Hendrik Hoppenstedt

Hendrik Hoppenstedt (born 14 June 1972 in Großburgwedel) is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from Lower Saxony. He has sat in the Bundestag since October 2013 for Hannover-Land I (constituency 43), the seat that includes Burgwedel in the Hanover region, and holds that direct mandate again after the 2025 federal election. Since 13 December 2021 he has been one of the parliamentary managing directors of the CDU/CSU group. On 23 November 2022 the Mediation Committee of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat elected him, together with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern minister-president Manuela Schwesig, as one of its two chairs, who alternate each quarter.

The Bundestag biography, which rests on the member's own statement, records that he is evangelical Lutheran, married and the father of two children. He attended school in Thönse, spent time at school in Abingdon in England, and took his Abitur at the Gymnasium Großburgwedel; from 1992 to 1993 he did military service and trained as a reserve officer, and he holds the rank of lieutenant colonel of the reserve. Between 1993 and 1999 he studied law in Passau, Lausanne and Würzburg and completed a doctorate. His legal clerkship in Hanover, from 1999 to 2001, included the regional court, the public prosecutor's office and the district government, with elective stations at the Bundesrat in Berlin and the German embassy in Washington, D.C. From 2002 to 2005 he worked at Allianz Versicherungs-AG in Berlin, first as assistant to the management and then as a division head, while also practising as a lawyer, and from 2005 to 2013 he was mayor of Burgwedel.

From November 2016 to March 2018 he was deputy chair of the Bundestag Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. In the free vote of 30 June 2017 on opening marriage to same-sex couples, he was among the 75 CDU/CSU members who voted yes; the Bundestag passed the bill by 393 votes to 226, with four abstentions, while Chancellor Angela Merkel voted no. In March 2018 he became Minister of State to the Chancellor at the Federal Chancellery and remained in that office until December 2021.

He entered the Bundestag in 2013, when the CDU candidate in Hannover-Land I took 44.3 percent of the first votes (77,509). He held the direct mandate in 2017, when the CDU led the constituency with 40.1 percent of first votes, and lost it in 2021 to Rebecca Schamber of the Social Democratic Party, who received 33.7 percent to his 31.9 percent. He remained a member and, on 23 February 2025, won the seat back with 34.8 percent (66,485 votes) against Schamber's 27.4 percent, on a turnout of 84.6 percent. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member and the CDU/CSU spokesperson (Obmann) of the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, a member of the Council of Elders, and a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization and of the Interior Committee.

Early life and education

Childhood and family background

Hendrik Hoppenstedt was born on 14 June 1972 in Großburgwedel and is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung names his father as Dietrich Hoppenstedt, former president of the Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband. In a profile of 5 May 2006, Die Welt wrote that this president, a man from Lower Saxony then aged 65, had been elected in October 1998 and was leaving after about eight years in the post. The integrated authority file of the German National Library records a Dietrich Hermann Hoppenstedt, with the variant name Dietrich H. Hoppenstedt, born on 16 September 1940 in Osnabrück, matching that age.

In its February 2014 report, the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung described Karsten Hoppenstedt as Hendrik's uncle and as honorary mayor of Burgwedel from 1974, the year a territorial reform created the municipality, until 2005. The paper added that Karsten Hoppenstedt had also served for a time as Landrat and as a member of the European Parliament, and it named Björn Hoppenstedt as Hendrik's brother. Karsten Hoppenstedt's term as honorary mayor covered Hendrik Hoppenstedt's childhood; the report does not name Hendrik's mother.

Schooling and military service

From 1978 to 1992 his schooling took him through Thönse and Abingdon, in England, and ended with the Abitur at the Gymnasium Großburgwedel. The chronology published by the Bundestag, which rests on the member's own disclosures, does not name the school in Abingdon or state how long the stay lasted.

After the Abitur he performed compulsory military service (Wehrdienst) in the Bundeswehr from 1992 to 1993 and trained as a reserve officer. The same biography gives his rank as Oberstleutnant der Reserve, lieutenant colonel in the reserve.

Legal studies and doctorate

From 1993 to 1999 he studied law at the University of Passau, the University of Lausanne and the University of Würzburg, and then took a doctorate. The dissertation was accepted at Würzburg in 1999/2000. It was published in 2000 by Ergon-Verlag in Würzburg, as volume 23 of the Würzburger rechtswissenschaftliche Schriften, in 285 pages. The title is Die bundesstaatliche Ordnung des Grundgesetzes zwischen Unitarismus und Föderalismus, with the subtitle Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung des föderalen Systems seit 1949 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bundesrates.

The book is a study in law and constitutional policy of federalism in Germany under the Basic Law. Reviewing it for the Portal für Politikwissenschaft, the political scientist Roland Lhotta recorded the examiners as D. Blumenwitz and H. Hahn. He summarized three parts: the federal order up to 1949, with the emphasis on the 1949 design and the Bundesrat; unitarizing and cooperative changes since 1949, including European integration and the party system; and the reasons for those changes, together with reform proposals then under discussion. Lhotta wrote that the dissertation did not claim theoretical novelty and largely recounted established lines of development in the postwar federal system, including in its treatment of the Bundesrat.

Legal training and work in the private sector

Legal clerkship

In Germany, the qualification for judicial office (Befähigung zum Richteramt) is acquired by completing a university course in law with the first examination and then a preparatory service, the Referendariat, with the second state examination. Section 5b of the Act sets that preparatory service at two years and allows an appropriate part of the training to be undertaken at a foreign institution.

Hendrik Hoppenstedt served the clerkship in Hanover from 1999 to 2001. The member biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on members' own disclosures, records stations at the Landgericht, the public prosecutor's office and the Bezirksregierung. The Bezirksregierungen were Lower Saxony's intermediate state authorities; the Landtag abolished them with effect from 1 January 2005, after his clerkship had ended. The elective stage was spent at the Bundesrat in Berlin and at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. The biography lists the second state examination in law together with that training. It gives no grade, no month and no account of the work done at any station.

Allianz and legal practice

From 2002 to 2005 Hoppenstedt was an employee of Allianz Versicherungs-AG at its Berlin branch. The Bundestag biography states that he began as Assistent der Geschäftsleitung, assistant to the management, and then became a Bereichsleiter, head of a division, while at the same time working as a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt). His own website gives the same years and says that the Allianz post ended in the division-head role, again alongside practice as a lawyer; it does not use the title of assistant to the management.

Under the Federal Lawyers' Act, a person who has obtained the qualification for judicial office may be admitted as a Rechtsanwalt, so the second examination was the statutory condition for that part of his work. Neither the parliamentary biography nor his website names a law firm, a bar chamber, or any file, client or proceeding. The published record therefore establishes the employment at the Berlin branch, the succession from assistant to the management to division head, and the fact of concurrent practice as a lawyer, but not the substance of any legal work. The biographies date both the Allianz employment and that practice to 2002–2005 and do not describe any continuation beyond 2005.

Mayor of Burgwedel

Election and re-election

Hendrik Hoppenstedt was the first full-time mayor of Burgwedel, in the Hanover Region of Lower Saxony, from 2005 to 2013. He succeeded his uncle, Karsten Hoppenstedt, honorary mayor for several decades until 2005. The local Social Democratic Party later put that tenure at 31 years, from the municipality created in the 1974 territorial reform.

On 11 September 2011 Hoppenstedt, for the Christian Democratic Union, was re-elected with the municipal elections: 7,341 votes (73.1 percent) against Karin Beckmann of the SPD, an economist, on 2,702 (26.9 percent). Turnout was 60.4 percent of 16,975 eligible voters. She was the only opponent, and the revised law made a simple majority final, with no runoff. In the council election the same day the CDU won 53.7 percent and 18 of 34 seats, an absolute majority; the SPD took eight.

Municipal administration

He directed the administration from the Rathaus in Großburgwedel.

At the end of 2012 the state statistical office recorded 597,000 euros in total liabilities, about 29 euros per inhabitant, unchanged from 2011, and no cash credits (Kassenkredite). The Hanover Region as a whole stood near 787 euros per inhabitant. On 19 December 2011 the council kept the property-tax multipliers for Grundsteuer A and B at 385 percent for 2012. Hoppenstedt signed the notice on 9 January 2012; with the rates unchanged, most properties received no new assessment. Childcare expanded ahead of the entitlement for children under three. A Hanover Region report put coverage for under-threes at 14.3 percent in 2007 and 30.5 percent in 2010, and for ages three to six at 106.5 percent. On 1 October 2010 Burgwedel had 115 approved crib places and 674 kindergarten places.

The 2009 war-memorial dispute

The sharpest dispute was a memorial for the Großburgwedel cemetery, to be unveiled on Volkstrauertag, 15 November 2009. Unlike the other districts, Großburgwedel had none for its Second World War dead. taz reported that a soldiers' association, backed by CDU district mayor Otto Bahlo, wanted an Ehrenmal for fallen soldiers, while Social Democrat Rudolf Gutte demanded that victims of Nazi rule be included as well. The inscription that emerged commemorated the fallen of both world wars and "the victims of National Socialist tyranny 1933 to 1945, of flight and expulsion." Sculptor Peter Lechelt designed the "Tor der Erinnerung."

Glass panels were to list 142 soldiers alphabetically, without rank or unit, including five members of the Waffen-SS and one man linked to the Sicherheitsdienst, beside a separate record of civilian victims. That record was to include infants of Polish forced labourers who had starved locally — taz counted 27 — and others murdered under Nazi rule. Hoppenstedt told taz the project was a citizens' initiative under democratic decisions, and that the charge of honouring SS men had hurt him personally. Pupils researched the names with a historian, and he required the council to add the infants.

On 30 October 2009 he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: "We were accused of honoring SS members, and we are definitely not doing that." File checks, he said, had found no war-crime charges, and no name was removed. Michael Fürst, chairman of Lower Saxony's Jewish communities, accepted ordinary soldiers but not SS or Gestapo names beside Jewish victims, and asked that Jewish names be omitted. The town agreed; Fürst said he had been consulted. Kay Schweigmann-Greve of the German-Israeli Society in Hanover called the pairing distasteful. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded cancellation, arguing that SS names denigrated the victims and that the lack of charges did not prove innocence. taz, headlined "Perpetrators and victims on one stone," reported foreign protest and a warning from the Foundation of Lower Saxon Memorials. Then minister-president Christian Wulff, a Großburgwedel resident, had not commented.

The Niedersächsisches Institut für Historische Regionalforschung then found that at least two of the SS men had probably taken part in war crimes. The local council ordered their names made illegible, and the soldiers' association boycotted the ceremony. It was unveiled anyway, with the six names covered. The next weekend the panes listing soldiers were smashed. Police did not rule out a political motive, and the town said the names would not be restored if the men's units were shown to have committed war crimes.

End of the mayoralty and the 2014 succession

The post fell vacant when Hoppenstedt entered the Bundestag in 2013. His brother Björn, a lawyer and Kreisrat in Harburg, sought the CDU nomination. The Hamburger Abendblatt reported in October 2013 that Michael Kranz, honorary mayor of Wettmar, was also a candidate, with the election set for February.

On 16 February 2014 Axel Düker of the SPD, backed by Alliance 90/The Greens, won with 51.6 percent. The SPD branch called it a break after 40 years in which the mayor had always been a CDU member named Hoppenstedt. The Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung called the result a sensation and a setback for the family. Düker was strongest in Wettmar, with more than 60 percent.

Bundestag elections

The Hannover-Land I constituency

Constituency 43, Hannover-Land I, is a Bundestag district in Lower Saxony. The Federal Returning Officer’s constituency descriptions for 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 list the same eight municipalities of the Hanover Region: the towns of Burgdorf, Burgwedel, Garbsen, Langenhagen, Neustadt am Rübenberge and Wunstorf, and the municipalities of Isernhagen and Wedemark. The region’s remaining municipalities were placed in constituencies 41 (Stadt Hannover I), 42 (Stadt Hannover II) and 47 (Hannover-Land II), so the district covers the northern and north-western surroundings of Hanover rather than the city itself.

Voters cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party list. The candidate with the most first votes takes the direct mandate; second votes determine list seats. The number of people entitled to vote in the constituency fell from 232,941 in 2013 to 227,327 in 2025.

Direct mandates in 2013 and 2017

At the election for the 18th Bundestag on 22 September 2013, Hendrik Hoppenstedt of the Christian Democratic Union won the direct mandate with 77,509 first votes (44.3 percent). Caren Marks of the Social Democratic Party was runner-up with 67,440 votes (38.5 percent). Turnout was 75.8 percent (176,671 voters). On the second vote the CDU led the SPD by 41.3 to 33.1 percent; Alliance 90/The Greens took 8.2 percent, the Free Democratic Party 5.0 percent, Die Linke 4.5 percent and the Alternative for Germany 4.0 percent. The Federal Returning Officer’s table of those elected and of the runners-up recorded Hoppenstedt, with 44.3 percent, as the constituency member and Marks, with 38.5 percent, as the unsuccessful candidate.

On 24 September 2017 he held the seat. The CDU candidate received 72,282 first votes (40.1 percent) and Marks, again the SPD candidate, 59,552 (33.1 percent). Turnout rose to 78.0 percent among 232,926 eligible voters. The AfD candidate, Dietmar Friedhoff, took 17,217 first votes (9.6 percent), ahead of the Greens (6.0 percent), the FDP (5.2 percent) and Die Linke (5.0 percent). Second votes divided CDU 34.8 percent, SPD 27.0 percent, FDP 10.5 percent and AfD 10.2 percent. Hoppenstedt was also 12th on the CDU list in Lower Saxony, but the direct mandate, not that list place, returned him.

The 2021 result and the state list

The election of 26 September 2021 reversed the constituency result. Rebecca Schamber (SPD) won 58,297 first votes (33.7 percent) to Hoppenstedt’s 55,185 (31.9 percent), a margin of 3,112 votes, and the final results named her as the elected constituency candidate and him as the runner-up. Turnout was 75.5 percent of 231,250 eligible voters. The Greens were third on first votes with 22,490 (13.0 percent), followed by the AfD (7.5 percent) and the FDP (7.3 percent). Second votes went to the SPD with 32.1 percent, the CDU 25.8 percent, the Greens 15.2 percent, the FDP 11.3 percent and the AfD 7.7 percent.

Hoppenstedt nevertheless remained a member through the state list. The Lower Saxony state returning officer’s notice of 3 August 2021, published in the ministerial gazette of 10 August, admitted him in first place on the CDU list for the election of 26 September, described there as a minister of state and member of the Bundestag and resident in Burgwedel. In the Federal Returning Officer’s final list of those elected from state lists, he is the first CDU candidate returned for Lower Saxony, where the party received 1,093,579 second votes (24.2 percent). A dpa dispatch carried by n-tv on election night had already identified that list place as his route back into the Bundestag after the loss of the direct seat.

The 2025 election

On 27 December 2024 the Federal President, at the request of the Federal Chancellor, dissolved the 20th Bundestag and set the election to the 21st Bundestag for Sunday, 23 February 2025. In Hannover-Land I, Hoppenstedt regained the direct mandate with 66,485 first votes (34.8 percent). Schamber, the outgoing constituency member, was second with 52,313 votes (27.4 percent). The AfD rose to 33,139 first votes (17.4 percent); the Greens received 9.5 percent, the Left 5.5 percent and the FDP 2.7 percent. Turnout jumped to 84.6 percent—192,232 of 227,327 eligible voters, 9.1 points higher than in 2021. Second votes were led by the CDU on 29.8 percent, then the SPD on 22.7 percent and the AfD on 17.4 percent. The Bundestag’s current biography of Hoppenstedt records the mandate as the constituency seat for Wahlkreis 043, Hannover-Land I.

Parliamentary work, 2013–2018

Legal Affairs Committee

Hoppenstedt took his seat in the Bundestag when the 18th legislative term convened on 22 October 2013, as the directly elected member for Hannover-Land I. For that term the Bundestag's archived biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection (Ausschuss für Recht und Verbraucherschutz) and of its subcommittee on European law, and as a substitute member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In the 18th term the legal-affairs committee was chaired by Renate Künast of Alliance 90/The Greens.

A documented rapporteurship from that period was the 2017 bill on Hinterbliebenengeld, compensation for surviving relatives. Hoppenstedt signed the committee's report of 17 May 2017 with Johannes Fechner of the SPD, Harald Petzold of Die Linke and Katja Keul of the Greens. The drafts, one from the CDU/CSU and SPD groups (Drucksache 18/11397) and one from the federal government (18/11615), concerned a gap in which close relatives of someone killed by a third party could claim for grief only if they themselves suffered a medically identifiable injury, known as a Schockschaden, under section 823 of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. The plenary had referred both texts to the legal-affairs committee as the lead committee, on 9 March and 30 March 2017. After a public hearing on 26 April, the committee on 17 May unanimously recommended adopting the groups' bill unchanged and declaring the government bill disposed of.

After the 2017 election the committee was reconstituted on 31 January 2018 as a body of 43 members, with Bundestag vice-president Thomas Oppermann in the chair for the opening sitting. Stephan Brandner of the Alternative for Germany was elected chair by secret ballot, 19 votes to 12 with 12 abstentions, after members objected to appointing him without a vote; Hoppenstedt was again a full CDU/CSU member.

Same-sex marriage and other recorded votes

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag held a roll-call vote on a Bundesrat bill to give persons of the same sex a right to marry (Drucksache 18/6665), the proposal known as opening marriage, or Ehe für alle. Three days earlier the CDU/CSU group, whose floor leader was Volker Kauder, had classed the question as one of conscience and lifted group discipline, after Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wanted the discussion to move toward a Gewissensentscheidung. President Norbert Lammert announced that 623 votes had been cast: 393 in favour, 226 against and 4 abstentions, and that the bill had therefore passed. The division list printed in the plenary protocol places Hoppenstedt among the CDU/CSU members voting yes. Within the CDU/CSU, Die Welt counted 75 yes votes, 225 no votes and those four abstentions; Merkel voted no.

The Hinterbliebenengeld recommendation was not itself a published individual roll call. The committee's report records only the unanimous recommendation of 17 May 2017, with Hoppenstedt named as one of the four rapporteurs.

Deputy chairmanship

On 30 November 2016, a day after the CDU/CSU group had nominated him unanimously, the legal-affairs committee named Hoppenstedt deputy chair. He was Künast's only deputy and, in her absence, was expected to preside over the committee's sittings and hearings. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members' own disclosures, dates the deputy chairmanship from November 2016 to March 2018.

In the 19th term the committee designated him deputy chair again on 21 February 2018, adopting the recommendation unanimously at a sitting chaired by Brandner. A Burgwedel local report that day said the CDU/CSU group had assigned him, as rapporteur, constitutional law, general civil law and digital subjects, including the Network Enforcement Act, liability rules for self-driving cars and digital consumer protection. The deputy chairmanship ended in March 2018, when he became Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor.

Minister of State at the Federal Chancellery

Appointment and responsibilities

On 14 March 2018, at the start of the Fourth Merkel cabinet, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble announced the new federal government after Frank-Walter Steinmeier had appointed the ministers. Among the state ministers at the Federal Chancellery he named Hendrik Hoppenstedt of the Christian Democratic Union as the minister for cooperation between the federation and the Länder. He replaced Helge Braun, until then the Chancellery's minister of state and the government's coordinator both for bureaucracy reduction and better regulation and for relations between the federation and the Länder, who the same day became Federal Minister for Special Affairs and head of the Chancellery under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The same announcement named three other Chancellery state ministers: Dorothee Bär for digitalisation, Monika Grütters for culture and the media, and Annette Widmann-Mauz for integration. Hoppenstedt's Bundestag biography records his office: from March 2018, Minister of State to the Chancellor, coordinator of the federal government for bureaucracy reduction and better regulation, and coordinator for federal–state relations.

Better regulation and bureaucracy reduction

The "one in, one out" rule had applied since 1 January 2015, before Hoppenstedt took the brief. An increase in the ongoing compliance costs (laufender Erfüllungsaufwand) of business from a new federal rule was to be offset elsewhere by the end of the legislative period. It did not cover one-to-one transposition of European Union law, international treaties or specified court rulings, measures to avert significant dangers, or rules limited to at most one year.

For 14 March 2018 to 31 December 2020 the government reported that ongoing business costs inside the rule had fallen by about €1.3 billion a year: €542 million in new burdens against €1.816 billion in relief, across 201 projects. It put the cumulative surplus since 2015 at more than €3.1 billion, and said that even with one-to-one EU transposition there was still a net reduction of €743 million in that period. The Chancellery later described the record since 2015 as "one in, three out": more than three euros of relief, it said, for each euro of new burden.

The National Regulatory Control Council (Nationaler Normenkontrollrat), reporting in September 2021 on its own 2020/21 year, counted an "in" of €562.7 million against an "out" of €1.1 billion—a net relief of about €515 million—and a cumulative "out" of about €3.5 billion since 2016. It called the exclusion of EU measures a growing "reality gap" (Realitätslücke): adding EU transposition turned that year's net relief into a net burden of €37 million, with ongoing costs from EU law of about €552 million. It also noted that no further bureaucracy-relief statute had been passed in the reporting period, despite announcements and unused proposals such as shorter tax-retention periods.

In 2021 the cabinet adopted a 22-point package to carry out a mandate of the coalition committee of 25 August 2020. The government release quoted Hoppenstedt on a basic register of company master data, faster binding tax information, changes to planning procedures, and simpler digital applications for family benefits. It also cited a 2018 work programme of more than 50 measures, the Third Bureaucracy Relief Act with a stated €1.1 billion a year in company relief, and a first joint federal–state programme of about 50 further measures, and said ongoing compliance costs were €700 million lower than in the previous legislative period.

The Planning Assurance Act (Planungssicherstellungsgesetz), passed early in the pandemic, allowed digital participation in planning and approval procedures. Hoppenstedt told Handelsblatt that Tesla's German procedures seemed to him to be moving quite fast, and that he wanted the Act, then due to expire at the end of March 2021, made permanent. The coalition extended it only until the end of 2022.

Federal–state coordination during the pandemic

From March 2020 the chancellor's conferences with the minister-presidents were the main political forum in which the federation and the Länder agreed pandemic restrictions. A written answer of 29 March 2021 listed him at the conference of 12 March 2020, with Merkel and Braun, and at 20 further meetings through 10 February 2021—21 of the 22 dates asked about, the exception being 14 October 2020.

In late November 2021, after the "epidemic situation of national significance" ended on 25 November, he criticised the prospective coalition of the Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party. He told Rundblick Niedersachsen that letting that basis lapse had removed instruments such as closing restaurants, restricting hotels and, as a last resort, closing schools, and that the parties were not quickly replacing it—which he called negligent. He said Olaf Scholz and the SPD were delaying another minister-presidents' conference, and that if it met only after the election then planned for 9 December, Germany might already be "close to a catastrophe". Above an incidence of 300 he argued for restaurant closures, assembly bans, distance learning in higher grades, retail restrictions and a general vaccination mandate. He named a fresh epidemic-situation declaration, a further amendment of the Protection against Infection Act, or a federal statute on the model of the expired "federal emergency brake" (Bundesnotbremse). He criticised Stephan Weil, the SPD minister-president of Lower Saxony, for supporting a smaller set of instruments.

Departure in 2021

The office ended when the Scholz cabinet took office on 8 December 2021. Bundestag President Bärbel Bas announced Sarah Ryglewski of the SPD as a Minister of State to the Chancellor. The Weser-Kurier reported that she would follow Hoppenstedt in coordinating federal–state relations; she said she could not yet say whether the minister-presidents' conference would be part of the job. The two halves of the portfolio were split. The chancellor's organisational decree of the same day moved from the Chancellery to the Federal Ministry of Justice the office for bureaucracy reduction, better regulation, and the National Regulatory Control Council. The Chancellery's later profile of Ryglewski describes her as responsible in particular for cooperation between the federation and the Länder, with sustainable development assigned in addition by the cabinet.

Parliamentary managing director of the CDU/CSU group

Appointment and functions in the group

On 13 December 2021 the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag elected a new executive under chair Ralph Brinkhaus and Alexander Dobrindt, chair of the CSU Landesgruppe. Thorsten Frei became first parliamentary managing director; Stefan Müller stayed managing director of the CSU Landesgruppe and Frei's deputy; and Nina Warken, Hendrik Hoppenstedt and Patrick Schnieder were the other managing directors. The Handelsblatt reported that Hoppenstedt, then a Chancellery minister of state, was expected to follow Manfred Grund. His Bundestag biography dates the office from December 2021.

On 13 May 2025 the group elected a new board: Jens Spahn as chair, with Steffen Bilger as first parliamentary managing director and Reinhard Brandl for the CSU Landesgruppe, both already chosen on 5 May, and Hoppenstedt, Catarina dos Santos-Wintz and Felix Schreiner as further managing directors. On 7 September 2026 dos Santos-Wintz was elected first managing director with 90.9 percent, after Bilger became federal transport minister at the end of July; Frederik Bouffier took the seat she left. The Bundestag faction page of 27 October 2026 listed Frei as chair and Hoppenstedt, dos Santos-Wintz and Schreiner as managing directors, with Brandl still for the CSU Landesgruppe.

Managing directors run a group's parliamentary business with its chair: plenary preparation, agendas with the other groups and the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat), attendance and cohesion at votes, committee places, and contact with the government, the Bundesrat, the party and associations. Under the Berlin hour, the agreed split of debating time, they tell the chair who speaks and for how long. Ministers and Bundesrat members must be heard under Article 43 of the Basic Law, but their time is usually charged to the governing groups. Excused absences can be paired, so a matching number on the other side stay out and an accidental majority is avoided.

Council of Elders, immunity and rules of procedure

The Council of Elders comprises the Bundestag president, the vice presidents and further members shared by group strength. Managing directors sit on it and pre-negotiate in separate rounds. It meets every sitting week under the president, sets sitting weeks, agrees the next agenda and, at the start of a term, the committee chairs. On the calendar and the agenda it only recommends. It decides some internal matters, such as the Bundestag budget estimate, rooms and members' staff, and appoints commissions to prepare them. Hoppenstedt is a full member.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member and the Obmann of the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and Rules of Procedure, and a deputy on the committees for Digital Affairs and State Modernization and for the Interior. He is also a deputy member of the separate Election Review Committee (Wahlprüfungsausschuss), the nine-member body that prepares Bundestag decisions on challenges to the validity of federal and European elections; the parliamentary groups nominated him to that place in June 2025. With 14 full members, the rules committee is described as a referee for the parliament's internal affairs: it interprets and amends the rules of procedure, looks for ways through conflicts in plenary and committee, and watches over immunity. At its constitutive sitting, led by president Julia Klöckner, SPD member Macit Karaahmetoğlu was elected chair, eleven votes to none with three abstentions. Hoppenstedt was one of five CDU/CSU members, with Ansgar Heveling, Carsten Müller, Thomas Silberhorn and Johannes Wiegelmann. Immunity lasts only for the mandate and can be lifted only by the Bundestag, which must also approve any other restraint on personal freedom; its purpose is to protect the chamber's ability to work.

Mediation Committee and the Joint Committee

The Mediation Committee elects one Bundestag member and one Bundesrat member as chairs. They alternate quarterly, from the constitutive sitting, and deputize for each other. On 23 November 2022 it elected Manuela Schwesig, minister-president of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Hoppenstedt, with Schwesig taking the first quarter.

That evening it dealt with the Bürgergeld, meant to replace Hartz IV. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Hoppenstedt thought a quick deal possible if the "basic principles of Hartz IV" stayed. In about an hour and a half the committee approved a compromise reached the day before. From 1 January 2023 the adult rate was to rise by about 50 euros; sanctions for failing to cooperate could still apply at once; and savings up to 40,000 euros were protected for a year. Friedrich Merz called it tolerable, and the CDU/CSU group accepted it with no votes against and one abstention.

In March 2024, during Hoppenstedt's turn in the chair, health minister Karl Lauterbach warned that referring the cannabis bill would kill it. In a letter reported by Der Spiegel, Hoppenstedt called the charge that he would neglect his duties for party advantage "groundless, false and inappropriate". A called sitting, he wrote, takes every referred bill; dates are set with Schwesig by agreement of both chairs; and referral alone would not defeat the law. Only a failure to meet again in that legislative period would, and that, he wrote, would probably be unconstitutional.

On 17 December 2025 the committee of the 21st term re-elected both, Hoppenstedt taking the chair that day. He holds it from 17 December to 16 March and from 17 June to 16 September; Schwesig from 17 March to 16 June and from 17 September to 16 December. The biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss); the Bundesrat's list puts him in the CDU/CSU contingent. The Bundestag president chairs it, and its Bundestag members and substitutes are appointed at the start of each term in proportion to the groups.

Party offices and political positions

Offices in the CDU

Hoppenstedt has been a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 1997, according to the self-reported biography on the Bundestag website. That account also lists him as chair of the CDU district association (Bezirksverband) Hanover, chair of the CDU county association Hannover-Land, and a member of the presidium of the CDU in Lower Saxony. The district board names him chairman, and the county association's page for its 2024 executive names him Kreisvorsitzender. Delegates elected him a further presidium member at the state congress in Braunschweig on 21 January 2023. He was not among those chosen for the presidium at the congress in Osnabrück on 22 and 23 August 2025, and the executive published afterwards does not list him.

On 16 January 2021, at the CDU's digital congress to succeed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the pandemic had cut the congress presidium to five people on stage: Kramp-Karrenbauer, secretary-general Paul Ziemiak, deputy chair Silvia Breher, Yvonne Magwas, and, unexpectedly, Hoppenstedt, then a state minister in the Federal Chancellery.

Federalism, administration and regulation

His 2000 doctorate, Die bundesstaatliche Ordnung des Grundgesetzes zwischen Unitarismus und Föderalismus, examined the federal order of the Basic Law since 1949, with a stated emphasis on the Bundesrat. Reviewing the Würzburg dissertation, examined by D. Blumenwitz and H. Hahn, Roland Lhotta called it a survey of familiar lines of German federalism that did not claim theoretical novelty.

As state minister to Angela Merkel, he defended that division of powers in the pandemic. At an April 2020 webinar of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU in Hanover he said the law assigned the competences and the federation could in many fields only encourage the Länder, and he treated differing infection rates as a reason for regional measures. He added that crisis digitization should cut bureaucracy and that "some shackles will have to be thrown off." In April 2021 he told Handelsblatt he understood complaints about bureaucracy but that Tesla's approvals were moving quickly, and he wanted the Planning Assurance Act, which allowed digital participation in planning, made permanent rather than extended only to the end of 2022. He urged the Länder toward common rules, including for schools through the Conference of Education Ministers. A cabinet package he presented that month was to supplement a 2018 programme of more than 50 measures. Johannes Ludewig, chair of the National Regulatory Control Council, called the result mixed and "only a drop in the ocean": little short-term relief, many 2020 proposals unused, and much of it vague and without deadlines.

Other recorded positions

On 6 October 2026 the Süddeutsche Zeitung carried a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report of remarks Hoppenstedt gave the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung on the CDU and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He called Brandmauer ("firewall") toxic, because it suggested the CDU was offended that a supposedly bourgeois-conservative force was contesting its role. The separation was "absolutely right" in its result, he said, because there were almost no overlaps; the party had to explain why cooperation was impossible. Europe, the euro, alignment with the West and the Christian understanding of the human person were the CDU's "core DNA," and if Alice Weidel wanted to leave Schengen and the euro, or to deport all Syrians across the board, cooperation was impossible.

The CDU congress of 8 December 2018 had already rejected coalitions and similar cooperation with the Left Party and the AfD, and in February 2020 the presidium ruled out any cooperation with the AfD, direct or indirect. On 10 October 2026, before a presidium retreat under Friedrich Merz on election losses, the argument widened. Manfred Weber of the Christian Social Union said a "them or us" firewall had to become history and had failed, while still calling the AfD a political enemy; Markus Söder said repeating the word would not work. Florian Oest called rigid incompatibility resolutions unhelpful, and Guido Heuer said the firewall had walled the CDU in, though he excluded coalitions with the AfD or the Left. Deputy chair Karin Prien said dropping the ban would end the Union in its present form, while Günter Krings rejected the idea that the resolution had caused the AfD's growth.

Personal life and outside interests

Family

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own statements, records that Hendrik Hoppenstedt was born on 14 June 1972 in Großburgwedel, that he is evangelical-Lutheran, and that he is married with two children. His personal website describes him as the father of two daughters; neither that page nor the Bundestag biography names his wife or his children. The Lower Saxony state returning officer's notices of the CDU state lists for the 2021 and 2025 Bundestag elections both give his place of residence as Burgwedel, postal code 30938, and his place of birth as Großburgwedel.

His Berlin parliamentary office is listed as Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin. The biography gives the constituency office as Walderseestraße 21, 30117 Hannover. The CDU/CSU group's member page lists the same street number, Walderseestraße 21, with the postal code 30177 Hannover.

Reserve service and disclosed outside roles

The biography states his current rank as Oberstleutnant der Reserve (lieutenant colonel of the reserve), after basic service and reserve-officer training in 1992–93. Speaking in June 2014 at a farewell parade for soldiers of Logistikbataillon 141 in Luttmersen, he said that from his entry into the Bundeswehr in 1992 as a conscript he had continued, as a reserve officer, to perform reserve exercises. On 5 March 2018 the magazine of the Verband der Reservisten der Deutschen Bundeswehr reported that the association's president, Oswin Veith, had welcomed him as a member, and that he belonged to the association's Bundestag reservists' working group, the RAG Bundestag.

Interests published under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), sections 45 onwards, are set out on the same biography. The notices are to be filed within three months of taking a seat and within three months of any later change. Under functions in public-law bodies, the biography lists him as Vertrauensmann at the Bausparkasse of BHW in Hameln, entered against the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Bonn, at 6,761.84 euros gross a year. Section 12 of the Building Societies Act provides that BaFin appoints a Vertrauensmann at each Bausparkasse, after hearing the society, to see that the general conditions for home-savings contracts on the allocation procedure are observed. The trustee may inspect books and records insofar as they concern that procedure, reports findings to BaFin without being bound by its instructions, and is paid by BaFin, with the Bausparkasse reimbursing the cost.

The disclosure also lists membership of the administrative board and of the risk committee of Sparkasse Hannover, at 250.00 euros gross a month until 31 December 2025 and 475.00 euros gross a month from 1 January 2026, plus irregular payments stated as 600.00 euros gross for 2025 and 1,590.00 euros gross for 2026. Sparkasse Hannover's published list of the Verwaltungsrat includes him among the members and identifies him as a member of the Bundestag. Under participations in companies the biography records Hoppenstedt Land & Art KG, Burgwedel, without stating the size of the holding or any income from it.