# Hermann Gröhe

# Hermann Gröhe

Hermann Gröhe (born 25 February 1961 in Uedem, Kreis Kleve) is a German lawyer and politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). He sat in the Bundestag from 1994 until 25 March 2025, entering on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list in 1994 and 2002 and otherwise holding the direct mandate for Neuss I, and he lives in Neuss. He was CDU secretary-general from October 2009 to December 2013 and federal minister of health in [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)’s third cabinet from 17 December 2013 until 14 March 2018, when Jens Spahn succeeded him at the Federal Ministry of Health. On 29 November 2025 the assembly of the German Red Cross elected him president for four years.

The Bundestag’s biography for the 18th electoral term records that he is Protestant, married and the father of four children. He took the Abitur in 1980 and studied law at the University of Cologne from 1980 to 1987, passing the first state examination in 1987. Until 1993 he was a research assistant at the university’s Seminar for State Philosophy and Legal Policy; from 1991 to 1993 he completed his legal traineeship at the Cologne Regional Court and in 1993 passed the second state examination. He has been admitted as a lawyer since 1994, with the practice recorded as resting.

Gröhe joined the Young Union in Neuss in 1975 and the CDU in 1977. He chaired the Neuss Young Union from 1983 to 1989 and the national organization from 1989 to 1994, sat on the Neuss district council in 1984–1989 and again in 1993–1994, and chaired the CDU in Rhein-Kreis Neuss from September 2001 to November 2009. In parliament he spoke for the CDU/CSU “Young Group” from 1994 to 1998 and for human rights and humanitarian aid from 1998 to 2005, then served as the group’s legal adviser from November 2005 to September 2008. From October 2008 to October 2009 he was minister of state to the chancellor.

As secretary-general he remained in post through the 2013 federal election, at which the CDU took 34.1 percent of second votes and the CSU 7.4 percent. On 17 December 2013 President Joachim Gauck appointed him minister of health and he was sworn in with the new cabinet. In November 2015 the Bundestag, with the votes of the CDU/CSU and the SPD, passed the second care-strengthening law, which replaced three care levels with five care grades so that dementia and physical limitation would be assessed together, and raised the long-term-care contribution by 0.2 percentage points to 2.55 percent from 2017 (2.8 percent for people without children). [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) opposed the bill and [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) abstained; both argued that staff shortages and the insurance’s partial-benefit design were left in place, and that some residents of care homes could face higher private co-payments. He was not reappointed when the fourth Merkel cabinet took office: on 14 March 2018 [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) handed Spahn the certificate of appointment. Gröhe stayed on as a deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and, on 23 July 2024, confirmed that he would not stand again, calling three decades in the Bundestag the greatest honour of his life.

## Early life and education

### Family background and schooling

Hermann Gröhe was born on 25 February 1961 in Uedem, in the district of Kleve in North Rhine-Westphalia. His parents, both teachers of Latin and Ancient Greek, left Saxony, then part of the German Democratic Republic, in 1958 and settled on the Lower Rhine; the family moved to Neuss in 1964, where he grew up with two siblings. A Konrad Adenauer Foundation biography places their departure in Leipzig in the late 1950s and describes his childhood as that of a Protestant on a largely Catholic Lower Rhine. Gröhe has said that his parents fled west via Berlin in 1958.

From 1967 to 1971 he attended the Friedrich-von-Bodelschwingh-Schule, and from 1971 to 1980 the Quirinus-Gymnasium in Neuss, where he took the Abitur in 1980. In a 2004 profile he recalled a train journey across the inner-German border in 1969, when he was eight: submachine guns and guard dogs at the crossing, and asthma medicine for his grandmother concealed in gifts his parents were carrying.

He is married to Heidi Oldenkott-Gröhe. In the early years of the marriage, before the children were born, she worked in the administration of a health insurer in Cologne; the couple moved back to Neuss in 1992. They have four children, the eldest of them a son, Bernhard, born in 1993. A 2010 church-press profile described her as Catholic and active in her Neuss parish. Bundestag biographies list Gröhe as Protestant, married, the father of four, and resident in Neuss.

### Legal studies and the bar

From 1980 to 1987 Gröhe studied law at the University of Cologne and passed the first state law examination in 1987. From 1987 to 1993 he was a *wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter* and *wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft* at the university’s Seminar für Staatsphilosophie und Rechtspolitik. Reference biographies identify that post with Martin Kriele, professor of general state theory and public law; the Adenauer Foundation’s account describes him as a *Hilfskraft* at Kriele’s chair. Overlapping the university work, he completed the *Referendariat* at the Landgericht Köln from 1991 to 1993 and passed the second state examination in 1993.

He was admitted as a *Rechtsanwalt* in 1994. In 1995 he joined the Neuss partnership Hüsch & Partner, where he practised constitutional, administrative and party law. A Bundestag biography of January 2006 still listed him simply as a lawyer. Parliamentary disclosures later recorded the work at Hüsch & Partner as ending on 30 September 2008. From October 2008, when the same biography records his appointment as minister of state to the federal chancellor, the admission was marked dormant, and the biography for the 20th electoral term still described him as a *Rechtsanwalt* whose practice was *ruhend*.

## Youth politics and local office

### Junge Union

Gröhe joined the Junge Union in its Neuss city association in 1975 and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1977. The Junge Union is the joint youth organization of the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union. From 1983 to 1989 he chaired its Neuss district association.

At the Deutschlandtag in Erlangen in early November 1989, days before the opening of the Berlin Wall, delegates elected him federal chairman. He was 28 and a research assistant at the University of Cologne. An [Associated Press](/organizations/associated-press) report in *taz* gave him just under 75 percent of the votes cast; the biography published by the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Kohl-Stiftung records 74.3 percent. He succeeded Christoph Böhr, who did not stand again after reaching the organization's age limit of 35. Opening the congress, Böhr said that nobody in the CDU/CSU Bundestag group was under 35, called reunification a priority, and urged contacts with democracy movements in the German Democratic Republic and talks "without arrogance" with the East German CDU and the Socialist Unity Party. The same report put membership at about 220,000 and said the total had been falling because of political disaffection. Chancellor [Helmut Kohl](/people/helmut-kohl) addressed the congress and, on the Saturday evening, led a candlelit march through Erlangen behind a banner reading "Freiheit für alle Deutschen".

He remained federal chairman until 1994 and, from 1990 to 1994, sat on the CDU federal executive. At the Deutschlandtag in Leipzig in September 1990 the West German Junge Union united with the Christian-democratic youth of the GDR, and delegates of the combined organization re-elected him. About 380 delegates heard Kohl and the East German prime minister [Lothar de Maizière](/people/lothar-de-maiziere). The four deputy chairs were split between the two states: Joachim Herrmann and Christian Fischer from the Federal Republic, and Christoph Bender and Cordula Schubert from the GDR. During his term, the Deutschlandtag of 6–8 November 1992 in Dillingen, in the Saarland, elected Udo Schuster of Würzburg as a deputy chair, and Bavarian motions on federalism and subsidiarity in European policy were carried. At the 1994 Deutschlandtag in Berlin he did not stand again; the delegates elected Klaus Escher to succeed him.

From 1991 to 1993 Gröhe sat on the commission that drafted the CDU's second basic programme, *Freiheit in Verantwortung*.

### Council and district party

Alongside the youth offices he was a member of the district council of the Kreis Neuss from 1984 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1994. In the boundaries fixed by the 1975 municipal reorganization, that district is today's Rhein-Kreis Neuss.

From September 2001 to November 2009 he chaired the CDU there, succeeding [Hans-Ulrich Klose](/people/hans-ulrich-klose) of Korschenbroich, who had led the association since 1976. This Klose, a long-serving member of the North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag, is not the Social Democrat of the same name. After taking over, Gröhe described him as a reliable and unobtrusive adviser. Gröhe's district chairmanship ended in November 2009. Lutz Lienenkämper, a Landtag member from Meerbusch, succeeded him and held the office until 2021, when Ansgar Heveling followed.

## Member of the Bundestag, 1994–2008

### Election and the Young Group

Gröhe entered the Bundestag at the federal election of 16 October 1994 on the state list of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in North Rhine-Westphalia, in 28th place; he was not among the members returned from a constituency. From 1994 to 1998 he was speaker of the “Junge Gruppe” of the joint parliamentary group of the CDU and the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CDU/CSU).

In June 1995 he and Matthias Berninger of Alliance 90/The Greens began regular meetings of younger Bundestag members from the two parties. The circle gathered about once a quarter in the wine cellar of the Italian restaurant Sassela in Bonn. Helmut Kohl’s secretary, Juliane Weber, saw them arrive, and Kohl allowed the meetings to continue. Bernd Protzner, general secretary of the CSU, said the party would watch the “Pizza-Connection,” and the name stuck. Participants later described the evenings as social and as trust-building rather than as negotiations for a coalition, though some also appeared together on climate policy and citizenship law. CDU members included Armin Laschet; Green members included [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir). The round faded after the 1998 change of government and the move of parliament to Berlin. Gröhe and Margareta Wolf revived meetings in 2007.

At the election of 27 September 1998 Gröhe won constituency 76, Neuss I, with 45.9 percent of the valid first votes. After the constituencies were redrawn, he stood in 2002 in constituency 109, again Neuss I. The direct seat went to Kurt Bodewig of the Social Democratic Party, with 44.7 percent of the first votes against 43.6 percent (73,250 votes) for the CDU. Gröhe returned on the North Rhine-Westphalia CDU list, in 23rd place. On 18 September 2005 he regained the direct mandate in constituency 109, with 77,781 first votes, 47.7 percent.

### Human rights and foreign affairs

After the Union parties went into opposition in 1998, Gröhe was the CDU/CSU group’s spokesperson for human rights and humanitarian aid until 2005. At the constitutive sittings of the 14th electoral term (1998–2002) and the 15th (2002–2005) he was a full member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.

On 22 June 1999 he was the first signatory of a CDU/CSU major interpellation on the persecution of Christians. It described discrimination, imprisonment, abduction and killing, and asked how religious freedom figured in German foreign policy, country reports and embassy contacts. Citing the German Evangelical Alliance, it referred to about 163,000 Christians killed for their faith in 1998. In a 5 November 1999 interview with *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* he accused Chancellor [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder) of giving human rights too little weight on a visit to China: Schröder had taken business representatives but not the Foreign Office’s human-rights commissioner, Gerd Poppe, and had linked the rule of law to investment security without raising Beijing’s campaign against Falun Gong. Gröhe called the coalition’s record after a year “very sobering,” citing cuts for human-rights work, humanitarian action and development aid.

On 15 February 2000 he was the lead signatory of a CDU/CSU motion on human rights in the People’s Republic of China. It argued that the economic opening Beijing sought had to be matched by a political opening, and that the situation had not substantially improved despite China’s signature of the two [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) human-rights covenants. The motion cited repression of Falun Gong, administrative detention and executions, pressure on Catholics loyal to Rome and on Protestant house churches, and restrictions on Muslims. It asked the government to raise these questions with China, to seek a resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights, to press for ratification of the covenants, and to support dialogue with the Dalai Lama on Tibet.

### Legal adviser to the CDU/CSU group

On 29 November 2005 the CDU/CSU group named Gröhe and Wolfgang Götzer of the CSU as its two legal advisers (Justiziare). Volker Kauder had been chosen the previous week as group chairman in succession to Angela Merkel. Gröhe held the post from November 2005 until September 2008 and, in those years, was a full member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs).

From April 2006 until September 2008 he was the group’s Obmann, its lead member, on the first committee of inquiry of the 16th electoral term. The Bundestag set the committee up on 7 April 2006, on an opposition application, to examine political instructions to the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) and other security bodies over the [Iraq war](/facts/iraq-war) and counter-terrorism, and how those bodies were supervised. The mandate covered CIA flights and prisons, the abduction of Khaled El-Masri, questioning abroad by German authorities after torture, and two BND officers deployed to Baghdad during the Iraq war.

## Minister of State and CDU secretary-general

### Chancellery, 2008–2009

On 22 September 2008 government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm announced that Hermann Gröhe, legal adviser to the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, would become Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery on 1 October. He succeeded Hildegard Müller, who was leaving for the Federation of German Energy and Water Industries. Müller had been responsible for coordination between the federation and the Länder and for cutting bureaucracy; the *Tagesspiegel* wrote that Gröhe would go on working quietly, coordinating for Chancellor Angela Merkel with the states and the parliamentary group. The government's 2008 report on the standard cost model, transmitted to the Bundestag in December, identified him as Minister of State and federal coordinator for bureaucracy reduction and better regulation. Its preface restated the aim of reducing firms' administrative costs from information obligations by 25 percent by 2011, and said measures already initiated would relieve business by about €7 billion a year.

He was still in the Chancellery at the [2009 federal election](/facts/2009-german-federal-election). On 27 September the CDU won 27.3 percent of the second votes and 194 seats, the CSU 6.5 percent and 45 seats, and the Free Democratic Party 14.6 percent and 93 seats, for 332 of 622 seats. Merkel, FDP chairman [Guido Westerwelle](/people/guido-westerwelle) and CSU chairman Horst Seehofer signed the coalition agreement "Wachstum. Bildung. Zusammenhalt." on 26 October. Two days earlier the CDU federal executive had unanimously named Gröhe acting secretary-general in succession to Ronald Pofalla, who was to enter the cabinet as Chancellery minister; the post was provisional until a party congress confirmed him. On 28 October the Bundestag re-elected Merkel chancellor with 323 of 612 votes cast, and she was sworn in that afternoon.

### Party headquarters and the 2013 election

On 22 March 2010, at a meeting of the CDU Bundesausschuss in Berlin, Gröhe stood for election as secretary-general and described the October appointment as provisional. Reports of that smaller congress put the result at 96.7 percent. The 23rd federal congress met in Karlsruhe on 15 and 16 November 2010 under the motto "Gemeinsam. Für ein starkes Deutschland." On 15 November delegates confirmed him with 90.3 percent, just under Merkel's 90.4 percent in her re-election as chair. With Merkel and the group's parliamentary leader, Volker Kauder, he had pressed for a ban on genetic testing of embryos, and the congress adopted that line by a narrow majority.

Membership kept falling while he ran the party organization. At the end of 2012 the CDU had 476,347 members, 2.8 percent fewer than a year earlier, and stood just behind the SPD, on figures the party headquarters supplied and in the account of political scientist Oskar Niedermayer.

About three months before the [2013 federal election](/facts/2013-german-federal-election), the CDU and CSU boards unanimously adopted a joint programme of roughly 120 pages, promising more money for pensions, families and roads while keeping budget consolidation. When FDP chairman [Philipp Rösler](/people/philipp-rosler) said the Union had given in to "the sweet poison of spending", Gröhe answered that it was the Union's programme, not Rösler's, and pointed to common ground between the two. The Returning Officer's final result for 22 September gave the CDU 34.1 percent of valid second votes and the CSU 7.4 percent—41.5 percent together, against 27.3 and 6.5 percent, or 33.8 percent, in 2009. The FDP fell to 4.8 percent and received no seats; the SPD took 25.7 percent, and turnout was 71.5 percent.

Talks with the SPD used a large round, twelve working groups and a steering group of the three general secretaries—Gröhe, [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) of the CSU and Andrea Nahles of the SPD. After five weeks Merkel, Seehofer and Sigmar Gabriel signed the 185-page agreement "Deutschlands Zukunft gestalten", subject to a ballot of SPD members. On 14 December 2013, 75.96 percent of the valid votes favoured the coalition. The next evening Merkel named Bundestag member [Peter Tauber](/people/peter-tauber) to succeed Gröhe as secretary-general, with Gröhe himself slated to become health minister. On 17 December the Bundestag re-elected Merkel, and the new ministers took the oath, Gröhe among them as Federal Minister of Health.

## Federal Minister of Health

### Appointment and portfolio

On 17 December 2013 President [Joachim Gauck](/people/joachim-gauck) appointed Hermann Gröhe federal minister of health in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s third cabinet, and he was sworn in the same day. The former secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) succeeded Daniel Bahr of the Free Democratic Party, minister since May 2011. Parliamentary state secretaries were the CDU members of the Bundestag [Annette Widmann-Mauz](/people/annette-widmann-mauz), already in the post, and Ingrid Fischbach. [Karl-Josef Laumann](/people/karl-josef-laumann) became federal commissioner for patients and for care, ranked as a state secretary. Gröhe left office on 14 March 2018, when President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed Jens Spahn (CDU).

### Long-term care reform

In October 2014 the Bundestag passed the first Care Strengthening Act. From 1 January 2015 the long-term care insurance contribution rose by 0.3 percentage points, to 2.35 percent of contributory income and 2.6 percent for childless members. Of that, 0.2 points—about 2.4 billion euros a year—financed higher benefits, including a one-off 4 percent rise in most amounts and wider access for people with dementia. The other 0.1 point, about 1.2 billion euros a year, went into a care reserve, filled for about twenty years from 2015 and drawn down over twenty years from 2035.

The second act, passed on 13 November 2015 by the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party, with [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) against and Alliance 90/The Greens abstaining, replaced three care levels with five care grades on 1 January 2017. Need was to be judged by independence in daily life, not by separating physical from cognitive or mental impairment. Up to 500,000 further people were expected to qualify, and existing recipients were not to be worse off. The contribution rose another 0.2 points, to 2.55 percent (2.8 percent for childless members). About five billion euros more were then to be available, with the rate expected to hold until 2022. Gröhe called the change a milestone for some 2.7 million people already covered and about 1.6 million with dementia; a staffing standard was left to later testing.

Critics treated financing, and the split between home and residential care, as open. Pia Zimmermann (Left) said the partial-cost design was untouched and that higher residential co-payments could push people into poverty; SPD deputy Heike Baehrens warned that lower grades could pay more while higher needs gained. Elisabeth Scharfenberg (Greens) welcomed the definition and the money but said staff were already at their limit, a personnel standard would come too late, and long-term finance was not secure. Motions for a “citizens’ care insurance” and for what the Greens called future-proof conditions failed.

The third act, passed on 1 December 2016 against the opposition, let municipalities for five years open advice centres, with model offices in up to 60 areas, wrote the new definition into social-assistance law, and gave health insurance a right to audit home-nursing bills after fraud cases. Disability groups and municipal associations warned that setting care benefits against integration assistance would disadvantage disabled residents of specialised homes, and economist Stefan Greß said the extra social-assistance cost was unconvincingly calculated.

### Insurance, hospitals and medicines

On 5 June 2014 the coalition majority, against a united opposition, changed statutory health-insurance contributions from January 2015. The general rate fell from 15.5 to 14.6 percent and the employers’ share was fixed at 7.3 percent. The employees’ 0.9 percent special contribution, and flat per-head add-ons, were replaced by an income-related additional rate set by each fund. The government said the freeze would protect jobs; Widmann-Mauz said up to 20 million people might gain if strong funds did not take the cut back in full. Annelie Buntenbach of the German Trade Union Confederation called it a break with parity; the VdK and SoVD demanded equal shares again. Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens) called the law deeply unjust, and Harald Weinberg (Left) a raid on low and middle incomes.

The Hospital Structure Act of 5 November 2015, also against the opposition, tied planning and payment to quality. Up to 660 million euros in 2016–2018, then 330 million a year, were to fund about 6,350 bedside nursing posts; a nursing supplement of 500 million a year replaced a general supplement; and a structural fund of 500 million from the health fund, matched by the Länder, was to pay for closures and conversions. Weinberg said missing posts were estimated at 70,000 to 100,000, so the programme would not end understaffing; the Greens said the Länder’s investment backlog was untouched.

On 3 December 2015 the coalition passed the E-Health Act; the Left voted no and the Greens abstained. It set deadlines, fees and penalties for a telematics infrastructure and the electronic health card, including online checks of insurance data after a test phase from 1 July 2016, with practices and hospitals to be connected by mid-2018. The gematik company had told the hearing that suppliers might miss those dates; the coalition kept the sanctions.

### Hospice, palliative care and prevention

On 5 November 2015, the day before the assisted-suicide debate, Union, SPD and Greens passed the Hospice and Palliative Care Act; the Left abstained. It was offered as better relief of pain and fear so that a wish for help in dying would often not arise. Funds were to cover 95 percent, not 90, of eligible inpatient hospice costs. Outpatient services gained material-cost subsidies, specialised outpatient palliative care was to spread, and nursing homes could arrange end-of-life plans paid by the sickness fund.

Eugen Brysch of the German Foundation for Patient Protection called the draft a two-class death: about 6,500 euros a month for each of roughly 25,000 deaths in some 220 hospices, against about 1,500 euros for an estimated 200,000 nursing-home residents with similar needs. The ministry expected annual spending to rise from about 400 million euros to about 600 million. At the hearing the foundation asked for a legal claim to hospice-type care inside homes, and other experts said dying patients in hospitals and homes could still lack qualified staff.

The Prevention Act of 18 June 2015, passed by the coalition and rejected by the Left and the Greens as too narrow, raised sickness-fund prevention spending from 3.09 euros to 7 euros per insured person a year from 2016—at least about 490 million euros—plus about 21 million from the care funds, for nurseries, schools, workplaces and care homes. Parents had to show proof of vaccination advice when a child entered a nursery. At first reading Gröhe said a vaccination duty should not be taboo if advice failed to close vaccination gaps; the act required documented advice, not a mandate. The funds’ association objected that about 35 million euros of a projected extra 220 to 240 million would finance the Federal Centre for Health Education. Board member Gernot Kiefer called that a subsidy of a federal agency from contributors’ money.

## Global health diplomacy

### Ebola, resistance and the G7

In April 2015 Hermann Gröhe and Development Minister Gerd Müller became the first German federal ministers to visit West Africa since the Ebola outbreak, traveling to Ghana and Liberia.

The World Health Organization had by then recorded more than 10,300 deaths and nearly 25,000 cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The ministers announced a €200 million programme to strengthen health systems and crisis response in Africa, and a GIZ team of “white helmets” meant to deploy within three to five days; Müller said the three economies had been set back five to ten years. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported a further pledge of about €37 million for infrastructure and health services in Liberia, where the two visited a treatment station the Bundeswehr had helped build and the German Red Cross was running. Gröhe said that “Ebola is not defeated.”

*Spiegel* wrote that Germany still had “something to make up for.” The government had hesitated, and become tangled in coordination problems, until Liberian President [Ellen Johnson](/people/ellen-johnson) Sirleaf told Chancellor Angela Merkel in early September 2014 that without more direct help the country would lose the fight; German operations, the magazine said, began in October. On 18 September *Spiegel* had called the early effort “shamefully little” beside a United States plan to send 3,000 soldiers: Berlin was discussing a mobile Bundeswehr clinic to be staffed locally, while the development ministry’s Ebola budget rose by €1 million to €10 million and the foreign ministry added €5 million. On 25 September Gröhe said the situation had been judged “too positively.” With the Red Cross and the German Medical Association he appealed for volunteers to staff about 300 beds, at a health-ministry cost of about €20 million, and the Robert Koch Institute was to train local personnel. Defence Minister [Ursula von der Leyen](/people/energy-ursula-von-der-leyen) had already asked Bundeswehr members to volunteer. On 16 October a further €85 million, from the development and foreign-office budgets, took announced pledges to €102 million. Gröhe called the money emergency aid for West Africa and “the most effective protection for the people of Europe.”

Germany held the G7 presidency in 2015. At Schloss Elmau on 7–8 June the leaders, not the health ministers alone, offered to help at least 60 countries implement the WHO International Health Regulations over five years, supported reform of the WHO’s emergency capacity, and welcomed a proposal from Germany, Ghana and Norway to the UN secretary-general on health-crisis management. They also endorsed the WHO global action plan on antimicrobial resistance and a One Health approach. Gröhe hosted the G7 health ministers in Berlin on 8–9 October. Their Berlin Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance — Global Union for Antibiotics Research and Development (GUARD) committed the group to national action plans, to antibiotics only for treatment after diagnosis and only on prescription in human and veterinary medicine, and to a high-level meeting at the 2016 UN General Assembly. The text cited work associated with the OECD estimating about 700,000 deaths a year from resistant pathogens. A companion note on lessons from Ebola backed the WHO contingency fund and global health emergency workforce agreed at the May 2015 World Health Assembly, and the [World Bank](/organizations/world-bank)’s planned Pandemic Emergency Facility. Gröhe signed with the other G7 health ministers, among them [Sylvia Mathews Burwell](/people/sylvia-mathews-burwell), [Jeremy Hunt](/people/jeremy-hunt), Marisol Touraine and Beatrice Lorenzin.

### G20 health ministers and multilateral bodies

Gröhe was a commissioner, not a chair, of the United Nations High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and co-chaired by French President François Hollande and South African President [Jacob Zuma](/people/jacob-zuma). Vice-chairs were WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and [International Labour Organization](/organizations/international-labour-organization) Director-General Guy Ryder; other commissioners included [Joseph Stiglitz](/people/joseph-stiglitz) and office-holders from India, Norway, Ghana, Liberia and Japan. On 20 September 2016 Hollande and Zuma delivered the commission’s final report to Ban in [New York](/organizations/new-york). It made ten recommendations and warned of an 18 million health-worker shortfall, mainly in low- and lower-middle-income countries, against demand for 40 million new health jobs by 2030.

Under Germany’s G20 presidency the health ministers met for the first time, in Berlin on 19–20 May 2017, and adopted the Berlin Declaration of the G20 Health Ministers, “Together Today for a Healthy Tomorrow.” The text treated outbreaks and antimicrobial resistance as economic as well as health risks, reaffirmed the WHO’s leading role, and recorded a simulation exercise run with the WHO and the World Bank Group. Ministers tied crisis management to the International Health Regulations, called for sustainable funding of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme and its Contingency Fund for Emergencies, welcomed the Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, and supported the programmatic, governance and managerial parts of WHO reform. On resistance they aimed to have multisectoral One Health national action plans in place and well into implementation by the end of 2018. They thanked Germany for the 2017 presidency and said the ministers’ joint dialogue would continue under Argentina, in line with the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

## Later parliamentary career

### Deputy chair of the parliamentary group

On 20 March 2018, shortly after leaving the Federal Ministry of Health, Gröhe was elected a deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, then still chaired by Volker Kauder. He put the result at 91 percent. The brief covered labour and social affairs and economic cooperation and development, and from the same day he was also the group's commissioner for churches and religious communities, succeeding Franz Josef Jung. On 25 September 2018 the group voted Kauder out and elected [Ralph Brinkhaus](/people/ralph-brinkhaus) as chairman; Gröhe remained a deputy.

In the early phase of the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), on 13 March 2020, he spoke for the group on the emergency widening of Kurzarbeit (short-time work) benefits. He called the bill a "protective shield for jobs in our country" and said that anyone already worried about family because of the virus should not also have to worry about a job. The Bundestag and the Bundesrat adopted the changes the same day in an expedited procedure.

He remained on the federal executive of the CDU. At the Hamburg congress in December 2018 he was re-elected as one of 26 additional members with 88.2 percent. At that congress he voted for [Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer](/people/annegret-kramp-karrenbauer) as party chair; he later called her his preferred choice and said he had supported her throughout. In January 2021, days before the digital congress that chose her successor, he backed Armin Laschet. "I am for Armin Laschet," he told the *Augsburger Allgemeine*, adding that Laschet could renew the CDU successfully as a people's party.

Gröhe had entered the Bundestag on the North Rhine-Westphalia list in 1994 and again in 2002, and thereafter held Neuss I — Neuss, Grevenbroich, Dormagen and Rommerskirchen — by direct mandate. In 2017, when the seat was constituency 108, the CDU first-vote share was 44.0 percent (69,658 votes), against 28.6 percent (45,314) for the SPD. In 2021 he kept the seat with 35.8 percent of the first votes (57,445), ahead of [Daniel Rinkert](/people/daniel-rinkert) of the SPD on 32.0 percent (51,391).

The group re-elected him deputy chairman on 13 December 2021, still under Brinkhaus, with 82 percent, for labour and social affairs and economic cooperation. The same evening [Thomas Rachel](/people/thomas-rachel) was chosen as spokesperson for churches and religious communities, the responsibility Gröhe had held since 2018. In the 20th Bundestag he was a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Subcommittee on Global Health. On 15 February 2022 [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) succeeded Brinkhaus, with 162 of 186 votes cast; the deputy chairs were not newly elected that day. When the board was confirmed in office on 28 September 2022, Gröhe's fields were listed as labour and social affairs, employees, and economic cooperation and development. In May 2024 the Berlin congress returned him to the CDU federal executive with 714 votes (74.5 percent).

### Departure from the Bundestag

On 23 July 2024 Gröhe announced that he would not stand at the 2025 federal election. He said it was "the right time to pass on the baton", that three decades in the national parliament had been "the greatest honour of my life", and that he would exercise the mandate until its last day.

Delegates in the redrawn constituency 107 nominated [Carl-Philipp Sassenrath](/people/carl-philipp-sassenrath) on the evening of 19 November 2024. He received 61 of 99 votes; David Zülow received 36. At the election on 23 February 2025 Sassenrath won the direct vote with 36.3 percent (62,250 votes), ahead of Rinkert on 27.1 percent. Gröhe's membership, continuous since 1994, ended on 25 March 2025, when the 21st Bundestag held its constituent sitting and the term of the 20th Bundestag closed.

## Church work and civic roles

### Evangelical Church and the working group

Gröhe belongs to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and has been a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD) since 1997. The Synod, one of three governing bodies with the Council and the Church Conference, has 128 members on six-year terms, 28 of them appointed from public life; it passes church laws, adopts the budget and joins in electing the Council. In March 2021 the Council appointed him to the 13th Synod in that group, described then as a lawyer and CDU member of the Bundestag and listed with the Rhineland church.

From 1997 until October 2009 he also sat on the Council, whose 15 members—14 elected by the Synod and the Church Conference, plus the Synod's presiding officer—lead the church between sessions and speak for it in public. On 4 November 2003 the Synod elected a Council to serve until 2009 and included him, then a CDU Bundestag member and lawyer from Neuss. From 2000 to 2008 he chaired the Diakonisches Werk of the Protestant congregations of Neuss.

Protestant members of the CDU and the CSU organize separately in the Evangelischer Arbeitskreis (EAK), founded in Siegen in 1952 as their association and as a forum between church and party, with a right to move resolutions inside the Union. Federal chairs have included [Roman Herzog](/people/roman-herzog), Angela Merkel (1992–1993) and Jochen Borchert (1993–2003); Thomas Rachel has held the office since 2003. He does not appear in that list or on the federal board the EAK publishes.

### Foundations, publishing and boards

From 2000 he was a co-publisher of the Protestant monthly *chrismon*, successor to the *Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt* and a supplement in newspapers including *Die Zeit*, the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* and the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*. In February 2010 the EKD announced that he and former Council chair Wolfgang Huber would leave on 1 March 2010 at their own request, after he had become CDU general secretary; Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Nikolaus Schneider replaced them. The Bundestag biography dates his co-publisher role 2000–2009.

He joined the board of the [Konrad Adenauer Foundation](/organizations/konrad-adenauer-foundation) in 2001. The foundation is aligned with the CDU: *Der Spiegel* has called it a CDU-near organization, and federal budget figures place it with the other party-aligned political foundations. He was a deputy chair from 2018; in December 2023 the members' assembly re-elected him unanimously and confirmed [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert), chair since 2018. In December 2025 the assembly elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to succeed Lammert after eight years as chair.

Since February 2021 he has sat on the board of the Deutsche Nationalstiftung. Founded in Weimar in 1993 by former chancellor [Helmut Schmidt](/people/helmut-schmidt) and others, the non-partisan foundation works for inner-German cohesion, the idea of the nation within a united Europe, and an open national identity. Its board list names him with chair Thomas Mirow, Christian Bernzen and Dagmar Reim.

From 1 April 2019 he was on the supervisory board of Ecclesia Holding GmbH in Detmold, parent of the Ecclesia group, whose shareholders—the German Caritas Association, the EKD and the Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung—gave the board the task of advising and supervising management. In the 20th Bundestag he declared that seat at 25,000 euros gross a year. As CDU general secretary he was also sent, with Wolfgang Bosbach, to the ZDF television council as a party representative; the 18th-term biography records the membership as ending on 17 December 2013.

## Presidency of the German Red Cross

### Election and office

On 29 November 2025 the Bundesversammlung of the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, DRK) in Berlin elected Hermann Gröhe president. The *Deutsches Ärzteblatt*, citing the organization, reported a unanimous vote for a four-year term. He succeeded [Gerda Hasselfeldt](/people/gerda-hasselfeldt) of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, who had led the Präsidium for eight years, did not stand again, and was named honorary president by the assembly.

Hasselfeldt had taken office on 1 December 2017 as the sole candidate and the first woman in the post, succeeding Rudolf Seiters of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, a former federal interior minister who, the DRK said, stepped down after 14 years. On 2 July 2025 the society announced that Gröhe would stand before about 130 delegates; he called the request “eine große Ehre” and said its work stood for the readiness to help people in need. The presidency is unpaid: the president chairs the honorary Präsidium, which sets strategy and the association’s goals and supervises the full-time executive board and federal management, and the assembly thanked Hasselfeldt especially for the response to the 2021 Ahr valley flood, the coronavirus pandemic and aid for people from Ukraine. Gröhe had been in the Bundestag from 1994 until spring 2025 and federal health minister from 2013 to 2018. On the DRK’s own figures, reported by the *Ärzteblatt*, about 457,000 volunteers and more than 211,000 paid staff worked for the society.

### Priorities in office

Gröhe said hundreds of thousands of people stood in the DRK’s name for humanity at home and in crises abroad. For International Volunteer Day in early December 2025 he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that volunteers carried out 90 percent of civil-protection deployments and still lacked nationwide equality with the Technisches Hilfswerk and the fire services on continued pay and release from work. Thuringia, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein, he said, already showed what recognition could look like, and volunteers should be properly equipped rather than left in run-down rooms.

In mid-December 2025 he told the *Augsburger Allgemeine* that the federal coalition had halved international humanitarian aid from two billion euros to one billion after promising to strengthen it, a cut he called short-sighted, and warned that if help in Sudan fell short, more people would be forced to flee. If conscription returned, he said, the Red Cross was ready to offer service without a weapon, and he urged first-aid courses that include self-protection. In April 2026 he described population protection to the *Tagesspiegel* as “völlig unterfinanziert”, asked for at least another billion euros, and said there was no defensive capability without protecting civilians; extra money, he argued, had gone mainly to federal authorities and the THW rather than to aid organizations whose volunteers would do much of the emergency work. In June 2026 he told *t-online* that the civil-protection pact of Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Defence Minister [Boris Pistorius](/people/boris-pistorius) was only a first step: aid organizations had not been included in it or in the Operationsplan Deutschland, and a November 2024 agreement with the defence ministry and the Bundeswehr on equipment and federal funding had stalled.

## Political positions and public reception

### Social and ethical questions

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag, in a recorded vote, passed the Bundesrat bill opening marriage to same-sex couples (“Ehe für alle”): 393 yes, 226 no and four abstentions, from 623 votes cast. Gröhe was among the 225 CDU/CSU members voting no; 75 of the group voted yes. His written explanation accepted the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court)’s reading of Article 6 of the Basic Law—marriage as the lasting union of a man and a woman—and the ban on discrimination by sexual orientation, but said registered partnerships were already largely equal and should themselves come under Article 6. A redefinition of marriage, he wrote, required a constitutional amendment and two-thirds majorities, and rested substantially on his faith and Christian tradition.

On 6 November 2015 the Bundestag adopted, by 360 votes to 233 with nine abstentions, the Brand/Griese bill creating section 217 of the Criminal Code, an offence of businesslike promotion of suicide. Gröhe voted yes and called the draft a rule of “measure and the middle”: help by one person to another should stay lawful, but an organized service to an unlimited public should not, because “the signal that suicide is a normal option for action is wrong.” Faith motivated him, he said, yet the argument was the state’s duty to protect life and dignity, not a prosecutor at the deathbed, and suicide assistance was not a treatment option. Palliative organizations, he said, called the bill a guardrail. Bills for wider criminalization, for physician-assisted suicide, and for declaring assistance lawful had lost the earlier ballot.

He did not impose a general duty to vaccinate against measles. In April 2015, after the Berlin outbreak, he told dpa and NDR that refusal without medical need was irresponsible, because it also put at risk children who could not be vaccinated, and that compulsory vaccination must not be taboo. The measures he described were compulsory counselling before daycare, notice to the health office, and exclusion from school during an outbreak. At the World Health Organization assembly in Geneva in May 2017 he said Italy’s new mandate was unnecessary—“I believe that our measures will reach the goal”—the gap being missed second doses. A proof requirement for daycare, school and some staff passed only on 14 November 2019, under Jens Spahn, by 459 votes to 89 with 105 abstentions.

As CDU secretary-general he told *Die Welt* in October 2011, after lethal attacks on Copts in Egypt, that embarrassment at the persecution of Christians misunderstood the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects public profession of a faith and a change of religion.

### Assessments of the ministerial record

Comment on 2013–2018 centred on care. In April 2014 Bernd Raffelhüschen called the proposal a “distribution of benefits” that would worsen financing; Bert Rürup called the planned Bundesbank reserve “nonsense” (“Unfug”); and Axel Börsch-Supan called benefits payable later hidden public debt. The plan raised the contribution by half a point in two steps, set part aside as capital, included dementia fully in long-term care insurance and increased benefits. In August 2015 Eugen Brysch of the German Foundation for Patient Protection said the money would be gone within seven years and fairness between generations was missing: the parents’ rate was to rise from 2.05 to 2.55 percent by 2017, and nursing-home residents would still pay for medicines and dressings covered at home by health insurance. The Bundestag passed that second stage with a broad majority of the Union and the SPD. Gröhe called equal access for people with dementia a “milestone” and spoke of up to half a million further beneficiaries; Alliance 90/The Greens said staffing was still inadequate, and critics warned that later claimants could be worse off.

Angela Merkel replaced him with Spahn in February 2018. *Der Spiegel* read the choice as coalition management: Gröhe, like state secretary Annette Widmann-Mauz a reliable Merkelian, could have stayed, but Spahn, a leading conservative critic, was brought into the cabinet before the party voted on another coalition with the SPD. Merkel cited his younger generation and fairness between generations in health and care. The *Rheinische Post* called Gröhe her “loyal paladin” and quoted him that he would have liked to continue, that a ministry is only temporary, and that Spahn had his good wishes. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* noted that the youngest CDU minister in the outgoing cabinet thus fell to the promised rejuvenation, without public complaint, and became deputy group chair for labour and social affairs, a post customarily held by the employees’ wing.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/hermann-grohe