Edelgard Bulmahn

Edelgard Bulmahn (born 4 March 1951 in Petershagen, Westphalia) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). She took the Abitur at the Aufbaugymnasium in Petershagen, studied political science and English at the University of Hanover, passed the first state teaching examination in 1978 and the second in 1980, and taught as a Studienrätin at the Lutherschule in Hanover until 1987. She joined the SPD in 1969. From 1993 to 2011 she was a member of the party's federal executive, from 1995 to 2011 chair of its Wissenschaftsforum, and from 1998 to 2003 chair of the SPD in Lower Saxony.

Bulmahn entered the Bundestag in 1987 as the directly elected member for Stadt Hannover II and sat until 2017. In her first decade she was deputy chair of the Enquete Commission on technology assessment (1987–1990) and then chair of the committee on education, science, research, technology and technology assessment (1994–1996), before serving as the SPD group's education and research spokeswoman (1996–1998). On 27 October 1998 the Bundestag was notified of her appointment as Federal Minister of Education and Research in the cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. She left that office on 22 November 2005, when Annette Schavan was appointed the minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's first cabinet.

The Max Planck Society, awarding her its Harnack Medal in 2025, pointed to the Bologna Process, the reform of student support under the BAföG, and the later Excellence Strategy as parts of the research and higher-education settlement associated with her years in office and continued by her successors. A 2002 amendment of the Higher Education Framework Act had required the Länder to keep a first degree free of general tuition fees and to maintain constituted student bodies; on 26 January 2005 the Federal Constitutional Court declared those provisions void because the federation lacked the legislative competence to enact them. Near the end of the Schröder governments, Der Spiegel described a long dispute in which Länder leaders took federal money for all-day schools and elite research while resisting the conditions attached to it, and quoted Bulmahn calling the federalism compromise then being negotiated a "catastrophe" for Germany as a location for research.

After the ministry she chaired the Bundestag committee on economic affairs and technology from 2005 to 2009. From 2009 she sat on the foreign affairs committee and, until 2013, was the SPD spokeswoman on the subcommittee for civilian crisis prevention and, from 2011 to 2013, on the enquiry commission on growth, prosperity and quality of life. The Bundestag elected her a vice president on 22 October 2013, and she held that office through the 18th electoral term. In June 2025, at the society's annual meeting in Magdeburg, Max Planck president Patrick Cramer presented the Harnack Medal, which the society describes as its highest award; in the laudation he treated the changes of her seven years as minister as a deliberate break with a slower pace of reform in German science.

Early life and education

Family and schooling

Edelgard Bulmahn was born on 4 March 1951 in Minden, North Rhine-Westphalia, the daughter of an inland skipper and a hairdresser, and grew up in Döhren, a village of about 900 people on the Weser in the municipality of Petershagen. Her own curriculum vitae and a Bundestag biography name Petershagen, the family’s place of residence, as the birthplace. Her father was often away on the river. She has an older sister. In a 2004 interview with Günter Gaus she said that her mother, who had not had access to further schooling, wanted both daughters to be able to earn their own living, and that the parents’ first plan for them was a commercial school (Handelsschule).

The Gymnasium Petershagen, formerly the Aufbaugymnasium where Bulmahn took her Abitur.

She went to the village primary school, which the Gaus programme described as still partly a one-class school, and from 1965 attended the Aufbaugymnasium in Petershagen. She later said that, at about thirteen or fourteen, she asked to try for the Abitur, that her mother agreed on the understanding that the family could not pay for extra support, and that she repeated a year. At the Aufbaugymnasium she took part in the student council and was, on her own account, the first girl to serve as Schulsprecherin at what had been a boys’ school. She passed the Abitur in 1972. A Bundestag biography for the 18th electoral term instead dates the examination to 1971. In 1969, at eighteen and still a pupil, she joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the Döhren/Petershagen branch; she told Gaus that she did so because of social justice. The Munzinger archive also records early functions in the Young Socialists in the SPD.

Studies and teaching career

After the Abitur she spent a year, 1972–73, at Kibbutz Bror Hayil (usually spelled Bror Chail in German sources) in southern Israel. She worked mainly in the children’s house and learned some Hebrew. A 2003 profile of the kibbutz notes her stay in 1972. She later said that a kibbutz, rather than other work abroad, had been a deliberate choice, and that the year brought her into contact with communal childcare and with people who had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Residential grounds of Kibbutz Bror Hayil in southern Israel.

In 1973 she began a degree in political science and English, aimed at school teaching, at the University of Hannover, now Leibniz University Hannover. A biographical interview names Negt, Seifert and Vester among her political-science teachers. She passed the first state examination in 1978 and the second, for the Gymnasium teaching qualification, in 1980; the teaching traineeship (Referendariat) between them was in Walsrode, in Lower Saxony. She then taught English and politics as a Studienrätin at the Lutherschule, a Gymnasium in the Nordstadt of Hanover, until 1987. She settled in the district of Linden. She is married to Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, a university teacher of the history of landscape and garden architecture; in an interview she said that he took her surname as the family name.

Political beginnings

Young Socialists and local office

Bulmahn joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1969, before her Abitur, while still at school in Petershagen. A portrait based on a 2006 interview records that the town had no social-democratic youth organisation, and that as a pupil she founded the first local association of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos). A Bundestag biography from her years in parliament states that she then held various offices in the Jusos.

Her first public mandate was in Hanover, where she lived and taught. From 1981 to 1986 she was a Bezirksratsfrau, a member of the district council, for Hannover-Linden. The 2006 portrait describes that socially mixed district as the place she came to treat as her political home. The council term ended the year before she entered the Bundestag in 1987.

Party offices in Lower Saxony

In 1993 she joined the SPD federal executive, the Parteivorstand, and remained a member until 2011. From 1995 to 2011 she also chaired the Wissenschaftsforum der SPD, the party's science forum. Delegates re-elected her to the executive at the Dresden party congress in November 2009, on the first ballot, together with Garrelt Duin and Wolfgang Jüttner.

She became chair of the SPD in Lower Saxony in October 1998, at a state congress in Hameln, succeeding Gerhard Schröder as he left the post to become federal chancellor. In a secret ballot she received 183 of 190 votes; the congress also nominated interior minister Gerhard Glogowski to succeed Schröder as minister-president. A later account gives that result as 96.3 percent. For most of the tenure she held the state chair while serving as federal education minister. On 23 September 2000 a congress in Braunschweig, with no opponent, confirmed her for two more years by 171 of 189 votes, 90.5 percent, and confirmed the deputies Christina Bührmann and Wolfgang Jüttner.

On 3 December 2001 the federal executive elected her, with Ute Vogt of Baden-Württemberg, to the 13-member party presidium, the narrower leadership chosen every two years. Christine Bergmann, Herta Däubler-Gmelin and Hans Eichel were returned; Andrea Nahles, a former Juso chair, and Karin Junker were not. The body then had more women than men for the first time in the party's history, and seven of its 13 members sat in the federal cabinet. An alumni account of Leibniz University Hannover dates her presidium membership from 2001 to 2011, when her term on the federal executive also ended.

The state chair ended sooner. At the Landtag election of 2 February 2003 the SPD's share of second votes fell from 47.9 percent in 1998 to 33.4 percent, while the Christian Democratic Union of Germany rose from 35.9 to 48.3 percent. On 22 February the Tagesspiegel reported that she was giving up the Lower Saxony chair. Under the headline "Abschied im Zorn" ("departure in anger"), it reported her criticism that the state association was far too weak and that four district associations had too much influence, so the state executive could only preside and could take no important decision without their consent. She did not stand again. At the state congress in Oldenburg on 17 May 2003, Jüttner, the former environment minister, was elected chair with 164 of 182 valid votes.

Bundestag career before 1998

Elections and constituency

Bulmahn entered the Bundestag at the election of 25 January 1987 as the directly elected member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) for constituency 37, Stadt Hannover II, in Lower Saxony. The Federal Elections Act, as amended in 1985, defined that constituency as “Hannover-Süd”: the southern part of the independent city of Hanover, including Linden, Döhren, Ricklingen and the Südstadt. She received 46.3 percent of the first votes, the votes cast for a constituency candidate.

She held the seat at the next three elections. On 2 December 1990 she won 44.0 percent of the first votes, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on 38.2 percent; the SPD’s second-vote share in the constituency was 40.9 percent, turnout was 80.0 percent, and 198,160 people were eligible to vote. On 16 October 1994 her first-vote share was 45.1 percent, against 39.4 percent for the CDU, while the SPD took 39.3 percent of the second votes; turnout was 81.4 percent among 197,610 eligible voters. On 27 September 1998 she received 53.6 percent of the first votes to the CDU’s 32.8 percent, and the SPD 48.9 percent of the second votes; turnout was 83.4 percent among 189,940 eligible voters. The constituency number stayed 37 through 1998. She continued to win Stadt Hannover II directly in later elections through 2013, when, as constituency 42, it returned her with 42.8 percent of the first votes.

Committee work and party spokesmanship

In the 11th Bundestag she was deputy chair of the enquiry commission “Gestaltung der technischen Entwicklung; Technikfolgen-Abschätzung und -Bewertung” (shaping technological development; technology assessment and evaluation), set up by a Bundestag decision of 5 November 1987. Its report of 30 May 1989, on a permanent parliamentary capacity for technology assessment, listed her as deputy chair and Jürgen Rüttgers of the CDU/CSU as chair. She was among the SPD members who put forward one of the separate proposals in that report on how the capacity should be organized. A membership list dated 10 June 1990 still named her deputy chair, by then under Friedrich Kronenberg (CDU/CSU). In August 1990 the commission reported on the opportunities and risks of expert systems in production and medicine.

From 1990 to 1994 she was the SPD parliamentary group’s deputy spokeswoman for research and technology policy, and from 1991 a member of the group’s executive. In the 13th Bundestag she chaired the Committee on Education, Science, Research, Technology and Technology Assessment. A Bundestag biography compiled in 2002 dates that chairmanship to 1995–1996; a later biography dates it to 1994–1996. The Bundestag data handbook records that she held the chair until 26 June 1996, when Doris Odendahl (SPD) succeeded her. From 1996 to 1998 she was the SPD group’s spokeswoman for education and research.

Federal Minister of Education and Research

Appointment and cabinets

Edelgard Bulmahn became federal minister of education and research on 27 October 1998, when President Roman Herzog appointed the first cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder under Article 64 of the Basic Law. The same day, in the second sitting of the 14th Bundestag, the ministers took the oath required by Article 56. She served in the coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Alliance 90/The Greens. The portfolio had, in the previous term, been the Ministry for Education, Science, Research and Technology; from the 14th term it was the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and Wolf-Michael Catenhusen was named parliamentary state secretary the same day.

On 22 October 2002, after the Bundestag re-elected Schröder, the federal president reappointed her, and she took the oath with "Ich schwöre es," without the optional religious formula. She left office on 22 November 2005, when Angela Merkel was elected chancellor and Annette Schavan was sworn in as minister of education and research. In the 14th electoral term the permanent state secretary was Uwe Thomas. In the 15th, Christoph Matschie was parliamentary state secretary until 30 June 2004 and Ulrich Kasparick from 1 July 2004; Thomas left on 30 June 2003 and Catenhusen took the permanent post the next day, while Wolf-Dieter Dudenhausen served until 31 January 2005 and Frieder Meyer-Krahmer from 1 February 2005.

The agenda covered student support, degree structures, academic careers, research finance, schools and vocational training. In February 2002 Der Spiegel called her reserved but professionally competent, described Schröder's veto of her preferred reconstruction of student aid as a resounding rebuff, and noted friction with Social Democratic state ministers and with professors.

Budget, remit and federalism

In the Bundestag budget debate of 10 September 2004 Bulmahn said the 2005 plans put €8.464 billion in the ministry's Einzelplan 30, another €1 billion in the federal all-day-school programme and €445 million in student-loan disbursements, and that on this combined definition spending would be about 36.4 percent higher than in 1998.

Heise online reported the same presentation, including her figure of a 36.5 percent rise since 1998, and noted that the extra billion sat outside the ministry, in an appropriation of Finance Minister Hans Eichel. CDU/CSU deputy Maria Böhmer called the draft disappointing and denied any shift of federal priorities toward education and research. The Budget Committee's report on the 2005 budget records a government draft of €8.463 billion for Einzelplan 30, €202.669 million above the comparable figure for the year before, raised in committee by €76.5 million to €8.540 billion. For 2002, Spiegel put ministry spending at €8.4 billion, a rise of 15 to 20 percent since 1998 "depending on the calculation," and quoted Klaus Landfried of the Rectors' Conference that under strict consolidation she had held her own and set new priorities. The figure near 36 percent is her own basket — ministry budget, all-day schools and student loans — not the growth of Einzelplan 30 alone.

Legislation was narrower than the budget. Schools and culture belonged to the Länder, their Kulturhoheit, under Articles 30 and 70. Until 2006 the federation's higher-education power was only a framework competence for general principles, then Article 75 (1) No. 1a, which had to leave the states a real field of choice; training assistance and out-of-school vocational training were concurrent, and university building and research promotion were joint tasks. On 27 July 2004 the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court voided the Fifth Act amending the Higher Education Framework Act of 16 February 2002 as incompatible with Articles 70 and 75 read with Article 72 (2), because it regulated the qualification and appointment of professors in detail rather than as a framework. Three judges dissented.

The same conflict stopped a constitutional rewrite during her tenure. On 17 December 2004 Franz Müntefering and Edmund Stoiber, federal and Länder chairs of the commission on federalism, declared the talks a failure: the Länder wanted education in full as part of their statehood, and Müntefering called it a common task. Only after she left office did the amendments in force from 1 September 2006 repeal Article 75. The Bundestag's research service records that the federation then lost its framework power over general principles of higher education, keeping a concurrent competence, with a Länder right of deviation, only for admission and degrees.

Higher education policy

Bologna Process

Germany joined the Bologna Process when the Bologna Declaration was signed in Bologna on 19 June 1999. Officials from 29 European countries undertook — politically, not by treaty — to build a European Higher Education Area of readable degrees, two cycles, credits and easier mobility. Germany’s signatories were Parliamentary State Secretary Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, for Bulmahn’s ministry, and Schleswig-Holstein education minister Ute Erdsiek-Rave, for the Kultusministerkonferenz — a double signature that marked the Länder’s responsibility for higher education.

Replacing Diplom and Magister courses with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, modules and accreditation therefore fell to the Länder and the universities. In January 2010, after protests against what critics called a crammed, school-like degree, Bulmahn told Der Spiegel that the protests concerned poor conditions, especially too little teaching staff, not the new qualifications. She defended wider access, mobility and more structure, and asked for a “reform of the reform”. The volume of continuous assessment and a rigid six-semester cap, she said, were not in the Bologna decisions; she blamed accreditation agencies, universities and the Länder, and said CDU-led Länder had rejected a federal support programme she offered in 2003. A Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interview on 19 June 2019 was headlined with her line that “something got out of hand”. In a Deutschlandfunk interview that year she distinguished comparability from uniformity, said many early programmes were too fragmented or had only renamed old degrees, and argued that dropping out had shifted into the first or second semester.

Student aid and tuition fees

A larger redesign of BAföG failed inside the coalition. In January 2000, with Finance Minister Hans Eichel and Chancellery chief Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Bulmahn could not secure a base payment (Sockelmodell) of about 400 Deutsche Mark a month for every student, financed largely by redirecting parents’ child benefit. Der Spiegel reported that Eichel refused an extra 1.5 to 2 billion marks a year. Matthias Berninger, education spokesman of Alliance 90/The Greens, demanded aid independent of parental income. Gerhard Schröder then blocked paying child benefit directly to students, on the ground that families had already committed it to housing. The Deutsches Studentenwerk, rectors and student representatives criticised the retreat.

The Bundestag passed the Ausbildungsförderungsreformgesetz of 19 March 2001, in force from 1 April. The bill stopped counting child benefit as parental income, raised allowances, equalised east and west, extended support for study in the European Union from the third semester to the degree, widened master’s funding, and capped repayment of the state-loan share at 20,000 Deutsche Mark. Bulmahn spoke of an extra 1.3 billion marks. After enactment, Deutschlandfunk and Der Spiegel put the maximum monthly rate at 1,140 marks, up from 1,030; she expected about 80,000 more recipients, roughly 450,000. The Federal Statistical Office later counted nearly 650,000 recipients in 2001 — about 244,000 pupils and 406,000 students — 16 percent more than in 2000. Full awards rose from about 34 to 44 percent, spending reached 1,655 million euro, and a student’s average monthly award was 365 euro. Der Spiegel called the law a limited repair, because parental income still governed eligibility.

The Sixth Act Amending the Framework Act for Higher Education, of 8 August 2002, ordered the Länder to keep study up to a first professional degree free of general fees and to maintain constituted student bodies. Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hamburg, the Saarland, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt — governments led by the CDU or the CSU — asked the Federal Constitutional Court to annul it. On 26 January 2005, in 2 BvF 1/03, the Second Senate voided the fee ban and the student-body duty. Under the Basic Law, a framework rule was allowed only if equivalent living conditions or legal or economic unity required it. The court held that neither test was met, and that fees of the size then discussed were secondary to living costs.

Academic careers

The Fifth Amendment of 16 February 2002 was to make the junior professorship the regular path to a chair: up to six years of independent research and teaching, without a further examination in the form of the Habilitation. The German Association of University Professors and Lecturers campaigned against the reform, arguing that it would push younger academics into industry. Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony sought review. On 27 July 2004, in 2 BvF 2/02, the Second Senate voided the entire amendment for exceeding framework competence; three judges dissented. Qualification, appointment and self-government had been regulated in too much detail. Posts already created under Land law remained. Der Spiegel reported nearly 1,000 approved at 65 universities. An Article 91b agreement had the federation pay 60,000 euro toward each post’s research equipment — up to 180 million euro in 2002–2006, and at most 3,000 posts — while the Länder paid the salaries.

The Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation was not a ministry statute. The foundation set it up in 1998; a February 1999 call drew 136 applications, and in June 1999 it approved 53 grants for independent junior groups. It ran beside the statutory junior professorship, not as part of it.

Research, innovation and bioethics

Excellence Initiative and research funding

In January 2004, at the Berlin congress "Deutschland. Das von morgen", Bulmahn announced "Brain up! Deutschland sucht seine Spitzenuniversitäten". From 2006, for at least five years, four or five universities were each to receive €50 million a year. Any German university could apply; a jury would shortlist up to ten, and she said she would put the plan to the Länder on 29 March without identifying the money. In March the government told the Bundestag that the contest would follow earlier programmes such as BioRegio and InnoRegio, with planning still inside the ministry and talks with the Länder only begun.

Union-led Länder treated a federal choice of whole universities as an intrusion on their responsibility for education. On 2 February 2004 their science ministers backed "Elitecampus Deutschland", temporary networks of departments. Peter Frankenberg of Baden-Württemberg refused to negotiate on Bulmahn's proposals, saying the Länder could do it "alone, and better".

InnoRegio, which the ministry cited as a model, had in October 2000 allocated 500 million marks to 19 eastern-German networks chosen from about 440 open-topic applications. Bulmahn presented it as a way to build products that could sustain themselves and to give young people a reason to stay.

She also promised the non-university organisations a predictable funding rise in return for reforms flagged by the German Science and Humanities Council. In November 2004 the federation and the Länder signed a Pact for Research and Innovation: institutional grants would rise 3 per cent a year, which she tied to excellence, young researchers, women, competition and cooperation with industry. On 23 June 2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the minister-presidents put the pact into force through 2010 for the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society, the Fraunhofer Society, the Leibniz Association and the German Research Foundation, and adopted the Excellence Initiative under Article 91b of the Basic Law.

The agreement of 18 July 2005, reached while she was still minister, was narrower than "Brain up!". It provided €1.9 billion for 2006–2011, 75 per cent federal and 25 per cent from the host Land, only for graduate schools, clusters of excellence, and "future concepts" for universities that already had at least one approved cluster and graduate school. Edmund Stoiber stressed that no university would be funded as an institution. The Research Foundation and the Science and Humanities Council were to run the competition, with the first awards in 2006. Those decisions came after she left. On 13 October 2006 the committee that included her successor Annette Schavan named only the Technical University of Munich, LMU Munich and the University of Karlsruhe in that third line.

Stem-cell research

Deriving human embryonic stem cells was already forbidden in Germany; importing them was not. On 30 January 2002 the Bundestag, without a party whip, rejected open import by 106 votes and then, by 340 of 617 valid votes to 265, allowed only lines created abroad before a cut-off, so German research would not cause more embryos to be destroyed. The bill reported on 23 April 2002 restricted use to lines existing on 1 January 2002, to high-ranking aims not otherwise achievable, and to surplus embryos created for a pregnancy, licensed by the state with advice from a central ethics commission.

Bulmahn backed that limited import. Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin opposed her and Schröder in cabinet, and the bishops' standing council said import meant accepting the killing of embryonic human beings. Supporters of a ban treated import as complicity in the destruction of embryos; supporters of the compromise treated the cut-off and the licence as a narrow opening that still barred the derivation of stem cells in Germany.

Skilled immigration

The IT "Green Card" was Schröder's programme, not Bulmahn's. On 31 May 2000 the cabinet approved ordinances for at most 20,000 non-EU specialists over three years, reviewed after 10,000, from August; residence rules still needed the Bundesrat. The permits were temporary and the scheme ended in 2004. By July 2003, 14,876 had been issued, a take-up the Federal Agency for Civic Education later called disputed.

On 26 October 2000 Bulmahn proposed, at the Fraunhofer Society's autumn meeting, that "excellent" foreign graduates be allowed to work in Germany for at least five years and that the route extend beyond IT. The ministry said the criteria were undefined and the remark was only to open a debate; IT graduates could already apply.

Jürgen Rüttgers, her predecessor and the Christian Democratic Union's candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia, campaigned on "Kinder statt Inder" ("children instead of Indians"). She called that agitation to cover his record and said each admitted specialist would help create four or five jobs. Ursula Engelen-Kefer of the German Trade Union Confederation replied that firms had not trained enough—about 10,000 young people found no IT apprenticeship in 1999—and opposed a general opening of the border.

Schools and vocational training

All-day schools

On 5–6 December 2001 the Kultusministerkonferenz drew the first official consequences from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2000 results. One of seven fields was more all-day provision for pupils with learning gaps or particular talents. At the Forum Bildung's Berlin congress on 9–10 January 2002, Bulmahn set out the Federation's conclusions from that joint federal–Länder exercise.

Edelgard Bulmahn with pupils at a meal during a visit to the Cäcilien-Grundschule in Berlin-Wilmersdorf on 15 December 2003.

Before the 2002 election, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder promised €4 billion toward about 10,000 all-day schools. The sum became the Investitionsprogramm "Zukunft Bildung und Betreuung" (IZBB). On 12 May 2003 Bulmahn signed an administrative agreement with the Länder, represented by Karin Wolff of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Doris Ahnen and Jan-Hendrik Olbertz. The Federation provided €4 billion for 2003–2007, €300 million of it in 2003, for places in years 1 to 10. The Länder had to add at least 10 per cent; staff costs stayed with them and the municipalities. The Cäcilien-Grundschule was among the first schools supported.

Because school education in Germany is a Länder matter under the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, federal aid covered only investment—building, conversion, renovation, equipment and related services. The Länder chose the projects and paid for teaching that was not investment. After the 2006 federalism reform, Article 125c (2) let the programme finish, with spending extended at no extra federal cost until 31 December 2009.

Union-led Länder disputed the educational conditions and the running costs; some conservatives said all-day schooling broke with a traditional view of the family. Later critics argued that the money built rooms without changing lessons. The taz reported about 6,400 schools built or converted from 2003. The Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung, which ran the ministry's scheme "Ideen für mehr! Ganztägig lernen", estimated that an all-day school needed about 30 per cent more educational staff, which no Land supplied. The usual pattern was called a "bikini model": ordinary mornings, then afternoon supervision by educators, clubs or volunteers.

Vocational education

On 7 May 2004 the Bundestag passed the Berufsausbildungssicherungsgesetz by 300 votes to 284, with the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Alliance 90/The Greens. Firms with at least ten employees and a trainee share below 7 per cent would pay into a fund, but only if, at the end of September, places did not exceed applicants by at least 15 per cent and no binding pact existed. Bulmahn warned of a possible gap of about 3.5 million skilled workers aged 30 to 45 by 2015, and offered business a multi-year pact so the levy would not be collected. The Free Democratic Party and the Union said it would create no places and would burden smaller firms. Economics minister Wolfgang Clement stayed away; opponents treated that as dissent.

The government said the German Bundesrat's consent was unnecessary, though a two-thirds objection could still block the bill. The Bundesrat insisted on consent and, on 9 July 2004, after fruitless mediation, refused it and lodged a precautionary objection. The levy never entered into force.

On 16 June 2004 the federal government and business associations signed the Nationaler Pakt für Ausbildung und Fachkräftenachwuchs instead. The next day Bulmahn called it a large step, but said the dual education system was on trial unless more company places appeared that year, and that quality had to rise with the numbers. She tied it to a Vocational Training Act reform, outlined in February 2004 and described as the broadest since the 1960s: updated occupations, staged qualifications, firm–school cooperation and training abroad. The Berufsbildungsreformgesetz of 23 March 2005, which also absorbed the 1981 promotion act, took effect on 1 April 2005.

Return to the Bundestag, 2005–2013

Economic affairs

At the federal election of 18 September 2005 Bulmahn again won Stadt Hannover II, then constituency 42, in Hanover, Lower Saxony. She took 79,249 of 145,959 valid first votes (54.3 percent); turnout was 78.5 percent. She left the education ministry when Angela Merkel’s first cabinet took office on 22 November 2005; Annette Schavan (CDU) was sworn in that day as minister of education and research. Through 2009 she chaired the Bundestag Committee on Economic Affairs and Technology.

On 7 November 2007 she signed, as chair, the committee’s recommendation on the Hard Coal Financing Act. It advised the Bundestag to adopt, unchanged, the combined government and coalition bills for a socially acceptable end to subsidized German hard-coal mining in 2018. The CDU, the Christian Social Union, the SPD and the FDP supported that recommendation; Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke opposed it. In September 2009, with state aid for Opel on the committee’s agenda, she told Der Tagesspiegel that jobs and the supplier industry were the reason for support. The credits, she said, required employee consent: KfW would carry half of a promised €3 billion, and the new firm should be a stock corporation so co-determination survived.

Foreign affairs and enquiry work

On 27 September 2009 she held the seat, by then constituency 43, with 55,068 first votes, 39.6 percent of 138,932 valid ballots, against 44,534 (32.1 percent) for the CDU. Turnout was 73.8 percent. The CDU candidate was family minister Ursula von der Leyen, who missed the direct mandate and entered parliament on the Lower Saxony list. Election-night reports put the gap at about 39.7 to 31.9 percent.

From 10 November 2009 she sat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and from 15 March 2010 she was the SPD spokeswoman on its Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention and Networked Security (Unterausschuss „Zivile Krisenprävention und vernetzte Sicherheit“). At a hearing on 14 June 2010 on the 2004 federal action plan for civilian crisis prevention, she criticized a “tunnel vision” in which each ministry, party foundation and committee watched only its own brief, and proposed an internet platform to pool projects. Subcommittee chair Joachim Spatz (FDP) said conflicts had no blueprint and that measures already taken should be evaluated.

From July 2011 she was also the SPD’s spokesperson (Obfrau) on the study commission “Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life — Paths to Sustainable Economic Activity and Social Progress in the Social Market Economy,” succeeding Peter Friedrich, and she chaired its project group on sustainable regulatory policy. Set up on 1 December 2010 with 17 members of parliament and 17 experts, under Daniela Kolbe (SPD), the commission was asked to examine the place of growth, an indicator of prosperity beyond gross domestic product, decoupling growth from resource use, and work, consumption and lifestyles in the social market economy. Its report, Drucksache 17/13300 of 3 May 2013, debated on 6 June 2013, proposed measuring prosperity in material, social and ecological dimensions as well as by GDP.

On 14 January 2013 she said environmental damage, inequality and financial crises required a “socio-ecological regulatory framework”: poorer countries could not copy Europe’s path; atmosphere, soil and water needed limits; and environmental costs belonged in measures of performance. Balanced budgets, she added, presupposed a decision on public tasks—health, infrastructure and much higher spending on education—and she backed a statutory minimum wage. Experts named by the governing parties rejected a set growth rate and charged the opposition with “market pessimism.” The term ended with the 2013 election; on 22 October 2013 the new Bundestag elected her a vice president.

Vice President of the Bundestag

Election and duties

At the federal election on 22 September 2013, Edelgard Bulmahn of the Social Democratic Party of Germany won the direct mandate in constituency 42, Stadt Hannover II, in Lower Saxony. The final count gave the SPD 59,686 first votes, 42.8 per cent, and the Federal Returning Officer's list of those elected names Bulmahn for that constituency with the same share. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany candidate, Ursula von der Leyen, was second. The CDU received 47,180 first votes, 33.9 per cent.

On 22 October 2013 the 18th Bundestag met for its constitutive sitting. Norbert Lammert (CDU) was elected president with 591 votes in favour, 26 against and eight abstentions, from 625 ballots. The House then set the number of vice presidents at six and elected them by secret ballot, with every nominee listed on one card. A majority of the members, 316 votes, was required. Of 626 ballot papers cast, Bulmahn received 534 yes votes, 50 no votes and 36 abstentions, with six votes invalid on her name—the largest yes vote of the six. Elected with her were Ulla Schmidt (SPD; 520 yes votes), Petra Pau (Die Linke; 451), Peter Hintze (CDU; 449), Johannes Singhammer of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (442) and Claudia Roth (Alliance 90/The Greens; 415). All six accepted. The CDU/CSU and the SPD had each put forward two candidates.

The president and the vice presidents form the Presidium for the electoral term. The rules of procedure charge the president with representing the House, conducting its business and chairing debates impartially; in the chamber the president and the vice presidents normally relieve one another about every two hours, and the power to conduct the sitting passes to whoever is in the chair. In each sitting week the Presidium, with the director of the Bundestag administration present, takes up the running of the House, senior staffing, major contracts and public relations. Every member of the Presidium also sits on the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat), which supports the president, fixes the dates of sitting weeks, recommends the plenary agenda and is where disputes among the groups are taken up.

In the same term Bulmahn was an ordinary member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and of its Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Management and Networked Action. The Bundestag's archived biography for the 18th electoral term lists both posts together with the vice presidency. From 2009 to 2013 she had been the SPD group's spokesperson on the subcommittee.

Departure from parliament

Bulmahn said in October 2016 that she would not stand at the 2017 federal election. She told the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, "Nach 30 Jahren will ich den Staffelstab an einen Jüngeren übergeben" ("After 30 years I want to pass the baton to someone younger"). Local SPD branches were to seek applicants, with the nomination left to a constituency conference in March 2017. The next day she added that her husband, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, had long come second for her time, and that she did not want still to be in the Bundestag at 70. She kept the seat for the rest of the term. The 18th electoral period ended when the 19th Bundestag opened its constitutive sitting on 24 October 2017.

Later activities and recognition

Boards and foundations

After leaving the Bundestag in 2017, the Social Democratic Party of Germany politician moved into university governance, foundations and development policy. On 22 September 2017 the Kuratorium of the Humboldt University of Berlin elected her chair unanimously. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development still described her as chair in December 2022, as did a 2026 Falling Walls attendee note.

The biography archived for the 18th electoral term also lists her as deputy chair of Atlantik-Brücke; deputy chair of the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung’s Kuratorium, paid annually in income bracket 3; honorary member of the Kuratorium of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and of the Berghof Foundation’s board of trustees; and honorary senator of the Stiftung Niedersachsen, Lower Saxony’s cultural foundation. She and Burkhard Schwenker became Atlantik-Brücke deputies on 29 June 2010, when Friedrich Merz returned as chair, and left on 26 June 2019, when Sigmar Gabriel was elected chair and Norbert Röttgen and Michael Hüther deputies. DIW Berlin’s 2022 report still listed her as of 31 December 2022; its July 2024 list did not, and she is not on the Berghof Foundation’s current governance page or the Stiftung Niedersachsen senate.

On 2 December 2022 State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth named her “SDG ambassador for peace policy and democracy,” to promote the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, especially peace, democracy and human security, through civil-society dialogue and ministry events. He tied the appointment to Russia’s war against Ukraine and to tackling poverty, inequality and weak institutions before conflicts start.

Honors and assessments

Earlier honors concern the same education and research record. On 15 February 2008 the Christian-Peter-Beuth-Gesellschaft, friends of the then Technische Fachhochschule Berlin, gave her the Christian-Peter-Beuth-Preis for 2007, a bronze sculpture for work on engineering education. The jury cited her push to put universities of applied sciences on a more equal footing with universities and to introduce bachelor’s and master’s courses at both under the Bologna Process. In 2010 she was the first recipient of the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund’s Sophie La Roche Prize, named for Sophie von La Roche and described by the association as recognition of achievement and commitment on behalf of women. On 27 August 2016 the German Jordanian University conferred its first honorary doctorate, in the humanities, at a commencement in Amman, citing her contribution to the university and her support for it.

In June 2025, at the Max Planck Society’s 76th annual meeting in Magdeburg, president Patrick Cramer presented the Harnack Medal, which the society calls its highest distinction.

Max Planck Society president Patrick Cramer presents the Harnack Medal to Edelgard Bulmahn at the society’s 2025 annual meeting in Magdeburg.

Cramer said her seven years as minister had helped place Germany among the world’s leading science centres, and Saxony-Anhalt’s minister-president, Reiner Haseloff, called her a driving force of the German Universities Excellence Initiative. The society added that the Bologna changes, the BAföG reform and the restructuring of academic salaries were still in force, and that the Pact for Research and Innovation and the Excellence Strategy had been continued. She said that being the first federal research minister of the Federal Republic to receive the medal was, in her view, exceptional recognition.

A commission chaired by Dieter Imboden, reporting in January 2016 to the Joint Science Conference, was positive about the Excellence Initiative overall but found its effect on careers partly counterproductive: a bottleneck of fixed-term researchers, problematic chains of postdoctoral contracts, and mostly more temporary posts rather than a broad tenure track. It wrote that it was not entirely free of cynicism that universities benefited while younger researchers spent productive years on poorly paid temporary jobs, a point taken up by the education union GEW.