Helge Limburg

Helge Limburg (born 25 October 1982 in Hanover) is a German lawyer and a politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. He has sat in the Bundestag since the 20th electoral term, which held its opening sitting on 26 October 2021, and he took his seat again when the 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025. He is the legal-policy spokesperson of the Green parliamentary group and an ordinary member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own statements, records that he passed the Abitur in 2002 at the Campe-Gymnasium in Holzminden and then did civilian service in outpatient care at the Diakonie station in Bevern-Stadtoldendorf. He studied law at the University of Bremen, concentrating on labour and social law, spent 2005–2006 in Istanbul, and passed the first state law examination in April 2008. In 2017 he completed a Master of Laws at the University of Hagen; the thesis treated the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. The same account lists him as a Lutheran, married, and the father of three children.

Limburg joined the Greens in 2001, sat on the Holzminden district executive from 2001 to 2005, and was spokesperson of the Green Youth in Lower Saxony from March 2006 to October 2007. He was a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony from the 16th electoral term, which opened on 26 February 2008, until 13 October 2021, as spokesperson for legal policy and the domestic intelligence service and, from 2013, as parliamentary managing director and deputy chair of the Green group. While the Social Democrats and Greens governed the state, he took part in drafting a 2016 statute that tightened rules on that service; he described it as a balance of data protection, civil liberties and security interests, while the interior ministry prevailed on allowing observation of suspects from the age of 14.

For the 2021 federal election the Lower Saxony Greens published a state list, still to be confirmed by a postal ballot until 15 June 2021, with Limburg in eighth place, and the Bundestag recorded a constituency candidacy in Wahlkreis 46, Hameln-Pyrmont–Holzminden, together with election via the state list. In that constituency the Greens received 13,259 first votes (10.1 percent) and 17,274 second votes (13.1 percent); Johannes Schraps of the SPD won the seat with 43.2 percent. On 14 December 2024 a state delegate conference in Hanover placed Limburg second on the list for the 2025 election, behind Filiz Polat. He again stood in constituency 46, where the Greens’ first-vote share was 7.2 percent (10,314 votes) and their second-vote share 9.4 percent; Schraps held the seat with 33.0 percent, and Limburg returned on the Lower Saxony list. In the 21st Bundestag he is also an ordinary member of the Richterwahlausschuss and a deputy member of the committees on sport and volunteering and on election scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure, of the Wahlausschuss, and of the Wahlprüfungsausschuss.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Helge Stefan Limburg was born on 25 October 1982 in Hanover. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members’ own information, gives the same date and place and describes him as Evangelical Lutheran. As a small child he moved with his parents to Holzminden, in Lower Saxony, because of a pastorate at the Thomasgemeinde, according to an account published by the district association of Alliance 90/The Greens when it nominated him in November 2020. Reporting in the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine likewise describes him as having grown up in Holzminden as the son of a Protestant pastor. At that nomination he spoke of the town as home and said that his parents were still there.

In 2002 he passed the Abitur at the Campe-Gymnasium in Holzminden. He then performed Zivildienst, civilian service in place of compulsory military service, at the Diakonie station covering Bevern and Stadtoldendorf, in outpatient care. The HNA specifies that the work was ambulatory care of older people.

Legal training

From 2003 he studied law at the University of Bremen, with labour and social law as his focus. The national authority record lists the same course of study and names Bremen and Istanbul among his places of activity. A profile on his own website, archived in 2017, records work in that period as a student assistant to Professor Sieveking at a Bremen institute for German, European and international gender, labour and social law. In 2005/2006 he spent time in Istanbul, in Turkey; press reporting describes the stay as a semester abroad. Published biographies do not name a host faculty.

In April 2008 he passed the first state examination in law. The university’s law faculty awards the degree Diplom-Jurist to those who pass that examination before the judicial examination office in Bremen. The authority file records the degree for him, his 2017 profile listed his occupation as Diplom-Jurist, and the archived Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral term headed the entry “Diplom-Jurist (LL.M.)”. On the university’s account, anyone who wants to work as a judge, lawyer or prosecutor must use the first examination to enter a two-year preparatory service, the Referendariat, and then a second state examination, the route to full qualification for judicial office. No published biography records a second examination or a traineeship. He told the HNA that he had still wanted to become a lawyer when the first examination came, but that he had already stood for the Landtag of Lower Saxony in 2008 and been elected. The authority file dates his membership from 26 February 2008, the day the 16th electoral term opened with its constituent sitting, and the Landtag’s report for that term lists him among the Green members. The Bundestag later recorded his occupation before entering the federal parliament as membership of the Landtag.

Master's degree

In 2017, while he was still a Landtag member, he received a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany’s state distance-learning university. His parliamentary biography gives the subject of the master’s thesis as “Die Europäische Staatsanwaltschaft” (The European Public Prosecutor’s Office), and his website repeats that description. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is the European Union body set up by Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 of 12 October 2017 to investigate and prosecute crimes affecting the Union’s financial interests. The thesis text is not in the university’s public catalogue; the title is known from his self-reported parliamentary biography.

Political beginnings

Local party and Green Youth

Helge Limburg joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2001 and, until 2005, was a member of the party's district executive in Holzminden, in southern Lower Saxony. The same biography, which the Bundestag notes is based on members' own accounts, records him as a member of the state executive of the Green Youth in Lower Saxony (Grüne Jugend Niedersachsen) and as one of its spokespersons from March 2006 to October 2007.

About two weeks before Lower Saxony's 2006 municipal elections, the Nordwest-Zeitung reported a state party congress in Göttingen at which the then 23-year-old law student appeared as Green Youth spokesperson and as the Greens' candidate for mayor of Stadtoldendorf, in the district of Holzminden. He told the roughly 120 delegates that the Titanic had been built by professional naval engineers and Noah's Ark by amateurs, a line the paper said drew applause, at a meeting the state leadership used to push younger candidates.

The list for the January 2008 election to the Landtag of Lower Saxony was drawn up at a state conference in Hitzacker over the weekend of 23–24 June 2007. Under the party statute, half the places had to go to women and one third to newcomers, and 28 women and 24 men were competing for realistic spots on a list aimed at a smaller parliament. The tageszeitung identified Limburg, the Green Youth spokesperson and a 24-year-old law student from Holzminden, as the choice for place 6, a position it described as reserved for candidates who had not previously sat in the Landtag. In his application speech he called the Greens "the anti-Nazi party" and said he wanted politics to be more attractive to young people; six of the first 15 candidates were under 40.

Student politics

The party offices coincided with law studies at the University of Bremen, which he began in 2003 with a concentration in labour and social law, and with a stay in Istanbul in 2005/06. In June 2005, during those studies, a list called the CampusGrünen stood for the first time in elections to the university student council and won one of 25 seats; 2,351 students voted, about 11 percent of those eligible, and the report named no candidates on the list. The short biographies Limburg later gave the Bundestag, and the profile he published while a state deputy, list the Holzminden executive and the Green Youth spokespersonship but not a student-council seat or the founding of a Bremen campus group. Under the Landtag's rules on outside interests he disclosed that, in the two years before the mandate, his occupation had been student assistant to Prof. Dr. Sieveking at the Bremen Institute for German, European and International Gender, Labour and Social Law.

In the nominations the state returning officer released in December 2007 he was still entered as a student living in Holzminden: sixth on the Green state list, and direct candidate in constituency 40, Nienburg-Nord, not in Holzminden, where Christian Meyer was the Green constituency candidate. On 27 January 2008 the Greens received 8.0 percent of the second votes (274,221) and 12 seats, all allocated from the state list, a result that included place 6. In Nienburg-Nord the returning officer's figures, published the next day and labelled preliminary, credited him with 2,124 first votes (5.8 percent); the Greens' second-vote share there was 7.4 percent (2,713 votes), turnout was 54.1 percent, and the constituency seat went to Johann-Heinrich Ahlers of the Christian Democratic Union.

Lower Saxony Landtag

Elections and mandates

Helge Limburg was a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, the state parliament of Lower Saxony, for Alliance 90/The Greens throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th electoral terms. The 16th term opened on 26 February 2008; the Landtag recorded the loss of his seat on 13 October 2021.

At the state election of 27 January 2008 the Greens won 274,221 second votes, 8.0 percent, and 12 of 152 seats, all from the state list. Limburg, registered as a student living in Holzminden and born in 1982, stood sixth on that list and was the Green candidate in constituency 40, Nienburg-Nord. Johann-Heinrich Ahlers of the Christian Democratic Union won the direct seat with 47.2 percent of the first votes; Limburg, the only Green candidate, received 2,125 (5.8 percent), while the Greens took 7.4 percent of the second votes there. On the term's first day the Landtag re-elected Christian Wulff (CDU) minister-president by 81 votes to 70, the size of the combined CDU and Free Democratic Party benches, leaving the Greens in opposition. Limburg later said he had been 25 when he arrived.

On 20 January 2013 the Greens rose to 489,473 second votes, 13.7 percent, and 20 of 137 seats, again entirely from the list; turnout was 59.4 percent. The returning officer's candidate list gave Helge Stefan Limburg list place 8 and, once more, constituency 40. Ahlers held Nienburg-Nord for the CDU with 45.3 percent. Limburg received 3,725 first votes, 9.9 percent, while the Greens polled 12.5 percent of the second votes in the constituency. The 17th term ran from 19 February 2013 to 14 November 2017. At its opening sitting the Landtag elected Stephan Weil of the Social Democratic Party of Germany minister-president by 69 votes to 68, equal to the SPD's 49 seats plus the Greens' 20, and confirmed a cabinet that included Stefan Wenzel and Christian Meyer, both elected on the Green list.

The election of 15 October 2017 returned the Greens to 334,131 second votes, 8.7 percent, and 12 of 137 seats, all from the list, on a turnout of 63.1 percent. The SPD led with 36.9 percent and 55 seats and the CDU followed with 33.6 percent and 50; the FDP and Alternative for Germany also entered. Limburg was eighth on the Green state list and again the party's candidate in Nienburg-Nord. Frank Schmädeke (CDU) won the constituency with 16,404 first votes (40.2 percent). Limburg received 3,768 (9.2 percent); the Greens' second votes there were 9.4 percent. The 18th term began on 14 November 2017. On 22 November Weil was re-elected by 104 votes to 32, with one abstention, and a new cabinet was confirmed; the Green group said it had lost its place in government and was preparing for opposition.

Roles in the Green group

Limburg's brief in the Green group was legal and constitutional policy and the domestic intelligence service. By 2011 he was being identified in the press as the group's legal-policy spokesperson, and his Bundestag biography, drawn from his own information, lists him as spokesperson for legal policy and the Verfassungsschutz. President Gabriele Andretta said at his departure that he had lately sat on the committees for legal and constitutional affairs, domestic intelligence, petitions and the COVID-19 pandemic, and had chaired the election-review committee; he himself mentioned earlier work on the subcommittee for prisons and offender support.

On 18 February 2013 the 20-member group, meeting in Hanover, elected Anja Piel chair. Limburg, then 30 and described as a qualified lawyer (Diplom-Jurist) from Nienburg, joined the executive with 19 votes and became parliamentary managing director (parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer). Andretta later said that from 2013 he was also deputy chair and that, as managing director, he represented the group in the Council of Elders; the report on the 17th term lists him as one of its two Green members. After the group fell to 12 and returned to opposition in 2017, it confirmed Piel as chair, with Christian Meyer and Miriam Staudte as deputies and Limburg again as managing director.

End of the state mandate

Limburg, Stefan Wenzel and Susanne Menge left the Landtag after election to the Bundestag in 2021. The Green group said Gerald Heere, Marie Kollenrott and Hans-Joachim Janssen would take the three seats. On 13 October 2021, at the 118th sitting, the Landtag unanimously established the loss of Limburg's mandate under the state constitution and electoral law. The state returning officer had already assigned the seat to Marie-Christine Kollenrott, who accepted it; Wenzel's seat went separately to Heere. In a statement dated 5 October the group reported that it had elected Heere, with no opposing candidate, to succeed Limburg as parliamentary managing director and on the executive. Limburg thanked the administration and the other managing directors and said he would continue to represent Lower Saxony from Berlin.

Domestic intelligence and civil liberties

Criticism before 2013

As legal-policy spokesman for Alliance 90/The Greens in the Landtag of Lower Saxony, Helge Limburg argued that the domestic-intelligence service of Lower Saxony under Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann (Christian Democratic Union) was aimed at the left. In 2012 the Greens, the Social Democratic Party and Die Linke failed to end observation of the Left, which Schünemann had ordered in 2003. The taz reported informants, surveillance and interception, with eight of ten Left deputies watched; Limburg called it misuse of the agency. He called the 2011 report partly contradictory and tendentious, including where peaceful anti-Castor protests were treated as influenced by left-wing extremism, and, after Schünemann retreated from claims about golf balls used as weapons and about arsons outside the state, “shockingly sloppy work.”

A week after the National Socialist Underground was uncovered in November 2011, he said warnings about left-wing extremism and Islamism had “blocked the view to the right,” and he demanded tighter democratic control and an end to informants in the far-right scene. Schünemann said informants served investigation and prevention; Limburg answered that, in the murder series, “that is not recognizable at all.” Briefings left him with “doubts whether all sides have the same interest in clarification.” The Greens considered an inquiry into failures around Holger G., arrested near Hanover after more than ten years in the state.

The 2016 intelligence-law reform

In September 2013 Interior Minister Boris Pistorius and Verfassungsschutz president Maren Brandenburger said data had been stored unlawfully on at least seven journalists with no extremist connection, including Andrea Röpke from 2006 to 2012. After an access request her file was deleted and she was told that nothing was held; Pistorius called that concealment. The journalists had not been wiretapped or physically observed. Limburg said the pattern looked systematic and politically steered, and sought administrative-offence proceedings against Schünemann and former presidents Günter Heiß and Hans-Werner Wargel. In the 2012 campaign the Greens had wanted the service abolished; floor leader Anja Piel had called it a “Scheißhaufen.”

The realignment statute of 15 September 2016, in force on 1 November, replaced the 2009 Act. Limburg was the committee’s rapporteur. On 14 September he called the redrafted text Germany’s most modern Verfassungsschutz law: “as much transparency as possible, as much confidentiality as necessary.” Covert means are a closed list: no bugging inside homes, no drones, and no police powers. Informants must be adults, must not live off the service, and must be dropped if they seek to leave the milieu; recruitment needs the G 10 Commission. Suspicion runs for at most two years, extendable once by two; unconfirmed cases are then deleted. The interior minister sets observation objects for at most four years and must brief the Landtag committee at least every six months on defined covert measures.

Data collection under 14 is forbidden; at 14 and 15 it is allowed only in narrow cases, such as G 10 offences, danger to life, or espionage. Limburg called that a compromise after the knife attack in Hanover by Safia S., then 15, and said minors remained chiefly a matter for social policy. The CDU and the Free Democratic Party voted no. Jens Nacke called the extra paperwork unfunded and the age rules a security risk. Stefan Birkner said control was still too weak, including the two-thirds quorum for appointing an expert investigator, and that the rules on minors lagged North Rhine-Westphalia. The Landtag passed the bill by majority; the chair recorded no abstentions.

A later grand-coalition amendment widened several of those limits. While the bill was in draft, Limburg called easier informant use a “roll backwards” from the lesson of the NSU, and said minors belonged with youth welfare rather than the service. The Act of 7 July 2021, passed on 6 July by the SPD and CDU against the Greens, the FDP and some independents, extended to ages 14 and 15 conditions that since 2016 had applied from 16, and allowed a temporary informant against an observation object whose importance was not yet clear. Limburg backed account-data queries to trace financing, and opposed the rest: wider informant use, wider collection on young teenagers, and an access rule requiring people to suggest why a file might exist. Pistorius called it a limited strengthening that still barred anyone under 14. The FDP’s no centered on that access limit.

Right-wing extremism and the NSU

The Green group later asked, in a Große Anfrage (Drs. 18/4130; answer Drs. 18/5265), how far Lower Saxony had applied recommendations of NSU inquiries in the Bundestag and the Länder, and what ties the group had to the state. On 30 January 2020 Limburg said that, so far as was known, the cell had committed no offences in Lower Saxony, but that the links should be public. He identified Holger Gerlach—the Holger G. arrested near Hanover in 2011—as a long-serving supporter living in Schaumburg while he aided the trio, with ties to “Besseres Hannover,” Blood & Honour, Braunschweig and Thorsten Heise in the Eichsfeld.

Many replies were that nothing was known, or were reserved for a closed committee. Limburg said that left the public and the victims’ families without an account of further supporters. He called the Anfrage only a beginning, pointing to inquiries in the Bundestag and other Länder. Gerlach, he said, was free pending a three-year sentence he called lenient. He argued that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had widened its powers after the NSU despite informants in the milieu. Pistorius called the series of at least ten murders a collective failure that had damaged trust in the service.

Criminal justice in Lower Saxony

Missing prison files

On 10 December 2008 the Landtag of Lower Saxony debated an urgent question from Alliance 90/The Greens on files at the prison in Celle. Parts of the file of former Red Army Faction member Karl-Heinz Dellwo, held there until 1995, were missing; the file of actor Burkhard Driest, released in 1968, had gone and come back. The taz reported that dozens of pages from Dellwo’s file were still missing.

Limburg, the Greens’ justice spokesperson, had called the loss a “solid scandal.” He said an August 2008 letter from a life-sentence prisoner, Christian V., alleged thefts from a staff-only archive—an employee taking files for 300 to 400 euros and offering them to Bild, which refused. He said he had no proof, then lost sight of the case, and would have gone to the press or prosecutors with evidence.

Justice Minister Bernd Busemann of the Christian Democratic Union said an inmate informed the prison on 3 September 2008 and later petitioned the Landtag about contacts with Limburg. He did not indicate staff involvement. Files were normally kept ten years after release, or fifteen in RAF cases; Dellwo’s was theoretically due for disposal around 2010. Busemann said “third parties” knew before the director and asked Limburg to help the inquiry. After questions from CDU and Free Democratic Party deputies, he named theft, breach of custody, aiding, favouring an offender and receiving stolen goods as offences that could apply to later handling, while saying the government was making no allegation. Limburg called the suggestion a cheek.

Prisons and rehabilitation

In the December 2009 justice budget debate Limburg credited Busemann’s stress on release preparation and closer work with social services, but said it was unfunded. The Greens wanted housing and employment projects for offenders and repairs, including at the prison hospital in Lingen. He wagered that the planned public–private partnership prison at Bremervörde would still be dropped.

Busemann launched it in September 2010: about 300 places over 25 years, at a stated cost of about 250 million euros, while the taz put capacity near 7,000 places and the population near 6,000. In October he signed with a Royal BAM Group subsidiary. The state would lease the prison for about 11.5 million euros a year—some 290 million over 25 years—then own it; he claimed a saving of about 5 percent. State staff would guard prisoners; company staff would cook, employ and supervise them. It was to open in 2013 as Germany’s fourth partly privatized prison, after Hünfeld, Burg and Offenburg.

Limburg said about 80 percent occupancy and roughly 1,000 free places made a “super-prison” unnecessary, and that sovereign and private tasks could not be split cleanly where prisoners also needed work, including in the kitchen. The officers’ union and The Left said distance from home would weaken rehabilitation. SPD spokesperson Marco Brunotte put the cost at about a million euros a place the state would not need.

Criminal-law debates

On 26 February 2008 the Federal Constitutional Court upheld section 173(2) of the Criminal Code, which punishes sexual intercourse between biological siblings by up to two years or a fine, citing protection of the family, the weaker partner and genetic risk. Justice Hassemer dissented on proportionality.

On 6 April 2008 the Green Youth of Lower Saxony published “Legalize love! Against the threat of punishment for incest,” a congress resolution Limburg co-sponsored. It sought repeal of section 173 in full—also intercourse with a biological descendant, punishable by up to three years, or an ancestor—and an amnesty. It argued that abuse of minors was already an offence, that the rule reached consensual adults, and that genetic grounds conflicted with human dignity. Descendants and siblings under 18 are exempt.

It was not a Landtag bill. In September 2013, amid dispute over earlier Green positions on pedophilia, and after Hans-Christian Ströbele backed decriminalizing sex between siblings, FDP general secretary Gero Hocker called the text highly problematic, said it could cover incest with minors, and asked Limburg to repudiate it. Limburg told the Nordwest-Zeitung there was no current debate: the 2008 aim had been alignment with Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and neither the party nor the Landtag group had adopted it.

Bundestag career

Federal elections

Helge Limburg was the candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens in Bundestag constituency 46, Hameln-Pyrmont – Holzminden, in 2021 and 2025. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer defined the seat as the districts of Hameln-Pyrmont and Holzminden and, from the district of Northeim, Bodenfelde, the town of Uslar and the unincorporated Solling area.

The constituency electoral committee admitted his 2021 nomination on 30 July 2021. The notice names “Limburg, Helge”, a jurist born in 1982 in Hanover and then living in Hanover, as the Green candidate, with Johannes Schraps for the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Mareike Lotte Wulf for the Christian Democratic Union. On 29–30 May 2021 a state delegates’ conference in Oldenburg placed him eighth on the Lower Saxony Green list, after Katja Keul and before Karoline Otte. The party said the vote would be confirmed by post until 15 June 2021; the slate it published keeps him eighth.

On 26 September 2021 turnout was 72.0 percent (132,893 of 184,471 eligible voters). Schraps won the constituency with 56,893 first votes (43.2 percent). The CDU received 33,575 (25.5 percent) and the Greens, with Limburg as candidate, 13,259 (10.1 percent); Green second votes were 17,274 (13.1 percent). He did not take the direct seat. The archive for the 20th electoral period records him as returned on the Lower Saxony state list, with constituency 46 as his candidacy. In the biography the Bundestag labels as self-reported, his membership of the Landtag of Lower Saxony ended on 13 October 2021. That Bundestag first sat on 26 October 2021.

He stood again in 2025. On 14 December 2024 a state congress in Hanover, with 228 delegates, elected Filiz Polat first on the state list with 95.4 percent and Limburg second with 97.2 percent. Abgeordnetenwatch records list position 2 for the 2025–2029 mandate. The constituency committee admitted the nominations on 24 January 2025, and the returning officer’s notice of 28 January names “Limburg, Helge Stefan”, jurist, born in 1982 in Hanover and resident in Holzminden.

On 23 February 2025 turnout was 81.2 percent (145,350 of 179,071 eligible voters). Schraps held the seat with 47,556 first votes (33.0 percent). Wulf received 41,181 (28.6 percent) and the Alternative for Germany 30,078 (20.9 percent). Limburg received 10,314 first votes (7.2 percent); Green second votes were 13,596 (9.4 percent). The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025, the date the member profile gives as the start of his current mandate, again via the Lower Saxony list and with a candidacy in constituency 046. The published constituency offices are at Obere Straße 25 in Holzminden and Wendenstraße 10 in Hameln.

Committees and spokesperson role

In the 20th electoral period the archived biography lists him as a full member of the Legal Affairs Committee (Rechtsausschuss) and of the parliamentary body under Article 13(6) of the Basic Law, and as a substitute on the first committee of inquiry (Afghanistan), the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, the Subcommittee on European Law, the Defence Committee and the Wahlausschuss. The Wahlausschuss proposes the Bundestag’s candidates for the Federal Constitutional Court. A legal-industry bulletin of 7 February 2022 named him legal-policy spokesperson of the Green parliamentary group. The Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine still used that title in February 2025, and the group’s profile continued to list “Sprecher für Rechtspolitik” after the 2025 election. The self-reported passage of his Bundestag biography also attaches the spokespersonship to the 20th electoral period.

In the 21st electoral period the biography of 27 October 2026 and the group profile agree: full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and substitute member of the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Service, the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and the Wahlausschuss. The biography also names him deputy chair of the German–Dutch parliamentary group, the Bundestag’s link to the parliament of the Netherlands. It does not list the Richterwahlausschuss or a separate election-scrutiny committee. On 20 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Limburg and Till Steffen as the Green members of the Richterwahlausschuss, which under the Richterwahlgesetz elects judges of the supreme federal courts. In June 2025 the parliamentary groups named him the Green deputy member of the Wahlprüfungsausschuss, which reviews the validity of Bundestag and European Parliament elections.

Outside offices

For the 20th electoral period the published register lists, besides his earlier Landtag membership, a board seat at RechtGrün – Verein grüner und grünnaher JuristInnen e.V. in Berlin; the board of trustees of the Stiftung Opferhilfe Niedersachsen until the end of 2021; the advisory board of Waage Hannover e.V. until 27 November 2023; and a stake in Windwärts Sonne GmbH & Co. Projekt Burgweisach KG in Vestenbergsgreuth.

The register of 27 October 2026 keeps the Windwärts participation and the RechtGrün role, as a board membership until 2 October 2026 and an advisory-board membership from that date. It adds the advisory board of the Schlichtungsstelle der Rechtsanwaltschaft in Berlin from 2 January to 8 May 2026; an assessor’s seat (Beisitzer) on the board of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Parlamentsfragen e.V. in Berlin from 15 October 2025; and the advisory board of the Solbach-Freise-Stiftung für Zivilcourage in Emmerthal from 7 January 2026. Abgeordnetenwatch reproduces the entries, dating the Windwärts holding from 15 November 2022, and shows no remuneration band for any of them.

Federal legal policy

As legal-policy spokesperson of the Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, Helge Limburg worked on disputes of the 20th and 21st terms over cannabis, abortion, sexual identity in the constitution, and a public review of pandemic restrictions.

Cannabis

On 23 February 2024 the Bundestag passed the government's Cannabis Act by 404 votes to 226, with four abstentions. The Green group voted 113 to zero in favour. The CDU/CSU cast 167 votes against and none in favour; Alternative for Germany members cast one in favour and 53 against. Published on 27 March 2024, the Act took effect in stages. From 1 April adults could possess up to 25 grams in public and grow up to three plants at home, where up to 50 grams could be kept. From 1 July non-commercial cultivation associations of at most 500 adults could hand out limited amounts, with a lower cap for members aged 18 to 21. Use near schools and playgrounds, and in pedestrian zones until 8 p.m., was banned. Commercial sale stayed illegal; licensed shops were left to later pilots.

Karl Lauterbach said the reform would shrink the black market. The German Judges' Association warned of more than 100,000 files in an amnesty review, and Medical Association president Klaus Reinhardt cited dependence and risks to brain development before age 25. On 3 January 2022 Limburg had instead favoured licensed shops with a maximum quantity, and an administrative fine, not a crime, for possession above it or not lawfully obtained.

Abortion law

On 5 December 2024 the Bundestag gave a first reading to printed paper 20/13775 of 14 November 2024, signed by 328 members, chiefly from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Greens and Die Linke. An abortion on request would have been lawful, not merely exempt from punishment, through the twelfth week after conception if a doctor performed it after mandatory counselling. The three-day wait would have ended and statutory insurers would have paid. Section 218 would mainly have covered abortions against or without the woman's will; later abortions would generally have stayed unlawful.

Limburg said criminal law had to remain a last resort. The bill would, for twelve weeks, move abortion out of the Criminal Code without leaving it unregulated, and would remove what he called the stigma of blanket unlawfulness. The post-1990s rules, which follow a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court, were in his view a failed compromise: they endangered supply, patronised women and criminalised doctors. Opponents, he said, were the ones waging a culture war, and blocking a final vote would itself keep the status quo. Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker (CDU), chair of the legal-affairs committee, said counselling already gave access and protected unborn life; the Union would not back an AfD tightening. Beatrix von Storch (AfD) said the sponsors wanted to burn a settled compromise. Dorothee Bär (CSU) said protection of life was not negotiable with her group. Free Democratic Party speakers asked for more time. The bill went to committee and lapsed with the 20th Bundestag.

Gender self-determination and equality

On 12 April 2024 the Bundestag passed the Self-Determination Act by 374 votes to 251, with 11 abstentions. From 1 November 2024 it replaced the Transsexuals Act of 1980, parts of which the Federal Constitutional Court had held unconstitutional. Sex marker and given names could be changed by declaration at a registry office, without a court or psychiatric reports; applications opened on 1 August. The Act does not cover medical treatment and did not need Bundesrat consent. Mareike Lotte Wulf (CDU) accepted an easier procedure as a matter of dignity but said dropping all preconditions risked minors. Martin Reichardt (AfD) called the bill ideological nonsense. Sahra Wagenknecht, for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, called it hostile to women.

In the next term Limburg was lead signatory of printed paper 21/2027, introduced on 7 October 2025, adding "sexuelle Identität" to Article 3(3), first sentence, of the Basic Law. The wording matched a Bundesrat draft of 26 September 2025. A constitutional change needs two-thirds majorities in both chambers. The Bundestag debated the Green text on 9 October 2025 and referred it to committee. Limburg called it cross-party—three CDU-led Länder, five led by the SPD, five with Greens and two with the Left had backed the Bundesrat text—and said it must not moulder in the files. It was not, he argued, merely symbolic, and it took nothing from heterosexual cis men such as himself.

Plum (CDU/CSU) called it symbol politics, and Moser said Article 3 already covers sexual orientation and gender identity. Jacobi (AfD) said the court would define the term. Wegge (SPD) backed the aim but not a partisan bill. Campaigns claimed the wording would legalise paedophilia. Correctiv reported that researchers and the Berlin Senate rejected that. Limburg said offences against children would stay criminal and that the categories male, female, diverse and no entry would not change. Günter Krings (CDU) called the term too vague.

Pandemic measures

In a taz interview on 27 March 2024, after a site close to the Querdenker milieu published internal minutes of the Robert Koch Institute, Limburg said conspiracy stories spun from single sentences were unserious, but a public review was due. He called the restrictions the widest limits on fundamental rights in the history of the Federal Republic. A review, he said, should test decisions against what was known at the time and acknowledge injustice, including the neglect of psychologists' warnings about lockdown harms to children. An inquiry might not finish in the term; another public body would do.

An exception in the Greens, he noted that Janosch Dahmen had called an inquiry electioneering, accepted that the far right might exploit one, but said democratic critics needed an outlet. The Greens had been in opposition for most of the pandemic, so he rejected blame for the strictest rules. He cited closed playgrounds and a man detained in Munich for reading outdoors, blamed uncertainty, and criticised the shift of decisions from parliaments to the minister-presidents' conference, which the Basic Law does not authorise. He also criticised stigma against unvaccinated people who kept the rules, and threats against scientists such as Christian Drosten. In the Lower Saxony parliament he had not, he said, fought hard enough against a total visiting ban at a home for disabled children; he still regretted that.

Controversies and reception

The 2009 Twitter incident

On 14 December 2009, during a morning debate in the Landtag of Lower Saxony in Hanover on a right to remain for long-term refugees, Alliance 90/The Greens deputy Helge Limburg posted from the chamber on Twitter. Christian Democratic Union floor leader David McAllister later read one message into the record: “Schünemann spricht wie HC Strache (FPÖ) und Gerd Wilders. Unerträglicher Hetzer!” It likened Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann to Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party of Austria and to a Dutch politician rendered as “Gerd Wilders,” whom reports identified as Geert Wilders. A wire account also said Limburg had called him an “unverschämten Rechtsausleger.”

The post came up that evening in the general debate on the 2010 budget. Free Democratic Party leader Christian Dürr said he had read the “unerträglicher Hetzer” line. McAllister called the comparison with a Dutch “Rechtsradikalen” defamatory and demanded an apology and a distancing by the Green leadership. Parliamentary manager Ursula Helmhold said a Twitter comment lay outside the chamber’s recent understanding on tone, and that the post was justified by Schünemann’s claim that immigrants wanted access to the social-security systems. After shouting, Minister-President Christian Wulff asked President Hermann Dinkla to suspend the sitting, saying the government had to consider whether it could stay if treated that way. Dinkla broke the session from 18:11 to 18:52; Der Spiegel described a break of about 45 minutes.

Limburg then made a personal statement. He kept the criticism of the minister on the substance but withdrew the wording, “insbesondere soweit bei Ihnen der Eindruck entstanden ist, ich würde ihn in die Nähe von Rechtsradikalen rücken,” and, when Dinkla pressed him, the phrase “unerträglicher Hetzer.” He received no call to order. The next day the HNA quoted him—“Die Wortwahl war scheiße”—while the Nordwest-Zeitung reported that he called the wording wrong and still stood by his criticism of Schünemann’s policy on foreigners. Schünemann said someone like Limburg could not insult him. Wulff said a defamation complaint had been considered and dropped because of the apology, and warned that deliberate rule-breaking helped the enemies of parliamentarism. Helmhold apologized that afternoon for having defended the post; Dürr said the Greens had to apply their own moral standards to themselves.

taz placed the row among headlines of tumult and of no sitting without an “Eklat,” and noted that Schünemann had not seemed to want a break. Left deputy Hans-Henning Adler called the suspension a very wide reading of the rules, and SPD deputy Detlef Tanke called Dinkla an “Erfüllungsgehilfen des Ministerpräsidenten.”

Political clashes

The quarrel with Schünemann continued in the same register. On 15 November 2011 taz described an opposition contest to strike the hardest blow. Limburg spoke of a “fast dramatische Ballung” of problems in the minister’s portfolio and, “ohne Übertreibung,” of an “innenpolitische Krisensituation.” In early December the Greens, the SPD and the Left asked Minister-President McAllister to dismiss Schünemann for an alleged breach of his oath, citing what they called an untruthful report to the interior committee about a police president’s night in a Hells Angels bar. The CDU–FDP majority rejected the motion. McAllister closed with “Der Minister bleibt im Amt.”

In September 2016, as Green parliamentary managing director, Limburg called the red–green rewrite of Lower Saxony’s domestic-intelligence law—treated elsewhere—a “bundesweite Vorreiterrolle” and an “ausgewogenen Weg zwischen Datenschutz, Bürgerrechten und Sicherheitsinteressen.” It reserved surveillance inside homes to the police. In August 2024 CDU floor leader Sebastian Lechner still described the state’s intelligence statute as “das schlechteste Verfassungsschutzgesetz aller 16 Bundesländer, mit den geringsten Kompetenzen,” and sought residential surveillance and online searches.

Personal life

Family

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members’ own reports, describes Helge Limburg as Evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of three children. The Green parliamentary group uses the same formula, “verheiratet, 3 Kinder,” and, asked what would get him up in the middle of the night, he answered “for my daughters.” His own website states the three children as three daughters. No reliable public source gives his spouse’s name.

He keeps his political base in the Weser Uplands of Lower Saxony. The Bundestag entry gives Hanover as his birthplace, but his regional page calls him a “gebürtiger Holzmindener.” As of 27 October 2026 the biography lists constituency offices at Obere Straße 25 in Holzminden and Wendenstraße 10 in Hamelin, and it does not publish a private home address.

Memberships

Disclosable interests on that biography, dated 27 October 2026, are posts members must report under the Bundestag code of conduct; Abgeordnetenwatch reproduces the filings.

From 2 January to 8 May 2026 he sat on the advisory board of the Schlichtungsstelle der Rechtsanwaltschaft in Berlin, which conciliates fee and damages disputes between clients and lawyers in a written procedure that is free and voluntary. Since 15 October 2025 he has been an assessor (Beisitzer) on the honorary board of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Parlamentsfragen, as both the disclosure and the association’s board list record. The association, founded in 1970, publishes the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen.

At RechtGrün – Verein grüner und grünnaher JuristInnen e.V., a charitable association of Green and Green-leaning lawyers, he was a board member until 2 October 2026 and has been on the advisory board since then. Since 7 January 2026 the disclosure also names him on the advisory board of the Solbach-Freise-Stiftung für Zivilcourage in Emmerthal. The foundation says Anne Solbach-Freise and her husband decided in 1994 to endow it to honour civil courage; it gives its seat as Bodenwerder and a contact address in Emmerthal.

He reports a participation in Windwärts Sonne GmbH & Co. Projekt Burgweisach KG of Vestenbergsgreuth, in Bavaria, filed under economy and energy and recorded by Abgeordnetenwatch on 15 November 2022, with no income bracket shown. A commercial-register summary states the partnership’s object as building and operating photovoltaic plants to generate and supply electricity.

Apart from that statutory list, his website names membership of WABE e.V. and Pulverfabrik Liebenau e.V. WABE e.V., in Verden, has since 2010 supported the Weser-Aller alliance for democracy and civil courage. The association that documents the former powder factory is the Dokumentationsstelle Pulverfabrik Liebenau e.V., founded in May 1999 in Liebenau.