Grant Hendrik Tonne

Grant Hendrik Tonne (born 22 June 1976 in Bad Oeynhausen) is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Since 20 May 2025 he has been Minister for the Economy, Transport and Building (Minister für Wirtschaft, Verkehr und Bauen) in the government of Lower Saxony. On that day the Landtag of Lower Saxony elected Olaf Lies to succeed Stephan Weil as minister-president, and Tonne, until then chair of the SPD parliamentary group, entered the cabinet in the portfolio Lies left.

He passed the Abitur in Petershagen in 1995 and studied law at the University of Bremen, taking the first state examination in 2000. From 2000 to 2003 he was a research assistant at the university; he completed his legal clerkship in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Celle in 2007 and then practised as a self-employed lawyer in Stolzenau, from 2007 to 2017 and again from 2022 to 2025, with the practice suspended while he held ministerial office. He joined the SPD in 1996. From 2006 to 2018 he was honorary mayor of the municipality of Leese, in the district of Nienburg/Weser, where he still lives with his wife and four children. The Landtag records him as a member from 26 February 2008 to 24 October 2017 and again from 23 April 2020, for constituency 38, Nienburg/Schaumburg.

At the October 2017 state election he lost that constituency for the third consecutive time and, because the SPD won many direct seats, did not return on the state list. Weil nevertheless made him education minister (Kultusminister) in the coalition of the SPD and the Christian Democratic Union; he held the office from November 2017 to November 2022. NDR later treated the introduction of fee-free kindergarten as the decision most closely associated with the tenure, and reported that teacher shortages and other structural problems in the schools were not removed. He was a deputy member of the German Bundesrat from 22 November 2017 to 8 November 2022.

He was parliamentary business manager of the SPD Landtag group from 2013 to 2017 and its chair from November 2022 until May 2025, when he gave up the chair to join the Lies cabinet. Since 20 May 2025 he has again been a deputy member of the Bundesrat, sitting on its committees for transport, economic affairs, and urban development, housing and regional planning, and in the conferences of the state ministers for transport and for economic affairs.

The Bundesrat lists him as evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of four children. Since October 2020 he has chaired the Lower Saxony branch of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German war-graves commission, and since November 2024 he has been a member of the synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Grant Hendrik Tonne was born on 22 June 1976 in Bad Oeynhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia, the son of Hans-Heinrich Tonne and Elke Tonne-Jork, and grew up with two siblings in Leese, in the district of Nienburg/Weser in Lower Saxony. He is Evangelical Lutheran (evangelisch-lutherisch), is married and has four children, and has continued to live in Leese with his wife and children.

His mother, Elke Tonne-Jork, chaired the Nienburg sub-district (Unterbezirk) of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) from 1999. She was an ordinary member of the executive of the SPD district (Bezirk) of Hanover from 2001 to 2005 and a deputy chair of that district from 2005, confirmed in 2007 with 178 of 194 votes and again in 2013 with 174 of 201. A brother of Tonne's later became active in local politics.

Tonne spent his school years in Petershagen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and in 1995 passed the Abitur at the Gymnasium Petershagen. In a 2023 interview he called that time at school "a nice time". In 2018 he said that in the ninth grade he had changed his attitude to school, coming to see learning as worthwhile rather than irritating, and that he had taken what he described as an ordinary Abitur with a grade of 2.5.

Legal studies and academic work

Tonne later said that he had wanted to become a teacher, possibly in mathematics or the natural sciences, but that the chances of being hired were very poor at the time, so he trained as a lawyer instead. From 1995 to 2000 he studied law at the University of Bremen (Universität Bremen) and in 2000 passed the first state examination in law (Erstes Juristisches Staatsexamen).

From 2000 to 2003 he was an academic assistant (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) in criminal law and criminal procedure (Straf- und Strafprozessrecht) at the same university. From 2005 to 2007 he completed the legal clerkship (Referendariat) in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Celle (Oberlandesgericht Celle) and in 2007 passed the second state examination in law (Zweites Juristisches Staatsexamen).

Legal career

Before he was admitted, Tonne was a research assistant in criminal law and criminal procedure at the University of Bremen from 2000 to 2003. From 2005 to 2007 he completed the Referendariat in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Celle, and in 2007 he passed the second state law examination there.

Practice in Stolzenau

In April 2007 he began work as a self-employed lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) at Heuvemann und Stolte in Stolzenau, in the Nienburg/Weser area of Lower Saxony. The office, Kanzlei Heuvemann & Stolte, is at Sünkenberg 33, 31592 Stolzenau/Weser, and names Detlev Heuvemann and Bettina Stolte alongside him. Its legal notice identifies the Rechtsanwaltskammer Celle as the competent bar association.

The state curriculum vitae lists him as a lawyer in Stolzenau in 2007–2017 and again in 2022–2025, without clients or proceedings. A biography of the Lower Saxony Social Democratic Party of Germany says the practice focused on criminal law and the law of administrative fines (Straf- und Bußgeldrecht) and on administrative and social law. An April 2025 NDR profile described him as a jurist who had practiced independently in Stolzenau until 2017, and did not mention the later resumption. No published account identifies individual cases.

The work overlapped his seat in the Landtag of Lower Saxony. The parliament's register of paid activities beside the mandate lists "Rechtsanwalt, Stolzenau" until May 2025, and his member page gives his profession as lawyer.

Interruptions for public office

Ministerial office, unlike the parliamentary mandate, bars another profession. Article 34 of the Lower Saxony constitution provides that members of the state government may not hold another salaried office, carry on a trade or a profession, or belong to the management or supervisory board of a profit-making enterprise, unless the government allows an exception and informs the Landtag.

The SPD biography states that the practice rested from 2017 to 2022 while he was minister of education (Kultusminister) and resumed in December 2022. The state curriculum vitae shows the same gap for the education ministry and a second period in Stolzenau in 2022–2025, when he also chaired the SPD group in the Landtag.

On 20 May 2025 the Landtag confirmed the new state government and the ministers took the constitutional oath; Tonne was appointed Minister for the Economy, Transport and Building. The Landtag disclosure closes the Stolzenau practice in May 2025. The firm's website still lists him as a lawyer but states that he is not exercising the profession for the time being, citing Article 34.

Local politics

Council and mayoralty in Leese

Grant Hendrik Tonne’s local career was based in Leese, a member municipality of the Samtgemeinde Mittelweser in the district of Nienburg/Weser, Lower Saxony. Mittelweser, a Samtgemeinde that administers tasks for its members, was formed on 1 November 2011 by the merger of the former Samtgemeinde Landesbergen with Stolzenau. Its members are Estorf, Husum, Landesbergen, Leese and Stolzenau; its offices are in Stolzenau, and it puts its population at about 16,000. Tonne joined the SPD in 1996 and sat on the Leese council until 2021, and from 2001 to 2018 on the Samtgemeinderat of Landesbergen, later Mittelweser. The Leese council elected him honorary mayor in 2006; the Bundesrat biography and the state curriculum vitae both end that office in 2018.

In a member municipality the mayor is not a full-time chief executive. Under the Lower Saxony municipal constitution the council, at its first meeting, elects the mayor from its own members for the council term. The mayor serves honorarily, becomes an honorary civil servant on accepting election, chairs the council, and continues after the term until a successor is chosen. NDR has reported that honorary mayors lead about two-thirds of the state’s municipalities, the local mayors of 653 member municipalities, and are residents’ first point of contact. Where administration has passed to the Samtgemeinde the role is largely representative; some mayors still handle tasks such as grant applications. NDR put typical allowances at 150 to 600 euro gross a month, set locally, and cited surveys placing the average time at about 15 hours a week.

After Leese’s food shop closed in 2013, the council called a public meeting on local supply. A survey with a 23 percent return found that about 80 percent of respondents wanted better provision, and that about 40,000 euro in share subscriptions would be needed. On 4 March 2014 the Kreiszeitung reported a unanimous decision to proceed, after Tonne told a residents’ gathering he expected that result. By 18 September 2014 the association Dorfladen Leese had legal capacity. Tonne, a board member, said the shop in the former Leeser Treff on Stolzenauer Straße was to combine a small supermarket with an internet café, a municipal office and a meeting place, and that its profitability was still unproven.

County politics in Nienburg

From 2001 to 2021 Tonne was a member of the Kreistag of Nienburg/Weser. On 16 November 2017, reporting that he was to become Lower Saxony’s education minister (Kultusminister), the Kreiszeitung described him as a Leese councillor since 1996, honorary mayor since 2006 and deputy Landrat since 2011. Official biographies disagree on the end date. The state government lists “stellvertretender Landrat Kreistag Nienburg” for 2011–2017, the year he entered the cabinet. The Bundesrat biography dates the same office from 2011 to 2018.

Resignation as mayor

On 22 June 2018 Tonne told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he was leaving the Leese mayoralty after twelve years. The past months, he said, had shown that the ministerial job and the mayoralty could not be combined, and that too many important tasks in Leese could not be done on the side. He called the decision right in substance and personally painful. Die Harke had reported it first.

He resigned at the council meeting on the evening of 26 June 2018, held at the Hotel Pirandello. Die Harke quoted him as saying the step had not been easy, and described the resignation as the last of his honorary offices. The paper wrote that after his swearing-in as Kultusminister on 22 November 2017 he had still hoped to keep the deputy Landrat post, the deputy mayoralty of the Samtgemeinde, and the Leese mayoralty. The council unanimously elected his deputy, Henning Olthage (SPD), as mayor, and unanimously elected Ernst-Johannes Kasten (SPD) as deputy mayor. Olthage said he would take the office gladly and with all his heart. The Bundesrat biography records that his Samtgemeinde council seat ended in 2018, while he remained on the Leese council and the district council until 2021.

Member of the Landtag

Entry and parliamentary business, 2008–2017

Grant Hendrik Tonne was a member of the state parliament of Lower Saxony, the Landtag of Lower Saxony in Hanover, from 26 February 2008, the start of the 16th electoral period, until 24 October 2017, the end of the 17th. In the elections of 2008 and 2013 he stood for the Social Democratic Party of Germany in constituency 39, Nienburg/Schaumburg, in Nienburg district, and each time lost the direct seat to Karsten Heineking of the Christian Democratic Union.

At the election of 27 January 2008 Heineking received 20,428 first votes (50.1 percent) and Tonne 13,878 (34.1 percent). Turnout was 56.3 percent: 41,417 of 73,525 eligible voters. The state statistical office lists Heineking among the constituency members and Tonne, placed 28th on the SPD state list, among those elected from the list. The SPD held 48 seats in that Landtag.

The pairing was repeated on 20 January 2013. Of 42,086 valid first votes, Heineking took 20,149 (47.9 percent) and Tonne 16,247 (38.6 percent). Turnout was 59.2 percent, with 42,647 ballots cast by 72,038 eligible voters. The constituency electoral committee, meeting on 24 January, declared Heineking elected. Tonne did not hold the direct seat, but his membership continued without interruption, again via the state list, through the 17th period.

On 22 January 2013, two days after the election, the SPD group chose Johanne Modder as its chair and Tonne, a 36-year-old lawyer from Leese, as parliamentary business manager (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) in succession to her. He received 44 votes, with three against and one abstention. He remained business manager from 2013 until 2017.

The 2017 defeat and return in 2020

The election of 15 October 2017 was closer. In constituency 39 the final state table gives Heineking 20,254 first votes (45.4 percent) and Tonne 19,230 (43.1 percent), a margin of 1,024 votes, on a turnout of 63.7 percent. The same totals appear in the district compilation as 45.42 percent and 43.13 percent. Bernd Leweke of the Free Democratic Party received 2,848 first votes, Torben Franz of Die Linke 1,797, and Martina Broschei of the Pirate Party 462.

Statewide the SPD won 55 of 87 constituencies and no seats from its list. Those 55 direct seats were one more than the 54 due on second votes, so one overhang seat enlarged the Landtag from a minimum of 135 to 137 members, and the SPD list was not used to fill seats. Tonne was ninth on the list the party adopted on 3 September 2017. Without a constituency or a list seat, his membership ended on 24 October 2017.

He nevertheless entered the second cabinet of Minister-President Stephan Weil. Reporting on 17 November 2017, NDR said Weil was expected to be re-elected on 22 November and that Tonne, until then the SPD group's parliamentary business manager, would become minister of education after missing re-election to the Landtag. The Landtag dates that portfolio from November 2017 to November 2022, so for more than two years he held it without a seat.

The seat returned before the education term ended. Dirk Adomat, the SPD deputy directly elected for Hameln/Rinteln, left parliament to become Landrat of Hameln-Pyrmont. At the 75th sitting, on 23 April 2020, the Landtag unanimously recorded the loss of Adomat's mandate (Drucksache 18/6284). President Gabriele Andretta stated that, under section 38 of the Niedersächsisches Landeswahlgesetz, the state returning officer had determined that the vacant seat passed to Tonne, who had agreed to take it as successor (Nachrücker). She welcomed him as a deputy; he was already education minister.

Direct mandate in 2022

On 9 October 2022 Tonne won a constituency for the first time. In constituency 38, Nienburg/Schaumburg, the constituency committee on 13 October recorded 14,160 first votes for him and 13,612 for Heinrich Kruse of the CDU. That was 35.7 percent and 34.3 percent of 39,679 valid first votes, a margin of 548. Turnout was 60.5 percent: 40,099 of 66,333 eligible voters. Lutz Harald Knoblich of the Alternative for Germany received 4,121 first votes (10.4 percent) and Burkhard Bauer of Alliance 90/The Greens 4,017 (10.1 percent). Anton van den Born (FDP) took 1,504, Sebastian Kuhlmann (Die Linke) 850, Gabriele Tautz of the Animal Protection Party 737, and Matthias Heine of dieBasis 678. Second votes in the constituency were 13,678 for the SPD (34.4 percent) and 12,522 for the CDU (31.5 percent). The result was published on 14 October 2022, and the committee declared Tonne elected.

He has continued to sit for constituency 38, including in the 19th electoral period. From November 2022 to May 2025 he was chair of the SPD Landtag group.

Minister of Education

Grant Hendrik Tonne was Minister of Education (Kultusminister) of Lower Saxony from 22 November 2017 to 8 November 2022 in Minister-President Stephan Weil's second cabinet, a coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. He left office on 8 November 2022, when Julia Willie Hamburg of Alliance 90/The Greens became education minister and deputy minister-president.

Appointment outside the Landtag

At the election of 15 October 2017 Tonne lost the constituency of Nienburg/Schaumburg for the third time. Because the SPD won many direct seats, the state list did not return him either, ending a seat in the Landtag of Lower Saxony held since 2008. Weil still appointed him education minister. The cabinet was sworn in on 22 November 2017; Tonne had been the SPD group's parliamentary business manager. He returned to the Landtag in 2020. From 22 November 2017 to 8 November 2022 he was a deputy member of the Bundesrat for Lower Saxony.

Early-childhood education and fee-free kindergarten

Abolishing kindergarten fees was a central coalition promise. On 9 March 2018 the state and the municipal associations agreed that, from 1 August 2018, care from age three until school entry would be free for up to eight hours a day. Lost fees were to be offset by raising the state subsidy for kindergarten staff from 20 percent to 55 percent in 2018/19 and by one point a year to 58 percent, with the state financing the rise to 55 percent itself, up to 45 million euros a year more than first offered. The Landtag passed the amendment on 20 June 2018, limiting the waiver to eight hours on five days a week.

Independent providers, more than two-thirds of centres, said the grant did not replace the fees. In September 2018 the Niedersächsischer Städtetag wrote that some were near insolvency: a Waldorf kindergarten in Wennigsen reported a monthly gap above 10,000 euros, and Buxtehude and Bad Gandersheim estimated extra annual costs of about 400,000 and 700,000 euros. On 15 November 2018 Tonne told the Landtag that a 48-million-euro federal hardship fund, tied to the Gute-Kita-Gesetz, had always been payable after the kindergarten year. The Greens and the Free Democratic Party said municipalities were left with the cost, and the Städtetag doubted the federal money could be used for the waiver.

Teacher supply, inclusion and the gymnasium

"Unterrichtsversorgung" is the share of calculated teacher hours—ordinary lessons plus inclusion, all-day school and language support—that can be staffed. Short-notice illness is not included. On 23 August 2018 the ministry reported 99.4 percent statewide and 102.2 percent at the Gymnasium. Horst Audritz of the Philologenverband said the averages concealed nine shortage subjects and heavy overtime.

The rate then fell. On 16 September 2021 it was 97.4 percent, down 1.6 points and the lowest since August 2002. Tonne called that politically and personally unsatisfactory. He cited the COVID-19 pandemic, about 14,000 hours lost to family leave, more pupils, and inclusion and all-day demand, which he would not cut. By February 2022, 961 teachers had been hired against 670 leavers, about 80 percent of 1,200 advertised posts. In August he forecast 98.5 percent, while warning that about 32,000 extra pupils, including some 15,000 from Ukraine, made the estimate unusually uncertain. After the election the ministry told the FDP that schools were covering 96.6 percent. Spokesman Björn Försterling called the gap with the 98.5 percent forecast an admission of failure. The ministry said an early forecast, before trainee hours and corrections, was not the census. The validated figure for 8 September 2022, published under Hamburg in February 2023, was 96.3 percent. The ministry blamed more than 25,000 extra pupils, absences for pregnancy, long illness and family part-time work, inclusion, all-day schooling and remaining COVID relief hours for primary heads. Hamburg said there was nothing to gloss over.

Tonne denied that inclusive schooling had failed. In March 2019 he said special-education teachers could, from the next year, be employed at every general school. The Landkreistag said the conditions were not in place. Counties and the Hanover region were employing 6,870 classroom assistants. The teachers' association VNL said too few special-education teachers existed for the change to help, and the Philologenverband said staff and rooms were short and that moving those teachers into mainstream schools implied the end of the Förderschulen. In September 2022, as schools for learning difficulties took fifth-graders for the last time, he called inclusion in every year group "ein hohes Gut" and said more than 60,000 teachers had trained for it. Those schools had fallen from 175 in 2012 to 55; 4,434 pupils remained in 2021/22. The CDU and the FDP opposed the rundown.

The longer Gymnasium was not his decision. Predecessor Frauke Heiligenstadt announced that a new upper-secondary regulation had completed the return to an Abitur after 13 school years, the first full statewide reversal in Germany, with the first examinations after nine Gymnasium years set for spring 2021. That cohort was examined while Tonne was minister.

Schools during the COVID-19 pandemic

On 13 March 2020 he announced that schools and kindergartens would close until the Easter holidays and that pupils would not yet be set work or online lessons. From 16 March every school was shut, with Abitur classes due back on 15 April, kindergartens closed until 18 April, and emergency care up to year 8 for children of essential workers.

The Abitur was postponed rather than cancelled. Written papers were to start on 11 May 2020, about three weeks late. In 2021 only material actually taught was examined, fourth-semester content was excluded, and papers ran from 19 April to 11 May under masks, distancing and fixed routes. Tonne argued that a reduced examination, unlike none, avoided a "Corona-Makel" on the certificate. His letters to families drew complaints: parents resented home learning, head teachers the job of assembling test kits, and teachers often learned on Friday what would apply on Monday, after federal-state meetings. On 2 September 2022 he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that keeping primary schools open had been right, but that the state should have been bolder and extended the same approach to younger secondary years. Testing in 2021, he said, should have begun sooner, which would have kept schools open; he blamed the federal government for delivering tests late.

School digitalization

The 2019 DigitalPakt, five billion euros from the federal government and 500 million from the states, paid for networks, school Wi-Fi and digital boards. By September 2021 Lower Saxony had paid out 30.2 million euros, approved a further 80 million, provided about 52 million for pupils' laptops and requested about 25 million for teachers' devices, from more than 500 million available to the state. Spending lagged. Of about 465 million euros, just over 164 million had been approved by the end of January 2022 and about 179 million applied for, but only about 45.8 million paid out. A pre-pandemic target of committing half by the end of 2021 was missed; the government cited outbreaks, missing hardware and too few contractors.

SPD parliamentary leadership

Election as group chair

On 1 November 2022 in Hanover, a week before the constituent sitting of the 19th Landtag of Lower Saxony, the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) elected Grant Hendrik Tonne unanimously as its chair. He succeeded Johanne Modder, chair since 2013, who had already said she would leave state politics. The same day Stephan Weil released him as education minister, and social-affairs minister Daniela Behrens ran that ministry until the new cabinet. Tonne said the chairmanship meant covering the whole of policy rather than a single field.

After the election of 9 October 2022 the SPD held 57 of 146 seats, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (47), Alliance 90/The Greens (24) and the Alternative for Germany (18). On 8 November the Landtag re-elected Weil. In that cabinet Julia Willie Hamburg of the Greens became deputy minister-president and education minister, and Olaf Lies minister for the economy, building, transport and digitalization.

Role alongside the Lies–Hamburg coalition

Until May 2025 the government was still Weil's, with Hamburg as deputy and education minister and Lies in the economy portfolio. NDR reported in April 2025 that people close to the government called Tonne a hinge between the cabinet and the deputies.

In the budget debate of 12 December 2023 he called the 2024 plan—about €42.4 billion, as Green group chair Detlev Schulz-Hendel said in the same sitting—"a budget of possibilities, a budget of responsibility and also a budget of progress." He dismissed a CDU bid to take €357 million from the general reserve as empty and short-sighted, after CDU group chair Sebastian Lechner had accused the coalition of standstill, including on the A 20 and A 39. On 25 February 2025, after a historically poor federal result, the group confirmed Tonne with 100 percent of the vote. Tonne said the SPD should make Lower Saxony better in the second half of the term.

Weil announced on 1 April 2025 that he would resign in May as minister-president and state party leader, citing age, pressure and sleep problems despite having pledged to serve out the term. He named Lies for both posts, with a congress on 16 May and a Landtag vote on 20 May, and the SPD group backed the handover. Tonne thanked Weil for his commitment "including in very hard times" and called Lies a "team player." Lechner called the departure a "clear breach of word" and a tactical reaction to the federal result; CDU parliamentary manager Carina Hermann demanded a new state election.

The posts his departure opened were more contested inside the SPD: NDR reported that party circles favoured Tonne for the economy ministry, partly because of a long friendship with Lies. For the chair, Stefan Politze was described as preferred to Claudia Schüßler and parliamentary manager Wiard Siebels, who said he was not available. Members also told NDR the debate was not quiet, that too few women were in line for senior office, and that the Hanover district resisted dropping Europe minister Wiebke Osigus while a man entered the cabinet.

Departure for the cabinet in 2025

On 19 May 2025 the group elected Politze, a Hanover deputy since 2008 and a deputy chair since 2017, with 89 percent of the vote, and chose Schüßler as a new deputy chair. Tonne was to take the economy ministry from Lies if, as the SPD and the Greens planned, Lies became minister-president the next day.

On 20 May Lies, the only candidate, received 80 votes, above the 74 required, from 144 ballots; one Green member was excused and one ballot was invalid. A special SPD congress had endorsed him unanimously the week before, and the red–green side held 81 of 146 seats. Tonne was sworn in as his successor in the economy portfolio, and digitalization moved from that department to the interior ministry. Melanie Walter became minister for Europe and regional development, but that ministry was folded into the state chancellery and Osigus left the cabinet. Lies said he would continue Weil's course at the head of the coalition, and Green group chair Anne Kura told NDR Info that cooperation with him should continue.

Minister for the Economy, Transport and Building

Appointment under Olaf Lies

On 20 May 2025 the Landtag of Lower Saxony elected Olaf Lies of the Social Democratic Party of Germany minister-president with 80 votes, after Stephan Weil resigned. The same sitting swore in a revised red-green cabinet in which Tonne succeeded Lies as minister for the economy, transport and building, while digitalization moved to the interior ministry.

From that day he was again a deputy German Bundesrat member for Lower Saxony, as from 22 November 2017 to 8 November 2022, on the committees for transport, economic affairs, and urban development, housing and spatial planning. He is listed for the state at the Conference of Economics Ministers and has spoken at the Conference of Transport Ministers.

Economic and industrial policy

In January 2025 Norddeutsche Landesbank had forecast a 0.1 percent fall in real output, led by the motor industry. The State Statistical Office later put 2025 real gross domestic product 0.7 percent above 2024, with nominal output about 399 billion euros; services rose and manufacturing was flat.

In September 2025, after crude-steel output fell about 12 percent in the first half of the year, Tonne asked for an EU tariff quota against excessive imports and an industrial electricity price of at most three to six cents per kilowatt-hour, putting the state's steel industry at about 10,000 employees and 7.2 million tonnes a year. By December the federal government was preparing a subsidized price from 1 January 2026 through 2028 for industries such as steel and chemicals, costed in draft at more than three billion euros. He told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that three years was too short, that five to six cents was required, and that further climate-investment conditions could deter firms; he called the price existential because jobs were being lost every month, and urged federal economy minister Katherina Reiche to move faster on hydrogen.

The state holds 20 percent of Volkswagen. In July 2026, as the group discussed further cuts and reported second-quarter sales down 8.6 percent, especially in China, Tonne called the management's treatment of employees indecent and said the board owed them a coherent concept rather than talk of closures.

Transport, rail and ports

On 16 and 18 June 2025 Tonne was elected chair of the supervisory boards of JadeWeserPort Realisierungs GmbH & Co. KG and of Niedersachsen Ports, succeeding Lies in both. Seaports of Niedersachsen reported that the state's nine seaports handled about 60.5 million tonnes in 2025, up 9 percent, and that the container terminal at Wilhelmshaven's JadeWeserPort handled about 1.47 million TEU, up 74 percent.

In September 2025 he demanded binding federal finance for the A20, A39, A26 and A33. NDR reported that Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil then agreed plan-approved northern motorways should be financed, while the finance ministry said the federal transport minister still had to set priorities; BUND continued its case against the A39.

From early October 2026 Deutsche Bahn began renewing the Lehrte–Berlin line through December 2027, adding about 60 to 80 minutes between Hanover and Berlin. The S4 to Hildesheim, about 2.5 million passengers a year, was dropped for the whole 2027 timetable, without replacement buses. Tonne told the transport ministers that the work must not follow presentation concepts and that losing the S4 was unacceptable unless the line was afterwards clearly more reliable.

On the evening of 8 October 2026 the Bundestag voted 414 to 132 for an additional Hanover–Hamburg line, along the A7 and B3 and meant to save about 18 minutes but not expected until around mid-century, plus 250 million euros for the existing route by 2034. Tonne told NDR that Lower Saxony had not demanded only Alpha-E, the upgrade of existing tracks agreed with lineside communities about a decade earlier, but that rural areas could not wait 25 years and that new stations and extra regional trains would fall to municipalities and the state without more federal money.

On 22 September 2026 Lower Saxony and Saarland tabled Bundesrat Drucksache 544/26, asking the federal government to concentrate support for autonomous and remotely operated driving on a few model regions in public transport and logistics, covering fleets, control centers and temporary operating costs rather than scattered pilots. The motion was still in committee on 16 October 2026, when the Bundesrat record lists a speech by Tonne on that item.

Housing and building regulation

In 2024 and 2025 the red-green government simplified the building code: faster permits, easier attic conversions and extensions, no parking rule for new homes, shorter boundary distances and more permit-free work. Tonne said loft conversions could add homes without new permissions; housing companies put a typical underground parking space at about 40,000 euros. Completions still fell to 15,400 homes in 2025, down 20 percent, though permits rose in the first quarter of 2026.

In an August 2026 text for the Institute for Building Research and insurer VHV, Tonne called the approach "less is more": rules should cover life, health, fire safety and structural stability, and "Building Type E" — simple or experimental building — needed contract-law changes so that leaving costly comfort standards would not automatically mean liability. On 27 October 2026, at the Alliance for Affordable Housing in Hanover, he welcomed a federal draft from justice minister Stefanie Hubig and building minister Verena Hubertz that would let parties opt into such a standard while safety, fire protection, stability, ventilation and light stayed binding. The ministries estimated 10 to 15 percent lower costs from pilots; Tonne called the draft an important signal that still needed swift passage and legal certainty.

Party offices

Jusos and the Nienburg SPD

Tonne has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1996. In the same year he joined the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos), formally the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Jungsozialistinnen und Jungsozialisten, and he chaired the Juso sub-district for Nienburg/Weser from 1999 to 2002 and again from 2006 to 2007.

In the SPD an Unterbezirk is the level between the local branches and a Bezirk, which the organizational statute calls the basis of the party; where a state has more than one Bezirk, as Lower Saxony does, those Bezirke may form the state association and remain responsible for giving it the means to work. The Lower Saxony SPD states that Tonne has sat on the executive of the Nienburg Unterbezirk since 1999, chairing it from 2017 to 2019, and that he has belonged since 2001 to the Sozialdemokratische Gemeinschaft für Kommunalpolitik (SGK). A May 2025 profile in the Schaumburger Nachrichten also dated his place on that executive from 1999, and noted that his mother, Elke Tonne-Jork, had long chaired the same Unterbezirk.

District and state leadership

The state-party biography dates membership of the Lower Saxony Landesvorstand from 2012 and of the executive of SPD-Bezirk Hannover from 2011. The Bezirk’s own published lists do not include him for 2011 or 2013. They name him as an ordinary member (Beisitzer) in 2015, 2016 and 2017, leave him off the 2021 executive chaired by Matthias Miersch, and in 2023 list him as a deputy chair, with Svenja Stadler and Karola Margraf, still under Miersch.

On 27 September 2025 the ordinary Bezirksparteitag met at the Karriere-Campus in Hanover and voted to install two equal chairs for the first time. Miersch, chair of the SPD group in the Bundestag, did not stand after six years, and neither successor faced an opponent. Stadler, from the district of Harburg, received 188 yes votes and 26 no votes, 87.85 percent of 214 ballots. Tonne, from Nienburg, received 163 yes votes, 24 no votes and 19 abstentions, 79.13 percent of 206 ballots. The same meeting elected Melanie Walter and Karola Margraf as deputy chairs and Maximilian Schmidt of Celle as treasurer.

Rundblick Niedersachsen called SPD-Bezirk Hannover the largest SPD Bezirk in the state and wrote that, for the first time since the end of the war, nobody from the Hanover Region would lead it. A district congress elects the executive and the Bezirk’s delegates to the federal and state party congresses; subdivisions are also where members take part in forming party policy. The 2025 congress heard Federal Defence Minister Boris Pistorius and Minister-President Olaf Lies, and the Harburg SPD reported resolutions against antisemitism, in solidarity with the Turkish opposition, and in support of Ukraine.

Civic and church roles

Tonne is evangelical Lutheran and lives in Leese, in the district of Nienburg. Beside offices for the Social Democratic Party of Germany he has held unpaid roles in war-graves work and on the synod of the Hanoverian Lutheran church. The biography of the Landtag of Lower Saxony also names him chair of the Heimatverein Leese; the association's legal notice names Holger Nürge as first chair.

War graves and remembrance

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission), founded in 1919, maintains war graves for the federal government and runs youth, school and educational work. At Tonne's election the Lower Saxony branch put that task at 832 cemeteries in 46 countries and about 2.8 million war dead. The Volkstrauertag, first held in 1922 on the association's initiative, is the national day of mourning. He joined in 2008 and, on 9 October 2020, while education minister, was elected unanimously in Hanover as Landesvorsitzender by delegates of the state executive and the district associations, succeeding Axel Saipa, who had resigned. The post is honorary.

On Volkstrauertag 2020 he told the Kreiszeitung that he had taken the chair because the Volksbund stood for peace and for carrying remembrance into the present. Memorials to the war dead should be explained rather than removed, he said, shifting a heroes' commemoration toward youth work and individual histories of the dead, including where perpetrator and victim were the same person. In Nienburg, he said, a monument to the fallen had been annotated to deny that such a death was heroic or patriotic, beside a memorial to all victims of National Socialism. He wanted the ceremonies changed, not dropped—his deputy had included refugees at one in Osnabrück—and opposed drawing a line under the past. In March 2025 the Landtag announced that he and its president, Hanna Naber, would honour collectors funding cemetery care and education; an NDR profile that April still named him state chair.

The Hanover synod

On 8 November 2024 the Evangelisch-lutherische Landeskirche Hannovers announced that Tonne would enter its Landessynode, the church parliament, in the seat left by Thela Wernstedt, a physician and former SPD member of the Landtag whom the church identified as president of the Klosterkammer Hannover. He was one of twelve members appointed by the church leadership, not one of 66 elected members, in a synod the church counted at 79.

The church is a Landeskirche, a regional Protestant church. It reported about 1,200 congregations and about 2.2 million members from the district of Göttingen to the North Sea, about three quarters of Lower Saxony. The synod passes church laws, adopts the budget and elects the bishop, and usually meets twice a year; the sitting then fixed was 26–29 November 2024 at the Henriettenstift in Hanover.

On 27 January 2026 the personnel committee appointed him again to the 27th Landessynode, a six-year term from 1 January 2026.

Reception

Assessments of the education ministry

An April 2025 profile by Norddeutscher Rundfunk called Tonne a hard-working education minister in Lower Saxony who talked to teacher unions, unlike predecessors often in conflict with them, but said teacher supply, inclusion and pandemic schooling were not put right from 2017 to 2022.

Unterrichtsversorgung — lesson hours covered by available teachers, excluding short-term sick leave — was 96.3 percent on 8 September 2022, down from 97.4 percent and the lowest reading in about twenty years. Successor Julia Willie Hamburg published the figure in February 2023, citing more pupils, pregnancy and part-time absences, and demand from inclusion and all-day schooling, with Hauptschulen and Förderschulen worst affected.

The opposition treated those averages as too favourable. In November 2022 Björn Försterling, education spokesman of the Free Democratic Party in the Landtag, called a ministry answer an “Offenbarungseid”: Tonne had spoken of 98.5 percent at the start of the year, against 96.6 percent on the reference date, still excluding illness and training. Försterling said he had either not known the figure or not wanted it known before the election.

On inclusion under staffing limits, Franz-Josef Meyer, state chair of the Verband Bildung und Erziehung, told a Cloppenburg conference in February 2019 that inclusive schooling was being “creepingly dismantled,” with disadvantages “not to be made good” for a generation of pupils, and demanded more special-education staff. Tonne called inclusion unfinished and apologised for remarking that primary teachers were not working enough.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NDR reported parental anger over home schooling, head teachers’ irritation at assembling test kits, and rules that teachers often learned too late, though changes followed federal–state talks. In September 2022 he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that the state “could well have been braver” about younger secondary years, and that testing in 2021 “could indeed have come faster and earlier,” while blaming late federal deliveries.

Standing in the party and the region

In Nienburg/Schaumburg he lost the direct mandate for a third consecutive time in 2017, with 43.1 percent of the first votes to 45.4 percent for Karsten Heineking of the CDU, and did not return on the state list because the SPD won many constituencies. NDR quoted him calling the result disappointing, and noted that Minister-President Stephan Weil still appointed him Kultusminister for a department long regarded as unpopular. The lost seat was reported as background, not as a scandal.

On 9 October 2022 he won the seat for the first time, by 14,160 valid first votes to 13,612 for Heinrich Kruse of the CDU, and became chair of the SPD Landtag group.

In 2025, with Olaf Lies designated minister-president, Tonne left that chair to become minister for the economy, transport and building on 20 May. Die Welt found opinion divided amid weak growth and crisis in the car industry. Detlev Schulz-Hendel of Alliance 90/The Greens cited “great political experience and the will to shape” the job. Maike Bielfeldt of the Hanover chamber of commerce, Mehrdad Payandeh of the German Trade Union Confederation and Thorsten Gröger of IG Metall welcomed continuity and attention to investment; Benedikt Hüppe of the employers’ associations said there was no room for a long induction. Critics stressed the lack of an economic portfolio. CDU group leader Sebastian Lechner said Tonne had “already failed as education minister” and had launched no notable economic initiatives. Alternative for Germany group leader Klaus Wichmann called the choice a “Fehlbesetzung,” and FDP general secretary Imke Haake feared more insolvencies than an upswing.