# Holger Mann

# Holger Mann

Holger Mann (born 19 February 1979 in Dresden) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since the 20th electoral term (2021–2025) and sits again in the 21st term, elected on the state list of Saxony as the SPD candidate in Leipzig I. From 2009 until 15 November 2021 he was a member of the Landtag of Saxony.

Mann grew up in the Ore Mountains, completed his Abitur in Annaberg-Buchholz, and has lived in Leipzig since 1997. He is married and has three children. After military service in the Leipzig district of Wiederitzsch he studied political science, journalism and history at Leipzig University, receiving a Magister Artium in 2006. Until March 2009 he was the employed managing director of a development company in the Leipzig Neuseenland.

In the Landtag he was the SPD group's spokesperson for higher education and science and for economic affairs, technology and digitalization. A Saxony party congress on 29 May 2021 elected him the SPD's lead candidate for the federal election; 60 of 78 delegates voted for him, with Kathrin Michel and Detlef Müller placed second and third on the list. The Bundestag biography records him as chair of the Leipzig SPD since 2018. He did not stand again at the city party congress on 17 May 2025, which chose Christina März and Benjamin Schulz as a new joint leadership; März had shared the chair with him since 2023.

In constituency 152, Leipzig I, at the 2021 federal election the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) won the direct seat by 519 votes over the SPD. The SPD candidate received 33,588 first votes (20.2 percent) and the CDU candidate 34,107 (20.5 percent); turnout was 74.8 percent, and the SPD led the second votes in the constituency with 20.9 percent. Mann took his seat through the state list. At the 2025 election, in the renumbered constituency 151, the SPD's first-vote share was 11.7 percent (21,472 votes). [The Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany received 25.0 percent of the first votes and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 21.5 percent, and the Federal Returning Officer recorded the constituency as left without a directly elected member because second-vote coverage was insufficient. Mann again entered through the Saxony list.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and of the Committee on Culture and Media, a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and a secretary (Schriftführer) of the house. He sits on the supervisory board of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND). In the 20th term he was a full member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and a deputy member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy and of the Budget Committee.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and school

Holger Mann was born on 19 February 1979 in Dresden and grew up in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge). He went to school and passed the Abitur in Annaberg-Buchholz, a town in the Erzgebirgskreis in Saxony. At the end of 2024 the State Statistical Office of Saxony counted 18,815 inhabitants there.

*The market square in Annaberg-Buchholz, with the town hall, a church spire and wooded hills beyond.*

Mann has tied that upbringing to his turn toward the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In a September 2021 portrait, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk quoted him saying he had grown up in the Erzgebirge “where it was about Waldsterben” (forest dieback), and that the party then dominant locally had wanted to close his youth centre because it seemed too alternative. That conflict, he said, politicized him and eventually brought him to the SPD’s youth organization. The same portrait reported his account of his mother: she was the only one of ten children in a working-class family who was allowed to study, a story he connected with arguing for access to education. In an interview the previous month he called her the eldest of those ten children and the first, and then the only one, who was able to study.

He has lived in Leipzig since 1997. After the Abitur he did compulsory military service (Wehrdienst) in the Bundeswehr. The biography published for the 20th Bundestag places that service in Wiederitzsch, in the city’s northern district; the current parliamentary text says only that it was in Leipzig. The Bundestag notes that these sketches rest on members’ own statements. Conscription of men was still in force for his cohort; in 2011 the Bundestag passed legislation suspending the general draft from 1 July that year and creating a voluntary term of six to 23 months, open to men and women.

He is married and has three children. He has written that he met his wife in Leipzig and that the children were born there; the 2021 MDR portrait likewise described him living in the city with his wife and their three children. The 20th-term Bundestag biography records parental leave from April to September 2009. On his website he describes a rented flat in western Leipzig.

### University of Leipzig

After military service Mann studied political science, journalism and history at Leipzig University. In 2006 he graduated with a Magister Artium. The university’s own account dates its foundation to 2 December 1409.

While a student he worked, by his own account, in jobs such as advertising, as a freelance journalist and later as an education officer (Bildungsreferent). With other young people he founded the Leipziger Hörspielsommer and edited a youth magazine, and he was politically active on campus and across Saxony on what he has called democratic education. The association that runs the festival gives a parallel account of its start: Sophia Littkopf, later its long-time chair, designed a public listening event after the 2002 Leipzig Book Fair and organized the first edition in 2003 with friends; Hörspielsommer e.V. was founded in the autumn of 2004. The festival is a free open-air radio-play event held each July on the [Richard-Wagner](/people/richard-wagner)-Hain in Leipzig.

## Professional start

### Neuseenland development company

After a Magister Artium in political science, journalism and history at Leipzig University in 2006, Holger Mann’s first regular employment was in the post-mining district south of Leipzig. Until March 2009 he was the employed managing director of a small development company in and around the Leipziger Neuseenland. The Bundestag biographies, which the parliament states rest on members’ own information, do not name the firm. A September 2021 portrait by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk likewise left it unnamed and described the post as two years as managing director of a development firm for the Neuseenland, his first professional step in Leipzig after university.

The southern Leipziger Neuseenland is a water landscape formed from flooded lignite pits in the Central German lignite mining district. In a December 2016 documentation, the federally owned remediation company Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV) wrote that until a few decades earlier there had been no large lakes south of Leipzig, and that open-cast pits more than 100 metres deep had displaced floodplain and about 60 settlements. After most mines closed from 1990, the priority was a post-mining landscape largely free of long-term aftercare, while flooding the voids and building canals and locks was meant to create a connected water system. The same publication describes a lake landscape of about 37 square kilometres immediately south of the city and dates the flooding of the Störmthaler See from 2003 to 2011.

Mann has since placed that job at today’s Störmthaler See. In written answers published by the Leipzig magazine *Ahoi* in July 2025 he said that, as managing director after his studies, he had helped shape development there and had learned about regional development, structural change and local cooperation. From April to September 2009 he took parental leave, before entering the Landtag of Saxony later that year.

### Early civic work

Before and beside that employment he was active in associations, above all the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) and the Leipziger Hörspielsommer. In the 2025 answers he said that during his studies he had held student jobs in advertising, worked as a freelance journalist and later as an education officer, that with other young people he had founded the Hörspielsommer and published a youth magazine, which he did not name, and that he had worked on campus and across Saxony for democratic education.

The association that runs the festival gives its own account of the start and does not name Mann. Hörspielsommer e.V. states that Sophia Littkopf, later its long-serving chair, noticed at the 2002 Leipzig Book Fair that audio-drama publishers lacked a shared public presentation, and that with friends and acquaintances she organized the first Leipziger Hörspielsommer a year later. The response led the organizers to found the nonprofit in autumn 2004. It describes a free open-air festival held each July at the Richard-Wagner-Hain, mixing independent productions with work from public broadcasters and publishers, and lists aims that include the art form, local cultural life, media education and voluntary work.

## Saxon Landtag

### Elections and mandate

Holger Mann sat in the Landtag of Saxony, the parliament of the Free State of Saxony, for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from September 2009 to September 2014, September 2014 to October 2019, and October 2019 to November 2021. He never won a constituency. At each election he stood in northern Leipzig and entered on the SPD state list.

On 30 August 2009 the SPD took 10.4 percent of the list vote and 14 of 132 seats. Mann was tenth on the state list. In constituency 30 — then Mockau, Möckern, Gohlis and Eutritzsch — he received 5,133 votes (17.5 percent). Wolf-Dietrich Rost of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) won the seat with 31.4 percent. On 31 August 2014 the SPD rose to 12.4 percent and 18 of 126 seats, and Mann, eleventh on the list, was returned on it. In the renumbered constituency 32 (Leipzig 6) he polled 5,504 votes (19.7 percent), again behind Rost (30.2 percent).

On 1 September 2019, with turnout at 66.5 percent, the SPD fell to 7.7 percent and 10 of 119 seats. The Landtag handbook records Mann in ninth place on the state list and as elected from it. In Leipzig 6 he received 5,028 votes (11.8 percent). Rost held the seat with 27.1 percent, ahead of the Alternative for Germany candidate on 19.7 percent. After Mann entered the Bundestag in 2021 he resigned the Landtag mandate. On 18 November Landtag president Matthias Rößler said the resignation took effect at the end of 15 November and that Juliane Pfeil, elected on the SPD list in 2014, had succeeded him from 16 November. She gave the formal affirmation that day.

### Higher education and science

The Bundestag biography, drawn from Mann's own information, describes him for 2009–2021 as the SPD group's spokesperson for higher education and science and for the economy, technology and digitalization. Reporting already named the higher-education brief in May 2013 and, by November 2014, an additional brief for technology and European Union funding. In the sixth electoral period he was deputy chair of the committee for science and higher education, culture and media, a full member of the European affairs committee, and a substitute on the committees for schools and sport, the environment and agriculture, and the economy, labour and transport. The handbook for the seventh period lists him on the committee for science, higher education, media, culture and tourism and repeats both spokesperson roles.

After the 2014 election the CDU under Minister President [Stanislaw Tillich](/people/stanislaw-tillich) negotiated a coalition with the SPD. Mann led the SPD side of the working group on science, research, digitalization and media, with Eva-Maria Stange, Simone Raatz and Dirk Panter; Sebastian Gemkow led the CDU side, which included science minister Sabine von Schorlemer. The agreement *Sachsens Zukunft gestalten* offered the universities a grant running to 2025 if a higher-education development plan for 2025 was settled by the end of 2016, and in that case dropped a planned cut of 754 posts from 2017. It used 95,000 students, including medicine, as the planning figure, restated that study would remain free of fees, and promised higher subsidies for the Studentenwerke..pdf)

### Economy, technology and the innovation enquete

On 29 September 2010 the CDU, the Free Democratic Party and the SPD moved to establish an inquiry commission on "Strategien für eine zukunftsorientierte Technologie- und Innovationspolitik im Freistaat Sachsen". Its chair, Thomas Schmidt (CDU), later called it the first inquiry commission of a German state parliament on that subject. After hearing 45 experts, and after working groups, a closed meeting and an information trip, the commission sent its report to the Landtag on 27 March 2013 as Drucksache 5/11300. The majority text was accompanied by a minority opinion of the SPD, Die Linke and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). Thomas Jurk, the SPD's economic-policy spokesperson, said that dissent ran to more than 120 pages and that proposals from the opposition and from experts had been taken up too little.

On 15 May 2013 the Landtag adopted the report and a CDU–FDP resolution. Mann moved the counter-resolution of the Left, the SPD and the Greens, Drucksache 5/11955. He called for a "complete renovation" of economic and technology policy rather than a change of wallpaper, and treated skilled labour as the constraint: universities should not be cut, foreign qualifications should be recognized more readily, and Saxony should drop what he called its low-wage strategy, including through a minimum wage and a "welcome culture". The motion asked for at least 3 percent of gross domestic product to go to research and development, a shift of business aid from investment support toward innovation, better finance for technology start-ups beyond the early phase, and university base funding at least at the national average with staffing held until 2020.

In November 2014, on the 2014–2020 programmes of the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund, Mann said funding should turn "from concrete to innovation" and use research, transfer and training to close the productivity gap. The coalition agreement then said the partners would in principle carry out the Saxon innovation strategy and the main results of the inquiry, keep research-and-development spending at a minimum of 3 percent of GDP, seek a federal tax incentive for research in smaller firms, and create an innovation platform and technology scouts..pdf)

## Roles in the SPD

### Young Socialists and the state executive

A dpa report of 7 June 2005 named Mann state chair of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) in Saxony, and a *taz* interview of 18 November 2008 described him as having held that post for four years and as a member of the state executive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. On 28 November 2009 a Jusos delegates’ conference in Leipzig elected the student Tino Buksch, then 28, as the new state chair for two years.

At the June 2005 meeting Mann demanded more young SPD candidates in the constituencies, saying the Jusos wanted “to do more than stick up posters” and that otherwise the party would “get the bill” in September. In November 2008 the Saxon Jusos pressed the state party to reject an amendment of the Federal Criminal Police Office Act that included covert online searches. On 16 November an SPD Saxony state congress voted not to pass the [bill. Thomas](/people/bill-thomas) Jurk, state chair and economics minister in the CDU–SPD government, said the party was bound by the vote. *Heise* reported that Länder governed with the FDP, the Left or the Greens had already planned to abstain in the Bundesrat, leaving the online-search provision one vote short, with a mediation committee the next step if the majority failed. Mann told the *taz* that the Jusos had slowed the bill rather than stopped it, that it violated civil liberties as drafted, and that Saxony’s SPD would not carry it unless the online search was removed. He called the row partly generational and, in the east, shaped by the Stasi: “Stasi 2.0 is simply not something we will accept.”

A personnel note of 31 May 2021 described him as a member of the SPD Saxony executive since 2006. He is not among the co-chairs, deputies, treasurer or additional members on the executive later published by the state association. For the 2021 Bundestag election, the state congress in Leipzig on 29 May 2021 elected him lead candidate, and thus list place 1, with 60 of 78 votes and no opponent; places 2 and 3 went to [Kathrin Michel](/people/kathrin-michel) and Detlef Müller. For 2025, the list conference of 21 December 2024 put Michel first; the federal returning officer records Mann on list place 2 and [Rasha Nasr](/people/rasha-nasr) on place 3.

### Leipzig city association

Hassan Soilihi Mzé, chair of the Leipzig SPD since 2014, resigned with immediate effect on 6 June 2018, about half a year before a board election fixed for 17 November. He wrote to the board and the press that conflicts among the association’s wings, and between the volunteer executive and full-time office-holders, had not been settled, and that a hostile climate had affected his health. On 17 November, 89 delegates elected Mann, then a member of the Landtag of Saxony for the northern constituency. A party notice in the *Leipziger Zeitung* gave him 84.3 percent, with deputies Irena Rudolph-Kokot (76.4 percent) and Peter Hütter (95.5 percent). He said the board would emphasise participation and debate with the city. The notice put membership above 1,400, the largest of 13 SPD sub-districts in Saxony.

On 19 June 2021 the city conference elected its first dual leadership. Dpa reported 85.9 percent for Mann and a runoff in which Rudolph-Kokot beat Christina März by 51.2 to 48.8 percent; März then joined the board as an ordinary member. Mann said the executive would give more weight to dialogue with the city and to security and the economy. A notice issued in Mann’s name, and published unedited on 2 July 2023, reported that the conference of 1 July had elected city councillor Christina März with 94.5 percent and Mann with 84.6 percent of 92 votes, calling it his second re-election; Rudolph-Kokot was not among the new chairs. A 2025 news report described März as having led the Leipzig SPD since 2023, until then beside Mann.

Mann did not stand on 17 May 2025. Delegates chose März, a Leipzig-born lawyer in the SPD city-council group, with 89 percent, and Benjamin Schulz, a social scientist from Saxony-Anhalt and former chair of the Leipzig-Südwest branch, with 93 percent, for two years. The *Leipziger Zeitung* reported that Mann left to applause and that Schulz took his post. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own details, nevertheless continued to call him chair of the SPD Leipzig since 2018.

## Bundestag elections

### 2021 election

Holger Mann was the Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate in Leipzig I at the election of the 20th Bundestag on 26 September 2021. The constituency, then numbered 152, consisted of the boroughs Alt-West, Nord, Nordost, Nordwest and Ost of the city of Leipzig; the remaining boroughs formed Leipzig II.

In the final result, Jens Lehmann of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the direct seat with 34,107 first votes (20.5 percent). Mann, named as the runner-up, received 33,588 first votes (20.2 percent), 519 votes behind. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 26,450 first votes (15.9 percent), Die Linke 25,436 (15.3 percent), Alliance 90/The Greens 19,778 (11.9 percent) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 13,397 (8.1 percent). Of 224,100 people eligible to vote, 167,696 cast a ballot, a turnout of 74.8 percent.

On the second vote in the constituency the SPD finished first, with 34,748 votes (20.9 percent), ahead of the AfD on 25,891 (15.6 percent), the Greens on 25,848 (15.5 percent), the CDU on 24,953 (15.0 percent), Die Linke on 20,884 (12.5 percent) and the FDP on 17,660 (10.6 percent). Across Saxony the SPD received 474,804 second votes (19.3 percent). Mann headed the SPD state list and entered the Bundestag from that list rather than as the constituency member; the official roll records him as elected for Saxony, list place 1, having also stood in constituency 152.

### 2025 election and the electoral reform

At the election of 23 February 2025 the same territory was numbered 151, still covering Alt-West, Nord, Nordost, Nordwest and Ost. The new number followed a redistribution in which one constituency was moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria because of population change, renumbering constituencies 72 to 255.

The electoral reform of 2023, in force from June of that year and applied for the first time at this election, set the Bundestag at 630 members and abolished overhang and compensatory seats. Under the Federal Elections Act, a party's constituency candidate is elected only when that candidate has the most first votes and the seat is covered by the second-vote seats allotted to the party's list in the Land. Winners are ranked by their share of valid first votes, and those beyond the party's seat total do not enter, leaving the constituency without a directly elected member. The Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) held this second-vote coverage procedure compatible with the Basic Law on 30 July 2024. Twenty-three candidates who led their constituencies on the first vote received no seat.

In Leipzig I the AfD candidate Christian Kriegel led with 45,730 first votes (25.0 percent). That was the lowest first-vote share of any AfD lead in Saxony, and constituency 151 was the only Saxon constituency left unfilled for lack of second-vote coverage. Kriegel did not enter the Bundestag. Nina Treu of Die Linke was the runner-up, with 39,377 first votes (21.5 percent), 91 votes ahead of Lehmann, whose 39,286 votes also rounded to 21.5 percent. Mann, again the SPD candidate, received 21,472 first votes (11.7 percent). The Greens took 13,796 (7.5 percent), the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) (BSW) 11,727 (6.4 percent) and the FDP 3,828 (2.1 percent). Turnout was 81.7 percent: 183,932 voters out of 225,020 eligible, and 182,962 valid first votes.

Second votes in the constituency went to the AfD with 46,288 (25.3 percent), Die Linke with 38,513 (21.0 percent), the CDU with 31,901 (17.4 percent), the Greens with 19,747 (10.8 percent), the SPD with 18,456 (10.1 percent), the BSW with 14,207 (7.8 percent) and the FDP with 5,826 (3.2 percent). In Saxony the SPD polled 217,144 second votes (8.5 percent). Mann was second on the state list, behind Kathrin Michel and ahead of Rasha Nasr, and was returned again from the list; the Bundestag records the mandate as a Saxony list seat, with his candidacy in constituency 151.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Committees and offices

In the 20th Bundestag, Holger Mann of the SPD was a full member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment from 13 December 2021 and a deputy member of the Budget Committee and the Committee on Climate Action and Energy. In the SPD group he was deputy spokesperson of the education-and-research working group from 11 January 2022 until that group was dissolved, and from 28 March 2023 spokesperson of the Landesgruppe Saxony, a post carried into the next term.

The 21st Bundestag split that education-and-research remit. From 21 May 2025 he has been a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and of the Committee on Culture and Media, and a deputy member of the committees on digital affairs and state modernization and on economic affairs and energy. He was a full member of the environment, climate and nuclear-safety committee only until 25 June 2025. On 22 May 2025 the plenary elected him, on an SPD proposal under section 3 of the rules of procedure, as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführer). The faction lists him as a member of its research working group and, since 3 June 2025, as deputy spokesperson for culture and media. His own site calls him deputy spokesperson in the research committee; the faction’s office list does not.

In the 2025 coalition talks with the CDU/CSU he sat on the SPD side of working group 8, “Education, research and innovation”, led by [Oliver Kaczmarek](/people/oliver-kaczmarek) with [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig) as deputy.

### Research, technology and innovation

On 29 September 2022 the federal research ministry named two centres under the Structural Strengthening Act, in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt: [the Centre](/organizations/the-centre) for the Transformation of Chemistry and the German Centre for Astrophysics. Mann, then deputy education-policy spokesperson, said that where lignite had been mined in Lusatia and central Germany, research sites would now stand, with more than one billion euros of federal money and more than 1,000 jobs at each centre.

On 17 November 2023 the Bundestag passed the SPRIND Freedom Act, in the education committee’s version (printed paper 20/9362), with the votes of the SPD, the CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party; the AfD and Die Linke abstained. SPRIND, founded in Leipzig in 2019, funds ideas that could create or overturn markets. Mann was the SPD rapporteur and the first signatory of the committee report of 15 November 2023, and he spoke in the debate. The amended text aimed at value created especially in Germany and Europe, returned half of related revenues to the funding pot, gave the finance ministry four weeks rather than three months to object to applications, and allowed above-scale pay at funded private firms for five years instead of two. A CDU/CSU amendment that opposed separating civil and military research at the agency was rejected. His seat on the SPRIND supervisory board, disclosed from 15 June 2022, is an outside office rather than a committee post.

On 28 February 2024, as rapporteur on the report of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, he welcomed its treatment of social as well as technological innovation and linked that to the government’s Future Strategy for Research and Innovation. On 13 November 2025 he spoke on the Hightech Agenda Germany (printed paper 21/1100), citing quantum communication, microchips and biotechnology and 18 billion euros over four years.

On 24 September 2026, in the second and third reading of the first amendment to the Science Freedom Act, he said academic freedom was already in Article 5 of the Basic Law and in higher-education law, and that the bill instead lifted the ban on more favourable pay for non-profit institutes left outside the 2012 statute. A coalition amendment extended that flexibility to institutes without institutional federal funding, including the Zuse Association and the [Johannes Rau](/people/johannes-rau) Research Association, and added four federal centres, among them the astrophysics and chemistry-transformation centres. He put the reach at 138 institutes and more than 10,000 employees, from Aachen to Görlitz. The SPD group named him rapporteur.

### Culture, media and the Saxon state group

As Landesgruppe spokesperson he has spoken for the Saxon SPD members on federal business, including the eastern research centres tied to the coal transition. On 7 May 2026, in a debate on local media, he called local journalism the “backbone of the democratic public sphere”, urged the European Union to apply the [Digital Markets Act](/facts/digital-markets-act) against platform oligopolies, and said Germany needed a digital levy if that public sphere was not to be lost. The faction argued the same day that diversity of opinion should not be left to the market and that money from platforms using journalistic content should reach local and regional media.

On 19 March 2026, with Nancy Faeser, he tied a motion on sites of democratic history to the planned Freedom and Unity Monument in Leipzig and to the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. The Bundestag’s art council (Kunstbeirat), chaired by President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner), names him an ordinary SPD member for the 21st term, with Faeser; the group dates the seat from 4 June 2025.

On 9 July 2026 the plenary elected him a full member of the board of trustees of the Foundation Archives of the Parties and Mass Organisations of the GDR, held at the Federal Archives. On the joint CDU/CSU–SPD ticket he received 463 votes in favour, 104 against, 21 abstentions and 15 invalid ballots; an AfD ticket failed. The same sitting made him a deputy member of the board of the Federal Foundation for the Study of the SED Dictatorship, with former SPD parliamentarian Iris Gleicke. The biography lists that SED seat among disclosable outside offices and does not place the archives board or the Kunstbeirat in its committee block.

## Political positions

### Education, research and innovation

As spokesperson for higher education and science for the SPD in the Landtag of Saxony, Mann opposed the higher-education bill that the CDU–FDP coalition passed in 2012. After the 8 June 2012 hearing he called the title *Hochschulfreiheitsgesetz* a “krasser Etikettenschwindel”, saying the draft would cut into university self-government through sanctions and ministerial targets and should not be rushed. In the final reading he objected to agreements fixing graduate numbers as well as enrolments, likened the bill to five-year plans rather than modern steering, and suggested the name “Hochschulkontrollgesetz”.

A question to Science Minister Sabine von Schorlemer then confirmed that the new fee—€500 a semester once studies ran more than four semesters over the standard period—also covered master’s students and those changing programmes if enrolled from winter 2012/13. He said the rule would within four years amount to tuition fees across Saxony, and that fee-free study up to a further degree remained, for the SPD group, a condition of equal opportunity. In the Bundestag, at the first reading of the 2022 BAföG amendment on 13 May, he welcomed 20 percent higher income allowances, higher housing and childcare rates and an age limit of 45, noting that in Saxony the share of recipients had fallen. He called the bill a first step and said the SPD group wanted later to cut the loan share, allow a change of subject and introduce a basic grant independent of parental income.

### Security and foreign policy

On 26 February 2022, two days after Russia began a large-scale offensive to control Ukraine, Mann spoke at a rally on the market square in Leipzig. The *Leipziger Zeitung* reported that the crowd, which had called for weapons as well as humanitarian aid, booed him when he spoke against arms exports. The €100 billion Bundeswehr fund announced by Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) remained disputed locally. After red numerals referring to that sum were painted on his constituency-office windows on the night of 10–11 April, Mann said vandalism was a crime, not politics, noted that he had already, on 30 March, invited a public exchange on the special fund, and added that, given a war of aggression in Europe, he would be grateful to hear alternatives to military deterrence and defence.

On 3 June 2022 he voted yes on the amendment of Article 87a of the Basic Law, adopted by 568 votes to 96 with 20 abstentions, and yes on the law establishing the Sondervermögen Bundeswehr, adopted by 590 to 80 with 7 abstentions. A motion from the Leipzig-Mitte branch in summer 2022, backed by the city association Mann chaired, asked the SPD executive to examine “blinden Flecken” of its Ostpolitik by an independent commission with outside Eastern Europe specialists. In December 2023 he told *Telepolis* that the party had been too naive about the violence [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin) would use and that economic rapprochement plus diplomacy had not brought Russia toward Europe. He welcomed [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil)’s revision but said the review was unfinished and was meant to avoid repeating errors, not to assign blame; not only the SPD had erred.

On 14 March 2024 Mann voted yes on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recommendation to reject a CDU/CSU motion for immediate delivery of Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missiles from Bundeswehr stocks, training of Ukrainian soldiers and replacement purchases. The committee had recommended rejection with the votes of the SPD, Greens, FDP, AfD and the Left group against the CDU/CSU; the plenary roll call was 494 yes, 188 no and 5 abstentions. In October 2026 he wrote on abgeordnetenwatch that the goal was not war with Russia but “ein gerechter und dauerhafter Frieden auf Grundlage des Völkerrechts”.

### Pandemic policy and other votes

On 7 April 2022, during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) in Germany, the Bundestag rejected a compromise bill on SARS-CoV-2 built around compulsory vaccination from age 60, plus a counselling duty and a vaccination register (printed papers 20/899, 20/954 and 20/1353). The roll call was 296 yes, 378 no and 9 abstentions; Mann abstained. On 11 April he wrote that he had preferred a general mandate from age 18, as better crafted and still able to work before the autumn, and had abstained because the age tiers would take too long and he doubted the compromise was constitutionally secure. He credited the aim of protecting those most at risk of severe disease, but said over-60s already had the highest vaccination rate and fewer contacts. The result, on his figures about 43 percent in favour, had to be accepted; he favoured promoting vaccination by other means, including a premium.

On Leipzig/Halle Airport he said on 18 February 2022 that a new fee schedule, agreed by the Saxon economy ministry, the operator and residents, should push freight carriers, above all DHL, to replace old, noisy aircraft. He said he had already sought, in the Landtag and in a submission on the expansion procedure, noise pauses by staggered runway use, a night ban on the noisiest aircraft, and fees rewarding low-emission planes.

## Offices and civic engagement

### Corporate and foundation seats

The Bundestag publishes offices members must notify under the Members of the Bundestag Act. As of 31 October 2026, Holger Mann’s entry gives his pre-mandate occupation as member of the Landtag of Saxony in Dresden, and one company function: member of the supervisory board of the Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen (SPRIND) GmbH in Leipzig. SPRIND is a limited company wholly owned by the Federal Republic, registered in Leipzig on 16 December 2019, with the research ministry representing the sole shareholder. The SPRIND Freedom Act of 22 December 2023 charges it with identifying, validating and publicly funding projects that could amount to a “Sprunginnovation”: an innovation able to replace existing products, technologies or business models, or to address a major technological, social or ecological problem. Its supervisory board, appointed by the shareholder meeting, advises management and oversees the legality, purpose and economy of that work. On 1 July 2026 the ten-member board included Mann and Ronja Kemmer as the two members identified as Bundestag members.

The 2024 corporate-governance report states that supervisory-board members serve unpaid under section 11 of the articles of association. The Bundestag entry lists the seat with no income figure. Income from a notifiable activity must be reported, and is published, only above 1,000 euro in a month or 3,000 euro in a year. Mann’s transparency page says he has no income besides the parliamentary allowance and that all board and supervisory-board work is unpaid. The Bundestag marks three association posts “ehrenamtlich” but does not add that word to the SPRIND line.

Under public-law bodies the same disclosure lists a deputy seat on the board of the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur in Berlin; a deputy seat on the board of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in Halle (Saale) from 19 May 2026; membership of the Kuratorium of the Stiftung Forum Recht in Karlsruhe; and, from 24 June 2025, a deputy seat on the Kuratorium of the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn.

On 19 March 2026 the Bundestag elected him deputy member of that Kuratorium on a joint CDU/CSU and SPD proposal, with Nancy Faeser as full member. The foundation presents German history since 1945 through museums in Bonn, Leipzig and Berlin. By statute, the SED foundation supports examination of dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR and remembrance of its victims. The Kulturstiftung des Bundes funds contemporary art and culture in Germany and abroad. Stiftung Forum Recht, seated in Karlsruhe with a site in Leipzig, is to make questions of law and the Rechtsstaat publicly accessible.

### Associations and local engagement

Three further posts are marked honorary: the board of Neue Gesellschaft Sachsen e.V. in Dresden; the administrative board of the Verbraucherzentrale Sachsen in Leipzig; and the board of Wissenschaftsforum Mitteldeutschland e.V. in Halle (Saale). His website repeats them among roles he describes as unpaid.

The biography, which the Bundestag says rests on members’ own information, also lists the GEW and ver.di, BUND, the federal Kuratorium of the Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V., the Erich-Zeigner-Haus Leipzig, the FC Bundestag, the Freundeskreis der Bundeswehr Leipzig, the Herbert-Wehner-Bildungswerk, the Jugend- und Kulturzentrum Alte Brauerei in Annaberg-Buchholz, the Konsumgenossenschaft Leipzig, the Mieterverein Leipzig, SJD – Die Falken, the Verband für Jugendarbeit und Jugendweihe, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, and the citizens’ associations of Leipzig-Gohlis and Leipzig-Möckern/Wahren. His site calls the GEW link a supporting membership and adds a supporting membership of Pöge-Haus e.V., plus the Universitätsgesellschaft and Verein Demokratie und Hochschule e.V.

## Reception and controversies

### Constituency office attack

On the night of 10–11 April 2022, unknown persons painted the shopfront of the citizens’ office JEDERMANNS at Georg-Schumann-Straße 133 in Leipzig’s Gohlis district, the constituency office of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) member of the Bundestag Holger Mann. The *Leipziger Zeitung* reported that the panes were covered with red figures reading “1(00) Milliarde(n)”, which it treated as an apparent response to the €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

A Deutsche Presse-Agentur dispatch carried by the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* gave the same account from Mann: the Gohlis windows had been smeared with red and white paint, and figures such as “1 Milliarde” and “100 Milliarden” could be read, apparently aimed at Scholz’s proposal. Leipzig police told the agency that the state-security department was investigating criminal damage, with the loss put at €1,000. Mann said paint on glass was not politics but a criminal offence, and that the renewed damage served no one. He pointed to surgeries, social media and a monthly online discussion, “Roter Faden”, held with fellow SPD member Nadja Sthamer, and said he had already invited a public exchange on the special fund on 30 March and remained willing to hear alternatives to military deterrence. As main tenant he said the four-figure damage also hit language courses, Ukraine collections and other free use of the rooms by the branches Leipzig-Nord and Leipzig-Nordwest. Neither report named a perpetrator.

### Party leadership and local debate

Mann gave up the Leipzig SPD chair in May 2025. On 15 May the *Leipziger Zeitung*, summarising a *Leipziger Volkszeitung* report headlined “Leipziger SPD vor Umbruch”, wrote that the 46-year-old would not stand again at the city congress on 17 May because a Bundestag mandate and the local chair could not be carried together for long. He was also speaker of the SPD’s Bundestag members from Saxony, and had shared the city chair with Christina März since 2023. At the February 2025 federal election the Saxon SPD did poorly, but Mann returned to parliament.

It also noted quarrels in the city party, including the November 2024 resignation of councillor Getu Abraham from the SPD and its council group. Abraham cited personal power struggles, treatment of some members with a migration background, and the choice of group business manager; he did not name Mann, and group chair Christopher Zenker said he regretted the step.

Members then elected a dual leadership for two years: März, a lawyer on the council group, with 89 percent, and Benjamin Schulz, a social scientist who had chaired the Leipzig-Südwest branch, with 93 percent. Mann, who had not stood, was applauded as he left the post.

Disagreement over Leipzig/Halle Airport is on record mainly as answers to constituents, not as a formal rebuke. In October 2021 a questioner on abgeordnetenwatch asked whether Mann would press the Saxon government—a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union, Alliance 90/The Greens and the SPD—to stop a planned rise in freight flights for climate and noise reasons. He replied that freight traffic had brought well-paid jobs and that he saw no case for stopping the plan-approval procedure early, but that approval would still have to let residents sleep at night and move freight toward climate neutrality. He cited coalition wording on noise, CO2 and the short southern departure route, and said he had asked the Landesdirektion Sachsen in February 2021 to weigh residents and nesting sites more heavily, including a night ban on loud aircraft and higher fees for older types.

Independent reporting does not record a personal scandal. The public record is political disagreement—over the defence fund, the Leipzig SPD and the airport—and one documented attack on the office, investigated as criminal damage, with no suspect named.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/holger-mann