Frauke Heiligenstadt

Frauke Heiligenstadt (born 24 March 1966 in Northeim) is a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from Lower Saxony and a member of the Bundestag. She represents constituency 52, Goslar – Northeim – Göttingen II, which she won directly in the federal elections of 2021 and 2025. Before moving to federal politics she was a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony in its 15th through 18th legislative periods and the state's minister of education from February 2013 to November 2017.

The Bundestag's biography, based on her own disclosures, lists her as evangelical Lutheran, married and the mother of one child, and gives her profession as Diplom-Verwaltungswirtin (FH). She passed the Abitur in 1985 at the Gymnasium Corvinianum in Northeim and, from 1985 to 1988, trained for that qualification with the city of Northeim and the Fachhochschule für Verwaltung und Rechtspflege in Hanover. She worked in Northeim's legal office from 1988 to 1994 and then headed the municipal office for economic development and real estate until 2003. A member of the SPD since 1982, she chairs the Northeim-Einbeck subdistrict and sits on the executives of the SPD district of Hanover and of the Lower Saxony state party. She has belonged to the Northeim district council since 2006 and has chaired it since 2018.

From June 2010 to February 2013 she was deputy chair of the SPD group in the Landtag, leaving that post to join the cabinet of Minister-President Stephan Weil as Kultusministerin. In that office she oversaw Lower Saxony's return from the eight-year Gymnasium to a nine-year course, with the change beginning in the 2015/16 school year for grades five to eight, a step Gymnasium teachers and pupils had welcomed and which she argued would give students more time to learn. The ministry was also marked by conflict over lesson cancellations and staffing. The Higher Administrative Court overturned her regulation adding one weekly lesson to Gymnasium teachers' duties, which the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported had been found unconstitutional, and she later assigned several hundred Gymnasium teachers to other types of school at short notice. After the 2017 state election she said she would not take the education portfolio in the next government and would not lead on education inside the SPD parliamentary group.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021, in the constituency then named Goslar – Northeim – Osterode, she received 52,129 first votes (36.7 percent) and defeated the sitting Christian Democratic Union member Roy Kühne, who took 33.2 percent. On 23 February 2025 she held the renamed seat with 46,875 first votes (30.4 percent), 176 votes ahead of Constantin Weigel of the CDU (30.3 percent), while the Alternative for Germany took 19.8 percent of first votes and Alliance 90/The Greens 7.7 percent; turnout was 81.3 percent. On the party-list ballot in that constituency the CDU led with 27.9 percent, ahead of the SPD on 24.9 percent and the AfD on 20.0 percent. In the 21st Bundestag the SPD parliamentary group lists her as spokesperson for its finance working group since 21 May 2025, a member of the group executive since 3 June 2025, and deputy chair of the Lower Saxony/Bremen state group since 12 May 2025. The Bundestag lists her as a full member and Obfrau of the Finance Committee and as a deputy member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government.

Early life and education

Family and schooling

Frauke Heiligenstadt was born on 24 March 1966 in Northeim, the seat of a district in southern Lower Saxony, and grew up in Gillersheim, a village in the municipality of Katlenburg-Lindau, where she has continued to live. She was the daughter of a master roofer and a factory worker and grew up with three siblings; disclosures published by the Bundestag list her as evangelical Lutheran. In 1985 she passed the Abitur at the Gymnasium Corvinianum in Northeim.

She has described the household as classically Social Democratic. A grandfather had belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Gillersheim and helped re-establish the local party after the Second World War, and she said that almost her whole family was in the SPD. The Munzinger archive records that one grandfather was persecuted as an SPD member and imprisoned in a concentration camp. An older sister took her, at 14 or 15, to meetings of the party's Working Group of Social Democratic Women (Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialdemokratischer Frauen). Heiligenstadt joined the SPD in 1982.

In an interview published by Landkreis Northeim on 10 August 2021, she said that studying medicine, which she had wanted, was not feasible in a family of six, and that she therefore went from the Abitur into a dual course at the Fachhochschule für Verwaltung und Rechtspflege in Hanover. On 1 March 1990 she married Gert Heiligenstadt. Their daughter was born in 1994. A January 2013 profile in the Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine named her Lisa, then 18 and shortly before her own Abitur, and reported that Gert Heiligenstadt worked in the kitchen management of the Maßregelvollzugszentrum in Moringen, formerly a state hospital, while also taking on much of the household.

Administrative training and career in Northeim

From 1985 to 1988 Heiligenstadt trained as a Diplom-Verwaltungswirtin (FH) with the City of Northeim and at the Fachhochschule für Verwaltung und Rechtspflege in Hanover. The Bundestag biography, which states that its details rest on members' own information, then places her in the city's legal office (Rechtsamt) from 1988 to 1994 and as head of the Amt für Wirtschaftsförderung und Liegenschaften, the office for economic development and municipal property, from 1994 to 2003. In the 2021 interview she recalled the legal-office post as lasting until 1993 and the department headship as running from 1993 to 2003, and she described herself as that office's erste Amtsleiterin, its first female head. A newspaper profile in 2013 summarised an 18-year career at the city administration before she entered the Landtag in 2003.

Munzinger lists further city-linked posts in those years: deputy chair of Stadtmarketing Northeim e.V. and managing director of Städtische Brauerei Northeim GmbH from 1997 to 2003, and managing director of the Reddersen-Stiftung from 2000 to 2003. The foundation holds the Reddersen-Haus at Am Münster 6, a timber-framed building probably put up in 1420 and owned by the Reddersen family from the mid-18th century. Marie Reddersen, its last private owner, left the house and her property to a charitable foundation bearing the family name; after restoration the house opened on 13 July 1997, with an upper floor preserved as a late-19th-century domestic interior. After she left the department in 2003 she has been recorded as Stadtamtsrätin a.D. (außer Dienst).

Local politics

Gillersheim and Katlenburg-Lindau

Frauke Heiligenstadt lives in Gillersheim, an Ortsteil of Katlenburg-Lindau in the Northeim district of Lower Saxony. The municipality was formed on 1 March 1974 from the previously independent communities of Berka, Elvershausen, Gillersheim, Katlenburg-Duhm, Lindau, Suterode and Wachenhausen. Its published figures list 985 residents with their main home in Gillersheim and 7,057 in the municipality as a whole. In an August 2021 interview issued by the district, she said she had been active in municipal politics since 1986, when she was elected to the Gillersheim Ortsrat at just 20 and as its only woman, and that a later election as second deputy Ortsbürgermeisterin met strong opposition. Her grandfather, she said, had helped refound the local Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the village after the Second World War.

The curriculum vitae on her website lists her as an Ortsrat member from 1986 to 2011 and as Ortsbürgermeisterin from 1999 to 2006. At the constitutive sitting in November 2011 the Ortsrat unanimously confirmed Uwe Lebensieg (SPD) as Ortsbürgermeister and thanked Heiligenstadt among the members then leaving. She sat on the council of Katlenburg-Lindau from 1991 until 2013, was deputy mayor from 1996 to 2011, and has said that in 1991 she was elected chair of the finance committee as its only woman. Her curriculum vitae dates that chair to 1991–2013. She resigned the council seat with effect from the meeting of 16 April 2013, writing that her duties as education minister and state parliamentarian no longer left room for the mandate, while keeping her seat on the Northeim Kreistag.

Northeim district council

The district administration describes the Kreistag as the main organ of Landkreis Northeim: it decides the district’s important affairs and consists of 50 elected members plus the Landrätin, with elections every five years.

Heiligenstadt has been a member since 2006. At the constitutive session reported on 18 November 2016, the Kreistag elected Hermann Weinreis (SPD) as chair and chose Christel Eppenstein of the Christian Democratic Union and Heiligenstadt—41 votes, three abstentions—as deputies, ahead of Manfred Schön of the Alternative for Germany. After Weinreis resigned for personal reasons, the council on 7 September 2018 elected her chair on the nomination of Uwe Schwarz: 37 votes in favour, six against and one abstention. Ludwig Binnewies (SPD) took her former deputy post; Eppenstein kept the other.

On 26 November 2021 the newly elected council reappointed her unanimously, with Günther Kelter (CDU) and Binnewies as deputies, after the groups had agreed the posts in advance because of the pandemic. She was returned at the district election of 13 September 2026, recorded in electoral area IV—Katlenburg-Lindau and Northeim 2—with 3,729 votes as a direct SPD candidate. The SPD remained the largest group, with 15 of 50 seats. The term then running ended on 31 October 2026; at the sitting of 2 October, 31 members who would not return were thanked, and Heiligenstadt was not among them.

Landtag of Lower Saxony

Elections in the Northeim constituency

Frauke Heiligenstadt won a direct seat for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Northeim constituency of the Landtag of Lower Saxony at the state elections of 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2017. The district lies in southern Lower Saxony and is centred on the town of Northeim. It was numbered 22 when the Landtag was elected in 100 constituencies; from 2008, after the number of constituencies fell to 87, it was number 18. In 2008 it comprised the towns of Hardegsen, Moringen and Northeim and the municipalities of Kalefeld, Katlenburg-Lindau and Nörten-Hardenberg; the delimitation used in 2013 added Bodenfelde.

On 2 February 2003 the constituency return declared her elected with 15,292 first votes (41.0 percent), ahead of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) candidate Strüder on 39.7 percent. Turnout was 67.6 percent. On second votes the CDU led the SPD in the constituency, 42.8 percent to 40.1 percent. Statewide the SPD took only nine direct seats, against 91 for the CDU, so Northeim was one of the few constituencies the SPD held.

At the election of 27 January 2008 she received 13,855 first votes (44.1 percent). Hans-Joachim Strüder, the CDU candidate, received 11,133 (35.4 percent). Turnout was 57.9 percent of 55,301 eligible voters. Second votes put the SPD narrowly ahead of the CDU, 38.7 percent to 37.1 percent.

On 20 January 2013 her first-vote share rose to 47.3 percent (15,734 votes). The CDU candidate in constituency 18 was Malte Schober; the CDU's first-vote total was 11,913 (35.8 percent). Turnout was 59.9 percent. Second votes divided 39.9 percent for the SPD and 31.5 percent for the CDU.

On 15 October 2017 the Northeim district electoral committee recorded her re-election with 47.01 percent of the first votes, against 29.93 percent for Lukas Seidel of the CDU. The official final result was 15,830 first votes (47.0 percent) to the CDU's 10,079 (29.9 percent), on a turnout of 61.6 percent. The SPD also led the second vote, 44.1 percent to 29.4 percent. She did not stand at the Landtag election of 9 October 2022. In February 2022 the SPD in the district said it needed a new candidate in Northeim because she was no longer available for re-election.

Parliamentary roles, 2003–2013

She sat in the 15th and 16th electoral periods and, after the January 2013 election, in the 17th. In opposition she became the SPD group's spokesperson on education. A party statement of 22 January 2009 described her as the group's bildungspolitische Sprecherin. A speakers' list captured in May 2012 named her Fraktionssprecherin for the Kultus portfolio and spokesperson for school policy; culture and media were assigned to another member of the group.

On 14 June 2010, meeting in Hanover, the group elected her one of six deputy chairs. She received 65.9 percent of the vote. The same sitting chose Stefan Schostok as chair in place of Wolfgang Jüttner and described her as the group's schools specialist. Her Bundestag biography dates the deputy chairmanship from June 2010 to February 2013. She left the deputy chair and the education brief in February 2013, when she became Lower Saxony's minister of education (Kultusministerin), an office she held until November 2017. That ministerial period is separate from her work inside the SPD group; she remained a Landtag member while in office.

Return to the Landtag, 2017–2021

After leaving the ministry she returned to a policy role in the SPD Landtag group. On 21 November 2017 the group elected her spokesperson for the budget and finance, with 83.6 percent of the votes, and placed her on the group's executive. In the 18th electoral period she served on the Committee on Budget and Finance. The Landtag president recalled that committee work, and her membership since 2003, when the house took leave of her.

On 9 November 2021 the Landtag voted, with no votes against and no abstentions, to establish the loss of her mandate. She was among members leaving for the Bundestag. The state electoral administration found that the vacant seat passed to Renate Geuter, who had accepted it. Her membership, running from the 15th electoral period through the 18th, ended that day.

Minister of Education

Appointment and responsibilities

On 19 February 2013 the Landtag of Lower Saxony elected Stephan Weil of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) minister-president of Lower Saxony, and he named a cabinet of five SPD and four Green ministers, to be sworn in that afternoon. Frauke Heiligenstadt became Kultusministerin. Science and culture were separate, under Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić of Alliance 90/The Greens. The cabinet made Heiligenstadt a full member of the Bundesrat, with Weil, Stefan Wenzel, Boris Pistorius, Cornelia Rundt and Antje Niewisch-Lennartz.

The law on the Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten makes the representative of the ministry responsible for memorial work the chairing member of the foundation council; that ministry is the Kultusministerium. On 11 August 2014 Heiligenstadt announced an extra one million euros a year, mainly for educational work, with the foundation’s new director, Jens-Christian Wagner. The memorial at Bergen-Belsen and the state’s other sites recalling Nazi crimes had drawn more than 300,000 visitors in 2013.

Gymnasium reform

On 20 February 2014 the ministry said that from 2015/16 a nine-year Gymnasium would again be the rule, with an eight-year Abitur only for higher-achieving pupils and both routes redesigned. Heiligenstadt spoke of a broad readiness to leave the stress of the shorter course; Weil had cited pupils’ lack of time, family pressure and employers’ doubts about very young graduates. Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the German Philologenverband, hoped other Länder would follow, but warned against rushing the change.

The Landtag amended the school law on 3 June 2015. Gymnasien and track-based cooperative comprehensive schools returned in general to an Abitur after 13 years, starting in 2015/16 with years 5 to 8, whose first examination was due in 2020/21. Pupils then in years 9 to 12 stayed on the twelve-year course, and skipping a year remained possible. Heiligenstadt said time would be added without expanding the core curricula, and the ministry called the result a new thirteen-year Abitur rather than a restoration of the old G9.

Inclusion, staffing and working time

From 2013 the state extended joint teaching, and the government phased out special schools focused on learning—165 of them in 2013—while keeping schools for emotional and social development, vision, hearing and intellectual disability. In August 2013 Kai Seefried, education spokesman of the Christian Democratic Union, called the end of new admissions from 2014/15 a serious cut in parents’ choice and a break with the 2012 inclusion law, which the SPD had supported, and said the promised talks were a sham. On 10 May 2017 Heiligenstadt reported an inclusion rate of 61.4 percent in the first eight grades, 22,879 of 37,269 pupils with special needs in mainstream public schools, up from 44.9 percent in 2013, and called it a deliberate parental choice. Seefried called that praise an impertinence once the special-school option had been removed, and Björn Försterling of the Free Democratic Party said teachers and money were still missing.

From 1 August 2014 a regulation added one weekly period for Gymnasium teachers and raised the load of Gymnasium heads; many schools cancelled class trips in protest. On 9 June 2015 the Higher Administrative Court in Lüneburg, in case 5 KN 148/14 and eight related actions by seven civil-servant teachers and two heads, backed by the Philologenverband and the GEW, held both changes contrary to the Basic Law. The ministry had not first measured the real workload, a breach of the duty of care, and had singled out Gymnasium teachers without a sufficient reason; an age-related reduction was lawfully ended, and no appeal on points of law was allowed. Horst Audritz of the Philologenverband called it a victory over an arbitrary increase, Heiligenstadt said the hour had been essential to the “Zukunftsoffensive Bildung,” and Försterling demanded her resignation.

On 1 December 2015 the government restored a standard load of 23.5 periods from the start of 2015/16, credited the extra 2014/15 lessons to working-time accounts, and had hired more than 2,570 teachers for that year, over 700 of them in the school types the judgment covered.

In May 2015 about a thousand pupils at the Gymnasium in Brake left lessons to protest in the yard while Heiligenstadt was in the town. After the school linked a local report, the Osnabrück branch of the state school authority ordered it removed at 12:27 on 8 May, saying the page made the protest look official. The following Monday she withdrew the order, said she had not been consulted, and said deletion was unnecessary; student speaker Johannes Wilbertz called it a limit on free expression, and the head was summoned to a disciplinary meeting.

Before 2017/18 the ministry cited a record 72,000 budgeted teacher posts and 837,500 pupils, but said supply had not improved because of 74 new all-day schools, language support and inclusion. Heiligenstadt said compulsory teaching was covered and defended secondments of Gymnasium teachers as ordinary staffing. Associations of teachers and headteachers accused her of embellishing the figures; Seefried called supply dramatically low, and Hartwig Jeschke of the Gymnasium parents’ councils said lessons were cancelled every day. Of 1,814 new posts, 1,550 had been filled by 2 August, 172 by career changers; by October, 1,649 teachers had been hired against about 1,800 posts, and several hundred Gymnasium teachers had been seconded at short notice.

Departure from office

On 20 October 2017 Heiligenstadt said in Hanover that she would not be Kultusministerin in the next cabinet. She would take the Landtag seat won the previous Sunday, but would not lead on education for the SPD group.

On 22 November 2017 the Landtag swore in Weil’s second government, an SPD–CDU coalition with five ministers from each party. Grant Hendrik Tonne, previously the SPD group’s parliamentary managing director, became Kultusminister, and science and culture passed to Björn Thümler of the CDU.

Bundestag election of 2021

Constituency and nomination

Frauke Heiligenstadt was the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) candidate in constituency 52 of Lower Saxony at the Bundestag election of 26 September 2021. The constituency was then named Goslar – Northeim – Osterode; the Federal Returning Officer’s 2025 list styles number 52 as Goslar – Northeim – Göttingen II. Under the 2021 delimitation it comprised, from the district of Göttingen, Osterode am Harz, Bad Grund (Harz), Walkenried, the district’s unincorporated Harz area and the joint municipality of Hattorf am Harz, with the rest of that district in constituency 53. From the district of Goslar it included Goslar, Bad Harzburg, Braunlage, Clausthal-Zellerfeld and that district’s unincorporated Harz area; from the district of Northeim, Northeim, Einbeck, Bad Gandersheim, Dassel, Hardegsen, Moringen, Kalefeld, Katlenburg-Lindau and Nörten-Hardenberg, the remainder lying in constituency 46.

On 20 March 2021 an SPD constituency conference in Osterode’s Stadthalle nominated her, then the directly elected member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony for the Northeim state constituency and the group’s budget and finance spokesperson; as the only applicant she received 93.75 percent of the votes, and the meeting described recovery of the direct mandate as the aim. The SPD state list placed her tenth, as the direct candidate for constituency 52 in the party’s Hannover district. The seat was held by Roy Kühne of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), recorded as directly elected for constituency 52 in the 19th electoral term (2017–2021).

Result and transition from the Landtag

The constituency returning officer, Regine Breyther, published the final result fixed by the constituency electoral committee on 30 September 2021 and declared Heiligenstadt elected. Of 197,519 eligible voters, 143,611 cast ballots, a turnout of 72.7 percent, 1.7 percentage points below 2017. Heiligenstadt received 52,129 first votes, 36.7 percent of the valid first votes, 1.9 points more than the SPD in 2017. Kühne, the CDU candidate, was second with 47,196 votes, 33.2 percent, down 6.5 points. In 2017 the CDU had led the constituency’s first-vote count with 39.8 percent (59,391 votes) to the SPD’s 34.8 percent (51,953).

Karoline Otte of Alliance 90/The Greens received 14,954 first votes (10.5 percent), Jens Kestner of Alternative for Germany 11,240 (7.9 percent), Jan Schwede of the Free Democratic Party 8,827 (6.2 percent) and Eva-Maria Brunnemann of Die Linke 3,835 (2.7 percent). Christian Warzecha (Free Voters) polled 2,031 (1.4 percent), Janine Reinecke (dieBasis) 1,797 (1.3 percent) and Jürgen Schäuble-Leopold 58. On the party vote the SPD led with 53,876 votes, 37.9 percent (up 5.8 points), ahead of the CDU on 33,614 (23.6 percent), the Greens on 17,118 (12.0 percent), the FDP on 14,239 (10.0 percent), the AfD on 11,819 (8.3 percent) and Die Linke on 4,251 (3.0 percent).

Heiligenstadt became a member of the 20th Bundestag when that parliament held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021. On 9 November 2021 the Landtag, applying the state constitution and the state electoral law, unanimously determined that she had lost her Landtag seat; on the finding of the state electoral authority the vacancy passed to Renate Geuter, who had declared that she would accept the mandate. The Bundestag’s biographical record for the 20th term lists Heiligenstadt as directly elected in constituency 52 and records her Landtag membership as ending in November 2021.

Twentieth Bundestag

Heiligenstadt sat in the Bundestag for its 20th term, constituted on 26 October 2021, as the directly elected member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany for constituency 52, Goslar – Northeim – Osterode, in Lower Saxony. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the chamber on 27 December 2024 under Article 68 of the Basic Law, after the government lost a confidence vote on 16 December, and set the next election for 23 February 2025.

Committees and faction posts

From 13 December 2021 she was an ordinary member of the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss) and a deputy member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government (Ausschuss für Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung, Bauwesen und Kommunen) and of the Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss). The archived biography for that term does not list an education or research committee.

On 25 January 2022 the SPD group made her deputy spokesperson of its finance working group. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on 31 January 2022 that Michael Schrodi had been elected finance-policy spokesperson, with Zorn and Heiligenstadt as deputies. Her office said the brief covered consumer protection in finance, including investment advice, the basic payment account, overdraft interest and private retirement provision. From 9 September 2022 she was also deputy chair of the group's state delegations (Landesgruppen) for Lower Saxony and Bremen. From 15 March 2022 the group listed her on the advisory board of the financial-market watchdog (Beirat Finanzmarktwächter); her disclosure records that role as an unpaid deputy seat on the matching board of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations. On 26 September 2023 the group elected her to its extended executive, one of 25 members chosen at mid-term.

Finance and tax policy

In the plenary she spoke for the SPD on the coalition's tax and financial-market bills.

On 22 September 2022, in the first reading of the Inflation Compensation Act (Inflationsausgleichsgesetz, printed paper 20/3496), she backed shifting income-tax thresholds before the final progression report and raising the basic allowance to €10,632 in 2023 and €10,932 in 2024, so that pay rises would reach employees and lower incomes would be relieved. Citing the president of the German Savings Banks Association in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 13 September 2022, she said households below €3,600 net a month could no longer save, and that the SPD group was therefore aiming relief at low and middle incomes.

On 17 November 2023, in the second and third reading of the Growth Opportunities Act (Wachstumschancengesetz), she presented the bill as company relief meant to strengthen Germany as a business location, and she spoke on pensions. Referring to the Federal Constitutional Court's bar on taxing pensions twice, she said deferred taxation, introduced in 2005, would now be completed in 2058 rather than 2040. The same day, on the Future Financing Act (Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz), she left capital-market access for start-ups and smaller firms to Lennard Oehl and argued for a comparison site, run by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), on account fees and overdraft rates, and for raising the income limits of the employee savings allowance (Arbeitnehmersparzulage) on fund and building-society saving to €40,000 for single assessment and €80,000 for joint assessment.

On 14 December 2023, in the first reading of the bill on fighting financial crime (Finanzkriminalitätsbekämpfungsgesetz, printed paper 20/9648), she put annual money-laundering damage in Germany at an estimated €100 billion and said it harmed democracy, social integrity and the economy. She argued that the subject was not only tax evasion but the victims of the underlying crimes, including forced prostitution and illegal drug and arms trafficking. The draft, which would create a federal office to bundle scattered responsibilities, went to the Finance Committee; the CDU/CSU instead proposed a customs police.

Constituency work

In the first quarter of 2022 she visited mayors and district chief executives in the constituency. Leinetal24 reported calls in Northeim, Dassel, Einbeck, Bad Gandersheim, Kalefeld and Osterode am Harz. Financing of all-day schooling dominated the talks, together with support for town centres and cultural projects, new forms of housing and rising construction costs.

In October 2023 StadtRadio Göttingen reported her announcement of €953,412 in federal broadband money for Northeim district, part of about €1.87 million with state and district funds, to connect more than 700 businesses. On 28 September 2023 the Harz Kurier reported federal KulturInvest grants of more than €1 million for the "Children of 20 July 1944" memorial in Bad Sachsa and €2.25 million for the World Heritage mine at Rammelsberg. She credited the region's Bundestag members jointly; Fritz Güntzler (CDU) and Konstantin Kuhle (FDP) also welcomed the awards.

2025 federal election and twenty-first Bundestag

Nomination and result

The SPD constituency conference for Bundestag constituency 52, Goslar – Northeim – Göttingen II, met on Saturday, 16 November 2024, in the Auetalhalle in Willershausen. As the only candidate, Frauke Heiligenstadt received 97 percent of the delegates’ votes. She also stood in eighth place on the SPD state list in Lower Saxony, headed by Lars Klingbeil. The state returning officer’s notice of 30 January 2025, published in the Niedersächsisches Ministerialblatt of 3 February 2025, admitted that list, with 78 SPD candidates, for the federal election of 23 February 2025.

In constituency 52, 191,421 people were eligible to vote and 155,587 did so, a turnout of 81.3 percent, 8.6 percentage points higher than in 2021. Of 154,168 valid first votes, Heiligenstadt received 46,875 (30.4 percent, down 6.3 points). Constantin Weigel of the CDU received 46,699 (30.3 percent, down 2.9 points). The Federal Returning Officer recorded Heiligenstadt as elected in the constituency and Weigel as the runner-up; the gap was 176 votes. The AfD took 30,494 first votes (19.8 percent, up 11.9 points), Alliance 90/The Greens 11,922 (7.7 percent, down 2.8), Die Linke 9,187 (6.0 percent, up 3.3) and the FDP 4,000 (2.6 percent, down 3.6).

The 154,617 valid second votes produced a different order. The CDU led with 43,210 (27.9 percent, up 4.3 points), ahead of the SPD on 38,453 (24.9 percent, down 13.0 points) and the AfD on 30,930 (20.0 percent, up 11.7 points). The Greens received 13,464 (8.7 percent, down 3.3 points), Die Linke 10,716 (6.9 percent, up 3.9), the FDP 6,116 (4.0 percent, down 6.0) and the BSW 6,035 (3.9 percent). Heiligenstadt took her seat on the constituency mandate. The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025.

Finance spokesperson

In the SPD Bundestag group she had been deputy spokesperson of the finance working group since January 2022. On 20 May 2025 the working group elected her spokesperson by unanimous vote. The group’s own list dates that spokespersonship from 21 May 2025.

The appointment came after the CDU, the CSU and the SPD formed a coalition. On 5 May 2025 Friedrich Merz signed the coalition agreement for the CDU with the SPD and the CSU, and on 6 May the Bundestag elected him chancellor on a joint CDU/CSU and SPD nomination. He received 310 votes on the first ballot, short of the required 316, and 325 of 618 votes cast on the second. The coalition groups then had 328 members, 208 from the Union and 120 from the SPD. Heiligenstadt’s finance role is that of spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group’s working group, which prepares the group’s position before committee deliberation.

Committees in the 21st Bundestag

The Finance Committee constituted itself on the afternoon of 21 May 2025 with 42 ordinary members: 14 from the CDU/CSU, ten from the AfD, eight from the SPD, six from the Greens and four from Die Linke. The Bundestag’s account of that sitting names Heiligenstadt among the eight SPD members. Her official biography lists her as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the Finance Committee for the SPD, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government.

In Bundestag practice, each parliamentary group names one Obmann or Obfrau in a committee. Those members are the main contacts for their group’s leadership; they help set the group’s line in committee deliberations, formulate its interests, and coordinate agendas and the planning of the work. On the Finance Committee the groups also appoint, separately if they choose, spokespersons for tax and financial-market policy, and the chair meets the Obleute to discuss the committee’s work and the timetable for major bills. The committee’s field matches that of the Federal Ministry of Finance except for budget policy. It is normally the lead committee for tax policy, financial-market regulation—covering banks, securities and insurance—and customs.

Positions in the SPD

Local and state party offices

Frauke Heiligenstadt has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1982. The party's organizational statute divides the SPD into local branches (Ortsvereine), subdistricts (Unterbezirke) and districts (Bezirke), with political decisions formed from the bottom up; an Unterbezirk is the intermediate unit, and its area is set by the district executive.

In May 2019, delegates of the SPD subdistrict Northeim–Einbeck, meeting in Hilwartshausen, elected her chair with 123 of 132 votes cast. She succeeded Uwe Schwarz, who had held the office for 26 years, after 18 years as deputy chair, and was the first woman in the post. Delegates confirmed her in May 2023 at a subdistrict congress in Gillersheim, with 94.69 percent of the vote, and again on 22 March 2025 in Moringen, with 98.9 percent.

She also sits on the executive of the SPD district of Hanover. That body's 2011 list names her among the additional members for Northeim-Einbeck, and the 2017 district congress elected her an assessor (Beisitzerin) with 142 votes. At the ordinary district congress in Hanover on 27 September 2025 she was returned as one of 24 assessors, with 156 votes; the executive published that day lists her for Northeim-Einbeck.

On the state executive of the SPD in Lower Saxony, the district of Hanover reported her election as an assessor at the ordinary state congress in Aurich on 24 June 2023; the state association's account of that vote lists her, misspelled "Franke Heiligenstadt," among 18 assessors. The executive chosen at the state congress in Wolfenbüttel on 24 May 2025 again lists her as a Beisitzerin, and the congress report names her among the 18 assessors elected with that board.

Bundestag state group

Within the SPD group in the Bundestag, members from the Länder meet in Landesgruppen. The group describes these as the bodies in which its MPs pool the concerns of their home regions, discuss how federal policy affects the states, and stay in contact with Land and municipal politicians; Lower Saxony and Bremen form one Landesgruppe.

On 13 September 2022, StadtRadio Göttingen reported that Heiligenstadt had been unanimously elected to that executive for the Hanover district, then its largest district, with 11 Bundestag members. The Landesgruppe confirmed the board unanimously on 18 September 2023: Johann Saathoff, chair since 2018, stayed in office, and Heiligenstadt was confirmed as deputy chair for Hanover, alongside Christos Pantazis (Braunschweig), Daniel Schneider (northern Lower Saxony) and Sarah Ryglewski (Bremen).

After the 2025 federal election the group filled out a new executive on 12 May 2025. Saathoff had already been re-elected chair at the start of the legislative period and continued to represent the Weser-Ems district. Heiligenstadt was confirmed as deputy chair for Hanover; Lars Klingbeil took the northern Lower Saxony seat, Dunja Kreiser the Braunschweig seat and Uwe Schmidt the Bremen seat, each by unanimous vote. The Landesgruppe's board page and the parliamentary group's overview of its Landesgruppen list the same five-member executive.

Other offices and memberships

Foundations, culture and sport

In the Bundestag register of declarable activities, Heiligenstadt’s posts in associations, foundations and advisory bodies are marked honorary and unpaid (ehrenamtlich). The only paid entry is the chair of the district council (Kreistag) of Landkreis Northeim, disclosed at 240 euros gross a month plus irregular payments of 150 euros gross in 2025.

On 16 June 2022 the members’ assembly of the Landesverband niedersächsischer Musikschulen, meeting in Stade, elected her president, succeeding Gabriele Lösekrug-Möller after eight years in the post. The assembly in Jever on 6 and 7 March 2025 re-elected her unanimously. The Hanover-based association describes the presidency as unpaid representation toward politics and the public. In 2022 it counted 74 public non-profit music schools in Lower Saxony.

She chairs, unpaid, the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Niedersächsische Kinderturnstiftung in Hanover. The foundation’s report for 2024 names her as chair and Josef von Helden as deputy and records two meetings that year; it does not date the start of the chairmanship. She is also unpaid chair of the board of trustees of the KSN-Sportstiftung in Northeim. The Kreis-Sparkasse Northeim says it founded the foundation in 2016 to fund grassroots, youth, senior and disability sport, with more than 20,000 euros a year, and does not date her chairmanship.

The same register lists her as an honorary member of the Kuratorium of Museum Friedland and as an honorary deputy member of the school and culture committee of the Niedersächsischer Landkreistag. The museum, opened in 2016 in the former station after a 2006 resolution of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, says the Kuratorium follows its development.

She was Lower Saxony’s education minister from February 2013 to November 2017. The chair of the Stiftungsrat of the Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten is not a separate personal appointment: under section 6 of the foundation law, the chairing member is the representative of the ministry responsible for memorial-site work, and service on the council is honorary. The foundation’s published list names the sitting education minister as chair of the Celle-based body, which maintains the Bergen-Belsen memorial and the memorial in Wolfenbüttel prison; she is not a current member.

Trade union and advisory bodies

Her Bundestag biography, drawn from her own statements, lists membership of ver.di, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), Stadtmarketing Northeim e.V., a local sports club, the local volunteer fire brigade, a local homeland and tourism association (Heimat- und Verkehrsverein) and a local shooting club, without naming the clubs or any office in them.

The activity register records an honorary seat on the advisory board of Versicherungsombudsmann e.V. until 14 July 2025 and an honorary deputy seat on the advisory board “Marktwächter Finanzen” of the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband, with no income disclosed for either. The federation’s observation of insurance, accounts, credit, investment and payments, called Marktwächter in the project phase, is now published as Marktbeobachtung Finanzmarkt.

Public reception

Assessment of the education ministry

In October 2017, as she ruled out another term in cabinet, Der Spiegel described Frauke Heiligenstadt of the Social Democratic Party of Germany as a controversial education minister in Lower Saxony who had set teachers and parents against her. It reported that the state had filled 1,649 of 1,800 newly advertised teaching posts that half-year, that several hundred Gymnasium teachers had been seconded at short notice to other schools, and that primary-school teachers were suing over overtime.

The sharpest clash was a 2014 rise in Gymnasium teachers’ compulsory lessons from 23.5 to 24.5 hours a week, used to help finance the “Zukunftsoffensive Bildung”. Teachers protested, often by cancelling class trips, and sued. On 9 June 2015 the Oberverwaltungsgericht Lüneburg declared the increase ineffective: the ministry had not measured real workload, contrary to its duty of care, and had treated Gymnasium teachers unequally under the Basic Law. Horst Audritz of the Philologenverband called the judgment “a victory of justice over the arbitrary increase in working time”; Heiligenstadt called it a “bitter defeat”. Bild reported that the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party demanded her resignation, quoting FDP schools specialist Björn Försterling that she was “no longer tenable”, while GEW state chair Eberhard Brandt did not, saying the finance minister and minister-president had to fund a gap Bild put at 750 full-time posts and 40 million euros. The Süddeutsche Zeitung likewise put the cost of hiring hundreds of extra teachers at about 40 million euros.

In May 2015 about a thousand pupils at the Gymnasium in Brake, nearly the whole school, protested in the schoolyard during lessons, in the context of the trip boycott. After the school linked a local report on the boos for the minister, the Landesschulbehörde in Osnabrück ordered the item removed on 8 May; a pupil spokesperson called that a limit on free expression. Heiligenstadt reversed the order, saying deletion had not been necessary and that she had not herself been involved, although the authority had coordinated with the ministry; the headteacher was summoned because the protest took place in teaching time. Spiegel presented the episode as a “Maulkorb-Posse”.

The return from the eight-year Gymnasium was received more warmly. In March 2014 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Lower Saxony intended to be the first state to drop the shortened Abitur, with support from philologists and parent councils, who called G8 a “folgenschweren Irrweg”. Spiegel quoted Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the Deutscher Philologenverband, hoping the reversal would act “as a catalyst”, while warning against a rushed change. In July 2015 the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Gymnasium teachers and their pupils had praised her highly for restoring a nine-year course; she said a redesigned G9 could start “in consensus with pupils, teachers and parents”.

Electoral standing

She won the direct mandate in the Northeim constituency of the Landtag of Lower Saxony four times. In constituency 22 in 2003 she took 15,292 first votes (41.0 percent). In constituency 18 the state returning officer recorded her as elected with 13,855 first votes (44.1 percent) in 2008, 15,734 (47.3 percent) in 2013 and 15,830 (47.0 percent) in 2017.

At the 2021 Bundestag election she gained constituency 52, then Goslar–Northeim–Osterode, from the CDU incumbent Roy Kühne: the final count was 52,129 first votes (36.7 percent) for the SPD and 47,196 (33.2 percent) for the CDU. In 2025 she held the revised seat, Goslar–Northeim–Göttingen II, by 176 votes—46,875 (30.4 percent, down 6.3 points) to 46,699 (30.3 percent) for Dr Constantin Weigel of the CDU—on a turnout of 81.3 percent.