Helmut Kleebank

Helmut Heinrich Kleebank (born 18 November 1964 in Berlin) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag. He represents the constituency Berlin-Spandau – Charlottenburg Nord, which he won directly at the election to the 21st Bundestag on 23 February 2025. From November 2011 to October 2021 he was district mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister) of the borough of Spandau.

The Bundestag lists his occupations as nurse (Krankenpfleger) and teacher. Its biography, which the parliament says rests on the member’s own statements, records an Abitur at the Kant-Gymnasium in Spandau, a nursing apprenticeship, and studies in mathematics and physics for a teaching qualification at the Free University of Berlin and the Technical University of Berlin, with the first state examination in 1996 and the second in 1999. The same account says he taught at the Kant-Gymnasium and at the Katholische Schule Liebfrauen and was, until 2011, head of the Heinrich Böll secondary school (Heinrich-Böll-Oberschule) in Hakenfelde. He has been an SPD member since 1993.

At the 2021 federal election he won the then constituency 78, Berlin-Spandau – Charlottenburg Nord, with 40,451 first votes (32.8 per cent), ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) on 28,904 votes (23.5 per cent). In 2025, in the renumbered constituency 77, he took 36,200 first votes (27.5 per cent) to 34,305 (26.1 per cent) for the CDU candidate Bernhard Jürgen Schodrowski. Der Tagesspiegel reported that he was the only SPD candidate to win a Berlin constituency outright, with a margin of about 1,800 votes. Turnout in the constituency was 75.5 per cent. On the second vote the CDU led locally with 23.8 per cent, followed by the AfD with 19.1 per cent and the SPD with 18.4 per cent.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, a secretary (Schriftführer) of the house, and a deputy member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues. During the 20th electoral term the advisory council, then named the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development, elected him chair at its constituent meeting on 16 March 2022; every vote cast went to him, and Wolfgang Stefinger of the CDU/CSU was elected deputy chair on the same basis.

The official biography describes him as Roman Catholic, married and the father of five children, and as a member of his parish church council from 2009 to 2015. It also lists him, since April 2018, as deputy district chair of the SPD in Spandau and, since 2021, as a member of the party’s Berlin state executive, and as a delegate at district, state and federal level.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Helmut Kleebank was born on 18 November 1964 in Berlin. He has said that his family came from the Aachen area. He grew up in Falkenhagener Feld, in the western borough of Spandau. On his own account he also went to school there. Falkenhagener Feld is a large estate on the city’s western edge, begun in the early 1960s and built in several stages: about 10,000 apartments, mostly social housing in blocks of four to sixteen stories, stand on both sides of the Falkenseer Chaussee, and schools and other local services were built with the housing. By about 1973 nearly 10,000 apartments were standing, roughly 30,000 people lived there, and three large schools had been built in the area.

In 1982 he passed the Abitur at the Kant-Gymnasium in Spandau. The school was founded in 1853 and since 1972 has occupied its present site at Bismarckstraße 54, in Spandau rather than in Falkenhagener Feld. From his childhood in West Berlin he remembered one school trip into East Berlin, on which the class waved East German flags at Alexanderplatz. He said the children did not take the visit very seriously.

Nursing apprenticeship

After the Abitur, Kleebank completed vocational training as a Krankenpfleger, a male nurse. He has said that he worked in the occupation for several years before starting a degree. In November 1989 he was 24, newly married, and living with his family at Bismarckplatz in Spandau, with shifts that began at 6 a.m. at a workplace on Osloer Straße in Wedding. He later told the Tagesspiegel that he slept through the night the Berlin Wall opened, on 9 November 1989, because he had gone to bed early for that shift. The next morning, leaving the U-Bahn at Osloer Straße, he saw and heard Trabants crossing at Bornholmer Straße.

He also described himself as a left-footed defender who played for Spandauer SV and Spandauer SC, and at one point for the works team of the Nervenklinik, the psychiatric hospital where he was employed. One trip with a football team took him into East Germany; he recalled the bus leaving the motorway for an Intershop soon after the border.

University studies

After those years in nursing he studied mathematics and physics for a teaching qualification (Lehramt) at the Free University of Berlin and the Technical University of Berlin, and passed the first state examination in 1996.

Under Berlin’s then teacher-education law, a teaching degree was built from two subjects and had a standard length of nine semesters. Both universities offered mathematics and physics as teaching subjects, for the two-subject Lehrer qualification and for the Studienrat course used in upper secondary schools. The first Staatsexamen was normally followed by a two-year preparatory service, the Referendariat, undertaken in schools and state teacher-training seminars and closed by the second state examination. Kleebank passed that second examination in 1999. He later returned to the Kant-Gymnasium as a teacher.

Teaching career

Classroom teaching and subject leadership

Kleebank qualified as a teacher of mathematics and physics: the biography published by the German Bundestag, which states that its biographical details rest on information supplied by members themselves, records that he studied the two subjects for a teaching degree at the Free University of Berlin and the Technical University of Berlin, passing the first state examination in 1996 and the second in 1999.

The same biography lists him as a teacher at the Kant-Gymnasium and at the Katholische Schule Liebfrauen, without naming the subjects he taught at either school or the years he spent there. The Kant-Gymnasium is a public Gymnasium at Bismarckstraße 54 in Berlin-Spandau; the Spandau district office gave its enrolment as 839 pupils as of 6 October 2025. In the Berlin school directory the Katholische Schule Liebfrauen is a private Gymnasium and a state-recognized substitute school (staatlich anerkannte Ersatzschule), at Ahornallee 33 in Westend.

On a profile published by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Kleebank writes that after the Referendariat he worked at various schools as a teacher, as a subject leader (Fachleiter) for physics and as a head, and that he was also a school inspector and a coordinator for drafting Berlin’s framework curricula (Rahmenlehrpläne); the profile gives no dates and does not name a school for the inspectorate or the curriculum post. The Bundestag text, likewise drawn from his own information, names the Kant-Gymnasium, Liebfrauen and the later headship in Hakenfelde, but it does not mention an inspectorate or a role in the framework curricula.

Head of the Heinrich-Böll-Oberschule

The Bundestag biography states that Kleebank was, until 2011, head of the Heinrich-Böll-Oberschule in Hakenfelde. A report in Die Welt on 30 January 2011 described him as having led the Heinrich-Böll-Schule in Spandau-Hakenfelde since February 2010.

In the Berlin school directory the Heinrich-Böll-Oberschule, school number 05K04, is a public integrated secondary school (Integrierte Sekundarschule) with an upper secondary level (gymnasiale Oberstufe), at Am Forstacker 9-9a, 13587 Berlin (Hakenfelde). The directory lists bilingual German-English provision, a sports-oriented profile and a partially compulsory all-day programme (teilgebundener Ganztagsbetrieb). The Spandau district office, citing the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family, recorded 1,020 pupils as of 6 October 2025, and its school page also describes mixed-age learning in years 7 to 10. That enrolment figure and the mixed-age description are from the district office’s account of the school in October 2025, after his headship had ended in 2011.

Die Welt quoted pupils saying that one could talk with him, and quoted Kleebank on the work of running a school: one had to see concrete problems that had to be solved together with others, while also knowing the limits set by the institution and its structures. On 25 October 2011 the Tagesspiegel still referred to him as the school’s head. The Bundestag biography places the end of the post in 2011.

Career in the Social Democratic Party

Helmut Kleebank has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1993. In the Berlin SPD, the local units called Abteilungen are the party's Ortsvereine; the twelve Kreise follow the boundaries of the city's boroughs and function as Unterbezirke; and the Landesverband is a Bezirk under the federal organisational statute. Organs inside the state association are elected for two years.

Local association work

His recorded local offices are in the branch for Gatow and Kladow, localities in the borough of Spandau. The Bundestag biography states that he was chair (Abteilungsvorsitzender) of the Gatow-Kladow Ortsverein and led its working group on municipal affairs and environmental protection (Arbeitskreis Kommunales und Umweltschutz). Under the Berlin statute, a department members' assembly elects the department executive and the delegates to the district delegates' assembly, and party executives may set up working groups for their term of office. On his SPD profile he also lists earlier roles as district chair of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) in Spandau, as a district delegate, and as both chair and deputy chair of a local branch. The SPD Spandau website names him, with Dagmar Brückmann, among the current chairs of the Gatow/Kladow Abteilung. That page says the branch aims to meet, outside school holidays, on the third Tuesday of each month.

District and state offices

The Kreisdelegiertenversammlung is the highest decision-making body of a Berlin SPD Kreis. It elects the Kreisvorstand, which may include a chair or co-chairs, up to three deputy chairs, a treasurer, a secretary and at least five assessors (Beisitzer), together with representatives nominated by the departments and by specified working groups, and it elects the delegates to the state party congress. The state congress elects the Landesvorstand, including eight to twelve assessors, and Berlin's delegates to the federal party congress.

The Bundestag biography states that Kleebank has been deputy Kreisvorsitzender of SPD Spandau since April 2018, a Beisitzer on the SPD Berlin state executive since 2021, and a delegate at district, state and federal level. The handbook Kürschners Volkshandbuch for the 20th Bundestag likewise lists him as deputy district chair of SPD Spandau since 2018 and as a state-executive assessor since 2021. District delegate meetings planned for spring 2020 were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic; the twelve Berlin Kreise then elected new executives before the state congress of 31 October 2020. For the 2020–2022 term, SPD Berlin listed Raed Saleh as chair in Spandau and Carola Brückner, Helmut Kleebank and Susanne Pape as deputy chairs.

A state party congress on 25 May 2024 elected a Landesvorstand co-chaired by Nicola Böcker-Giannini and Martin Hikel. In the compilation of SPD executives published by the federal returning officer, dated 16 December 2025, the Berlin board elected that day still includes Helmut Kleebank, MdB, among the Beisitzer. The SPD Spandau website's Kreisvorstand page, by contrast, names Raed Saleh as Kreisvorsitzender and Dr. Carola Brückner, Miloslava Büger and Niklas Nagel as deputies, and does not name Kleebank in the chair or deputy-chair posts; the assessors are given there only as a group of fourteen.

District mayor of Spandau

Election in 2011

On 18 September 2011 voters in Spandau, the westernmost borough of Berlin, elected a new borough assembly, the Bezirksverordnetenversammlung. Turnout was 56.1 percent, and of 95,117 valid votes the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took 36.7 percent and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 34.7 percent. Alliance 90/The Greens received 9.7 percent, Die Linke 3.2 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 1.6 percent, and other lists together 14.1 percent.

The district mayor is chosen by the assembly, not by a direct popular vote, and the SPD’s candidate was Helmut Kleebank. The taz described a counting group of the SPD’s 21 seats, six Green seats, three from the Pirate Party Germany and one from Die Linke—31 votes against 23 for the CDU, which had held the mayoralty for 16 years. On 27 October 2011 he nevertheless failed two secret ballots. Kleebank said he would stand a third time and then stop. On the evening of Wednesday 2 November 2011 the assembly elected him on that attempt. Der Tagesspiegel wrote that he would then have to prevail against a CDU majority in the borough executive, the Bezirksamt; of the councillor posts still open, the taz reported three for the CDU and two for the SPD.

Re-election in 2016

At the election of 18 September 2016 the SPD again led Spandau without its own majority. Turnout was 59.3 percent. The SPD won 34,652 votes, 33.2 percent and 20 of 55 seats; the CDU 25.7 percent and 16 seats; and the Alternative for Germany 16.0 percent and nine seats. The Greens took four seats, the FDP three and Die Linke three. Borough-executive mandates were allotted two to the SPD, two to the CDU and one to the AfD.

On 30 November 2016 the assembly re-elected Kleebank by 28 votes to 27, the minimum majority with 55 members voting. SPD, Die Linke, Greens and FDP had been expected to supply 30 votes, so two were missing, and without the FDP he would have been one short; the CDU voted against him after cooperation talks had collapsed. Gerhard Hanke (CDU) became deputy mayor in place of Carsten Röding, while the AfD’s Andreas Otti was elected a councillor only on a third ballot.

Schools, finance and the Council of Mayors

After that vote Kleebank’s departments were finance, personnel, central tasks, schools and sport, while Otti received facility management and environmental protection. While still mayor, Kleebank’s SPD page described him as a member of Berlin’s Council of Mayors, spokesperson of the SPD district mayors, and chair of the council’s committee for finance, personnel and the economy.

School buildings belong to the boroughs. In February 2018, amid an assembly debate on school conditions, the Berliner Abendblatt reported a survey putting Spandau’s renovation need above €223 million, set against a statewide Schulbauoffensive of €5.5 billion by 2026. Arne Schaller of the education union GEW blamed decades of austerity and a lack of planning. Kleebank said every Spandau school was to be put right and that a renovation plan would be presented that month. In June he called it a false path to give construction management of renovations mainly to outside firms; on a roof job at the Carlo-Schmid-Oberschule, disputes with the external managers ended with the borough building office taking the work back, at a cost in time.

Audits, disputes and the end of the term

On 18 June 2018 the GEW and parents arranged a press tour of the Carlo-Schmid-Oberschule, a 1970s building the taz called a five-year construction site, and Kleebank barred journalists from the building.

Lobby of the Carlo-Schmid-Oberschule in Spandau, with lockers and a display about Carlo Schmid.

Borough parent-speaker Thorsten Hartje said the tour had been meant to show both defects and progress. The union said Kleebank’s office had been notified two weeks earlier without objection; he said he had already vetoed the tour. He argued that the visible damage had “almost nothing” to do with the Schulbauoffensive and that missing ceiling cladding and hanging cables came from a fire-protection upgrade. Principal Bärbel Pobloth described leaking windows, rainwater in her office, a gas line blocking science experiments, and heating failures that sent pupils home early. She cited Howoge estimates of about €36 million for a core renovation and about €5 million more for a new building, which she and the parents preferred.

Parents at the Grundschule am Ritterfeld in Kladow had already written to him about classrooms at 9–13 °C, children in hats and jackets, and a gym left dirty after a fire in October 2017. A Tagesspiegel newsletter reported that a temporary heater could not be refuelled and that similar heating trouble at Carlo-Schmid was being put to Otti as the councillor for facilities. Kleebank called the parents’ letter unnecessary because the problems were already being handled. The borough said classroom heating was working again, rejected an allegation of negligent injury, and scheduled the gym cleaning for the Easter holidays, with a temporary heater until then.

The Berlin Court of Auditors, in its 2020 annual report, found serious breaches of budget and procurement law when Spandau hired a consultancy to retender cleaning at 44 schools. After a cold call in March 2018, a contract of 15 May—not signed by an officer with documented authority—promised 45 percent of one year’s demonstrated savings. The borough estimated the fee at €40,500 net, on an assumed saving of about 2 percent from annual costs of about €4.5 million, and said daily classroom floor cleaning would stay as it was. On the consultant’s proposal of 13 July 2018 the specification instead cut cleaning by about 25 percent, including classroom floors from five days a week to four and offices and upper stairwells from five days to one. New contracts cost about €3.41 million a year, then about €3.30 million. Invoices of €595,375.55 (paid 18 December 2018, with nothing budgeted) and €52,919.64 (paid 12 June 2019), plus a retention of €31,335.56 still open, came to €679,630.75 gross.

The auditors found no legal basis for a direct award, because a market of providers existed, and said the borough paid without asking its legal office whether the contract was valid. They treated about €1.125 million of the reduction as the result of cleaning less, so the further saving was only about €72,000 and a 45 percent fee on that sum about €38,500, not about €680,000. A cross-borough group had already noted on 4 September 2017 that Spandau cleaned classrooms five times a week rather than the DIN figure of three. The borough’s reply, that the change still beat that standard and saved more than €1 million a year, was called unconvincing; the report named the office, not Kleebank. CDU group chair Arndt Meißner said Kleebank, responsible for schools and finance, had ordered a fee of about €680,000 without a prior legal check, and called the frequency cut a spree bought for more than half a million euros. Kleebank said the two sides differed on whether a competition had been required, that the original fee estimate had rested partly on hypotheses later shown to be wrong, and that the cuts had seemed not to harm quality—but that the legal office should have been consulted once they were proposed.

He did not stand for a third term. A borough release of 8 October 2021 said he had won a direct Bundestag seat for Spandau/Charlottenburg-Nord and that the second mayoral term would end in 2021. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members’ own statements, dates the office from November 2011 to October 2021. On 4 November 2021 the new assembly elected Carola Brückner (SPD), whom the borough office described as the first woman to head the administration: aged 59, formerly head of the disabilities-equality unit at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and an assembly member since autumn 2017.

Elections to the Bundestag

2021 federal election

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 the constituency was numbered 78 and named Berlin-Spandau – Charlottenburg Nord. It covered the whole borough of Spandau and, within Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, the area north of the Spree; the rest of that borough was then constituency 80. The sitting member, Swen Schulz of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), announced in August 2018 that he would not stand again. Schulz had sat in the Bundestag since 2002 and had taken the constituency directly in 2017 against Kai Wegner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); he said he would keep the mandate until the end of the legislative period.

Map of Bundestag constituency 77, Berlin-Spandau – Charlottenburg Nord, covering the borough of Spandau and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf north of the Spree.

In the original final count for constituency 78, SPD candidate Helmut Kleebank received 40,451 first votes, 32.8 percent of 123,157 valid first votes and 0.7 percentage points above the SPD share in 2017. Turnout was 70.2 percent, 126,551 of 180,251 people eligible to vote. Joe Chialo (CDU) was second with 28,904 votes (23.5 percent), 11,547 behind Kleebank. Stefan Laube of Alliance 90/The Greens received 14,680 (11.9 percent), Lukas Garnis of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 12,447 (10.1 percent), Dominik Hamann of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 10,492 (8.5 percent) and Helin Evrim Sommer of Die Linke 6,771 (5.5 percent).

On the party list the SPD also led, with 34,233 second votes (27.7 percent), ahead of the CDU on 26,266 (21.3 percent), the Greens on 17,963 (14.5 percent), the AfD on 12,783 (10.3 percent), the FDP on 12,491 (10.1 percent) and Die Linke on 6,353 (5.1 percent). The 20th Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 26 October 2021.

2024 partial repeat

On the same day as the federal election, Berlin voted for the state parliament and the borough assemblies and on a referendum, and the Berlin Marathon was run. On 10 November 2022 the Bundestag declared the federal election invalid in 431 Berlin polling districts and ordered a partial repeat. In its judgment of 19 December 2023 (2 BvC 4/23), the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held that the Bundestag had not adequately investigated the election because it had not evaluated the polling-district minutes. The court invalidated further districts, set aside the invalidation of seven districts and their linked postal districts, and, after later findings on the postal count, required the election to be repeated in 455 of Berlin's 2,256 districts. Both votes were to be recast, and only in the affected districts. The judgment found errors in preparation and conduct, including too few polling booths and ballot papers, closures and interruptions of polling stations, and ballot papers for the wrong constituency.

In constituency 78 the repeat covered 11 polling-station districts and 10 postal districts, 12,269 eligible voters and 6.9 percent of the constituency electorate. It was held on 11 February 2024; only the districts marked for repetition voted again, and the 2021 results elsewhere stood. The revised result gave Kleebank 39,062 first votes (32.6 percent) and the CDU 28,647 (23.9 percent), a lead of 10,415 votes. Of 179,896 eligible voters, 122,863 cast ballots (68.3 percent); 119,815 first votes were valid. The Greens received 14,004 first votes (11.7 percent), the AfD 12,440 (10.4 percent), the FDP 9,954 (8.3 percent) and Die Linke 6,484 (5.4 percent). rbb24 reported that Kleebank was 0.2 percentage points below his original share and Chialo 0.4 points above his, and that the direct mandate was unchanged. The Federal Returning Officer's live 2021 results page now gives this revised count; the September 2021 count is kept in a separate archive.

Revised second votes were 32,853 for the SPD (27.4 percent), 26,158 for the CDU (21.8 percent), 17,193 for the Greens (14.3 percent), 12,780 for the AfD (10.7 percent), 11,798 for the FDP (9.8 percent) and 6,074 for Die Linke (5.1 percent).

2025 federal election

The next federal election was held on 23 February 2025. The same territory was numbered 77, still named Berlin-Spandau – Charlottenburg Nord: the whole of Spandau and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf north of the Spree, with the rest of that borough now constituency 79. rbb24, citing the Federal Returning Officer, attributed the new number to Saxony-Anhalt losing one constituency and Bavaria gaining one.

The final result names Helmut Heinrich Kleebank (SPD) as elected in the constituency with 36,200 first votes, 27.5 percent, 5.1 percentage points below the revised 2021 figure used as the comparison base. Bernhard Jürgen Schodrowski (CDU) was second with 34,305 votes (26.1 percent, up 2.2 points); the margin was 1,895 votes. The AfD received 25,931 first votes (19.7 percent, up 9.3 points), Die Linke 15,044 (11.4 percent, up 6.0), the Greens 12,217 (9.3 percent, down 2.4) and the FDP 4,283 (3.3 percent, down 5.1). Turnout was 75.5 percent, 133,309 of 176,536 eligible voters, 7.2 points above the revised 2021 turnout. Der Tagesspiegel reported Kleebank as the only SPD candidate to win a Berlin constituency, named Andreas Otti (AfD) as third, and put the lead over Schodrowski at about 1,800 votes. The Berliner Morgenpost likewise called the result the SPD's only constituency victory in Berlin.

Second votes were led by the CDU with 31,440 (23.8 percent), followed by the AfD with 25,305 (19.1 percent) and the SPD with 24,296 (18.4 percent, down 9.0 points). Die Linke received 17,071 (12.9 percent), the Greens 14,625 (11.1 percent), the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) 7,913 (6.0 percent) and the FDP 5,208 (3.9 percent). Kleebank's first-vote share was 9.1 percentage points above the SPD list in the same constituency. Under the law used in 2025, a first-vote plurality did not itself produce a seat where the party's second-vote share in the Land did not cover it; the preliminary national result recorded 23 such uncovered pluralities. The final roll of those elected lists Kleebank for constituency 77, with 27.5 percent of the first votes.

Work in the Bundestag

Twentieth electoral term

In the 20th electoral term of the Bundestag, Helmut Kleebank of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was an ordinary member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy and of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. Both were constituted on 15 December 2021 under vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Alliance 90/The Greens). The climate and energy committee, chaired by Klaus Ernst (Die Linke), had 34 ordinary members, ten of them SPD, including Kleebank. The environment committee, chaired by Harald Ebner (Alliance 90/The Greens), had 38 ordinary members, eleven of them SPD, again including Kleebank.

The SPD parliamentary group also lists him, for that term, as deputy spokesperson of its working group on municipal policy from 18 May 2022 and as deputy chairman of the group’s Landesgruppe Ost. The same list records him as a full member of the board of trustees of the public-law Fund for the Financing of Nuclear Waste Disposal (KENFO) from 5 April 2022 to 20 June 2023, and as a deputy trustee from 20 June 2023.

Advisory Council on Sustainable Development

On 17 February 2022 the Bundestag unanimously re-established the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development, first created in the 15th electoral term, with 20 ordinary and 20 deputy members. It was to follow the German Sustainable Development Strategy and sustainability policy at European level and at the United Nations, and to propose by mid-term how its work could be made more effective and more public.

At the constitutive sitting on 16 March 2022, again chaired by Göring-Eckardt, the members elected Kleebank chairman by secret ballot: every vote cast was for him, with none against and no abstentions. Dr. Wolfgang Stefinger (CDU/CSU) was elected deputy chairman by the same margin. The 20 ordinary members were six from the SPD, five from the CDU/CSU, three each from the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, two from Alternative for Germany, and one from Die Linke, not yet named. Kleebank said the council was a fixed part of parliamentary work, that it would scrutinize the federal government, and that the body often called a sustainability “watchdog” should gain “more teeth.”

On 17 January 2024 the council, over Kleebank’s signature as chairman, submitted printed paper 20/10100 on its further development. The paper said it checked sustainability policy against the principles of sustainable development, spoke with institutions and civil society, and opened debates with position papers, while accompanying the national strategy, the European Green Deal, and the Sustainable Development Goals. It noted that the council already assessed, in formal terms, the government’s sustainability checks on bills, and recommended substantive assessments of selected drafts as well. Further proposals, to be in place at the latest for the 21st term, were to remain a council rather than become a committee, to add “and Future-Related Matters” to its name, to start earlier each term, to keep seeking cross-party consensus, to hear ministers on selected goals, to review whether spending served those goals, to add scientific staff, and to help shape a “sustainability week” beside the Bundestag’s annual debate.

Twenty-first electoral term

The Bundestag biography for the 21st electoral term lists Kleebank as an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and as a deputy member of the renamed council. On 22 May 2025 the Bundestag, without debate, elected the parliamentary secretaries (Schriftführer) proposed under section 3 of its rules of procedure. Kleebank was one of twelve SPD nominees on the adopted list, printed paper 21/215. Two secretaries sit with the presiding officer, usually one from the governing side and one from the opposition, and receive motions and requests to speak, keep the speakers’ list, read out papers, check corrections to the minutes, and establish the result of votes.

The renamed council was constituted on 11 September 2025 under vice-president Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU). Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker (CDU/CSU) was elected chair unanimously in an open vote. It has 18 ordinary members—six from the CDU/CSU, four each from the AfD and the SPD, and two each from the Greens and Die Linke—and 18 deputies. The ordinary SPD members named that day were Sanae Abdi, Dunja Kreiser, Kathrin Michel and Stefan Zierke, not Kleebank. It was set up on a joint motion of the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Left, printed paper 21/571 of 24 June 2025. The motion assigns it the national strategy, European and UN sustainability policy, opinions to lead committees, and evaluation of the government’s sustainability impact assessment, which the lead committee must discuss and appraise in writing. It also follows the state secretaries’ committee for sustainable development and the German Council for Sustainable Development, and the plenary holds a yearly debate on sustainability and future-related matters.

On 4 December 2025 he spoke for the SPD on the government bill to accelerate geothermal plants, heat pumps and heat storage (printed papers 21/1928 and 21/3101). He linked it to the statutory goal of net greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2045 and described geothermal energy as a continuously available heat source, to be expanded by shorter procedures and an overriding public interest when protected interests are weighed, not set aside. The CDU/CSU and SPD then voted for the bill and the AfD, the Greens and Die Linke against, with no abstentions, and it was adopted.

Disclosures on the same biography, dated 28 October 2026, list outside roles: from 22 August 2025, the advisory board for the renewable-energy market offensive at the German Energy Agency (dena); the extended steering committee of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Germany at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability; the KENFO deputy trusteeship until 13 October 2025; the advisory board of the German Business Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF); from 3 September 2025, the advisory board of the SPD Economic Forum; and, until 23 June 2026, deputy state chair of the Berlin association of the German War Graves Commission.

Political positions

Climate and energy

In the Bundestag, Helmut Kleebank has framed policy on climate change as "socially just climate protection," his shorthand for the Social Democratic Party of Germany line. On 11 June 2026, in the first reading of amendments to the Building Energy Act, he called it a scientific survival question and a social one: extreme weather hits people on low incomes harder, and the cost of ending carbon dioxide emissions should not fall on them. He said the previous act had lost acceptance, with about 30 percent of households seeing no workable option. The SPD target remained climate neutrality in 2045, with continued support for renewable power, heat pumps and district heating, while new oil and gas boilers would again be allowed if they later switched to biofuels on a rising schedule, the Biotreppe.

Alliance 90/The Greens rejected the compromise. In the June and July 2026 debates Alaa Alhamwi and Lisa Badum asked how new gas heating could be squared with climate neutrality in 2045, and Michael Kellner cited industry and environmental warnings against the green-gas quota. Kleebank replied that gas and oil for heating should shrink sharply, that biomass could cover what remained, and that suppliers would have to reach climate-neutral fuel by 2045. In February 2026 he told ZFK that dropping the 65 percent rule was a coalition compromise, not a change of SPD view.

On carbon capture and storage he has put avoidance first. On 27 September 2024 he said emissions had to fall to zero and further carbon dioxide then be taken from the atmosphere, estimating that 90 to 95 percent could be avoided by not producing it. He accepted capture for process emissions from cement, questioned it for waste incineration, opposed it on coal as a lock-in and on gas plants because it could slow the switch to hydrogen, and cited incomplete capture, leaks and risks to drinking water. On 11 September 2025, for the SPD on a coalition bill, he grouped cement, lime and waste incineration as unavoidable and said those residuals required CCS, which the coalition had agreed to allow in order to protect the climate, industry and jobs.

Housing and transport in the constituency

In Spandau he has made the same case for rent and heat. In January 2025 he said the Mietpreisbremse had to stay, because tenants were "threatened by exorbitant rent increases" if it lapsed, and that the city should buy rental flats against what he called growing rent gouging. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he said, some heat suppliers had used an unclear legal position to demand €7,000 to €8,000 back for one year, and he called for price supervision and a household arbitration office. The brake, which limits a new rent in a tight market to 10 percent above the local reference rent and exempts flats first let after 1 October 2014, was extended to the end of 2029. On 26 June 2025 the Bundestag passed the CDU/CSU–SPD bill with Green votes; the AfD voted no and Die Linke abstained, its speaker calling the extension a false label. Kleebank's public case was to keep the brake, the position the SPD took in that vote.

As district mayor he opposed more emergency shelter on the ground that Spandau already had a disproportionate share. In December 2015 he told Berlin's refugee coordinator that a request to name further sports halls was "unacceptable," because the borough was already planning 3,000 to 4,000 short-term places and would otherwise, as the least populous borough, hold the most places for asylum seekers.

He has backed reopening the Siemensbahn, a Berlin S-Bahn branch through Siemensstadt approved in 1929, closed in 1980 and scheduled to run again in December 2029.

He has treated reactivation, an extension to Hakenfelde and, if possible, an S-Bahn to Nauen as priorities, and has said Siemens made reopening a condition of investing in Spandau. The residents' initiative Planungswerkstatt neue Siemensstadt objects that houses built after the closure stand very close to the track: in May 2024 one resident said his bedroom was five metres from the rails. Hans-Ulrich Riedel of the initiative says the 1929 approval means noise walls are not required on the old alignment, only lubricators, mats, soled sleepers and a 60 km/h cap, on a service reported at 124 trips a day past a school and a nursery. In March 2025 the Tagesspiegel reported that 150 residents were demanding more protection. Kleebank has hoped for speed limits and extra barriers; the Senate told the Märkische Oderzeitung that neither was planned for residents, schools or nurseries.

Education

For 2024/25, more than 600 teaching posts in Berlin were reported vacant. Kleebank, a former teacher and head, said that still understated the need: workloads had risen sharply over 15 to 20 years, and "we can actually no longer get by with the idea of one teacher for one class." Sharply smaller classes were not realistic, he said, because the extra classes would first require many new schools. In October 2017, as mayor, he warned senators of a "schooling emergency": Spandau had neither rooms nor teachers for 46 refugee children due to move from Charlottenburg.

Personal life and other affiliations

Family

The Bundestag member page, whose biographical details the parliament says rest on Kleebank’s own statements, records that he is a Roman Catholic, is married, and has five children. A profile on the site of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which still describes him in the present tense as district mayor and as a Bundestag candidate, states that the children are adults and that he lives with his family in Spandau. His later personal site calls Spandau his home, citing his upbringing, schooling, work as a nurse and teacher, and ten years as district mayor, but it gives no residential address. The Bundestag lists a constituency office at Bismarckstraße 61, 13585 Berlin. In a 2019 interview with Der Tagesspiegel he said that he had no relatives in East Germany, while his wife had family contacts in southern Brandenburg, around Cottbus.

Civic and professional affiliations

The biography states that from 2009 to 2015 he sat on the parish council (Kirchenvorstand) of his congregation. It names the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), the education union in the German Trade Union Confederation, which says it represents nearly 280,000 people in educational institutions. Also listed are the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), whose federal association represents its regional bodies and describes its principles as freedom, equality, justice, solidarity and tolerance; the Sozialverband Deutschland (SoVD), which describes itself as a socio-political self-help organisation active since 1917; and the Sozialverband VdK Deutschland, which states that it gives social-law advice and represents members on social policy.

The membership list places him on the board of the Berlin state association of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge; the published disclosure records the deputy state chairmanship as running until 23 June 2026. The Volksbund describes itself as a humanitarian organisation charged by the federal government with recording and caring for the graves of German war dead abroad. The disclosure also names an unpaid advisory-board seat at the Al-Farabi Musikakademie in Berlin, which the biography lists as an assessor’s role (Beisitzer), and an advisory-board seat at the Deutsche Unternehmensinitiative Energieeffizienz (DENEFF). DENEFF campaigns on energy efficiency and describes itself as a voice for that policy in Berlin and Brussels.

Further entries are support associations for the Mary-Poppins primary school (Mary-Poppins-GS), the Heinrich-Böll-Oberschule and the Gartenarbeitsschule sites in Hakenfelde and at Borkzeile, the Heimatkundliche Vereinigung Spandau, and a board role at Forum sozialer Klimaschutz. The biography also names the German Youth Hostel Association, the Verband Privater Bauherren, Vereinigung Wirtschaftshof and Magic of Gospel e.V., plus the unexpanded abbreviations ABI and DPG. Roles at the Deutsche Energie-Agentur, SDSN Germany, KENFO and the SPD Economic Forum appear separately, under the disclosure rules for posts in companies and public-law bodies.