Evelyn Schötz

Evelyn Schötz (born 30 June 1961 in Lauf an der Pegnitz) is a German politician of Die Linke and a member of the Bundestag. Her mandate began on 25 March 2025, in the 21st electoral term. At the 2025 German federal election she was returned in fifth place on the state list in Bavaria, and she also stood in constituency 245 (Roth). She is a full member of the Committee on Health and a deputy chair of the German–French Parliamentary Group. The Bavarian list of those elected records her residence as Schwaig bei Nürnberg; the Bundestag biography states that she is married and has one child.

Schötz is a state-recognized geriatric nurse (Altenpflegerin). In 1976 she gained a qualified lower-secondary certificate at what is now the Geschwister-Scholl school in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz, and from 1976 to 1978 she attended the Staatliche Realschule der Englischen Fräulein in Bamberg. She then worked as a ward assistant in a Protestant retirement home of the Stadtmission in Röthenbach (1978–1980), in the fine-ceramics industry (1980–1984) and in family care (1984–1988). From 1988 to 1990 she trained at the City of Nuremberg's vocational school for geriatric nursing, and from 1990 to 1996 she worked in the city's municipal retirement homes. From 1996 until 2025 she worked at the Frankenalb-Klinik of the Bezirkskliniken Mittelfranken in Engelthal, including in a nursing home for severely mentally ill people, in gerontopsychiatry and in general psychiatry. The Bundestag's side-activity notice lists that post and a right to return to it.

From 1980 to 1988 she belonged to the chemical, paper and ceramics union IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik, and from 1983 to 1990 to the German Communist Party (DKP) in Nürnberger Land. Since 1988 she has been a member of the public-services union ÖTV, now ver.di. She joined Die Linke in 2017, has chaired its Nürnberger Land organization — now Die Linke Nürnberg Stadt & Land — since 2018, and has sat on the Nürnberger Land district council since 2020. The same biography lists membership of the social association VdK, ver.di and the VVN – Bund der Antifaschist:innen. On 23 February 2025 she received 9,951 first votes (5.1 percent) in Roth, where turnout was 86.6 percent. The direct mandate went to Ralph Edelhäußer of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, with 84,151 first votes (42.9 percent). Die Linke took 10,628 second votes in the constituency (5.4 percent) and 456,935 second votes in Bavaria (5.7 percent); seven of its Bavarian candidates were elected on the state list, Schötz in fifth place among them. Nationally the party received 8.8 percent of second votes, compared with 4.9 percent in 2021, and 64 seats.

Her parliamentary work has centered on long-term care in Germany. In comments carried by the Middle Franconia paper N-LAND, which described her as the care-policy spokesperson of the Die Linke group in the Bundestag, she called a reported rise in the number of people needing care — a doubling since 2014, to 5.6 million — a clear alarm signal, and argued for care that is affordable and collectively financed and for more support for family caregivers, most of whom, she said, are women. Bayerischer Rundfunk reported the result as an election surprise in constituency Roth: a 63-year-old geriatric nurse entering the Bundestag for Die Linke.

Early life and education

Birth and family

Evelyn Schötz was born on 30 June 1961 in Lauf an der Pegnitz in Bavaria. The biography on the website of the German Bundestag, which the parliament states is drawn from the member's own information, records that she is married and has one child, and it gives no names for her spouse or the child.

Lauf an der Pegnitz, officially Lauf a.d.Pegnitz, is a town of 5,986 hectares in the district of Nürnberger Land, in the Regierungsbezirk of Middle Franconia, and is placed in the planning region of Nuremberg. The Landratsamt Nürnberger Land has its headquarters at Waldluststraße 1 in Lauf, which the district administration describes as its Kreisstadt. At the census of 6 June 1961, the year of Schötz's birth, the town had 18,137 inhabitants; on 31 December 2024 the Bavarian State Office for Statistics recorded 26,106. The official abbreviated name, like that of neighbouring Röthenbach a.d.Pegnitz, refers to the Pegnitz.

Schooling

In 1976 Schötz obtained a qualifizierter Hauptschulabschluss at the Hauptschule in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz that the Bundestag biography identifies as today's Geschwister-Scholl-Mittelschule.

The school states that pupils have been taught at its site in the Steinberg district since 1975, when it opened as Teilhauptschule 2 for grades 7 to 9. In October 2010 the Pegnitz-Zeitung reported that the Geschwister-Scholl-Hauptschule had been designated the Geschwister-Scholl-Mittelschule, described by the district administrator as the first official Mittelschule in Nürnberger Land, at a ceremony that also marked 35 years of the school and ten years of the intermediate M-Abschluss. The school says its name refers to Hans and Sophie Scholl, members of the White Rose, a Munich student group active in resistance to the Nazi regime.

Röthenbach a.d.Pegnitz is a town in the same district and Regierungsbezirk, covering 1,429 hectares. It had 10,259 inhabitants at the census of 6 June 1961 and 12,529 on 31 December 2024.

From 1976 to 1978 she attended the Staatliche Realschule der Englischen Fräulein in Bamberg. The Bundestag biography does not record a leaving certificate from that school. The present Maria-Ward-Realschule traces the girls' school to 17 June 1717, when the first Englische Fräulein arrived in Bamberg from Augsburg to educate girls; in 2002 the order transferred sponsorship of the Gymnasium and Realschule to the Archdiocese of Bamberg, and in 2004 the Institut der Englischen Fräulein was renamed the Maria-Ward-Schule Bamberg. Bamberg is a district-free city in Upper Franconia and had 77,150 inhabitants on 31 December 2024. Its old town, in the north of Bavaria, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993.

From 1978 to 1980 the biography lists her as a Stationshilfe (ward assistant) at the Protestant old-age home of the Stadtmission in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz.

Nursing career

Training as a geriatric nurse

The Bundestag biography of Evelyn Schötz, which the parliament notes is based on the member's own information, places her first care-work job before any formal nursing qualification. From 1978 to 1980 she was a Stationshilfe, a ward assistant, in the Protestant old people's home of the Stadtmission in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz. That home is the Karl-Heller-Stift of the Stadtmission Nürnberg, an old people's and nursing home in Röthenbach inaugurated in 1967 and named for Karl Heller, founder of the mission. The same biography records employment in the fine-ceramics industry from 1980 to 1984, then family care (Familienpflege) from 1984 to 1988, the interval before nurse training.

From 1988 to 1990 she attended the Berufsfachschule für Altenpflege of the City of Nuremberg and qualified as a state-recognized Altenpflegerin, a geriatric nurse. In Bavaria the school order of 7 November 1985 for Fachschulen für Altenpflege set a course of two years—18 months of full-time instruction and a six-month practical placement—while also allowing a three-year form in which pupils worked in geriatric or family care alongside school. The order's stated aim was to enable pupils to care for, support and advise older people on their own responsibility in residential, part-residential and open services and in their own homes.

Municipal homes and the Frankenalb-Klinik

From 1990 to 1996 Schötz worked for the Städtische Altenheime Nürnberg, the city's municipal old people's homes. On 1 January 1999 those services were consolidated as the municipal enterprise NürnbergStift, a special asset of the city without its own legal personality; the enterprise's statute replaced the 1979 rules for the city's old people's dwellings and nursing homes. NürnbergStift's stated task is to operate outpatient, day-care and fully inpatient services for older people.

From 1996 to 2025 she worked for the Bezirkskliniken Middle Franconia at the hospital in Engelthal. The narrative biography spells the name once as "Frankenalp-Klinik" and says the work included a nursing home for severely mentally ill people, gerontopsychiatry and general psychiatry; the mandatory disclosure of her last occupation uses "Frankenalb-Klinik", which is also the operator's name, and records the post as state-recognized Altenpflegerin with a right of return.

The Frankenalb-Klinik in Engelthal, a hospital complex of the Bezirkskliniken Mittelfranken.

The Frankenalb-Klinik, at Reschenbergstraße 20, is the group's hospital for psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine. Its own account lists four main fields—psychosomatics, psychiatry, addiction treatment and gerontopsychiatry—plus a day clinic, a psychiatric outpatient clinic and a private ward centred on depression and burnout. Gerontopsychiatry there is described as treatment of mental illness in later life, including depression, personal crises, dependence on medication, further care after acute psychoses and early dementia; aims stated for the protected ward include a return home or a suitable place in an old people's home. The operator reports 211 beds and treatment places at Engelthal, more than 2,500 inpatient and day patients and about 5,200 outpatients a year, and 262 staff in medical services. It does not list a nursing home on the Engelthal site; the two social-psychiatric homes for chronically mentally ill residents are given as Ansbach, with 50 places, and Eggenhof, with 45.

The Engelthal buildings opened in 1900 as a lung sanatorium and from 1973 were a Bezirkskrankenhaus devoted to the treatment of mental illness. With effect from 1 January 2005 the Bezirk Mittelfranken converted its hospitals in Ansbach, Erlangen and Engelthal into the Kommunalunternehmen Bezirkskliniken Mittelfranken, an institution under public law, which took over the staff of the former hospitals and homes while preserving their existing pay and contract rights.

The published notice of her pre-mandate occupation repeats the Frankenalb-Klinik post and the right of return. Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, the rights and duties of public employees, including staff of other public-law institutions, are suspended during membership, and the return rules apply to them by analogy. An application within three months of leaving the Bundestag leads to reinstatement in the former employment relationship within three months. Members must notify the President of the last occupation and of any right of return, and those particulars are published.

Trade unions and the DKP

IG Chemie, Papier, Keramik

Schötz’s biography on the website of the Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, lists membership of the Industriegewerkschaft Chemie, Papier, Keramik (IG CPK) from 1980 to 1988. The same account places her in the fine-ceramics industry from 1980 to 1984 and in family-care work (Familienpflege) from 1984 to 1988, and it names no union office. IG CPK organized chemicals, paper and ceramics. After a cooperation agreement with IG Bergbau und Energie in June 1992, later joined by the leather workers’ union, the three founded IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie at a congress in Hanover on 6–10 October 1997. Schötz’s listed membership had ended in 1988.

Membership of the DKP

The biography records membership, from 1983 to 1990, of the German Communist Party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP) in Nürnberger Land, and no party office or candidacy. In a text dated 20 February 2021 for the Bavaria association of Die Linke, she wrote that she had been politicized “in ÖTV (heute ver.di) und DKP (1983-1990)”. The Ärzte Zeitung of 26 February 2025 reported that formulation as her own account.

On 17 August 1956 the Federal Constitutional Court declared the Communist Party of Germany unconstitutional and banned it and any substitute or successor organization, holding a dictatorship of the proletariat incompatible with the free democratic basic order. In 1968, as relations with the German Democratic Republic eased, the federal government tolerated a new party, which the Federal Agency for Civic Education calls the de facto successor of the KPD and describes as drawn largely from former KPD members. An initiative committee constituted the DKP on 22 September 1968; the founding congress in Essen on 12–14 April 1969, under Kurt Bachmann, made it the first legal communist party in West Germany since the ban. It spoke of the “power of the working class” rather than the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, wording an agency dossier treats as moderation aimed at avoiding another ban.

Intelligence-service figures in that dossier put membership near 9,000 in 1968, about 40,000 from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, 35,000 in 1989 and 6,000 in 1995. The DKP entered neither the Bundestag nor a state parliament, and its vote was usually under 1 percent. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany secretly financed the apparatus—about 75 million Deutsche Mark and some 500 full-time officials in 1989—booked as donations, and issued instructions from East Berlin. An internal crisis from 1984 widened when Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms diverged from the line of Erich Honecker in East Germany. In 1987–88 the party lost 5,000 of about 40,000 members, and the end of the GDR then removed its model and its money. Schötz’s recorded membership ends in 1990; the later comments do not describe an office, the party’s financing, or why she left.

ÖTV and ver.di

From 1988 the biography lists membership of the Gewerkschaft Öffentliche Dienste, Transport und Verkehr (ÖTV), continued as ver.di. That year she also began training, finished in 1990, at the municipal school for geriatric nursing in Nuremberg. Inside the German Trade Union Confederation, the ÖTV covered public services, transport and traffic and, with 1,526,891 members on 31 December 1999, was the second-largest affiliate after IG Metall. On 19 March 2001 in Berlin it merged with the white-collar union DAG, the postal union, the commerce, banking and insurance union, and IG Medien to form ver.di. The biography still lists ver.di and records no union post.

Die Linke and the district council

Local party office

Schötz joined Die Linke in 2017. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, lists her from 2018 as chair of the branch in Nürnberger Land and, in the later wording, as chair of Die Linke Nürnberg Stadt & Land. At the March 2020 district election the newspaper N-LAND described her as the party's Kreissprecherin. The Bavarian state association's directory of the Stadt-und-Land branch lists her as Kreisvorsitzende jointly with Bernd Hartz.

Kreistag Nürnberger Land

Under Bavaria's district code, the Kreistag represents a Landkreis's citizens, decides important district business and supervises the administration; every councilor may obtain information from the Landratsamt. It consists of the Landrat and honorary councilors, 70 of them in a district of more than 150,000 inhabitants, and a council elected at the general municipal elections serves six years from the following 1 May. Where more than one list stands, each voter has as many votes as there are seats, may give one candidate up to three, and may split votes across lists.

The election in Landkreis Nürnberger Land on 15 March 2020 filled 70 seats. Of 136,161 people entitled to vote, 86,950 cast ballots, a turnout of 63.9 percent, and 5,267,382 votes were valid. Die Linke received 104,775 votes, 2.0 percent, and one seat. N-LAND reported that the party entered the council for the first time, as did the AfD and the ÖDP, and that the new Kreistag was to meet on 4 May 2020. Schötz, number 1 on the Linke list, received 6,843 votes and was the only candidate of the list marked elected; Franziska Wendland, with 5,678 votes, was recorded as the first substitute. The official seat distribution gave the Christian Social Union 22 seats, the Free Voters 15, Alliance 90/The Greens 14, the Social Democratic Party 10, the Alternative for Germany 4, the Free Democratic Party 2, and one each to the Bunte Liste and the Ecological Democratic Party. Schötz, from Schwaig, told N-LAND she was glad the party had won a seat at the first attempt and that she meant to speak for socially disadvantaged people and to take up integration and inclusion.

Councilors may combine to send joint representatives to the Kreisausschuss. On 28 February 2024 N-LAND reported that a lot drawn in a tie cost the AfD its Kreisausschuss seat and left one seat with an Ausschussgemeinschaft of the Free Democrats, Die Linke, the Bunte Liste and the ÖDP; the committee was then Landrat Armin Kroder, five CSU members, three each from the Free Voters and the Greens, two SPD members and one unnamed alliance representative. On 22 February 2026 the paper named Schötz as that alliance's representative on the project group of the district's Bündnis für Familie, beside Betty Schmidt (CSU), Julia Hacker (Free Voters), Margit Kiessling (Greens) and Karin Völkl (SPD).

On 4 April 2022 N-LAND reported a Linke motion, presented by Schötz, for an annual fund of 25,000 euros for households facing an electricity or gas cutoff, modeled on a budget Erlangen had kept since 2018. She called cutoffs cruel because they removed light, hot water and cooking, and the paper said the Kreistag would have to vote.

N-LAND reported on 22 December 2025 that a nomination meeting had adopted a Linke list of 70 candidates for the 2026 municipal election, led by the Landrat candidate Christoph Tyl of Kirchensittenbach, with Schötz of Schwaig in second place. She said she had intervened, on the council and in the Bundestag, over electricity cutoffs, Sparkasse branch closures, access to health care and accessibility, and that she wanted the two levels linked.

At the Kreistag election of 8 March 2026, Die Linke received 275,610 of 5,725,792 valid votes, 4.8 percent, and three of the 70 seats; 93,688 of 135,711 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 69.0 percent. The final result, established by the election committee on 24 March 2026, lists Schötz—identified as an Altenpflegerin, sitting Kreisrätin and Bundestag member from Schwaig bei Nürnberg—as elected with 7,494 votes, behind Tyl with 8,386 and ahead of Samantha Schäning of Feucht with 5,855.

Candidacies before 2025

2021 Bundestag election

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September 2021, Evelyn Schötz stood for Die Linke as its direct candidate in Bundestag constituency 246, Roth, and in eleventh place on the party's state list in Bavaria. The Bavarian state electoral committee admitted the Land lists on 30 July 2021, and the state returning officer published them on 9 August 2021. Die Linke's list had 26 names and was headed by Nicole Gohlke, then already a member of the Bundestag. Schötz was entered as a geriatric nurse (Altenpflegerin), born in 1961 in Lauf an der Pegnitz and living in Schwaig bei Nürnberg.

Constituency 246 covered the districts of Roth and Nürnberger Land. Schötz received 5,076 first votes, 2.7 percent of valid first votes and 2.1 percentage points below the 2017 result for the party's candidate there. Die Linke's second votes in the constituency were 4,950, or 2.6 percent, down 3.7 points. The seat was won by Ralph Edelhäußer of the Christian Social Union, with 71,478 first votes (38.0 percent); turnout was 82.7 percent.

In Bavaria as a whole, Die Linke took 210,838 second votes, 2.8 percent, 3.3 points less than in 2017. Nationally the party also finished below the five-percent hurdle, with 2,255,864 second votes (4.9 percent) in the final result published by the federal returning officer. It nevertheless won three constituencies and, under the basic-mandate clause (Grundmandatsklausel) then in force, was allocated 36 further Land-list seats, 39 in all. Eleventh place on the Bavarian list did not return Schötz. Her candidacy in the 2025 Bundestag election is covered in the next section.

2024 European election

At the 2024 European Parliament election in Germany, held on 9 June 2024, Schötz stood seventeenth on Die Linke's common list for all Länder. The federal electoral committee admitted the list, of 20 candidates, and the federal returning officer published it on 22 April 2024 in the Federal Gazette. The first three places were held by Martin Schirdewan, Carola Rackete and Özlem Alev Demirel-Böhlke.

Die Linke received 1,091,586 votes, 2.7 percent, 2.8 percentage points below its 2019 share, and three seats in the European Parliament, two fewer than in 2019. Those seats went to the first three names on the list, Schirdewan, Rackete and Demirel-Böhlke. Schötz, in seventeenth place, was not elected. German elections to the European Parliament have had no five-percent threshold since 2014, so 2.7 percent was still enough for the three seats. Turnout was 64.7 percent.

Election to the 21st Bundestag

Constituency Roth

Germany held an early election to the Bundestag on 23 February 2025, the 2025 German federal election. Evelyn Schötz was the Die Linke candidate in constituency 245, Roth, and the Bundestag biography records that candidacy together with her election on the Bavarian state list. The Federal Returning Officer assigns the constituency, in Bavaria, the districts of Nürnberger Land and Roth.

The final result published for the constituency lists 227,696 eligible voters and 197,152 voters, a turnout of 86.6 percent. Of the ballots cast, 196,205 first votes and 196,567 second votes were valid. Schötz received 9,951 first votes, 5.1 percent. Die Linke received 10,628 second votes, 5.4 percent.

Ralph Edelhäußer of the Christian Social Union (CSU) won the constituency with 84,151 first votes, 42.9 percent. The CSU also led the second vote, with 74,215 votes, or 37.8 percent, and the Bavarian results list records Edelhäußer as elected from constituency 245.

Klaus Norgall of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 33,199 first votes (16.9 percent), and the AfD 35,444 second votes (18.0 percent). Jan Plobner of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) received 25,561 first votes (13.0 percent), and the SPD 26,325 second votes (13.4 percent). Dr. Bianca Pircher of Alliance 90/The Greens received 24,181 first votes (12.3 percent), and the Greens 23,881 second votes (12.1 percent). Jürgen Joos of the Free Voters received 8,872 first votes (4.5 percent), and that list 7,155 second votes (3.6 percent). Kristine Lütke of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) received 5,525 first votes (2.8 percent), and the FDP 7,483 second votes (3.8 percent). Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which had no constituency candidate, took 5,878 second votes (3.0 percent).

Bavarian list result

In Bavaria as a whole, Die Linke won 366,149 first votes, 4.6 percent, 2.1 points more than in 2021, and 456,935 second votes, 5.7 percent, 2.9 points more than in 2021.

The Federal Electoral Committee established the national result on 14 March 2025. Die Linke received 4,356,532 second votes, 8.8 percent, compared with 4.9 percent in 2021, and 64 seats, of which six were constituency seats—25 more seats than the 39 it held after 2021. Turnout was 82.5 percent, against 76.4 percent in 2021, and the new Bundestag was fixed at 630 members rather than the 735 of the previous election.

Under the electoral reform adopted in 2023, the Bundestag is limited to 630 seats and overhang and leveling seats are abolished. Second votes alone determine how many seats each party receives; since a Bundestag decision in 2008 those seats have been apportioned by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method, and each party's total is then divided among its state lists according to its second votes in the states. In a state, candidates with a first-vote plurality are seated in descending order of that share, but only up to the party's seat quota there. Seats still open after those covered constituency winners are filled from the state list, and a plurality winner who is not covered by second votes does not enter; that second-vote coverage replaced the former guaranteed direct mandate.

The Bavarian State Office for Statistics lists seven Die Linke members as elected, all through the state list: Ates Gürpinar in first place, Nicole Gohlke in second, Sarah Vollath in third, Luke Hoß in fourth, Schötz in fifth, Aaron Valent in sixth and Agnes Conrad in seventh. Schötz is shown there as born in 1961 and living in Schwaig bei Nürnberg. Her parliamentary biography likewise records election via the Bavarian state list for the 21st electoral term, which began in 2025, with the Roth candidacy attached to that mandate. The 21st Bundestag constituted on 25 March 2025.

Roles in the Bundestag

Health Committee

Evelyn Schötz is a full member (ordentliches Mitglied) of the Bundestag Committee on Health (Ausschuss für Gesundheit). The site abgeordnetenwatch.de lists the same seat for 2025–2029, as a member rather than a substitute. The Bundestag elected in February 2025 set up 24 standing committees on 15 May 2025. On 21 May the Health Committee constituted itself with 38 full members — 13 from the CDU/CSU, nine from Alternative for Germany, seven from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, five from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke — and listed Schötz with Ates Gürpinar, Stella Merendino and Julia-Christina Stange. Dr. Tanja Machalet (SPD) was designated chair at that meeting, conducted by Vice-President Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke); an agreement of the Council of Elders, based on faction strength, gave the SPD the right to propose the chair.

The Rules of Procedure call standing committees preparatory decision-making bodies, as a rule paired with a federal ministry. After first reading, the plenary refers bills, motions and some government communications to them, one committee leading and others advising, and later votes on the lead committee’s recommendation. Full members vote; a substitute votes only in place of an absent full member of the same faction. Committees may also take up subjects on their own under section 62, and they may hold public expert hearings. The Health Committee’s page describes its field as the financial sustainability of the health system, local provision, and working conditions and training in medicine and nursing, against demographic change and pressure on the health and long-term-care funds.

The Die Linke group’s profile lists Schötz, under the heading AK III, as spokesperson for care (Sprecherin für Pflege) and for mental health (Sprecherin für Psychische Gesundheit). In a report of 24 June 2025, the regional paper N-LAND called her the care-policy spokesperson (pflegepolitische Sprecherin) of the Bundestag group of Die Linke. Neither title appears in the Bundestag administration’s list of her memberships and offices.

German–French Parliamentary Group

Her biography records the office of deputy chair (Stellvertretender Vorsitz) of the German–French Parliamentary Group (Deutsch-Französische Parlamentariergruppe). Roland Theis (CDU/CSU) is chair. The same deputy-chair office is held by Armand Zorn (SPD), Dr. Sandra Detzer (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Diana Zimmer (Alternative for Germany). The list of parliamentary-group boards for the 21st electoral term places those five members with the French group.

Parliamentary groups (Parlamentariergruppen) are cross-party associations of members, without statutes or rules of procedure of their own, for contact with parliaments abroad. The Bundestag says 47 bilateral and multilateral groups, including the Berlin–Taipei circle of friends, keep up that dialogue and explain German positions; a bilateral group may issue one invitation to its partner parliament and make one delegation trip per legislative term. At the start of each term the Council of Elders fixes their number and structure; chairs follow faction strength, any faction without the chair may name a board member, and a member may join at most three groups.

Constituency office and disclosures

Her Berlin office is given as the German Bundestag, Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin. The constituency office is listed as Die Linke Nürnberg, Äußere Cramer-Klett-Straße 11–13, 90489 Nuremberg.

Under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), members file notifiable interests within three months of taking their seats, and later changes within three months; publication follows once a duty to publish has been found. The entries for Schötz name, as her occupation before membership of the Bundestag, the Frankenalb-Klinik of the Bezirkskliniken Mittelfranken in Engelthal, as a state-recognized geriatric nurse (staatlich anerkannte Altenpflegerin), with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). They also record membership of the district council (Kreistag) of Nürnberger Land, a function in a public-law body, with the place given as Lauf an der Pegnitz. abgeordnetenwatch.de carries both items for the 2025–2029 mandate, captured on 24 November 2025, under prior occupation and under functions in public-law corporations.

Health and long-term care policy

Staffing, pay and working conditions

On 12 June 2025 the Medizinischer Dienst Bund reported that people drawing long-term-care benefits had doubled since 2014 to 5.6 million, and that nearly 90 percent lived at home, more than half without a professional service. Evelyn Schötz, health-policy spokesperson of the Die Linke group in the Bundestag, called that an alarm signal, supported case management at assessment only if it added no hurdles, and said women doing most unpaid home care needed support and social protection.

In the first reading on 11 September 2025 she said the bill on wider nursing powers had a large title and a small text. She argued that nursing should be independent of doctors’ orders, that pain therapy had been left out, and that dropping a conversion of in-kind benefits into cash and an independent nursing commissioner kept women in unpaid care. For the CDU/CSU, Astrid Timmermann-Fechter presented a companion bill merging 27 helper pathways into one nursing-assistant occupation. The SPD stressed colleagues, less paperwork and fair pay; the Greens called the drafts weaker than the previous government’s; the AfD treated the shortage as demographic and favoured family care at home.

On 6 November 2025 Schötz called the powers law a small step that named only dementia, diabetes and wound care and left pain, malnutrition, dehydration and breathlessness to a later committee. The Greens said they would abstain. The Federal Ministry of Health later put care employment at about 1.3 million. In May 2026 she told rbb24 Inforadio that staffing left no time for a conversation or a walk. On 10 September 2026 she set a defence-ministry allocation of almost 110 billion euros against a health budget she said fell from 21.8 to 14.3 billion euros.

Financing and benefit rules

The 2025 coalition agreement charged a federal–state group with a reform for sustainable finance and stronger home care, and told it to examine bundling benefits, private provision, “sustainability factors (such as the introduction of a waiting period)” and a cap on care-related co-payments.

Schötz led the motion “No benefit cuts in long-term care” (printed paper 21/2216, 14 October 2025), which read that mandate as the first opening to cuts since the insurance began. The Health Committee held a public hearing on 3 December 2025.

In May 2026 rbb reported that Health Minister Nina Warken wanted stricter grading because many more benefits had been approved since 2017. Schötz said someone at the lowest level might next year have no grade and face the costs alone, and proposed full insurance without co-payments. On 12 June, in a Greens debate on family care and poverty, she said caregivers—mostly women who cut hours and later pensions—kept the system running because homes were unaffordable or unavailable, and she opposed cutting pension credits earned through caregiving. She asked for a care wage, six weeks’ paid leave when care starts suddenly instead of ten days, and contributions on wages and on capital, rent and assets. SPD deputy Claudia Moll interjected that the pension point was not settled; CDU speaker Anne Janssen said only a ministerial draft existed and that stricter grades, plus half the cash benefit for the first three months in grades 2 and 3, would push unpaid work onto families.

She would include private care insurance, raise the contribution ceiling first to 15,000 euros a month and charge capital income, citing a Rothgang–Domhoff study only as a model. She opposed folding respite care and consumable aids, up to 42 euros a month, into other budgets, which she said would leave grade 1 without them, and warned that capping some wage rises from 2027 at 3.42 percent could cut posts even if collective-agreement rules stayed.

The ministry’s FAQ says more than 6 million people drew benefits and that the aim was to avoid another general rate rise. Thresholds would move slightly toward 2013 recommendations, with existing grades protected; grade 1 would not receive the new budget replacing up to 131 euros of relief money, and separate benefits would be bundled so the same sums could buy aids or replacement care. From 1 January 2027 the contribution ceiling would match health insurance, rising from 5,812.50 euros a month in 2026 to 6,375 euros.

Mental health

On 11 July 2025 Schötz led questions on police files about mental illness after CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann, following the attack at the Magdeburg Christmas market, had called for a register of mentally ill people and for exchange with psychiatry. The questions argued that treating mental illness as a general security risk conflicted with the UN disability convention and with medical evidence. The government replied on 7 August 2025 that INPOL then held 16,043 records marked “mental and behavioural disorder” and 3,810 marked for a risk of suicide, and said a joint risk assessment required by the coalition agreement was still under discussion, with data protection to be observed.

On 9 July 2026 she led a motion to reduce coercive psychiatric treatment rather than extend it. It asked for more qualified nursing and psychotherapy staff under the psychiatry staffing directive, and for outpatient coercion, after a Federal Constitutional Court ruling of 26 November 2024, only where the patient had agreed in writing beforehand.

Positions beyond health policy

Peace, social spending and public services

Defence spending rose while Schötz sat in the Bundestag. On 25 June 2025 NATO agreed at The Hague that allies would spend 5 percent of GDP a year by 2035 on defence and related security, at least 3.5 percent of it on core defence. For 2026 the Bundestag press service reported €108.2 billion in planned defence outlays, €82.69 billion in the ministry budget and €25.51 billion from the Bundeswehr special fund created in 2022. An August 2026 finance plan ascribed a rise in borrowing outside the debt rule, from €85.4 billion in 2027 to €151.8 billion in 2030, mainly to defence, and put core-budget interest at €41.9 billion in 2027.

On 10 September 2026, in the first reading of the 2027 health budget, Schötz spoke for Die Linke against those priorities. The draft cut the health budget from about €21.77 billion in 2026 to about €14.33 billion in 2027. She said almost €110 billion was still there for the defence ministry, €27 billion more than in the current year, while people were told that health and long-term care had to be cut, and that by 2030 every third euro of the federal budget would go to armaments. Debt and cuts, she said, would make citizens pay twice, in interest and in worse services; she asked for more money for health, care and social security, and for higher taxes on large fortunes, capital income and crisis profits, instead of a budget “for armaments and for the wealthy.”

N-LAND, the paper for Nürnberger Land, reported the same case locally. On 2 June 2025 it quoted her against a “Defence Valley” around the Diehl Defence plant in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz, which she attributed to Free Voters deputy Felix Locke and other members of the Bavarian Landtag after a state armaments summit. She called it an appropriation of the Nuremberg region for military ends and “a risky step toward militarization,” and said security came from diplomacy, crisis prevention, fair distribution and public services, not heavy armament. Citing Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, she said 5 percent of GDP meant €225 billion a year—“an attack on our welfare state”—and that the region should fund infrastructure, mobility, health care and digitalization rather than “tank halls and drone factories.” On 27 June 2025 N-LAND quoted her on the Deutschlandticket: Bavaria found money for motorways and companies, she said, but wanted to cut the ticket, which helped little where the bus ran only twice a day.

Antifascist affiliation

The Bundestag biography, based on members’ own statements, lists the Sozialverband VdK, the union ver.di, and “VVN – Bund der Antifaschist:innen,” the spelling on that page. The name is that of the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschisten (VVN-BdA), which the Berlin daily taz described as founded in 1947 by survivors of the Holocaust. In November 2019 the Berlin corporate-tax office withdrew the federal association’s charitable status back to 2016, because the Bavarian domestic-intelligence office—then the only one in Germany to do so—had classified the federal body, not only its Bavarian branch, as extremist. Taz reported the stated grounds as cooperation with open left-wing extremists and a view of non-Marxist systems, including parliamentary democracy, as potentially fascist. The association rejected that account and said its members ranged from Christians to the German Communist Party. On 28 April 2021 taz reported that charitable status had been fully restored and the tax claims dropped, after the current Bavarian report no longer listed the federal association as extremist and after sworn statements by its chairs; the tax office treated the suspicion of unconstitutional activity as rebutted.

Public profile

Press coverage

After the Bundestag election of 23 February 2025, regional and specialist media described Evelyn Schötz’s seat mainly through her age, her nursing work, and an unexpected list result for Die Linke. On 25 February, Bayerischer Rundfunk’s Frankenschau aktuell broadcast “Linke Wahl-Überraschung: Evelyn Schötz im Bundestag,” reporting that in the Roth constituency the 63-year-old Altenpflegerin had entered parliament for Die Linke.

The Nürnberger Nachrichten wrote the next day that the Schwaig resident’s life had changed within hours after Die Linke’s stronger-than-expected result, and that she would represent Roth, and with it Nürnberger Land, in Berlin; the day after the vote she was still taking down posters. On election night the Donaukurier quoted her at a Nuremberg party of Die Linke calling the mood “bombastisch,” reported about five percent of the first votes—nearly double 2021—and her expectation of a state-list seat “zu 99 Prozent,” which the paper called almost a sensation. The next day it called the seat official and tied it to a Bavarian second-vote share of 5.7 percent.

Ärzte Zeitung, in a 26 February portrait series on health professionals in the new Bundestag, called her an Altenpflegerin who, on her own account, had been politicized in the former ÖTV union and in the German Communist Party in the 1980s, a Linke member since 2017, and a Nürnberger Land district councillor since 2020. On 20 June 2025 the Donaukurier reported that she had the Health Committee place she had sought and meant to use her nursing experience there. A 17 January 2026 Nürnberger Nachrichten interview, headlined “Mit 63 Jahren in den Bundestag eingezogen,” said her chances had looked very small and that, nearly a year into full-time politics, the then 64-year-old former nurse valued breaking the cliché of “Kreißsaal, Hörsaal, Plenarsaal.”

In September 2025 the same paper reported that she had called a five-year sentence against Hanna S. a “handfester Skandal.” N-LAND quoted her office calling the Munich Higher Regional Court verdict “politisch motiviert” and “eine Schande für den Rechtsstaat.” PZ-Redaktionsleiter Andreas Sichelstiel argued in a commentary that the second phrase went too far.

Organizational memberships

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on the member’s own information, lists Sozialverband VdK, the union ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, named there as the present form of the ÖTV), and “VVN – Bund der Antifaschist:innen.”

The Sozialverband VdK Deutschland was founded in 1950 as the Verband der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegshinterbliebenen und Sozialrentner Deutschlands. It states that it is politically and confessionally independent, lobbies on pensions, care, health, and disability, and has more than 2.3 million members. In November 2024 Deutschlandfunk called the VdK Germany’s largest social association and referred to about two million members.

The third entry is a shortened form of the name of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten). The organization describes itself as non-party and as founded in 1947, as the VVN, by survivors of Nazi persecution and of the resistance.