as an *Überzeugungstäter*, a convinced proponent, of Lusatian lignite. The *Tagesspiegel* reported that during the 2013 federal coalition talks he was advised on energy by Ulrich Freese, then on Vattenfall's supervisory board. In 2023 the Left called his letter to Elon Musk, offering help with water and power for an expansion of the Tesla plant at Grünheide, a "blank cheque for rule-breakers"; a government spokesman said it was help with problems, not an exemption from the rules.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/dietmar-woidke