Felix Döring

Felix Maximilian Döring (born 23 February 1991 in Giessen) is a German teacher and a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He has been a member of the Bundestag in the 20th electoral term, constituted on 26 October 2021, and in the 21st. The Bundestag's biography, which rests on the member's own disclosure, lists him as married and gives his occupation as Lehrer (teacher).

He attended the Limesschule in Pohlheim from 1997 to 2001 and the Adolf-Reichwein-Schule there from 2001 to 2007, then the upper level of the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost, where he took the Abitur in 2010. From 2010 to 2011 he did civilian service at the Martin-Buber-Schule in Giessen, and from 2011 to 2019 he studied to teach at Gymnasium level at the University of Giessen, in sport and in politics and economics, with a state-examination grade of 2.0. He joined the SPD in 2008. Before parliament he worked as a school escort and as a teacher in Rockenberg and Giessen, and from November 2020 he was in the pedagogical preparatory service at the Gesamtschule Hungen; the Bundestag's register of prior posts lists that service with the state of Hesse and a right to return to it.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 the federal returning officer recorded 48,514 first votes (30.4 percent) for the SPD in constituency 173, Gießen, against 47,283 (29.6 percent) for the Christian Democratic Union. The Süddeutsche Zeitung identified the SPD winner as Felix Maximilian Döring and the CDU runner-up as Helge Braun. Hessenschau reported that Braun had won the constituency at the three preceding elections and described him as a long-time aide of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Turnout was 74.4 percent of 217,514 eligible voters.

The constituency was numbered 172 at the election of 23 February 2025. Döring received 49,204 first votes (27.8 percent) and placed second to Frederik Bouffier of the CDU, who won with 53,851 votes (30.4 percent); turnout was 83.0 percent, and the SPD's share of second votes in the constituency was 18.8 percent. He kept a seat through the Hesse state list and remained the SPD candidate for the Gießen constituency.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of that body's subcommittee on questions of the European Union, and a deputy member of the Budget Committee and the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development. The SPD parliamentary group lists him as chair of its Hesse Landesgruppe and as a member of the group executive, and both the group and the Bundestag list him as deputy chair of the German–Greek parliamentary group.

Early life and education

Upbringing in Pohlheim

The 2025 federal returning officer listed the candidate as Felix Maximilian Döring. Döring was born on 23 February 1991 in Gießen, Hesse. A 2025 local profile noted that he would turn 34 on 23 February that year. He grew up in Dorf-Güll, a district of Pohlheim. The town, about six kilometres southeast of Gießen, was created on 1 January 1971 from Dorf-Güll, Garbenteich, Grüningen, Hausen, Holzheim and Watzenborn-Steinberg.

His Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, lists primary school at the Limesschule in Pohlheim from 1997 to 2001. The Limesschule is the Grundschule in Watzenborn-Steinberg. That detail is absent from the shorter biography archived for the 20th Bundestag, which begins with the Abitur. In interviews he has said that his parents separated when he was three and that his mother afterwards lived with a woman, something he had not understood as a child because the two could not marry. He has also said that his mother wanted to marry her partner but could enter only a registered life partnership.

Secondary school and civil service

In 2001 he entered year 5 at the Adolf-Reichwein-Schule in Watzenborn-Steinberg, an integrated comprehensive school (Integrierte Gesamtschule) of the district of Gießen, named for the educator Adolf Reichwein. Norbert Kissel took over as head in the same year and was later Döring's class teacher in year 8. At a 2022 school anniversary Döring said he had received his year-10 certificate in the Volkshalle fifteen years earlier, six years after that 2001 start.

He was a pupil spokesperson (Schulsprecher) at the school. The Bundestag biography, again a self-disclosure, dates that role to 2005–2006 and his attendance to 2001–2007.

From 2007 to 2010 he attended the upper secondary stage (Oberstufe) of the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost and took the Abitur there in 2010. The school describes itself as an integrated comprehensive school with a Gymnasium-level Oberstufe, in which the Haupt- and Realschule tracks and the middle years of the Gymnasium track are taught together rather than in separate streams. He was a pupil spokesperson there as well; press accounts confirm the office, and the biography places it in 2008–2010.

After the Abitur he performed Zivildienst from 2010 to 2011 at the Martin-Buber-Schule in Gießen, according to both the current and the archived Bundestag biographies. The school teaches pupils with intellectual disabilities and has a department for physical and motor development. Zivildienst was the civilian substitute required of recognized conscientious objectors. On 24 March 2011 the Bundestag suspended compulsory military service in Germany, so that men no longer had to perform military service or that civilian substitute, with effect from 1 July 2011.

Teacher training at Justus Liebig University

From 2011 to 2019 he studied for a Gymnasium teaching qualification (Gymnasiallehramt) at Justus Liebig University Giessen, in sport and in politics and economics (Politik und Wirtschaft). Local reporting has described the same path more briefly, as teacher training for Gymnasien at the university after the Abitur at the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost. The university presents Lehramt an Gymnasien as the academic phase of teacher education, ending with the first state examination (Erste Staatsprüfung). A preparatory service (Referendariat) and a second state examination then confer the qualification to teach at a Gymnasium.

The current Bundestag biography records the examination mark as 2.0. The archived 20th-term text lists the course and the two subjects but no grade. Both biographies also list freelance work from 2010 to 2019 as a Vollkostümanimateur—an entertainer working in full costume—and, from 2015 to 2017, employment as a school companion (Schulbegleiter) at the Martin-Buber-Schule.

Professional work before parliament

Classroom teaching

Before he entered the Bundestag, Felix Döring worked in schools in and around Giessen. The biography on the Bundestag website, which states that members' biographical details rest on their own information, lists him as a school companion (Schulbegleiter) at the Martin-Buber-Schule in Giessen from 2015 to 2017. The school describes itself as a school for intellectual development with a department for physical and motor development.

The same biography records several teaching posts during and after his university course for grammar-school teaching, in sport and in politics and economics, which it dates from 2011 to 2019. From 2017 to 2018 he was a teacher at the primary school in Rockenberg, with charge of his own class; the Hessian school database lists that school as the Sandrosenschule. In 2019 he taught at the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost, an integrated comprehensive school. From 2019 to 2020 he taught at the Grundschule Gießen-West, and in 2020 at the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Schule in Giessen, which the state database classifies as a Mittelstufenschule, a lower-secondary middle school. When Mittelhessen presented him in October 2020 as the Social Democratic Party candidate for the Bundestag, it reported that he described having seen the school system both in rural Rockenberg and at the Grundschule Gießen-West, which he called socially heterogeneous.

In November 2020 he began the pedagogical preparatory service (pädagogischer Vorbereitungsdienst), the school-based second phase of teacher training in Hesse, at the integrated Gesamtschule in Hungen. The Hessian teacher-training academy states that this phase normally lasts 21 months, is served at a seminar and a training school, and ends with the Second State Examination. He was elected to the Bundestag during that training. The Gießener Anzeiger wrote in February 2025 that the election came in the middle of his preparatory service at Hungen, and quoted him as saying that as a teacher he had tried to see children as whole people rather than judging them only by their performance. In the Bundestag register of activity before membership, the post is entered as pedagogical preparatory service for the state of Hesse, with the place given as Kassel, together with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). His own website states that the service was officially paused because of the election. The parliament lists his occupation as teacher (Lehrer).

Political education and the education union

The Bundestag biography also lists two sidelines. From 2010 to 2019 he worked freelance as a Vollkostümanimateur, an entertainer performing in a full-body costume, and from 2016 as a part-time trainer and moderator in political education. Neither entry names a client. A public listing of his outside activities records the preparatory service, categorized as work before membership in the Bundestag, and does not list the trainer role.

He lists membership of the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), the education and science union, and of the support associations of schools connected with his schooling and teaching, among them the Martin-Buber-Schule, the Grundschule Gießen-West, the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost and the Gesamtschule Hungen.

Local and party politics

Jusos and student government

Döring joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2008. He told the Gießener Allgemeine that his first contact with the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) came that year in the attic of the Henriette-Fürth-Haus in Giessen, the party’s district office. In 2025 he linked joining to the Hesse election of 2008 and the SPD’s pledge to abolish tuition fees; he said he had been a school spokesperson from the ninth grade until his Abitur. His Bundestag biography, based on his own statements, dates those roles to 2005–2006 at the Adolf-Reichwein-Schule in Pohlheim and 2008–2010 at the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost.

While he was a student at the University of Giessen, that biography lists him as spokesperson of the Juso university group in Gießen from 2012 to 2014 and, from 2013 to 2015, as state coordinator of the Hessian Juso university groups and a co-opted member of the SPD state executive. It also lists him as an AStA spokesperson and a student member of the university senate from 2013 to 2016. A 2020 profile said that, with the Juso university group, he campaigned for a flat-rate outdoor-pool ticket and free student entry to the Landesgartenschau. In April 2019, after Jusos and UniGrün won the January university elections, the student parliament elected him an AStA spokesperson again, with Lisa Schmidt of UniGrün. He pointed to overcrowded lectures and student housing, and both called for more student say in university bodies.

Gießen city council

At the municipal election of 6 March 2016 the city’s election committee recorded 8,394 personal votes for Döring. He was returned with 15 other SPD members to the 59-seat Stadtverordnetenversammlung; the SPD list took 431,586 of 1,541,381 valid votes and those 16 seats.

The live Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on self-disclosure, still lists him with no end date as a city councillor since 2016, as chair of the committee for schools, education and culture, and from 2018 as deputy chair of the SPD group. By October 2020 the Gießener Allgemeine wrote that he had sat in the city parliament since 2016 and was deputy chair of the SPD group and of the city association. In February 2025 the Gießener Anzeiger wrote that he had sat there for the SPD from 2016 to 2021. The record of the city election of 14 March 2021 names other SPD candidates, including Nina Heidt-Sommer, but not Döring.

SPD offices in Gießen

The 2020 profile dated his chairmanship of the branch SPD Gießen-Ost from 2017. In November 2021 the branch marked his move to Dorf-Güll and his transfer to the SPD branch in Pohlheim; the paper called him the branch’s former chair and said that, as the constituency’s member of the Bundestag, he remained a contact for Gießen-Ost. The Bundestag biography still lists the Gießen-Ost chair from 2017, the deputy chairmanship of the city association from 2019, and the post of officer for political education on the Unterbezirk executive from 2020.

On 22 January 2022 a congress in Gießen elected him chair of the SPD Unterbezirk Gießen in place of Frank-Tilo Becher, who had become lord mayor and said he should not lead the party as well. Döring took 70 of 71 delegate votes, reported as 98.6 percent. At a congress in Lich on 4 November 2023 he was re-elected for two years with 87.7 percent. In late August 2025, at a congress in the Bürgerhaus Wieseck that was closed to the press, he was elected a third time, unopposed, with about 75 percent. Delegates disputed an October 2024 plan to reserve Kreistag list places four to 17 for younger candidates behind Döring, Nina Heidt-Sommer and Staufenberg mayor Peter Gefeller; a compromise admitted up to four experienced office-holders to that block. A party statement from the congress said he would chair the Unterbezirk for another two years and assigned political-education work to other board members.

At the district election of 15 March 2026 he stood third on the SPD list for the Kreistag of Landkreis Gießen and received 35,353 votes, the most of any SPD candidate. The SPD took 1,794,177 votes (20.23 percent) and 16 of 81 seats, and the official notice names him among those elected. The new Kreistag met for its constitutive sitting on 18 May 2026 in Grünberg’s Gallushalle. The Bundestag’s register of positions in public bodies lists him as a member of that Kreistag from 18 May 2026.

The 2021 federal election

The Gießen constituency

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September 2021, constituency 173 Gießen was the Hesse seat covering most of the Giessen district and part of the Vogelsbergkreis. It included Allendorf (Lumda), Buseck, Fernwald, Giessen, Grünberg, Heuchelheim an der Lahn, Hungen, Langgöns, Laubach, Lich, Linden, Lollar, Pohlheim, Rabenau, Reiskirchen and Staufenberg, with the rest of that district in constituency 172, and Alsfeld, Antrifttal, Feldatal, Gemünden (Felda), Homberg (Ohm), Kirtorf, Mücke and Romrod from the Vogelsbergkreis. The same municipalities were later numbered constituency 172. At the end of 2019 the seat had 24 municipalities, 1,343.3 square kilometres and 293,600 inhabitants (218.6 per square kilometre).

Of 217,514 eligible voters, 161,919 voted, a turnout of 74.4 percent and 2.1 points below 2017. There were 159,775 valid first votes and 159,702 valid second votes. Helge Braun of the Christian Democratic Union had held the direct mandate since 2009; in 2017 he took 35.1 percent against Matthias Körner of the Social Democratic Party. In 2021 he was Head of the Federal Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs under Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Hessian CDU’s lead candidate. On 20 September the Gießener Allgemeine still described him as a heavy favourite for the seat.

Campaign

The SPD candidate was Felix Döring, aged 30, a trainee teacher at a comprehensive school in the district, from Pohlheim. The Gießener Allgemeine later referred to the campaign slogan as “Der Junge macht das” (“The lad will do it”). Döring said he had made about 50 village rounds with a handcart, walking side streets to meet people who would not have come to a surgery.

The other direct candidates were Behzad Borhani for Alliance 90/The Greens, Uwe Schulz for the Alternative for Germany, Dennis Pucher for the Free Democratic Party, Ali Al-Dailami for Die Linke and Diego Semmler for the Free Voters, together with Stephan Krüdener (dieBasis), Darwin Walter (Die PARTEI) and Henning Mächerle (DKP). Borhani, from Fernwald, was twelfth on the Hessian Green list. Schulz, of Pohlheim, had been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and stood third on the AfD state list. Al-Dailami was second on the Hessian Left list.

Defeat of Helge Braun

The final result was 48,514 first votes for Döring (30.4 percent, 2.2 points above the SPD share in 2017) and 47,283 for Braun (29.6 percent, 5.5 points below the CDU share in 2017), a margin of 1,231 votes. The Federal Returning Officer recorded the SPD as elected in the constituency and the CDU as runner-up. The Gießener Allgemeine reported that the count stayed open through the evening and that Braun missed what would have been a fourth successive win.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the result a “faustdicke Überraschung” in central Hesse. The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote that a seat which had seemed safe for the chancellor’s-office minister went to Felix Maximilian Döring, whom it called a blank slate in federal politics (“bundespolitisch eine Tabula rasa”), and that first place on the Hessian CDU list still left Braun expecting to enter the Bundestag through second votes. hessenschau called him the best-known casualty of a shift in which the CDU’s direct seats in Hesse fell from 17 in 2017 to seven, while the SPD took 14 and the Greens one. It described Döring as little known outside the region and treated Braun’s return from the top of the state list as assured. Before his own figure was final, Braun said a CDU-led government with the Greens and the FDP remained possible, but called the Union’s losses severe (“natürlich herb”).

Other first-vote totals were 21,249 for the Greens (13.3 percent, up 5.0 points), 14,496 for the AfD (9.1 percent, down 2.5), 12,109 for the FDP (7.6 percent, down 0.1), 6,339 for Die Linke (4.0 percent, down 2.3) and 4,595 for the Free Voters (2.9 percent, up 0.9), with 3,003 (1.9 percent) for Die PARTEI, 1,954 (1.2 percent) for dieBasis and 233 (0.1 percent) for the DKP. On second votes the SPD led with 44,046 (27.6 percent, up 3.7 points), ahead of the CDU on 36,201 (22.7 percent, down 7.5), the Greens on 26,109 (16.3 percent, up 6.7), the FDP on 17,106 (10.7 percent, up 0.4), the AfD on 14,836 (9.3 percent, down 3.1), Die Linke on 8,028 (5.0 percent, down 3.4) and the Free Voters on 3,697 (2.3 percent, up 1.0). The Süddeutsche Zeitung described the second-vote changes as similar to the trend in Germany, with the Greens gaining most and the CDU losing most, and turnout at 74.4 percent against 76.5 percent in 2017. Across Hesse, the provisional result from state returning officer Wilhelm Kanther put the SPD on 27.6 percent of second votes, up 4.1 points, and the CDU on 22.8 percent, down 8.1.

The 20th Bundestag

Entry and committees

Felix Döring took his seat in the Bundestag on 26 October 2021, when the 20th Bundestag held its constituent sitting in Berlin. Wolfgang Schäuble opened it as Alterspräsident, and the house elected Bärbel Bas of the Social Democratic Party of Germany as President of the Bundestag. Döring, directly elected for the SPD in constituency 173, Giessen, in Hesse, Germany, was present for the roll-call connected with that election.

On 15 December 2021 the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth constituted itself with him among the SPD's eleven full members, and the Committee on Culture and Media did so the same day with him among the SPD's six full members. The Gießener Anzeiger added on 20 December that he would be a substitute on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. He named a child basic income (Kindergrundsicherung), repeal of section 219a of the Criminal Code, democracy promotion, and universities and BAföG among the subjects he expected to take up.

In May 2023 the Gießener Allgemeine reported that, for the SPD group, he would negotiate the family ministry's estimates in the Budget Committee and remain on the family committee only as a substitute. Helge Braun of the Christian Democratic Union had chaired the Budget Committee since its constitution in December 2021. The archived biography for the 20th term lists the end-of-term assignments as substitute memberships only: education, research and technology assessment; family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth; the budget; and legal affairs. Culture is not among them. The same page records a right to return to his teacher-training post with the Land of Hesse and a deputy seat on the board of the Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung until 10 April 2024.

Education, family and budget work

His first plenary speech, on 13 January 2022, in a debate on the policy of the federal government, called for repeal of section 219a, which restricted how doctors could inform patients about abortion. On 27 April 2022 he opposed an Alternative for Germany motion to keep the provision and described threats against doctors who performed abortions.

On 23 September 2022, on the 16th federal report on children and youth, he said political education could not be neutral because it was bound to democratic values, and that youth work should be funded when costs rose. On 16 March 2023, at the first reading of the draft Democracy Promotion Act, he defended a statutory federal role in democracy promotion, extremism prevention and political education, and opposed a CDU/CSU call for an extremism clause on funded organisations.

He spoke for the SPD on the family ministry's chapter, Einzelplan 17. On 5 September 2023 he called it about 3 per cent of the federal budget, financing parental allowance, youth associations, women's shelters and local democracy projects, and mentioned a shelter renovation in his constituency. On 30 January 2024 he said the group had asked him in spring 2023 to take Budget Committee responsibility. He defended €200 million for democracy promotion and said that, after the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on the Climate and Transformation Fund, cuts to multi-generation houses, the child and youth plan and voluntary services had been reversed. On 12 September 2024 he said an earlier plan of €13 billion would have cut €872 million, while the 2025 draft stood €560 million above the previous budget. Reports of the Budget Committee on 29 January 2025, under section 96 of the rules of procedure, named him among the rapporteurs on bills concerning help against gender-based and domestic violence and structures against sexual violence against children and young people.

Constituency activity

On 21 January 2022 he opened a Bürgerbüro in the SPD office in Grünberg, for the part of the constituency in the Vogelsbergkreis. The Gießener Allgemeine reported that he favoured a general vaccination mandate from the age of 18, and that he was not among seven members of the SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party who had just announced a draft on that subject.

In Giessen the office had been in the SPD's Henriette-Fürth-Haus on Grünberger Straße, shared with other SPD members of the Bundestag and the Landtag of Hesse. In January 2023 the Gießener Allgemeine reported that he would move it, around the end of February, into a former shop at the corner of Kirchenplatz and Lindenplatz, as tenant of the municipal housing company Wohnbau until the end of the electoral term. The Gießener Anzeiger reported the opening on 27 February 2023. The office was staffed on weekdays from 09:00 to 17:00, Döring held a Wednesday-morning surgery, and the smaller Grünberg office, shared with the local SPD, stayed open.

He held the direct mandate for constituency 173 through the 20th electoral term. The committee places in that term's archived biography are separate from those he took after the next Bundestag was constituted.

The 2025 federal election

Contest with Frederik Bouffier

On 23 February 2025 Döring, the sitting member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, stood again in constituency 172, Gießen, at the early federal election in Germany. The constituency takes in the city of Giessen and fifteen other municipalities in Giessen district, plus eight in the western Vogelsbergkreis, including Alsfeld. The candidate of the Christian Democratic Union was Frederik Bouffier, a Giessen lawyer and member of the Hesse Landtag, and the son of former minister-president Volker Bouffier. In November 2024 the CDU associations in Giessen and Vogelsberg nominated him to succeed Helge Braun, who was leaving politics.

It was the first Bundestag election under the law amended in June 2023. A party candidate who led the constituency vote was seated only if that seat was covered by the party's second-vote entitlement in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung); second votes alone fixed how many seats each party received. Of 215,142 people eligible to vote, 178,656 did so, a turnout of 83.0 percent, 8.6 points above 2021. From 176,938 valid first votes, Bouffier received 53,851 (30.4 percent, up 0.8 points) and Döring 49,204 (27.8 percent, down 2.6). The Alternative for Germany took 33,541 (19.0 percent, up 9.9), Alliance 90/The Greens 15,276 (8.6, down 4.7), Die Linke 12,444 (7.0, up 3.1), the Free Voters 5,122 (2.9, unchanged), the Free Democratic Party 4,906 (2.8, down 4.8) and Volt 2,594 (1.5). The returning officer recorded Bouffier as elected in the constituency and Döring as runner-up, 4,647 votes behind.

Second votes went to the CDU with 47,076 (26.6 percent, up 3.9 points), the AfD with 33,917 (19.1, up 9.8) and the SPD with 33,234 (18.8, down 8.8), followed by the Greens on 21,926 (12.4, down 4.0), Die Linke on 17,359 (9.8, up 4.8), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht on 7,913 (4.5) and the FDP on 7,410 (4.2, down 6.5). Döring's personal share ran nine points above the SPD list.

The first-vote appeal

In the closing days Döring sent a letter headed "CDU verhindern, Erststimme Döring" and posted a video asking voters inclined toward the Greens to give him, rather than Michel Zörb, their constituency vote. The seat, he said, had long been a CDU–SPD contest; Zörb was competent and likeable, but only he could realistically beat the CDU, and votes split in the past among the SPD, the Greens and the Left had let the CDU candidate win.

Zörb called the appeal irritating, because Döring, fifth on the state list, was likely to enter parliament anyway, and said it put Döring and his arithmetic ahead of policy. He replied, "Wählt doch, wen ihr wollt!" Desiree Becker, the Left candidate, accused him of paid advertising and personalized mail aimed at Green, Left and Volt voters without a policy argument. Dorothée de Nève, a political scientist at the University of Giessen, told the Gießener Allgemeine that this was negative campaigning: unfair, dismissive of voters' preferences, and damaging to trust in the system. The paper also reported unease among some SPD colleagues.

Döring said a list seat was not assured, because forecasts then pointed to about eight SPD seats in Hesse and wins by candidates placed behind him could use those seats first. He called the appeal legitimate and respectful, denied negative campaigning because he had praised Zörb, and accused de Nève of bias since Zörb had been her student assistant. She called that absurd: she had not endorsed Zörb, was herself an SPD member, and treated votes for other candidates as preferences rather than lost votes. The Gießener Allgemeine noted that Bouffier was not secured by the CDU list, while Döring on place five would miss out only if the Hesse SPD won as few as four seats.

Return via the state list

On 21 December 2024 an SPD delegate meeting in Giessen placed Sören Bartol first on the Hesse list and Döring fifth, after Dagmar Schmidt, Armand Zorn and Nancy Faeser. The Federal Returning Officer records Felix Maximilian Döring as elected for the SPD from the Hesse list at position 5, with a candidacy in constituency 172; the Bundestag biography gives the same route into the 21st Bundestag, and the constituency count seated Bouffier. Hessischer Rundfunk, using the next day's still provisional allocation, reported ten SPD seats from Hesse, two of them in constituencies, and listed Döring from the state list for Gießen.

The 21st Bundestag

Committees, foundations and rapporteur work

Döring sits in Germany's 21st Bundestag on the state list of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Hesse, and as the party's candidate in constituency 172, Giessen. The parliamentary directory gives his Berlin office as Platz der Republik 1 and, in the constituency, an office at Kirchenplatz 2 in Giessen and a citizens' office at Alsfelder Straße 6 in Grünberg.

On 15 May 2025 the Bundestag set up 24 standing committees for the term, with seats divided among the parliamentary groups by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method. His principal full seat is on the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with 38 members — 13 from the CDU/CSU, nine from the Alternative for Germany, seven from the SPD, five from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke — and elected Saskia Esken chair. Döring was one of the seven SPD members named that day. SPD working groups draft the group's bills and prepare committee sittings. Jasmina Hostert speaks for the education and family working group; the group lists Döring as a member from 21 May 2025.

He is a deputy member of the Budget Committee and of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development. The Budget Committee, with 42 members, examines the annual federal budget; without the Bundestag's consent the government receives no money from the federal treasury. The SPD group dates the budget seat, and a deputy place in its budget working group, from 21 May 2025, and the development seat and the matching working-group place from 25 June 2025. He is a full member of the Budget Committee's Subcommittee on European Union Affairs, dated by the group from 11 July 2025. The subcommittee pre-discusses EU items referred to the Budget Committee and meets the European Court of Auditors, MEPs and commissioners. Its substitutes are the Budget Committee's ordinary members, so his full subcommittee seat accompanies only deputy status on the parent body.

For the 2026 budget the plenary named him a rapporteur for Einzelplan 23, the estimate of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the second reading on 26 November 2025 the chair stated that reporting lay with Inge Gräßle (CDU/CSU), Mirco Hanker (AfD), Felix Döring (SPD), Jamila Schäfer (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Sascha Wagner (Die Linke). Döring spoke for the SPD and later made a short intervention on the same item.

The Bundestag also lists him as deputy chair of the German-Greek Parliamentary Group, one of the cross-party friendship groups the Council of Elders reconstitutes each term, distributing chairs by group strength so that other groups may name a further board member. The SPD group dates that deputy chairmanship from 7 September 2026 and lists him, from 9 September 2025, as a deputy on the Council of Elders' commission for international exchange programmes, a post absent from his official biography.

Declarations under the members' rules of conduct record a deputy seat on the board of the Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung from 30 September 2025; a board seat at the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt, in Neustrelitz, from 1 November 2025; a board seat at the Denkfabrik in der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion from 16 October 2025; a place on the Kuratorium of the Otto Benecke Stiftung from 17 September 2025; and a Beisitzer role at the Akademie für Kommunalpolitik Hessen. They also record a Giessen district-council seat from 18 May 2026. The SPD group's list dates the equality-foundation seat from 25 June 2025 and the engagement-foundation seat from 15 September 2025.

Hesse SPD Landesgruppe and intra-party alignment

On 24 March 2025 the SPD's Hesse Landesgruppe elected Döring its speaker (Landesgruppensprecher) and Philipp Rottwilm deputy. Its notice named ten members: Sören Bartol, Daniel Bettermann, Esther Dilcher, Döring, Nancy Faeser, Natalie Pawlik, Martin Rabanus, Rottwilm, Dagmar Schmidt and Armand Zorn. Hessenschau's list of Hesse's 45 new members matches those ten SPD names and records Felix Maximilian Döring as elected on the state list for Giessen. The national SPD group lists him as chair (Vorsitzender) of the Hesse Landesgruppe, and assigns him Betreuung — supervision for the group — of constituencies 183 (Groß-Gerau) and 187 (Bergstraße), alongside his Giessen candidacy.

On 3 June 2025 the SPD Bundestag group elected 25 members of an extended executive, the erweiterter Fraktionsvorstand. Döring was among them, and his profile dates membership of the Fraktionsvorstand from that day.

A membership page of the Parlamentarische Linke, a current inside the SPD Bundestag group, included Döring in an archive of 21 April 2022. Its leadership page for the later term does not publish a full roll or name him, and neither the Bundestag biography nor the SPD group profile records the affiliation, so membership in the 21st Bundestag is not established by those sources.

Political positions

Schools and democratic education

In the Bundestag on 26 February 2026, on a motion from Die Linke about “democratic schools”, Felix Döring of the Social Democratic Party of Germany spoke as a former politics teacher, not for an SPD bill. School structure in Germany belongs mainly to the Länder. He imagined a tenth-grade lesson before an election and attributed to the Alternative for Germany a call for “Remigration” and the claim that the country would also function with 60 million people. A teacher sworn to the constitution, he said, would not breach neutrality by pointing out that such statements at least contradicted Articles 1 and 3 of the Basic Law; that was their “gottverdammte Aufgabe”. AfD deputy Nicole Höchst interrupted that the scene was false and the constitutional point untrue. Michael Hose of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany had already said that neutrality toward parties was not neutrality toward the free democratic basic order.

A democratic school, he said, meant democracy across subjects. He opposed what he called 27 numerical grades a half-year in year three, and selection after year four into Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, which he said was not equal opportunity. CDU deputy Konrad Körner accepted cross-subject teaching, citing Bavaria’s “constitutional quarter-hour”, but said the federation should leave Land schools alone. AfD deputy Götz Frömming called the idea socialist and said civil-servant teachers must not do party politics. Döring interjected that the AfD was “gesichert rechtsextrem”, after Höchst had cited a Cologne administrative-court decision that it could not, for the time being, be listed as right-wing extremist.

The programme “Demokratie leben!”, which funds civic education and work against extremism, split the coalition. In March 2026 Family Minister Karin Prien said about 200 grants would end that year, sooner than awards from the previous government, with fresh bids under new rules. Tagesschau reported about €190 million for 2026 and her view that goals had been vague and results uneven. On 27 March Döring told Clara Bünger of the Left that “Demokratiesterben” went too far: the coalition agreement, he said, still committed the government to the programme. He disputed Prien’s claim that it was missing its goals, and, stopped for time, said it had followed the murders of the National Socialist Underground and should keep right-wing extremism at its centre. Misbah Khan of Alliance 90/The Greens replied that closing projects before an evaluation was not thrift. On 9 July, against an AfD motion to abolish it, he called the programme 0.038 percent of federal spending and more than 3,000 projects, and cited Bayerischer Rundfunk research alleging over 100 right-wing extremist employees in AfD Bundestag offices. CDU deputy Marvin Schulz said it had dwelt too long on right-wing extremism, should also cover other extremisms and antisemitism, and that cuts were right.

Family policy and development cooperation

On 10 October 2025, on a Left motion to raise minimum Elterngeld, Döring argued the coalition case. He called mental load—family organisation done mostly by women, who, he said, do 44 percent more unpaid work than men—the real subject of the allowance. Fewer than half of fathers claim it, he said; mothers take nearly twelve months and fathers about three, often together. The agreement, he quoted, promised incentives for partnership and for fathers’ months alone. The minimum, frozen since 2007, should rise, but as equality policy, not only income support. CDU deputy Wolfgang Dahler also refused a minimum-only change. Khan wanted a paid two-week Familienstartzeit after birth and at least a third of the leave for each parent. The agreement, she said, never mentioned Familienstartzeit, and the 2026 draft still showed no higher minimum.

On 8 July 2026, named by the SPD group as its rapporteur, he broke with selling cuts as equality. Any saving, he said, had to be socially fair: a €1,000 monthly cap for the richest tenth, not a “3-6-3” pattern that would cut many mothers from twelve months to nine. Paid leave for fathers just after birth would, he said, cost the taxpayer nothing.

On 26 November 2025, speaking for the SPD on the budget of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, he said the 2026 estimate was €10.06 billion, 2.4 percent below the year before because the coalition agreement had reduced official development spending. Parliament had still added €111 million to the draft, he said, and he contrasted Germany with the United States, which he said had scrapped 86 percent of its programmes. Green deputy Claudia Roth interjected that it remained a cut. The ministry later recorded the €10.06 billion as 1.92 percent of the federal budget. On 10 September 2026 he called a further fall of about €590 million in the next draft “very regrettable”, described that draft as investment in security, stability and climate protection, and said parliament should still choose priorities.

Reception and public incidents

Coverage of the 2021 upset

Regional and national reporting treated Felix Döring's 2021 win in the Gießen constituency as a narrow upset of Helge Braun, Christian Democratic Union head of the Federal Chancellery and a close aide to Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote that Braun, who had held the seat three times, lost to a Social Democrat it called a tabula rasa in federal politics, 30.4 percent to 29.6 on the first vote. Hessenschau called Braun the best-known casualty of CDU direct-seat losses in Hesse and Döring little known outside the region, while noting that Braun, lead candidate on the state list, was still assured of a Bundestag seat. The Süddeutsche Zeitung also called the race close and said its model had expected an open contest.

The 2025 campaign dispute

On 21 February 2025 the Gießener Allgemeine asked whether an appeal by Döring was "bad style" (schlechter Stil) or legitimate. In a letter titled "Stop the CDU, first vote for Döring," and in a short video, he asked likely voters of Alliance 90/The Greens to choose him over Michel Zörb. He called Zörb competent and likeable, but said only he could beat the CDU, that other votes would be wasted, and that "progressive" first votes split among the SPD, the Greens and the Left had elected the CDU candidate.

Dorothée de Nève, a political scientist at the University of Giessen, called this negative campaigning that lectured voters, slighted their preferences and could damage trust in the electoral system. Zörb said he was irritated, because Döring looked fairly safe on the state list and the reformed electoral law made the tactic unlikely to work, and commented, "Vote for whoever you want." Desiree Becker of Die Linke said paid social-media ads and personalized mail were meant to draw Green, Left and Volt votes, with little policy content. Döring replied that praise of Zörb was not negative campaigning, which he defined as spreading something adverse about a rival, and that fifth place on the list was not secure. He accused de Nève of bias because Zörb had been her student assistant; she called that absurd and said she had not spoken for Zörb. The paper noted that she was an SPD member and that, on its information, some party colleagues also disliked the campaign.

The Rabenau insult case

In November 2024 the Amtsgericht Gießen fined a 70-year-old man from the district who had compared Döring with the Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele. Hessenschau reported that in August 2023, beside an Alternative for Germany state-election event in Rabenau-Geilshausen, he said "Dr. Mengele is here too" as a vehicle with Döring's portrait passed, then that "this criminal voted for compulsory vaccination." Döring, at a counter-demonstration, filed a complaint; the organizers said the man was not an AfD member. The Allgemeine's trial report dated a video of the remarks to February 2023.

On 8 November 2024 the paper reported that Judge Beate Ritzke followed prosecutor Nathalie Dohmen and convicted the previously unconvicted man of insult in concurrence with Volksverhetzung (incitement of the people), at 120 daily rates of 30 euros. Dohmen said the comparison injured Döring's honor and trivialized the Holocaust by setting the murder of European Jews beside pandemic measures; Ritzke said of that parallel, "One does not do that." Defense lawyer Hans-Georg Frank said he would appeal. On 14 November hessenschau, citing a court spokesperson, reported that the judgment was not yet final and had not yet been challenged. Döring called the result, on Instagram, a "hefty fine" for trivializing the Holocaust and injuring his honor, and pointed to the portal "Hessen gegen Hetze." In a statement carried by the Allgemeine he said insult and incitement had no place in political argument.