Ellen Demuth

Ellen Demuth (born 10 July 1982 in Linz am Rhein) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from Rhineland-Palatinate. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, holding the direct mandate for constituency 196, Neuwied. From 2011 until 2025 she sat in the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bundestag biography lists her profession as Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH) and describes her as unmarried with one child.

She took the Abitur in 2002 at the Clara-Schumann-Gymnasium in Bonn. From 2002 to 2007 she studied business administration at the Internationale Hochschule Bad Honnef-Bonn and graduated as a Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH). A year of that course, 2004–2005, was spent at the University of Technology in Melbourne, where she completed a Bachelor of Business. Before the 2011 state election she worked in the mayor’s office in Brühl, responsible for economic development and tourism, and took special leave to campaign.

On 23 February 2025 she won Neuwied with 35.6 percent of the first votes (68,501), ahead of Jan Hellinghausen of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on 22.0 percent (42,314). The Alternative for Germany took 21.0 percent of the constituency’s first votes. Turnout there was 82.3 percent of 236,097 eligible voters. Nationally, the federal returning officer’s final result of 14 March 2025 gave the CDU 22.6 percent of second votes and the CSU 6.0 percent, with turnout at 82.5 percent.

In December 2020, during the contest to succeed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Der Spiegel reported that Norbert Röttgen intended, if he became CDU chair, to put Demuth in charge of a steering group as the party’s chief strategist. She told the magazine that equal participation of women and men was the CDU’s most important modernization task, noting that about 80 percent of district chairs and Bundestag members were men. She served as Röttgen’s campaign strategist in that race. On 27 September 2021, the day after a federal election in which the CDU/CSU fell to 24.1 percent, she publicly asked party chair Armin Laschet to resign.

In the 21st Bundestag she is acting chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, a full member of the Committee on Culture and Media and of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization. From 2020 to 2025 she was a member of the Südwestrundfunk broadcasting council and a deputy member of the ARD programme advisory board. She has sat on the Neuwied district council and the Linz town council since 2009.

Early life and education

Schooling

Ellen Demuth was born on 10 July 1982 in Linz am Rhein, in northern Rhineland-Palatinate, and grew up there. She is the eldest of four daughters of Peter and Jutta Demuth.

The Clara-Schumann-Gymnasium in Bonn.

In a profile published on 7 January 2011 she described a strongly political household. Her father, she said, had sat for decades on the Linz town council for the Christian Democratic Union, and her mother had for as long as she could remember been active in municipal politics in Linz, at that time as leader of the CDU group on the council of the Linz am Rhein collective municipality. As a child, she said, she listened to her mother's political telephone calls and went along to campaign stalls, summer festivals and other political events. She dated her own participation to school, where she was a class representative, and said she joined the Young Union (Junge Union) at nearly 15.

Until 2002 she attended the Clara-Schumann-Gymnasium in Bonn, across the state border in North Rhine-Westphalia, and passed the Abitur there that year. The Bundestag biography, which states that members' biographical details are supplied by the members themselves, records the same school and year.

Business studies

From 2002 to 2007 she studied business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) at the Internationale Fachhochschule Bad Honnef-Bonn, a Fachhochschule in Bad Honnef. The Bundestag entry gives the institution's later style, Internationale Hochschule Bad Honnef-Bonn, and the degree as Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH), the diploma awarded by a university of applied sciences. In a reply published on Abgeordnetenwatch on 24 February 2011 she wrote that the programme was taught in English, had tourism as its focus, and lasted four and a half years. The same account, and the January 2011 Rundschau profile, say that the course included an internship in Ireland; she specified that the placement lasted six months.

During the degree she spent a year studying in Melbourne, Australia. The Bundestag biography dates that year to 2004–2005, names the host as the University of Technology in Melbourne, and lists a Bachelor of Business from it. Her February 2011 reply and the Rundschau profile described the period only as a year at a university in Melbourne, without naming that institution or a second degree. The Bad Honnef school had opened in 1998 as the Internationale Fachhochschule Bad Honnef / Bonn; it was renamed IUBH in 2011 and later became the IU International University of Applied Sciences.

Work before parliament

After finishing the degree in 2007 she worked as a Referentin in the municipal administration of Brühl, in the Rhineland in North Rhine-Westphalia. On 7 January 2011 Rundschau Online reported that she was assigned to the office of mayor Michael Kreuzberg, responsible for economic development and tourism, and that after a house explosion in Brühl the previous December she had also coordinated the assistance measures. The same article said she was then taking three months of special leave to campaign for the CDU in the constituency of Linz am Rhein/Rengsdorf at the Rhineland-Palatinate state election of 27 March 2011. The following month she wrote that she had worked for the Brühl administration for the past several years. That municipal post was her employment before she became a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate in 2011.

Local government

Town and collective municipality

The Bundestag biography, based on Demuth's own statements, records her as a member of the town council (Stadtrat) of Linz am Rhein since 2009. The town belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Linz am Rhein, a collective municipality in the district of Neuwied, Rhineland-Palatinate, and elects that council separately from the Verbandsgemeinderat.

In the municipal election reported on 27 May 2014 she received 1,542 personal votes, second on the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) list behind Michael Rücker (1,694). The CDU share in Linz fell from 53.5 percent in 2009 to 45.6 percent and ten seats; the SPD rose by 3.5 points to 26.1 percent and six seats.

On 9 June 2024 turnout was 60.7 percent (2,865 of 4,723 eligible residents). The CDU took 41.3 percent and nine of 22 seats, the Freie Wählergruppe Linz am Rhein five, the SPD four, the Greens two, and the FDP and Die Linke one each. Demuth, 22nd on the CDU list, received 1,390 votes, fourth on that list behind Helmut Muthers (2,443), Ruth Zimmermann (1,809) and Detlef Nonnen (1,484). The town's page for 2024–2029 still lists her in the CDU group.

She was also returned that day to the Verbandsgemeinderat. Turnout was 68.1 percent; the CDU received 42.8 percent, the FWG 23.3, the SPD 17.1, the Greens 10.5, the FDP 3.6 and Die Linke 2.7, and the NR-Kurier named her among those elected. The Bundestag's outside-office register records that seat, and membership of the Verbandsgemeinde Schulträgerausschuss, as ending on 30 September 2025; the town-council seat has no end date.

Neuwied district council

The biography likewise records membership of the Kreistag of Neuwied since 2009. After the 2019 election the CDU group, still the largest with 17 seats, confirmed Michael Christ as chair and chose three deputies: Demuth, then a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, Reiner Kilgen and Erwin Rüddel, with Pascal Badziong as business manager.

On 9 June 2024 the CDU again received 34.4 percent, against 34.5 percent in 2019, and again 17 of 50 seats. Other shares in the state returning officer's table were SPD 19.9 percent, AfD 14.3, Greens 9.8, Free Voters 8.4 and FDP 4.0. Local reports gave the SPD ten seats, the AfD seven, the Greens five, the Free Voters four, the BSW three, the FDP two and Die Linke and Ich tu's one each, on a turnout of 61.2 percent. Demuth stood on the CDU district list for that election and was among the 17 CDU members returned.

The register lists her on the district Schulträgerausschuss and as deputy chair of the CDU Kreistag group. That post is separate from the deputy chairmanship of the CDU Landtag group, recorded in the same register as ending on 4 April 2025. The district main statute of 8 July 2024 makes the Schulträgerausschuss a Kreistag committee of 30 members; under section 90 of the state school act it is also to include teachers at the district's schools, elected parent and pupil representatives, and employees.

Other local bodies

Demuth sits on the administrative board (Verwaltungsrat) of Sparkasse Neuwied. The 2024 report lists her, then still identified as a Landtag member, among the members under section 5 (1) no. 2 of the Rhineland-Palatinate Savings Banks Act; the 2025 report lists her as a Bundestag member. In both years the chair alternated between Landrat Achim Hallerbach and Jan Einig, lord mayor of Neuwied. The Act composes the board of the head of a sponsoring authority's administration as chair, further members elected by the sponsors' councils, and employee representatives. The Bundestag register repeats the Sparkasse seat with the continuing Kreistag and Stadtrat memberships.

Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate

State elections

Ellen Demuth of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the direct mandate in constituency 3, Linz am Rhein/Rengsdorf, at the Rhineland-Palatinate state elections of 27 March 2011, 13 March 2016 and 14 March 2021, and sat for that seat in the Landtag in Mainz. The constituency covers the collective municipalities of Asbach, Bad Hönningen, Linz am Rhein, Rengsdorf-Waldbreitbach and Unkel in the district of Neuwied. Her Bundestag biography records Landtag membership until 4 April 2025.

In 2011, 70,209 people were eligible and turnout was 63.1 per cent. Of 43,106 valid constituency votes, Demuth received 18,286 (42.4 per cent). The Social Democratic Party (SPD) polled 15,094 (35.0 per cent), Alliance 90/The Greens 5,630 (13.1 per cent) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 1,850 (4.3 per cent). On the list vote the CDU led the constituency with 17,815 votes (41.0 per cent) to the SPD’s 13,879 (31.9 per cent). The General-Anzeiger named Guido Job as the unsuccessful SPD candidate and Uta Schellhaaß for the FDP.

In 2016 turnout was 70.0 per cent of 70,172 eligible voters. Demuth took 19,614 of 48,328 valid constituency votes (40.6 per cent), ahead of Birgit Haas of the SPD on 14,864 (30.8 per cent). Next were Hans-Joachim Röder of the Alternative for Germany (9.6 per cent), Tobias Kador of the FDP (6.8 per cent) and Melanie Petri of the Greens (5.8 per cent). The CDU list vote in the constituency was 18,476 (38.1 per cent), against 15,932 (32.8 per cent) for the SPD.

At the 2021 state election, 71,007 people were eligible and turnout was 64.4 per cent. Demuth received 18,232 constituency votes (40.4 per cent), 0.2 points below 2016, while the SPD fell to 11,297 (25.0 per cent). The NR-Kurier identified the SPD candidate as Jürgen Hühner, a restaurateur from Hausen. The Greens took 5,735 votes (12.7 per cent), the Free Voters 2,900 (6.4 per cent), the AfD 2,819 (6.2 per cent) and the FDP 2,800 (6.2 per cent). Her personal vote was well above the CDU list there (15,558 votes, 34.3 per cent), which finished just ahead of the SPD list (15,009, 33.1 per cent). The lead over the SPD candidate grew from 3,192 votes in 2011 to 4,750 in 2016 and 6,935 in 2021.

After her election to the Bundestag she left the Landtag. On 14 May 2025 Landtag president Hendrik Hering welcomed Pierre Fischer, at his first sitting, as her successor. The NR-Kurier reported on 27 April 2025 that Fischer, newly elected mayor of Rengsdorf-Waldbreitbach, would keep the Landtag mandate until the end of that year.

Faction and committee roles

From the 2016 term, the NR-Kurier reported, Demuth was a member and deputy chair of the Committee for Society, Integration and Consumer Protection, and a full member of the Committee for Media, Digital Infrastructure and Network Policy. She was a substitute on the equality and environment committees and also sat on the data-protection commission, the state cultural foundation and, as a substitute, the data agency’s advisory board. On 7 November 2019 the equality committee elected her deputy chair unanimously after Gabriele Wieland left the Landtag.

By the Landtag directory of 20 November 2024 those posts had shifted. She was an ordinary member of the Committee for Equality and Women, not its deputy chair; deputy chair of the Committee for Digitalisation, Digital Infrastructure and Media; a substitute on the health committee; and an ordinary member both of the interim committee and of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat), with Christof Reichert as her substitute there. The NR-Kurier had reported her election as deputy chair of the media committee when the committees of the 18th Landtag were constituted in June 2021. The Bundestag biography, whose details it says rest on members’ own disclosures, dates the Council of Elders seat to 2024–2025.

That biography also states that she was deputy chair of the CDU Landtag group from 2014 to 2025. A German Press Agency dispatch of 12 May 2021, carried by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, gives a later start: the group newly elected Demuth, Marcus Klein and Gordon Schnieder as deputy chairs, while Anke Beilstein remained in office. Christian Baldauf as group leader and Martin Brandl as parliamentary business manager had already been confirmed after the election of 14 March. The dispatch is the dated record of her joining the group leadership; it does not describe the re-election of someone who had held the post since 2014. The biography’s end date is 2025, when she left the Landtag.

Tourism inquiry and broadcasting councils

Demuth chaired the inquiry commission “Tourism as an Economic and Location Factor in Rhineland-Palatinate” (Enquete-Kommission “Wirtschafts- und Standortfaktor Tourismus in Rheinland-Pfalz”). Opening its 30th and final sitting, reported on 12 October 2020, she said the Landtag had created the commission at the beginning of 2017 on a CDU initiative, because tourism was a significant part of the state economy. She said the groups had worked through the six fields of the existing tourism strategy, from target groups, regional profile and foreign markets to quality, organisation and finance, and the tourism trade.

On 30 January 2020 the Landtag elected her one of its four members of the broadcasting council of Südwestrundfunk (SWR). Blick aktuell reported that the council’s new term began on 11 July and that she would serve with the CDU deputy Adi Weiland. On 6 December 2020 the SWR council elected her a deputy member of the programme advisory board of ARD, representing the SWR area on the body that advises on Das Erste and other ARD services. The Bundestag biography lists both roles as 2020–2025. At the council’s public meeting on 4 July 2025 its chair said that, after her election to the Bundestag in February and her resignation from the Landtag, her membership of the SWR bodies had ended on 30 April 2025; Jennifer Groß was to succeed her, a choice made the day before. The Bundestag’s list of side activities gives the same end date for the SWR council.

Christian Democratic Union

Joining and state-party offices

Ellen Demuth’s path into the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) ran through its youth organisation. In a 2011 profile she said she had joined the Junge Union at just under 15, in a household in Linz am Rhein already active in local CDU politics. Born on 10 July 1982, that recollection points to about 1997, though she named no calendar year. The Bundestag biography, based on her own information, dates CDU membership to 2001.

In August 2008 the Junge Union in the district of Neuwied elected the then 26-year-old as district chair, succeeding Christina Vomweg after she defeated Hendrik Wessling. She said the youth organisation should not remain in a “pre-political space” but should place its members on CDU lists. On 18 November 2017 delegates of the CDU Bezirksverband Koblenz-Montabaur — the association for northern Rhineland-Palatinate, then about 15,000 members in eleven district associations — elected her deputy to Bezirksvorsitzender Adi Weiland. She said she would focus on recruiting younger members and on a working group called Zukunftswerkstatt 2030.

She joined the state executive at the March 2022 congress in Wittlich, where Christian Baldauf succeeded Julia Klöckner after twelve years and the party raised the number of deputies from two to three. Before about 320 delegates, Gordon Schnieder was elected general secretary with 96 percent. Jenny Groß and Jan Metzler became deputies with about 98 percent — Groß reported 98.4 percent — while Demuth, the third deputy, received 61.3 percent. The Rhein-Zeitung reported that she treated the result as a spur rather than a setback.

She left the post at the state congress in Frankenthal on 21 September 2024, when Schnieder was elected chair with 275 votes in favour, 21 against and two abstentions (92.9 percent, according to the party). The Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that she did not stand again in order to concentrate on the Bundestag election; Jan Metzler and Jenny Groß were re-elected as deputies and Mechthild Heil was newly elected. Baldauf had already said she would not run, and thanked her for her work on promoting women in the party. The Neuwied association said its chair, Jan Petry, would represent the district on the state executive after she stood down.

Röttgen leadership campaign

On 3 December 2020, in the contest to succeed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Norbert Röttgen told Der Spiegel that if he won the chair he would make Demuth the party’s chief strategist, heading a steering group to modernise the CDU and anchor it in new social milieus. The magazine cast the role as his “number two”. He called her a major political talent, strategically minded and well networked, and “female, young and digital”. Demuth said the party needed a general overhaul to remain the party of the centre, and called parity of women and men the central task, noting that about 80 percent of district chairs and Bundestag members were men. She was then a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, responsible in the CDU group for equality and digital policy.

Spiegel reported that he had first meant to propose her as general secretary, but after the congress was postponed planned, if elected, to keep Paul Ziemiak with a federal election near. He was running against Friedrich Merz and Armin Laschet; a decision expected in April 2020 had been delayed twice by the pandemic, and Kramp-Karrenbauer had called the race ruinous for the CDU.

At the January 2021 leadership election, the CDU’s first fully digital congress, Röttgen missed the runoff. Merz led Laschet by five votes in the first round; in the runoff, of 991 ballots, Laschet received 521 and Merz 466, with four abstentions, as Ziemiak announced. The digital result still required a postal ballot, with only Laschet on the paper; the party said the legally binding figure would follow on 22 January.

After the federal election Demuth declined a second pairing. On 6 November 2021, as new candidacies could be filed, she told n-tv that she and Röttgen would not enter as a team. Handelsblatt quoted her as citing different views on the party’s personnel renewal, not personal reasons, and as wishing him well. She said they had worked together well the year before, “but times change”, left open whether she would vote for him in a membership ballot, and ruled herself out: she would like a woman among the candidates, but in 2022 saw herself as part of the team rather than as chair.

Call for Laschet to resign

On 27 September 2021, the day after the 2021 German federal election, Demuth called on Twitter for Laschet to resign as party leader. Die Rheinpfalz published the text: she wished the post were unnecessary and that there had been self-knowledge, but after a press conference she called troubling she wrote, “@ArminLaschet, you have lost. Please show insight. Avert further damage from the #CDU and step down.” A CDU spokesman confirmed the tweet; Demuth could not at first be reached. The paper reported that the CDU/CSU, with Laschet as chancellor candidate, had fallen from 32.9 percent to a historic low of 24.1 percent, while the SPD rose from 20.5 to 25.7 percent and finished first. It noted that she had been Röttgen’s chief strategist when he, Laschet and Merz sought the chair in late 2020. Handelsblatt later tied the tweet to Laschet’s proposal, after the defeat, of a Jamaica coalition under his leadership.

2025 federal election

Nomination

Bundestag constituency 196 Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, comprises the districts of Neuwied and Altenkirchen (Westerwald). The direct mandate had been held since 2009 by Erwin Rüddel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), from Windhagen, who had won the constituency four times.

At the end of June 2024 Rüddel said he was willing to stand again. Two other CDU applicants then came forward: Justus Brühl, a 28-year-old legal trainee from Scheuerfeld and chair of the Young Union in the Altenkirchen district, and Ellen Demuth, a directly elected member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate for Linz am Rhein/Rengsdorf for 13 years and deputy chair of the CDU Landtag group. In a statement published on 21 August 2024 she argued that the CDU’s priority was to win and keep the direct mandate, and that the adopted electoral-law reform made a deliberate change of generation necessary if the seat was to remain with the party.

On 11 October 2024 Rüddel announced that he would not run. He said he had offered himself only because nobody he had asked earlier had been available, and that he would not stand in the way if the party preferred a younger candidate. The remaining contest was between Demuth and Brühl. On Friday 22 November 2024 a joint delegates’ assembly of the CDU district associations of Neuwied and Altenkirchen, held in Horhausen, gave her 59 votes to 37. The Rhein-Zeitung reported that she had defeated Brühl and was to succeed Rüddel; Matthias Reuber, chair of the Neuwied district association, was pictured congratulating her with Brühl. Demuth said the delegates had attended despite snow and ice, and that the short time before the early federal election on 23 February 2025 had to be used.

Result in Neuwied

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025, Demuth won constituency 196. The final result gave her 68,501 first votes, 35.6 percent, 3.7 points above the CDU’s 2021 share in the seat, and she was returned as the directly elected member. Jan Hellinghausen of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was runner-up with 42,314 votes, 22.0 percent, down 8.2 points.

Of 236,097 eligible voters, 194,324 cast ballots, a turnout of 82.3 percent, 5.9 points higher than in 2021. There were 192,393 valid first votes. Behind the CDU and the SPD, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 40,365 (21.0 percent, up 11.6 points), Alliance 90/The Greens 11,921 (6.2 percent), Die Linke 9,689 (5.0 percent), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 6,858 (3.6 percent), the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) 6,445 (3.3 percent), the Free Voters 4,345 (2.3 percent) and Volt 1,955 (1.0 percent). On second votes the CDU led with 62,296 (32.3 percent, up 5.4 points), followed by the AfD with 41,999 (21.7 percent, up 12.0), the SPD with 35,679 (18.5 percent, down 11.5), the Greens with 15,674 (8.1 percent), Die Linke with 11,695 (6.1 percent), the BSW with 9,017 (4.7 percent) and the FDP with 8,488 (4.4 percent), out of 193,104 valid second votes.

Nationally the election was an early vote for a Bundestag of 630 members, down from 735 in 2021. Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand announced the final result on 14 March 2025, after a turnout of 82.5 percent (76.4 percent in 2021). Second-vote shares were CDU 22.6 percent, AfD 20.8, SPD 16.4, Greens 11.6, Die Linke 8.8 and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) 6.0 percent. The BSW, on 4.981 percent, and the FDP, on 4.3 percent, remained below the five-percent threshold and won no seats. The chamber comprised 164 CDU members, 128 of them elected in constituencies, 44 CSU, 152 AfD, 120 SPD, 85 Greens, 64 Die Linke and one seat for the South Schleswig Voters’ Association. CDU/CSU and SPD together held 328 seats, 208 for the Union and 120 for the SPD. On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Friedrich Merz chancellor on a joint CDU/CSU–SPD proposal: he received 325 of 618 votes in a second ballot, after 310 in the first, short of the 316 required, then accepted the election and was appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In Neuwied the CDU’s second-vote share, 32.3 percent, was well above the party’s 22.6 percent nationwide, while the AfD placed second both in the constituency and in the country.

Member of the Bundestag

Ellen Demuth took her seat in the 21st Bundestag on 25 March 2025 as a directly elected member for constituency 196, Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, and sits with the CDU/CSU.

Committees

On 16 October 2025 the Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Armin Laschet, constituted its subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy (Unterausschuss Auswärtige Kultur- und Bildungspolitik). Demuth was elected deputy chair at that sitting; Alexander Wolf, the nominee of Alternative for Germany for the chair, did not receive the majority required. The Bundestag’s biography, last modified on 29 September 2026, and the subcommittee’s member list both style her acting chair (amtierende Vorsitzende) as well as a full member.

Armin Laschet opens the 16 October 2025 constitutive sitting of the subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy; Ellen Demuth, elected deputy chair, is on the right.

Its remit covers intermediary organisations of foreign cultural and education policy, including the Goethe-Institut and the German Academic Exchange Service, described by the Bundestag as part of the third pillar of German foreign policy. At the sitting Demuth said resilient partnerships had to be built and German positions conveyed clearly and in a form open to dialogue. The September 2026 biography and the committee lists also record her as a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Culture and Media, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation.

Those were not her seats at the start of the term. At the constitutive meeting of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth on 21 May 2025 she was one of 13 CDU/CSU full members. The minutes still list her among the full members on 14 January 2026 and 22 April 2026. The agenda for 4 March 2026 names her as the CDU/CSU rapporteur for the committee’s discussion of the federal government’s third gender-equality report. From 8 to 12 March 2026 she was in the committee delegation, with Anne Janssen for the CDU/CSU, to the 70th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York. She is not on that committee in the biography modified on 29 September 2026, nor on the committee’s later member list. A statement from her office, carried by the NR-Kurier on 17 May 2025, also described her as a deputy member of the health committee; she does not appear on that committee’s current member list or in the September 2026 biography, which instead records the digital-affairs deputy seat.

Delegations and other bodies

The same biography lists her as a full member of the Bundestag delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and a substitute member of the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Both roles match the delegations’ own member lists. She was named in the Bundestag group for the IPU’s 151st Assembly in Geneva, held from 18 to 23 October 2025. The delegation’s report to the Bundestag, printed on 19 January 2026, records that she and Katrin Fey of Die Linke represented the Bundestag in the IPU Committee on Democracy and Human Rights, which considered a draft resolution on recognising and supporting victims of illegal international adoptions.

In the register of outside offices, compiled from members’ own disclosures, the Bundestag lists her from June 2025 as a deputy member of the advisory board (Beirat) of the Federal Foundation for Equality (Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung). Separately, the foundation announced on 18 September 2025 that for the 21st legislative term she was the substitute for Ralph Edelhäußer among the Bundestag members on its board of trustees (Stiftungsrat), a listing repeated on the foundation’s board page.

Parliamentary activity

Mediathek recordings show plenary speeches on foreign affairs, culture and family policy, not government bills she introduced. On 8 October 2025 she spoke in a current-affairs hour, requested by the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel and the war in the Gaza Strip. On 12 November 2025 she spoke, and answered a short intervention, in an AfD-requested hour on possible copyright infringements and conflicts of interest of the federal commissioner for culture and the media. The next day she spoke at the first reading of a bill from Alliance 90/The Greens on residence rights for Yazidi women (Drucksache 21/795).

In 2026 she spoke on 16 January on a Die Linke motion on solidarity with people in Iran, human rights and humanitarian support (Drucksache 21/3612). On 25 February she spoke in an AfD-requested hour on reporting failures in public-service broadcasting; during that speech Christoph Birghan (AfD) put a question. On 17 April she spoke in a Die Linke hour on military escalation and the humanitarian situation in Lebanon. On 7 May she spoke on two AfD motions, one on redirecting the Federal Institute for Population Research and one on a national plan for a family-friendly society (Drucksachen 21/5757 and 21/5758). On 24 September she spoke on an AfD motion that described immigration policy as a cause of the crisis in the school system (Drucksache 21/8120).

Political positions

Equality and party reform

In December 2020, during the contest for the chair of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Demuth told Der Spiegel that the party needed a general overhaul to remain competitive. “The CDU must modernize in order to remain the centre,” she said, and she called the equal participation of women and men its most important modernization task. A party in which 80 percent of district chairs and members of the Bundestag were men, she argued, no longer represented society in its breadth.

Before the January 2021 leadership election, she told Deutschlandfunk that she had supported the quota decision of the CDU’s structure and statutes commission. She said she would, “if necessary,” use “the crutch of a quota” so the party reflected society. A supporter of Friedrich Merz, quoted in the same report, called a quota discrimination against men.

In a May 2020 commentary with Norbert Röttgen, she argued that the COVID-19 pandemic had shown how much low-paid care, hospital and shop work was done by women, often without home office. A cultural change was not enough, they wrote: those occupations had to be upgraded in pay. They cited an unadjusted gender pay gap of 21 percent, rejected the idea that women earned more only by entering male-dominated trades, and said the Pay Transparency Act, which gave a right to information rather than to equal pay, should be amended to create that claim.

Media, culture and digital policy

After the minister-presidents postponed a decision on the broadcasting fee in October 2024, Demuth, then deputy chair of the CDU group in the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate and a member of the Südwestrundfunk broadcasting council, said a stable fee and a full reform had to go “hand in hand,” and that a further burden on the public was unacceptable. The group stood by the basic-supply mandate, she said, but that mandate did not justify ever-rising fees; a finance commission had proposed a rise of 58 cents, to €18.94 a month.

In the 2021 state campaign she named network expansion as a goal and said Rhineland-Palatinate had a chance only if it mastered digital transformation and demographic change. In February 2023 she cited the state audit office to argue that a 5.5 percent investment ratio, against 9.5 percent elsewhere, was letting digitalization and roads decay despite a €2.3 billion surplus in 2021, which she blamed on a lack of will rather than of money. Closing the Landtag tourism inquiry on 12 October 2020, she said digitalization and sustainability still had to be developed, and she endorsed a final report opposed only by the Alternative for Germany. In March 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine cut foreign visits and raised fuel costs, she asked the state government to revise the “Rheinland-Pfalz Gold” campaign and to follow the inquiry’s recommendations, especially on nature and culture.

Health, care and regional development

When the Linz–Remagen hospital group announced insolvency in self-administration in March 2025, Demuth said the Franziskus hospital in Linz am Rhein had to stay for care in the northern Neuwied district and as an employer. She called on the Social Democratic-led state government to halt closures, to create a “living hospitals fund” of €150 million in each of 2025 and 2026, and to assign service groups immediately, as she said North Rhine-Westphalia had done. She said she would seek, in the Bundestag, financing that gave rural clinics a future. In September 2026 she said the hospital’s real capacity, including staff where the conditions were met, had to count when the state assigned service groups from 1 January 2027.

In October 2026 she said care had to be available near home, because rural outpatient and day-care services were what let people remain in familiar surroundings, and that a coming care reform had to use practitioners’ experience. The same month she welcomed a Bundestag reform of emergency care as a step toward reliable help “no matter where one lives,” through closer work among rescue services, doctors and hospitals on long rural journeys. In July 2026 she welcomed monument-standard repairs, during a Deutsche Bahn line closure, to the bridge towers at Erpel, remains of the Ludendorff Bridge. She called them history that had to be preserved; a 2014 minor interpellation of hers had already sought a timetable because loose stone threatened neighbouring paths.

Foreign and cultural policy

On 16 October 2025 the Foreign Affairs Committee constituted its subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy and elected Demuth deputy chair; Alexander Wolf, the AfD nominee for chair, did not win a majority. She said reliable partnerships had to be built and German positions conveyed clearly and in a form open to dialogue, because intermediaries reach into other civil societies, and that dialogue had to be kept open in a tenser setting. The Bundestag named the Goethe-Institut and the German Academic Exchange Service among the bodies in that remit.

At a 16 September 2025 discussion of the Goethe-Institut and the German Cultural Council, she said conveying German culture and language abroad had to be realigned, with “securing prosperity, freedom and security” the first priority. The council reported cross-party support on the panel for more funding despite a tight budget, and for the independence of the intermediaries. Maren Kaminski of the Left, on the same panel, said culture was a value in itself and should not be reduced to prosperity or geopolitical interest.

Public profile

Media attention

Regional papers have described Demuth’s 2011 arrival in the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate by her age. In December 2012, reporting her election as chair of the Linz am Rhein city association of the Christian Democratic Union, the NR-Kurier and Blick aktuell repeated the association’s line that the then 30-year-old had been, since 2011, the youngest directly elected CDU member of the Landtag. A March 2026 Rhein-Zeitung retrospective was headed “2011 jüngste CDU-Abgeordnete”.

National coverage came on 3 December 2020, as Norbert Röttgen campaigned against Armin Laschet and Friedrich Merz for the January 2021 leadership election. Der Spiegel reported that a win would make the then 38-year-old his “Nummer zwei” and chief strategist. He called her a “great political talent”, “female, young and digital”; she said the CDU needed a “general overhaul”, with parity of women and men the main task. He had considered her for general secretary but would keep Paul Ziemiak. Die Welt treated the title as a device for his slogan “Weiblicher. Jünger. Digitaler.”, noted that she was little known nationally and had made headlines by collapsing in the Landtag, and asked whether the role was a step up or a consolation.

At the March 2022 state congress in Wittlich she was elected a deputy state chair with 61.3 percent, beside Jenny Groß on 98.4 percent and Jan Metzler on about 98. The WW-Kurier called the figure a clear setback. The Rhein-Zeitung, giving Metzler 98.1 percent, headed its report with her view of the “mageres Wahlergebnis” as a spur.

Awards and fellowships

In 2017 she was a fellow of Stiftung Mercator’s Türkiye Europe Future Forum. The foundation’s page lists the project as “Reflecting Change”, a dialogue of younger participants from Turkey and Europe.

In 2021 two magazines included her on lists they publish themselves, not independent measures of influence. Capital, which since 2007 has named a “Top 40 unter 40” in politics, business, management and society, included her; the NR-Kurier reported on 30 November that she attended its Berlin summit (“Macht! Jetzt! Was?”) and a panel on political reform. On 24 December Focus ran “Die 100 Frauen des Jahres” and wrote of the then 39-year-old that she might have become general secretary had Röttgen won, that her strategic skill was known beyond Rhineland-Palatinate, and that readers should “remember the name”. Local reporting said the jury had included her among the “100 Frauen des Jahres 2021” on a proposal by Düzen Tekkal.

The 2020 plenary collapse

On the evening of 17 September 2020, after a sitting in Mainz of more than eleven hours without a break, Demuth broke off a speech on the last item, an Alternative for Germany motion on reunification, victims of the SED state and what it called continuing far-left structures. SPD members led her from the rostrum, and vice-president Hans-Josef Bracht (CDU) closed the sitting, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported from dpa.

The next day the presidium said it would reconsider how long sittings run. President Hendrik Hering (SPD) wished the 38-year-old from Linz am Rhein a swift recovery; a spokesperson said the presidium and Ältestenrat would take up duration again “regardless of the causes”. The same dispatch recalled that Helga Lerch, then still of the FDP, had collapsed in the Landtag in October 2019, when a faction spokesperson said long days could also be a physical strain.

Personal life

Ellen Demuth was born on 10 July 1982 in Linz am Rhein, in the Neuwied district of Rhineland-Palatinate, and has continued to give that town as her place of residence. A portrait in the Schwäbische Zeitung on 9 January 2021 described it as a wine-growing town of about 6,000 people on the Rhine. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own information, states: “Geboren am 10. Juli 1982 in Linz am Rhein; ledig; ein Kind.” A 2021 candidate profile in the NR-Kurier likewise listed her as unmarried with one daughter. Answers printed by the AK-Kurier before the February 2025 federal election described the household as unmarried, with a daughter then aged 19 and two cats.

On 7 January 2011, campaigning for the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, she told Rundschau Online that “Familie und Beruf müssen miteinander vereinbar sein,” and called for flexible workplaces and reliable childcare. In the 2021 Schwäbische interview, given while she was advising Norbert Röttgen’s campaign for the chair of the CDU, she said her family and her then 15-year-old daughter supported that work: “Ohne deren Rückhalt geht es überhaupt nicht.” The paper wrote that she had raised her daughter alone for several years and described her as an “alleinerziehende Mutter” familiar with long evening sittings, after which, it said, the important conversations often took place in a pub. She told the interviewer she felt bound to her daughter’s generation—the 15-year-old had taken part in Fridays for Future demonstrations—and said, “Ich bin sehr religiös geprägt, auch von der christlichen Soziallehre.” In the NR-Kurier questionnaire she named Christian social teaching as the reason she had joined the CDU; the profile did not give a denomination.

The Bundestag formula has remained unmarried with one child. Reporting the election-night party of 23 February 2025, the Rhein-Zeitung wrote that the business graduate from Linz celebrated in Oberhonnefeld-Gierend “mit ihrer Familie und ihrem Lebensgefährten Markus Köhler.”

The 2021 NR-Kurier profile also listed civic memberships: deputy chair of the support association of the Franziskus hospital in Linz, a hospice association, an animal-welfare society, UN Women, the friends of the volunteer fire brigade, a citizens’ association, carnival and other folklore clubs, an initiative against railway noise, a shooting club, and the Kuratorium of RömerWelt. Blick aktuell reported on 26 June 2016 that she had joined that seven-member board at Rheinbrohl-Arienheller, succeeding Werner Wittlich, and quoted her wish to help develop the park as a regional tourist attraction. In the same questionnaires she named running, hiking, reading and cinema, and later her cats, sport and time with family and friends; asked in 2021 for role models, she named Angela Merkel and Rita Süssmuth.