# Fritz Güntzler

# Fritz Güntzler

Fritz Güntzler (born 6 May 1966 in Cuxhaven) is a German auditor (Wirtschaftsprüfer), tax adviser (Steuerberater) and politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 22 October 2013. In the 20th electoral term he held his seat through the Lower Saxony state list; at the 2025 federal election he won constituency 53, Göttingen I, in his own right. He received 50,736 first votes (29.1 percent), ahead of Thorsten Heinze of the Social Democratic Party on 44,623 (25.6 percent), with turnout at 83.5 percent.

He studied business administration at Saarland University and the University of Göttingen, qualified as a Diplom-Kaufmann, and was admitted as a tax adviser in 1999 and as an auditor in 2003. He is a partner in audit and tax firms in Göttingen and Kassel. On 21 June 2019 the assembly of the Steuerberaterkammer Niedersachsen, the public-law chamber for tax advisers in the state, elected him president, succeeding Carsten Fischer. The chamber's notice of that election records that he is married and has two children.

In the CDU/CSU Bundestag group he is spokesperson and chair of the working group on finance. In the 21st Bundestag, constituted in March 2025, he is a full member of the Finance Committee and of the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Service, and a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. He sat on the committees of inquiry into cum-ex dividend-tax trades and the collapse of Wirecard. As of April 2026 he was one of the Bundestag members on the administrative board of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).

The Bundestag's register for the 20th term listed monthly profit distributions of 8,500 euro from Prof. Dr. Ludewig + Sozien in Göttingen and Kassel, and 7,000 euro (8,000 euro from January 2024) from Quattek & Partner in Göttingen, together with further annual distributions, including 195,000 euro from Quattek & Partner for 2023. In July 2026 Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) decided to replace Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder and offered the post to Güntzler, who accepted and then withdrew shortly before the appointment was to be announced. Coalition sources told news agencies that he considered himself unsuited to the portfolio on subject grounds; he later told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that he should have asked for time to think, that he had put the chancellor in difficulty, and that he had told Merz he was the wrong man for the office.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Cuxhaven

Fritz Güntzler was born on 6 May 1966 in Cuxhaven, on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. He grew up in the district of Groden, where both of his parents were teachers and the family lived beside the sports ground of the local school. His father, Fritz Güntzler senior, taught at the Groden school from 1965 to 1995 and later became its deputy head. He also ran the Karl-Waller-Museum before its holdings went to the town museum, and he spent decades in the volunteer fire service, including as local fire chief in Groden, deputy town fire chief and district training officer. The Fritz-Güntzler-Weg in Groden is named after him. Güntzler later said that this father—a village teacher, fire chief and active member of the Christian Democratic Union in Groden—took him, as the boy known as Fiete, into that voluntary work.

In 1985 he passed the Abitur, Germany's general university-entrance qualification, at the Amandus-Abendroth-Gymnasium in Cuxhaven. The same year of the school-leaving examination appears in the biography published by the Bundestag, which notes that such career details rest on members' own statements, and in a short biographical note in the *Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine*.

### Studies and military service

After the Abitur he performed basic military service (*Grundwehrdienst*) with the Bundeswehr in 1985–86. From 1987 to 1992 he studied business administration (*Betriebswirtschaftslehre*), first at Saarland University in Saarbrücken and then at the University of Göttingen.

*The Aula of the University of Göttingen on Wilhelmsplatz.*

He later said that the then central office for allocating university places, the ZVS, had first assigned him to Saarbrücken, and that he transferred because he wanted to return to Lower Saxony and because Göttingen already had a reputation in economics. At the start of the course he was, in his own later description, a "Di-Mi-Do student": three days at the university in Göttingen, then back to Cuxhaven. He completed the degree in 1992 as a *Diplom-Kaufmann*. In an interview carried by the university's alumni association he recalled receiving the diploma in the Aula on Wilhelmsplatz, and he named Lothar Schruff and Harald Wedell as the teachers who had drawn him toward auditing. Asked what he would study again, he answered business administration, with auditing (*Prüfungswesen*) and tax (*Steuerlehre*) as the emphasis.

### Professional examinations

After the diploma examination he worked in a firm engaged in tax advice and auditing. He was admitted as a *Steuerberater*, the regulated German tax adviser, in 1999, and as a *Wirtschaftsprüfer*, the regulated statutory auditor, in 2003. The *Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine* reported the same two dates, and a curriculum vitae he issued in January 2022 lists both steps as *Bestellung*—the formal appointment to those professions—directly after the 1992 *Diplom-Kaufmann*. The Steuerberaterkammer Niedersachsen, the state's public-law chamber for tax advisers, identifies him as Dipl.-Kfm. Fritz Güntzler, *Steuerberater* and *Wirtschaftsprüfer*.

## Professional career

### Tax and audit practice

Fritz Güntzler is a Diplom-Kaufmann and holds two regulated German professional titles: Steuerberater since 1999 and Wirtschaftsprüfer since 2003. After the examination, or an exemption from it, a Steuerberater is appointed on application by the chamber for the intended place of practice. A Wirtschaftsprüfer is appointed by the Wirtschaftsprüferkammer, which issues the certificate once the examination has been passed. The Bundestag biography, based on the member's own information, says that after those qualifications he worked in a tax-advisory and auditing firm.

That account dates the later roles from 2000, as a partner (Sozius) of Prof. Dr. Ludewig & Sozien and managing director of Prof. Dr. Ludewig und Partner GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft in Kassel; from 2001, as managing director of EURATIO Prof. Dr. Ludewig und Quattek GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft in Göttingen; and from 2002, as a partner of Quattek und Partner Steuerberatungsgesellschaft there.

Legal notices use later company names. Quattek & Partner Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbB, entered at the Amtsgericht Hanover as PR 120156, is seated at Nikolausberger Weg 49 in Göttingen; Güntzler is one of the partners authorised to represent it. In Kassel, Prof. Dr. Ludewig + Sozien GmbH & Co. KG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, Steuerberatungsgesellschaft und Rechtsanwälte (HRA 18393, Amtsgericht Kassel, Friedrichsstraße 11) lists him among its managing directors. The general partner is MOORE Ludewig GmbH (HRB 20038, Amtsgericht Kassel). The same notice does not list him among the managing directors of the separate Prof. Dr. Ludewig u. Partner GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (HRB 2866). It names the Wirtschaftsprüferkammer in Berlin as the auditors' supervisory authority and the Steuerberaterkammer Hessen as that of the tax advisers.

Disclosures for the 21st electoral term record a participation in the Kassel GmbH & Co. KG and in Prof. Dr. Ludewig u. Partner GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft until 31 December 2025, and from 1 January 2026 describe his activity at the GmbH & Co. KG as managing director. They still list him as Wirtschaftsprüfer and Steuerberater at the Göttingen mbB. Register compilations give the Göttingen audit company tied to the EURATIO name as EURATIO GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (Amtsgericht Göttingen, HRB 112435) and name him among its managing directors.

### Chamber and professional associations

Steuerberater with a professional establishment in a chamber district form a Steuerberaterkammer, a corporation under public law. The Steuerberaterkammer Niedersachsen, which uses that form and sits in Hanover, is charged with safeguarding its members' professional interests as a whole and with supervising professional duties. On 21 June 2019 its Kammerversammlung in Hanover elected Güntzler president, succeeding Carsten Fischer of Syke, who left after four years. The chamber noted that Güntzler, already a Bundestag member, had belonged to it for about 20 years and had examined Steuerberater candidates. On 1 September 2023 the assembly re-elected him with 91.9 percent of the votes cast; Dajana Schmitz, returned to the board, became vice-president. Its profile of the president also lists him, since 2016, on Examination Committee III for the Steuerberater examination at the Lower Saxony Ministry of Finance, and in the chamber's professional-law department. The Bundestag disclosure records the presidency and the examination-committee membership.

The Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer in Deutschland e.V. (IDW), in Düsseldorf, is a registered association that promotes auditors' work and the profession, provides training and represents professional interests. Its Verwaltungsrat, elected by the Wirtschaftsprüfertag and the Landesgruppen, meets at least once a year, chooses the honorary board members and the chair of the Hauptfachausschuss, sets the budget and contribution rules, and approves the accounts and management report. Güntzler is a member and deputy chair of Landesgruppe Niedersachsen, chaired by the Hanover auditor Sebastian Brandt. The twelve Landesgruppen represent members regionally, assist the institute and elect Verwaltungsrat members. The Bundestag records the Verwaltungsrat seat as unpaid.

DATEV eG, the Nuremberg cooperative, lists him on its Beirat as Dipl.-Kfm., StB/WP. Beirat members must belong to the cooperative and are appointed by the executive board; the body carries suggestions from tax, audit and legal organisations to DATEV and discusses its services with the board. He also sits in the Vertreterversammlung for electoral district 10, Land Niedersachsen, for 2024–2028; the archived 20th-term biography dated that seat from May 2024. That assembly is the general meeting: it amends the statutes, adopts the accounts, decides the use of the surplus, discharges the boards, and elects the members' representatives on the supervisory board.

## Party offices

### Young Union

Fritz Güntzler joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in 1989 and, in 1990, its youth organisation, the Junge Union. From 1992 to 1995 he chaired the Junge Union in Göttingen, and from 1995 to 2000 the Junge Union district association Südniedersachsen-Hildesheim. Both the archived biography for the 20th Bundestag and the current Bundestag biography, each based on the member’s own disclosures, give those dates. A curriculum vitae he issued in January 2022 instead dates a chairmanship of the “JU-Bezirksverband Hildesheim” from 1992 to 2000, overlapping the Göttingen youth office.

### CDU in Göttingen and Lower Saxony

He chaired the CDU city association in Göttingen from 1999 to 2005, the span given in the 20th-term Bundestag biography and in a University of Göttingen alumni profile. The current Bundestag biography instead dates that chairmanship from 1995 to 2005. The 2022 CV lists him as treasurer of the CDU district association Göttingen from 1999 to 2009. Since 2009 he has been its chairman, succeeding Harald Noack, who had led the association from 1989 to 2009 and later called proposing Güntzler his best decision. A district congress in October 2024 re-elected Güntzler with 97.1 percent of the vote.

The CDU district association Hildesheim draws delegates from the district associations of Holzminden, Hildesheim, Northeim and Göttingen-Osterode. In August 2013 a congress in Osterode am Harz elected him chairman with 94.5 percent, in succession to Eckart von Klaeden, then a minister of state in the Federal Chancellery, who was leaving the office to join Mercedes at the end of the year. He held the chair until 2018. At a congress in Osterode at the end of August that year, the former minister and Landtag member Uwe Schünemann succeeded him; delegates also gave Güntzler 94 percent, and he remained a deputy chair. On 7 March 2025 in Hildesheim the congress confirmed him as deputy chair for another two years, with Laura Hopmann and David Artschwager, while Schünemann was re-elected chair with 96 percent.

He has been a member of the CDU state executive in Lower Saxony since 1996, at first as an ordinary board member. On 12 September 2014 a state congress in Braunschweig elected him one of three deputy state chairs, with 82.45 percent of 319 valid votes, alongside Maria Flachsbarth and Reinhold Hilbers and under state chair [David McAllister](/people/david-mcallister). He and Hilbers replaced Elisabeth Heister-Neumann and Hermann Kues. He stayed a deputy until the 59th state congress in Braunschweig on 21 January 2023. There, after Sebastian Lechner’s election as state chair, Güntzler became state treasurer in succession to Barbara Havliza; StadtRadio Göttingen, citing the CDU, reported a vote above 92 percent. [Gitta Connemann](/people/gitta-connemann) took a deputy chair in his place, while Lena Düpont and Hilbers continued. An archived 20th-term Bundestag biography dates the treasurership from 2024; the party’s announcement of the January 2023 election and the current Bundestag biography both date it from 2023. The 61st state congress in Osnabrück confirmed him as treasurer; the state-executive page records the election of 22 August 2025.

In May 2019 the *HarzKurier* reported that he had been elected chair of a new CDU federal specialist committee on the economy, jobs and taxes, sharing the chair with Baden-Württemberg economics minister Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut. The January 2022 CV still listed that chairmanship, and it dates a deputy chairmanship of the Lower Saxony *Landesgruppe* of the CDU/CSU Bundestag group from his entry into parliament in 2013. The *Landesgruppe*’s own site lists him in that office. The CDU’s specialist-committee pages, as updated in 2025, list a committee on fair taxes and sound public finances chaired by Franziska Hoppermann, not Güntzler.

## Municipal and Landtag politics

### Göttingen council and district

Fritz Güntzler sat on the council (Rat) of Göttingen from 2001 to 2014 and, throughout that time, chaired the council group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). On 6 October 2014 the *Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that, after 13 years, he was not standing again for the chair; the group elected Hans-Georg Scherer unanimously, with Marcel Pache and Brigitte Eiselt remaining deputies. Güntzler said weekly meetings required a chair who could attend, which he could no longer guarantee as a member of the Bundestag, and he announced that he would resign the seat on 12 December 2014, with Ludwig Theuvsen to succeed him.

At the election of 11 September 2016 he entered the Kreistag of Landkreis Göttingen, the first assembly after the merger with the former Landkreis Osterode am Harz. The paper reported 72 seats, eight more than before, under a merger clause allowing that size; the CDU won 22, and Güntzler was named among those elected. For 12 September 2021 the district electoral committee put him first on the CDU list in the area Stadt Göttingen–Oststadt, and the Kreistag that followed had 66 members, 18 of them CDU. The Göttingen CDU has continued to describe him as a Kreistag member since 2016, including on the page consulted in October 2026. For 13 September 2026 he again led the CDU list in Wahlbereich 1, Göttingen Ost, while the party's Landrat candidate was Harm Adam. Preliminary figures from StadtRadio Göttingen early on 14 September, with all ballots counted, gave the SPD 25.82 percent and the CDU about one point less, 17 seats each.

### Lower Saxony Landtag

Güntzler joined the Landtag of Lower Saxony on 26 January 2005. That day the chamber established, under Article 11 of the state constitution and the state election law, that Friedrich Kethorn had lost his seat, and President Jürgen Gansäuer then welcomed Güntzler. For 2005–2008 his curriculum vitae records ordinary membership of the committees on science and culture and on legal affairs.

*Historical engraving of the Leine Palace in Hanover, the building that houses the Landtag of Lower Saxony.*

At the election of 27 January 2008 he was the CDU candidate in constituency 17, Göttingen-Stadt, and number 20 on the CDU state list. Gabriele Andretta of the SPD won with 14,429 first votes (37.1 percent) to his 12,014 (30.9 percent), on a turnout of 58.5 percent, and he did not return with that Landtag.

On 11 June 2010 the Landtag recorded Minister-President [Christian Wulff](/people/christian-wulff)'s resignation of his seat. A dpa report in *Bild* on 18 June said he had given up the mandate the previous week because he was standing for federal president, and that Güntzler would follow on the CDU list after Joachim Runkel, an engineer from Schaumburg, declined for professional reasons. On 1 July President Hermann Dinkla said the Landeswahlleiter had determined under section 38 of the state election law that the seat passed to Güntzler, who had accepted it as a list successor (*Nachrücker*), and recalled that he had already sat in the 15th electoral period.

For 2010–2013 the same curriculum vitae lists him as interior-policy spokesman of the CDU group, ordinary member of the committee for the interior and sport and of the committee on constitutional-protection affairs, and deputy member of the committee on certain police data-gathering. On 22 February 2012 he opened the final debate, for the CDU and FDP, on amendments to the rescue-service act. He said the existing law had worked in practice, but that case law of the [Court of Justice of the European Union](/organizations/justice-cjeu), especially an April 2010 judgment on the submission model, required changes that also let carriers such as Göttingen weigh disaster-relief capacity and use a concession model. In November 2011, after Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann briefed those interior and constitutional-protection committees on the case of Holger G., Güntzler said the state office had already in 1999, observing for Thuringia, called the Zwickau trio right-wing terrorists, and that this should have brought further measures.

## Bundestag elections

### List entry, 2013–2021

Güntzler was the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in constituency 53, Göttingen, at the federal elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021. The first-vote seat went to the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) each time, and he entered the Bundestag on the CDU state list for Lower Saxony. The list adopted on 3 November 2012 placed him 11th, the position the *Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine* (HNA) also reported after the state delegate assembly in Hanover.

In 2013 the SPD candidate Thomas Oppermann won with 66,192 first votes (40.4 percent), ahead of Güntzler’s 62,558 (38.2 percent). [Jürgen Trittin](/people/jurgen-trittin) of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) received 16,740 (10.2 percent). Turnout was 74.7 percent of 222,102 eligible voters. Second votes were led by the CDU with 59,000 (35.9 percent), ahead of the SPD on 54,410 (33.1 percent); the Greens had 12.2 percent, [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 6.3 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 4.1 percent and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) 3.7 percent. The 18th Bundestag convened on 22 October 2013. Güntzler’s biography records him as a member from 2013, when the list, not the constituency, was his route into parliament.

On 24 September 2017 he stood from ninth place on the state list. Oppermann won again, 59,032 first votes (34.9 percent) to Güntzler’s 56,250 (33.3 percent), on a turnout of 77.4 percent of 220,420 eligible voters. The Greens, whose candidate the HNA profiled as Trittin, took 19,131 (11.3 percent), the AfD 11,870 (7.0 percent), Die Linke 9,905 (5.9 percent) and the FDP 7,734 (4.6 percent). Second votes were 30.2 percent CDU and 28.3 percent SPD.

The state list adopted on 5 June 2021 put Güntzler tenth. Andreas Philippi (SPD) won the constituency with 51,385 first votes (32.2 percent). Güntzler received 42,958 (26.9 percent), 6.3 percentage points below 2017. The Greens’ 37,060 first votes (23.2 percent) were Trittin’s. Turnout was 75.5 percent of 214,542 eligible voters. The AfD had no constituency candidate, and the official first-vote line for the party is blank. Second votes were led by the SPD with 51,180 (31.9 percent), then the CDU with 34,588 (21.6 percent), the Greens on 20.2 percent, the FDP on 9.8 percent, the AfD on 6.1 percent and Die Linke on 5.1 percent.

### Direct mandate in 2025

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025, after the federal president dissolved the 20th Bundestag. The 2023 reform fixed the Bundestag at 630 members and ended the overhang and compensatory seats that had enlarged it. Second votes set each party’s seats. In a Land, candidates with a plurality of first votes are ranked by that share and seated only until the party’s second-vote total is used up (*Zweitstimmendeckung*). Further constituency winners do not enter, and those constituencies stay vacant; remaining seats go down the state list. A first-vote plurality no longer guarantees a mandate by itself.

In the constituency, now named Göttingen I and still numbered 53, Güntzler received 50,736 first votes (29.1 percent), 2.2 percentage points more than in 2021, ahead of Thorsten Heinze of the SPD with 44,623 (25.6 percent). [Viola von Cramon-Taubadel](/people/viola-von-cramon-taubadel) of the Greens took 26,771 (15.4 percent), the AfD 24,753 (14.2 percent), Die Linke 15,935 (9.1 percent) and the FDP 6,321 (3.6 percent). Turnout was 83.5 percent, 175,553 of 210,202 eligible voters. The HNA reported this as the first CDU win in the constituency since Rita Süssmuth in 1994, and reported that von Cramon-Taubadel was not on a state list.

Second votes were led by the CDU with 44,788 (25.6 percent, up 4.1 points), then the SPD with 38,346 (22.0 percent), the Greens with 27,390 (15.7 percent), the AfD with 25,266 (14.5 percent), Die Linke with 19,429 (11.1 percent) and the FDP with 6,911 (4.0 percent). The Federal Returning Officer lists Güntzler as elected in constituency 053 and as fifth on the Lower Saxony CDU list, the place the party had given him at its state assembly; his Bundestag entry for the 21st term records a constituency mandate for Göttingen I.

### The Göttingen constituency

The statute setting the districts for the 2025 election renamed constituency 53 Göttingen I and constituency 52 Goslar – Northeim – Göttingen II, previously Goslar – Northeim – Osterode. The bill stated that the names followed the abolition of the districts of Göttingen and Osterode am Harz and the creation of one district of Göttingen, and that the change of name did not alter the boundaries. The part of the district placed in constituency 52 is Bad Grund (Harz), the town of Osterode am Harz, Walkenried, the district’s unincorporated Harz area, and the joint municipality (*Samtgemeinde*) of Hattorf am Harz — Elbingerode, Hattorf am Harz, Hörden am Harz and Wulften am Harz — together with named municipalities in the districts of Goslar and Northeim.

Constituency 53 is the rest of the district: Adelebsen, Bad Lauterberg im Harz, Bad Sachsa, Bovenden, Duderstadt, Friedland, Gleichen, Göttingen, Hann. Münden, Herzberg am Harz, Rosdorf and Staufenberg, plus the joint municipalities of Dransfeld, Gieboldehausen and Radolfshausen. The SPD held the first-vote seat there through Oppermann in 2013 and 2017 and Philippi in 2021, with Trittin the main Green opponent until von Cramon-Taubadel and Heinze stood in 2025.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Finance Committee and tax policy

Fritz Güntzler, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has sat in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU since 22 October 2013, across the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st terms, and has been an ordinary member of the Finance Committee throughout. For the 21st Bundestag the official biography also records an ordinary seat on the Committee on Sport and Volunteering and a deputy seat on the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, dated from 25 March 2025. The Finance Committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with 42 ordinary members, 14 of them from the CDU/CSU, including Güntzler. On 15 May 2025 the group elected him chair of its finance working group and thus its finance-policy spokesman; StadtRadio Göttingen, citing his constituency office, reported 96.7 percent, and the faction lists [Carsten Brodesser](/people/carsten-brodesser) as his deputy. He went on practising as a tax adviser and auditor while on the committee: its November 2023 minimum-tax report notes a declaration under section 49 of the Members of the Bundestag Act, and the register listed pay from a tax and audit firm until 31 December 2025. The biography also records seats on the inquiry committees into cum-ex trades (2016–2017) and Wirecard (2020–2021).

After the Bundestag passed the immediate tax investment programme, Güntzler told the parliamentary weekly *Das Parlament* that the Union would rather have cut company-tax rates earlier and faster than over five years, but that he was glad any cut had been agreed, calling it a difficult step for the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats). The federal government described the law as lowering corporation tax from 15 percent to 10 percent in five annual steps from 2028, taking the combined burden on retained profits from about 30 percent to just under 25 percent in 2032. He credited Finance Minister [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) of the Social Democratic Party with extending the relief to partnerships, beyond the coalition agreement, and said the Union still wanted larger loss carry-backs, which the SPD had refused. As CDU/CSU rapporteur on the 2023 law implementing the OECD and G20 Pillar Two minimum tax, he called the 15 percent top-up for groups with at least €750 million in annual revenue highly complex, while saying a low-bureaucracy design was scarcely possible.

He has opposed changes to income splitting for married couples. On 4 June 2026 Deutschlandfunk reported that he rejected economists’ proposals and said he did not fully believe the studies. In an October 2026 reply he argued that spouses are legally bound to maintain one another, that the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) has treated splitting as consistent with Article 6 of the Basic Law, and that the rule is neutral between different divisions of paid work and care. In August 2026 he and SPD politician [Frauke Heiligenstadt](/people/frauke-heiligenstadt) rejected a plan by Clemens Fuest of the ifo Institute to replace the 7 percent value-added-tax rate with 19 percent plus a cash payment; Güntzler said making basic food dearer and then returning some money through a new mechanism would not help families or the administration.

On 22 April 2026 Güntzler and rapporteur Matthias Hiller said the unrestricted continuation of the *Fremdbesitzverbot*, the ban on outside owners of tax-advisory firms, had been decided, arguing that financial investors were using cross-border holdings to exploit legal grey areas and that a purely financial stake was incompatible with tax advisers’ role as independent participants in the administration of justice.

### Budget, economy, sport and BaFin

From 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025 Güntzler was an ordinary member of the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium and a deputy member of the Budget Committee, and the Bundestag archive lists him as *Obmann*—the CDU/CSU coordinator—of the Sport Committee, as does abgeordnetenwatch. He had already been a Budget Committee deputy and a Sport Committee member in the 19th term; neither the budget seat nor the debt-oversight seat is listed for the 21st term. He remains an ordinary member for sport and volunteering and a deputy on economic affairs and energy, and the CDU/CSU group also names him in its sport working group.

On 15 January 2026 the Bundestag elected him and [Mechthilde Wittmann](/people/mechthilde-wittmann) as the CDU/CSU members of the administrative board of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), with Carsten Brodesser and [Florian Oßner](/people/florian-ossner) as deputies. The joint nomination of the CDU/CSU, the Alternative for Germany and the SPD passed with abstentions from Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke. BaFin’s member list, as of April 2026, includes him among the Bundestag representatives. The board supervises BaFin’s management, supports its tasks and decides a budget financed by supervised firms rather than by the federal budget.

### Selected votes

On 30 June 2017, in the 244th sitting, the Bundestag held a roll-call vote on the Bundesrat bill opening [marriage to same-sex couples](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany) (Drucksachen 18/6665 and 18/12989). Of 623 votes cast, 393 were in favour, 226 against and four abstentions; inside the CDU/CSU, 75 members voted yes, 225 no, four abstained and five did not vote. Güntzler voted yes; Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) voted no. In a written explanation he criticised a 38-minute debate, which he blamed on SPD election tactics, but said people who love each other and accept lasting responsibility deserve recognition regardless of sex. He wrote that registered partnerships already had nearly the same rights, that joint adoption would still have to serve the child’s welfare, and that Article 6 of the Basic Law should be read so as to include same-sex couples.

## Parliamentary inquiries

### Cum-Ex committee

Fritz Güntzler, a tax adviser and auditor who also sat on the Finance Committee, was an ordinary CDU/CSU member of the 4th committee of inquiry of the 18th Bundestag. The chamber established it on 19 February 2016 on a motion from Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens, the coalition abstaining, and constituted it on 25 February under Hans-Ulrich Krüger (SPD); Philipp Graf Lerchenfeld (CDU/CSU) was deputy chair. Its brief was cum-ex trading from 1999 to 2012: short sales around the dividend date that made one share appear briefly to have several owners, so capital-yield tax paid once was certified and refunded more than once, together with related cum-cum trades.

The report of 20 June 2017 (printed paper 18/12700) records that the OGAW IV Implementation Act of 22 June 2011, effective for this purpose on 1 January 2012, put withholding, remittance and certification of the tax with the same paying agent. In the debate of 23 June Güntzler said that Act, and a later investment-tax reform under Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, had closed the gaps. In July 2021 the Federal Court of Justice held that claiming credit for tax never withheld on such trades was tax evasion.

The committee met 46 times, heard about 70 witnesses, and produced about 800 pages, which Krüger gave to Bundestag President [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert) on 21 June 2017. The CDU/CSU–SPD majority wrote that the inquiry had not been necessary and that the Finance Ministry had acted properly: the trades had always been unlawful, and the loss was a fraction of a publicly cited €12 billion — about €1 billion, not yet reliably estimable. Güntzler stressed the complexity of the trades and said witnesses had presented them as a technical problem whose scale the tax administration could not have foreseen. Richard Pitterle (Die Linke) called it Germany's greatest tax scandal. Gerhard Schick (Greens) called the clearance of the authorities absurd and accused the coalition of shielding Schäuble and former SPD finance minister Peer Steinbrück. Dissenting opinions said the report had been written one-sidedly to protect those ministers.

### Wirecard committee

In the 19th Bundestag Güntzler sat on the 3rd committee of inquiry into the collapse of Wirecard. Established on 1 October 2020 on a motion of the FDP, Die Linke and the Greens, with the coalition abstaining, the nine-member body was chaired by Kay Gottschalk (AfD), with Hans Michelbach (CDU/CSU) as deputy. From 19 November 2020 to 8 June 2021 it held 32 sittings and questioned 105 witnesses, including former executives, auditors and supervisors, on what the government, BaFin, the Financial Reporting Enforcement Panel and the auditors had known of suspected balance-sheet fraud.

Gottschalk gave the report, printed paper 19/30900 and more than 2,000 pages, to Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble on 22 June 2021; the Bundestag noted it unanimously on 25 June. There was no common verdict. The coalition wrote that unqualified opinions from EY had dispersed doubts after *Financial Times* reporting in October 2019; FDP, Left and Greens called the Wirecard scandal the largest post-war stock-market and financial scandal, enabled by collective supervisory failure. Speakers put €1.9 billion missing from Asian trustee accounts and named chief executive Markus Braun and board member Jan Marsalek.

Drawing on about thirty years as an auditor, Güntzler said criminals had been at work first, but that supervision had failed collectively — at the supervisory board, in money-laundering oversight, at BaFin and in the Finance Ministry's control of it — and that EY had not honoured auditors' trust. KPMG's special audit and the committee's investigator, he said, showed a concentration of anomalies that should have forced harder questions. Later statutes could not replace "healthy mistrust", and Finance Minister [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) should admit errors at BaFin. Union speakers blamed Scholz's ministry; SPD speakers stressed the fraud and EY.

## Outside income and professional regulation

### Disclosed earnings

Members of the Bundestag must notify paid work beside the mandate. A 2021 amendment of the Abgeordnetengesetz, after reports that members had gained personally from procuring medical products, requires publication to the cent of income above 1,000 euro a month or 3,000 euro a year, and of holdings from 5 percent. Changes are due within three months.

The 20th-term archive for Fritz Güntzler (CDU), a Steuerberater and Wirtschaftsprüfer, lists a monthly profit distribution of 8,500 euro from Prof. Dr. Ludewig + Sozien GbR in Göttingen and Kassel, plus 25,000 euro in 2022 and 15,000 euro in 2024. Quattek & Partner Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbB in Göttingen is entered at 7,000 euro a month until 31 December 2023 and 8,000 euro from 1 January 2024, plus 140,000 euro (2021), 150,000 euro (2022), 195,000 euro (2023), 75,000 euro (2024) and 72,000 euro (2025). The page also shows the presidency of the Steuerberaterkammer Niedersachsen at 4,700 euro a month until August 2023, 4,100 euro until August 2024 and 4,362 euro thereafter, a Sparkasse Göttingen board seat, and a DATEV advisory-board fee of 3,780 euro a year until 2023 and 4,140 euro from 2024.

The 21st-term biography, republished by the transparency project Abgeordnetenwatch from Bundestag filings, names Ludewig as a GmbH & Co. KG: 8,500 euro a month until 31 December 2025, plus 25,000 euro in 2025, then 6,250 euro a month gross as managing director, with the shareholding shown only to the end of 2025. Quattek remains 8,000 euro a month, plus 79,000 euro in 2025 and 120,000 euro in 2026. Chamber pay stays at 4,362 euro a month; Sparkasse Göttingen is 415 euro a month to the end of 2025 and 430 euro after, plus irregular payments of 2,520 euro (2025) and 2,030 euro (2026); DATEV stays at 4,140 euro a year. From 11 February 2026 the page lists the administrative board of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), with no amount. Abgeordnetenwatch and [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel), using filings to 16 June 2026, put income declared since March 2025 at 425,000 euro, fourth among 630 members.

### Debate on conflicts of interest

On his own site in June 2023 Güntzler wrote that the mandate comes first, that he works over 60 hours a week, mostly in parliament, with few free evenings or weekends. The monthly sums, he said, were advances on profit: only a small part reflected work in the firms, the rest a capital return like a dividend, so neither the amount nor the number of matters—notifiable from the first minute—measured time spent. Practice, he wrote, also secured jobs and helped in the Finance Committee. The mandate must remain central.

In June 2025 the advocacy group Finanzwende described a “bedenkliche Nähe” between some members of the new Finance Committee and financial institutions, including Güntzler’s published four-figure Sparkasse Göttingen fees. The filings combine that seat with the chamber presidency, the firm income, the Finance Committee and, from February 2026, the BaFin board.

### Rules on ownership of tax firms

In April 2026 the Finance Committee added a sentence to § 55a of the Steuerberatungsgesetz: if a recognised audit or accounting firm holds shares, companies above it in the chain must meet the recognition test too, so indirect stakes are caught. The coalition said this closed Luxembourg routes. The Börsen-Zeitung reported no transition for existing private-equity stakes, which the factions called unlawful unless licences were corrected.

Güntzler, CDU/CSU finance spokesman and president of the Lower Saxony chamber, and rapporteur Matthias Hiller described a “creeping, partly uncontrolled” entry through cross-border structures. Tax advisers, they said, are independent organs of the administration of justice; outside return targets conflict with quality and clients, and a purely financial holding breaks professional rules. Bundessteuerberaterkammer president Hartmut Schwab welcomed the vote as protection of independent advice and of clients. Ulrike Hinrichs of the Bundesverband Beteiligungskapital called bans misplaced, arguing that firms needed capital for digitalisation, succession and growth. The Börsen-Zeitung named Cinven at Grant Thornton Germany and EQT at WTS, and noted that Lars Klingbeil’s finance ministry had favoured the tightening while Katherina Reiche’s economy ministry had not.

Those amendments passed with the CDU/CSU, AfD, SPD and the Left against Alliance 90/The Greens, who preferred a code of conduct; the bill as a whole, also exempting a premium of up to 1,000 euro, passed with the coalition against AfD and Left, the Greens abstaining. The Bundesrat rejected it on 8 May 2026 over compensation for the premium. Reintroduced unchanged on ownership, it was signed on 29 June 2026 and published on 2 July; § 55a took effect the next day, most of the act on 1 September. JUVE Steuermarkt wrote that parts of the industry then blamed Güntzler, after a Berlin meeting in autumn 2025 at which investor-backed firms thought he would ease their path.

## The 2026 transport ministry episode

### The offer

In July 2026 Chancellor Friedrich Merz reshuffled the federal cabinet after Jens Spahn resigned as chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag. Tagesschau reported on 18 July that Spahn resigned because having a child by surrogacy in the United States could not be squared with the office; Merz called that “right and unavoidable” and, the broadcaster later reported, used the resignation for wider changes in government, the group and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

On the evening of 23 July Merz told Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) that he intended to remove him, and offered the post to Fritz Güntzler, the CDU member for Göttingen and the group’s finance-policy spokesman. Güntzler accepted; the announcement was set for the morning of 24 July. He withdrew that morning. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur, citing coalition circles, reported that he had reconsidered overnight for lack of expertise and judged himself the wrong person for a field he had barely worked in. Those circles used the line “Ein Torwart sollte nicht Linksaußen spielen” (“A goalkeeper should not play as a left winger”). The agency called Güntzler a football fan and captain of FC Bundestag, and did not give the sentence as his own. The *Tagesspiegel*, citing *Bild*, reported that he sent the refusal by text after agreeing in person at the Chancellery. *Der Spiegel* reported that he decided during the night that his strengths were in finance and that his transport expertise was insufficient. Almost simultaneously, Schnieder texted several Bundestag members that Merz would dismiss him and thanked them; the message became public.

### Withdrawal and aftermath

Merz therefore did not announce Schnieder’s removal with the other changes on 24 July — [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) as head of the Chancellery, [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann) as health minister and [Philipp Amthor](/people/philipp-amthor) as minister of state for federal–state relations — and said only that further changes would follow. Schnieder stayed in post over the weekend. On 26 July he said he would ask Merz to propose his dismissal to the federal president, to end an “unwürdigen Zustand” that made proper work impossible, including decisions at Deutsche Bahn that could not wait. Spokesman Stefan Kornelius said Merz had called to thank Schnieder and to regret that unforeseen circumstances had blocked the planned announcement, and named [Steffen Bilger](/people/steffen-bilger) — then first parliamentary managing director of the CDU/CSU group, and a parliamentary state secretary in the transport ministry from 2018 to 2021 — as successor.

On 1 August Güntzler told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that not asking for time to think had been “a big mistake” and that he greatly regretted putting Merz in difficulty. “The situation simply overwhelmed me,” he said. He had never worked on transport policy, he said, and would not spend six months reading out what ministry staff wrote for him. He described Merz’s reaction as fair and humane rather than angry.

Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) appointed Bilger federal minister of transport on 29 July 2026. The ministry stated that he took office with effect from that date, when Schnieder handed the department over. The CDU in Lower Saxony still had no federal minister. State chairman Sebastian Lechner told dpa he would “clearly” have wished Güntzler to accept, citing motorway, port and waterway projects in the state, but that he understood the personal reasons. Güntzler stayed a Bundestag member and the group’s finance-policy spokesman.

## Personal life

### Family

Güntzler's Bundestag biography, drawn from his own declaration, lists him as Evangelical Lutheran, married and the father of two children. He met his wife, Wibke, in the Young Union in Göttingen, and by 2013 the couple were living in the Nikolausberg district with their sons, Jan and Alexander. In July 2026 the *Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine* again described him as living there with his family. A profile published in October 2024 by the Sepp Herberger foundation of the German Football Association named both sons as adults who, like their father, referee and are members of FC Bayern Munich. He grew up in Groden, a district of Cuxhaven, where his parents, both teachers, lived beside a school sports ground; in 2021 he said that he was still a member of the club there and that a younger sister chaired it.

### Football and voluntary commitments

He took up football in the 1970s and has played, coached youth teams and refereed. In 2021 he told the *HNA* that he was officiating again, sometimes with both sons, and that he played for a local recreational side and for the cross-party team FC Bundestag. A 2024 profile for the Herberger foundation described youth coaching at Grodener SV and the chairmanship of Nikolausberger SC, and recorded that he still assisted in the Lower Saxony Landesliga and had previously run the line up to the old amateur Oberliga. He called refereeing a "school for life".

On 25 June 2025 FC Bundestag unanimously re-elected him captain, a post he had held from 2019 to 2021 and which by custom goes to the largest parliamentary group; he succeeded [Mahmut Özdemir](/people/mahmut-ozdemir) of the SPD. In July 2026 the *HNA* described him as a defender and captain who regularly played with deputies from other parties. In 2013 he said he had been a Bayern member for more than twenty years and also followed Hannover 96. In 2024 he traced that support to the 1974 World Cup and to Sepp Maier, and said that he and both sons were still members. He also belongs to the Freunde der Nationalmannschaft, whose donations support the Herberger foundation.

Apart from his professional bodies, the Bundestag register lists unpaid posts: the supervisory board of the Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, the board of the Göttinger Händel-Gesellschaft, the advisory board of [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) musa, and trusteeships at Museum Friedland, at two Göttingen institutes of the [Max Planck Society](/organizations/max-planck-society), at [Special Olympics](/organizations/special-olympics) in Lower Saxony, at the Arwed Löseke university foundation in Hildesheim, and at two foundations of the University Medical Center of the University of Göttingen. The same disclosure records a paid seat on the board of Sparkasse Göttingen.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/fritz-guntzler