# Isabel Cademartori

# Isabel Cademartori

Isabel Andrea Cademartori Dujisin (born 9 January 1988 in Bad Saarow-Pieskow, Brandenburg) is a politician in Germany of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021, standing in the Mannheim constituency in Baden-Württemberg, and the Bundestag press office describes her as the SPD parliamentary group's transport-policy spokesperson since 2023. On 19 June 2026 a state party congress in Ulm elected her co-chair of the Baden-Württemberg SPD, together with Robin Mesarosch.

The Bundestag's biography, drawn from her own information, records the German School in Santiago, Chile, from 1994 to 2000, a year at the Hoer Oranje Meisieskool in Bloemfontein in 2004–2005, the Abitur at the Sophienschule in Hanover in 2007, and two degrees from the University of Mannheim: a bachelor's in business administration in 2011, with a semester at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and a master's in business education in 2014. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur report on election night in 2021 said she was born in Brandenburg, grew up in Santiago de Chile, completed her Abitur in Hanover, and, after those studies, worked at the University of Mannheim, including as a lecturer in business education. The same biography lists her as a research associate at the university's chair of business education from 2014 to 2019 and as a staff member for the state legislator Stefan Fulst-Blei from 2020 to 2021. From 2019 to 2022 she sat on the Mannheim city council as deputy chair of the SPD group; at the time of the 2021 election she was also the group's spokesperson for urban development and mobility.

On 26 September 2021 she won Mannheim, constituency 275, by direct mandate. The federal returning officer's final count gave the SPD 37,102 first votes (26.4 percent), ahead of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) on 22.5 percent and the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) on 19.9 percent, with turnout at 72.2 percent. The election-night report named the nearest rivals as Melis Sekmen of the Greens and Roland Hörner of the CDU, and Südwestrundfunk later described the seat as the only direct mandate the SPD won in Baden-Württemberg in that Bundestag. At the 2025 federal election the CDU led the same constituency's first votes with 24.7 percent (37,566); the SPD, with Cademartori as its candidate, took 22.5 percent (34,137) and was listed as the runner-up. The returning officer left the constituency seat unfilled for want of sufficient second-vote coverage, and Cademartori entered the 21st Bundestag from place 9 on the SPD state list in Baden-Württemberg.

In the new parliament the SPD group again chose her, on 20 May 2025, as spokesperson of its transport working group, and on 3 June 2025 elected her to the extended group executive. The Bundestag lists her as a full member and Obfrau of the Transport Committee, a full member of the subcommittee on international order, the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) and international organisations, and a deputy member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs). The state leadership election followed the March 2026 Landtag election, in which the SPD under Andreas Stoch won 5.5 percent of the vote, which Südwestrundfunk called the party's worst result in any German state election; a prior member survey had given the Cademartori–Mesarosch ticket 56.5 percent, and the Ulm congress then gave her 87.8 percent and Mesarosch 78.5 percent. The same reporting placed her in the Seeheimer Kreis, a more conservative current inside the SPD.

## Early life and family

### Birth and childhood between Germany and Chile

Isabel Andrea Cademartori Dujisin was born on 9 January 1988 in Bad Saarow-Pieskow, a municipality in Brandenburg that then lay in the German Democratic Republic. In a local vote on 22 September 2002, 1,489 residents chose to shorten that name to Bad Saarow. Her mother is German and her father Chilean, and she has said that she holds both citizenships.

Her parents met in East Germany. She has written that her father, admitted there as a political refugee, studied mathematics at Leipzig University, and that in 1989 the couple moved to his home country, Chile. In a 2021 [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) interview she placed that move after the plebiscite which set the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, when she was one year old. She grew up in Santiago. Her paternal grandfather was still in East German exile in 1988 and returned to Chile that year, weeks before the plebiscite.

### Schooling in Hanover and South Africa

From 1994 to 2000 she attended the Deutsche Schule Santiago de Chile, the German school in the capital, also known as the Colegio Alemán. The school has operated since 1990 at Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Las Condes, the campus still used for its upper grades.

She has described arguments at that school as an early political influence. She told Deutsche Welle that a classmate in third grade had called Pinochet a good president, and that learning how many people did not treat the period as a dictatorship had a strong effect on her. In a 2022 interview with *taz* she said she had often been in the minority in those discussions, and that her pediatrician in Santiago had been [Michelle Bachelet](/people/michelle-bachelet), later president of Chile, who spoke German after her own exile in Germany.

After her parents separated, she returned to Germany at the age of twelve with her mother; a *taz* profile also names siblings on that return. She told Deutsche Welle that she and her mother were at first supported by the social-welfare system until her mother found work. She took the Abitur in 2007 at the Sophienschule in Hanover.

During those school years she spent 2004–05 at the Hoër Oranje Meisieskool in Bloemfontein, South Africa, recorded in her Bundestag biography as the Hoer Oranje Meisieskool. She has written that a scholarship paid for the year and that she speaks Afrikaans as well as German, English and Spanish.

### Family and Chilean political heritage

Her paternal grandfather was José Luis Cademártori Invernizzi (24 September 1930, La Serena – 25 June 2024, Santiago), a commercial engineer trained at the University of Chile and a member of the [Communist Party](/organizations/communist-party) of Chile. The Library of the [National Congress of Chile](/organizations/national-congress-of-chile) records that he was a deputy for the Santiago departmental grouping for four consecutive terms, from 1957 to 1973, sat on the party’s Central Committee from its 1961 congress, and served as minister of economy, development and reconstruction under President Salvador Allende from 5 July 1973 until the coup of 11 September.

After the coup he was held for three years, at the Military School in Santiago, on Dawson Island and at Ritoque. In November 1976 he was deported with his wife, Xenia Dujisin, and two of their children; the couple’s three children were Yanina, Jean José and Andrés. He then lived about six years in Venezuela, about a year in Cuba and about five years in East Germany, where her parents met, before he returned to Chile in 1988.

She has said that she and her grandfather often talked about the day of the coup and about a short time he spent in hiding before his arrest, while he rarely discussed imprisonment. In the same 2022 interview she said that an uncle had stood for the Chilean Senate the previous year. At the election of 21 November 2021, Jan José Cademartori Dujisin, a son of José Cademartori, was the Communist candidate for senator in the third senatorial constituency, Antofagasta. The Electoral Court recorded 5,750 votes for him, out of 187,173 valid votes in the constituency, and he was not elected. He told a regional paper that he had stayed in Chile under the dictatorship, including a period of forced residence in the highland locality of Visviri, while his immediate family was forced into exile.

## Education and professional career

### University of Mannheim

Isabel Cademartori took both of her university degrees at the University of Mannheim. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, records a Bachelor of Science in business administration (*Betriebswirtschaftslehre*) in 2011 and a Master of Science in economic and business education (*Wirtschaftspädagogik*) in 2014. The same entry states that the bachelor’s programme included an exchange semester at the Universidad Católica de Chile, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in Chile.

In an interview published in August 2024 in the university magazine *FORUM*, she said she had chosen Mannheim for the university’s reputation and for her first impression of the palace, although she had not known the city before. As a school-leaver, she said, she had expected a business degree to provide a broad range of knowledge and more than one possible career. She said she did not want to follow the bachelor’s degree with another programme limited to business administration. Economic and business education, she said, included history as a minor subject and made school teaching one possible profession.

A version of her website archived on 29 October 2021 lists placements at Südzucker, at the software firm SAP and at a management consultancy in Frankfurt, together with the semester in Chile, as part of her studies in Mannheim, which she dated from 2007 to 2014. In a reply published on Abgeordnetenwatch on 5 February 2023, she said the work at SAP and Südzucker came during her studies, between the bachelor’s and the master’s degrees. That reply does not give a job title or the length of either placement.

### Research and work before parliament

From 2014 to 2019 she was a research associate (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) at Mannheim’s Chair of Business Education, Vocational Teaching and Learning (*Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftspädagogik, Berufliches Lehren und Lernen*). She has also described that post as lecturing and training prospective vocational-school teachers. In the February 2023 reply she said that graduates in the field usually teach at commercial vocational schools or work in companies, personnel development or adult education, and that she had taken the university route of preparing those teachers. In the *FORUM* interview she said remaining at the chair had the further effect of letting her stay politically active in Mannheim.

The October 2021 text, under the years 2014–2019, said that she researched economic competencies (*wirtschaftliche Kompetenzen*), trained future vocational teachers, and had been a scholarship holder of the [Friedrich Ebert Foundation](/organizations/friedrich-ebert-foundation) until March 2020; it named no dissertation, supervisor or doctoral degree. The Bundestag biography does not list a doctorate either. The next post in that biography is employment, from 2020 to 2021, as a staff member (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) to Dr. Stefan Fulst-Blei, a member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. Fulst-Blei, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, states that he has represented the Mannheim-Nord constituency in the Landtag since 2011.

## Local politics in Mannheim

### Joining the SPD and party offices

Cademartori has written that she joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2012 and began working in Mannheim on the district advisory council (Bezirksbeirat) for the inner city and Jungbusch, in the Mannheim SPD, and at state level. A February 2017 branch notice, published by Rheinneckarblog, was more specific about the advisory seat: she had been one of three SPD members of the Innenstadt/Jungbusch Bezirksbeirat since 2014, and that month succeeded the retired judge Detlef Möller as the SPD's spokesperson there. The notice said Mannheim's council appoints a twelve-member Bezirksbeirat in each of 17 districts to advise the council and the administration, and that she represented the district in the council's education and health committee, chaired the SPD branch for Innenstadt/Jungbusch, and had sat on the SPD Baden-Württemberg state executive since the previous year.

In February 2018 that branch elected her chair for a third consecutive term. Its account of the meeting, carried by MRN-News, cited work on the Herschelbad swimming baths, affordable housing, access from the inner city to the Neckar, and a mobility workshop, and described the branch as still Mannheim's largest SPD local association, with more than 240 members.

At the state conference of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) in Baden-Württemberg, held in Balingen on 28–29 June 2014, delegates elected her to the state executive. The Mannheim Jusos' report said Christian Dristram, also from Mannheim, was elected deputy state chair and that she joined the executive as well; a photo caption in the same report listed her, under a misspelt surname, as a deputy state chair. On 14 April 2024 a Mannheim district conference confirmed Dr. Stefan Fulst-Blei as district chair and confirmed Cademartori, by then a member of the Bundestag, and Sascha Brüning as his deputies.

### Mannheim city council

At the municipal election of 26 May 2019, turnout in Mannheim was 49.8 percent. The official result gave the SPD 21.2 percent of the vote, 1,071,597 votes, and 10 seats, behind Alliance 90/The Greens with 12 seats and ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) with 9. In the city's count of all 199 precincts, published on 28 May 2019 as a preliminary result, Isabel Cademartori Dujisin received 30,052 votes, 2.8 percent of the SPD list, and was the tenth SPD candidate elected.

By 30 December 2020, MRN-News, relaying a notice from her, described her as a city councillor and deputy chair of the SPD council group. On 19 November 2019 the group had published an inner-city proposal, "In unserer Innenstadt hat der Mensch Vorfahrt," naming her and Ralf Eisenhauer as contacts. It called for four quadrants reachable by car only from the ring road, for making streets such as the Fressgasse car-free while keeping car parks accessible, and for turning some parking into outdoor seating. On 10 October 2021 the same outlet identified her as deputy group chair and transport spokesperson when the SPD asked the city for a parking concept in every district before fining pavement parking. She said the group had applied to extend resident parking and to build neighbourhood garages, and she called sharp fee increases, on the scale of plans discussed in Tübingen, socially unfair to households on low and middle incomes.

She kept the council seat after entering the Bundestag in 2021. On her website she said she would leave at the meeting of 11 October 2022 because Bundestag committee work and other posts in Berlin made the two mandates hard to combine, and that Dr. Melanie Seidenglanz would succeed her. Seidenglanz, a linguist and project manager at Metropolregion Rhein-Neckar GmbH, had been the SPD's Bezirksbeirat spokesperson in Käfertal since 2012. A group notice dated that day said Seidenglanz had become a councillor and that Professor Heidrun Deborah Kämper had been elected unanimously as deputy chair, also taking Innenstadt/Jungbusch. Group chair Thorsten Riehle became transport spokesperson, and deputy chair Reinhold Götz took on urban development as well.

## Bundestag candidacies and elections

### Nomination and the 2021 election

The Mannheim organization of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) nominated Isabel Cademartori on 17 October 2020 for Bundestag constituency 275, the district covering the city of Mannheim. For the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election) she also stood 17th on the SPD state list in Baden-Württemberg, a place the local party did not treat as safe. Through that election, the candidate with the most first votes (Erststimmen) in a constituency received a direct mandate and entered the Bundestag whether or not the state list would also have carried that person; second votes (Zweitstimmen) fixed each party's total seats, and the closed state list filled only the places left after directly elected members were seated.

The election was held on 26 September 2021. Of 196,863 people eligible to vote in Mannheim, 142,132 cast ballots, a turnout of 72.2 percent; 140,782 first votes were valid. Cademartori received 37,102 of them, or 26.4 percent, 1.6 percentage points below the SPD's 2017 share in the district but the largest total on the day. Melis Sekmen of Alliance 90/The Greens was second with 31,723 votes (22.5 percent, up 9.4 points). Roland Hörner of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was third with 27,986 (19.9 percent, down 9.4 points). Konrad Stockmeier of the Free Democratic Party received 14,879 (10.6 percent), Jörg Finkler of [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) 13,773 (9.8 percent), and [Gökay Akbulut](/people/gokay-akbulut) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 6,811 (4.8 percent). Second votes put the SPD first on 35,651 (25.3 percent), then the Greens on 29,814 (21.1 percent), the CDU on 25,682 (18.2 percent), the Free Democrats on 18,515 (13.1 percent), the AfD on 12,846 (9.1 percent) and Die Linke on 7,066 (5.0 percent).

The Federal Returning Officer recorded the SPD as elected in the constituency. Mannheim had voted SPD on both ballots for decades until 2009, and SWR noted that the CDU had finished ahead in the two federal elections before 2021. The sitting CDU member, Nikolas Löbel, resigned in March 2021 during a controversy over commissions on coronavirus-mask procurement and did not stand; the party nominated Hörner, a former head of the Mannheim port and a recent CDU member. The final seat calculation credited the SPD with one constituency seat in Baden-Württemberg, the CDU with 33 and the Greens with four. SWR described Cademartori as the only SPD candidate in the state to win a direct mandate that year; she entered the 20th Bundestag on the Mannheim result.

### The 2025 election and the 21st Bundestag

The Mannheim SPD nominated Cademartori again on 24 October 2024, when about 80 delegates gave her 88 percent of the vote. On 15 December 2024 a state delegates' assembly in Schwäbisch Gmünd adopted the SPD list for Baden-Württemberg and placed her ninth, again as the candidate for constituency 275. The 2025 German federal election was held on 23 February 2025.

*Isabel Cademartori speaking to SWR after the 2025 Bundestag election in Mannheim.*

Turnout rose to 78.4 percent: 153,146 of 195,336 eligible voters took part, and 151,921 first votes were valid. Sekmen, standing this time for the CDU after leaving the Greens in 2024, led with 37,566 votes (24.7 percent, up 4.8 points). Cademartori was second with 34,137 (22.5 percent, down 3.9 points). Nina Wellenreuther of the Greens received 27,493 (18.1 percent), Heinrich Koch of the AfD 27,170 (17.9 percent), Akbulut 12,117 (8.0 percent) and Stockmeier 6,391 (4.2 percent). On the second ballot the CDU led with 35,227 votes (23.1 percent). The SPD fell to 27,687 (18.2 percent, down 7.1 points), followed by the AfD on 26,735 (17.6 percent), the Greens on 24,376 (16.0 percent), Die Linke on 17,211 (11.3 percent), the FDP on 7,839 (5.1 percent) and Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) on 7,150 (4.7 percent).

A 2023 amendment, in force for this election, fixed the Bundestag at 630 members and made second votes decisive for each party's seats. A party candidate now gains a constituency seat only by winning the most first votes and by having that seat covered by the party's second-vote entitlement in the state (Zweitstimmendeckung): within the state, constituency winners are ranked by their share of valid first votes and assigned seats in that order, remaining seats go down the closed state list, and a winner who is not reached gets no seat. The official Mannheim table states that the constituency stays unoccupied for lack of second-vote coverage, although the CDU led the first votes.

SWR reported that Cademartori, Koch and Akbulut entered the 21st Bundestag through their parties' state lists, while Sekmen did not receive a seat. Sekmen called that outcome a "bitter consequence of the electoral reform" and said she would continue her political work; Stockmeier also missed re-election. Cademartori told SWR she was disappointed by the SPD's national result, which she described as one of the party's worst and the worst of the postwar period. The register of elected members lists Isabel Andrea Cademartori Dujisin, born in 1988, as returned for the SPD from the Baden-Württemberg list at place 9, and records that she had also stood in constituency 275.

## Parliamentary work and transport policy

### Committees, spokesperson role and the group executive

In the 20th Bundestag, the archived biography of Isabel Cademartori lists her as a full member of the Transport Committee, as the SPD group's Obfrau on that committee, and as a deputy member of the Health Committee. It does not list the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government. The Obfrau entry is undated; the spokesperson election that carries that role came only at mid-term.

On 26 September 2023 the group elected its working-group speakers and named her for transport. *Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung* reported that this was the usual halfway reshuffle and that Dorothee Martin, the transport spokesperson until then, lost the vote. Martin took a full seat on the Interior Committee and stayed only a deputy on transport; Thomas Lutze took the full transport seat from 7 November 2023. *Tagesspiegel Background* had already reported a working-group vote for a new spokesperson. A date of 21 May 2025 is therefore a reconfirmation, not the first election.

The group announced on 20 May 2025 that it had that day again chosen its speakers, with Cademartori once more for transport; its profile dates the office from 21 May 2025. On 3 June 2025 she was one of 25 members elected to the extended group executive. The same profile dates the Transport Committee seat, and a deputy seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, from 21 May 2025. It dates the subcommittee on the international order, the United Nations and international organisations from 17 October 2025, lists her as that subcommittee's Obfrau until 23 June 2026 and as its deputy chair from 24 June 2026, and records a deputy seat from 25 June 2025 on the advisory council on access to railway infrastructure. The Bundestag biography likewise lists her as a full member and Obfrau of the Transport Committee, a deputy on Foreign Affairs, and a full member of the United Nations subcommittee.

In the 21st term the committee has been chaired by [Tarek Al-Wazir](/people/tarek-al-wazir) of Alliance 90/The Greens. [Björn Simon](/people/bjorn-simon) chairs the CDU/CSU transport working group; [Henning Rehbaum](/people/henning-rehbaum) sits on it.

### Public transport and the Deutschlandticket

The Deutschlandticket, sold since May 2023, is a personal monthly pass for local and regional transport across Germany, not for long-distance trains. It followed the 2022 9-Euro-Ticket and opened at 49 euros. The Federation and the Länder each pay 1.5 billion euros a year to cover operators' lost fare income; the federal share runs through 2030. The federal government put use at about 14.5 million people and the price, from January 2026, at 63 euros. The Länder's transport ministers set the fare, because local transport is their responsibility, and a semester ticket at 60 percent of the standard fare was agreed from summer 2024.

She treated a stable price and funding beyond a single year as the condition for keeping the pass. At the first anniversary, with about 11 million subscribers, transport minister [Volker Wissing](/people/volker-wissing) of the Free Democratic Party called it Europe's most modern public-transport ticket. She warned that the row over price and survival was itself damaging acceptance. Industry figures in that account said only about 8 percent of users were new to regular public transport. In November 2023 she called the semester ticket, then 29.40 euros, "a great success".

On 23 September 2024 the Länder agreed 58 euros from January 2025. Oliver Krischer, the Green chair of the transport ministers' conference, said that figure kept the ticket attractive while steadying the finances; Bavaria had suggested 64 euros, and Baden-Württemberg was among the states warning that too high a price would cut demand. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations said 58 euros was a lot of money for many households, and Pro Bahn warned that the jump, unlike a rise to 54 euros, could push riders away.

After the coalition fell, the Union dropped an earlier block and agreed to free unused 2023 federal money so the ticket could continue in 2025, still with 1.5 billion euros a year from each side and about 13 million users. Cademartori said the Union had given way to pressure and that the pass should not be a bargaining chip. [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) said a Deutschlandticket should remain, but that regional transport was chiefly a Land task and that the subsidy had grown far beyond the original plan. In April 2025, after he again questioned the subsidy, she was quoted calling the ticket a great success and saying he would do well not to cast doubt on it.

In autumn 2025 the Bundestag wrote the federal 1.5 billion euros a year through 2030 into law, with a matching Land sum, a rise to 63 euros from January 2026, and from 2027 an index for personnel, energy and operating costs intended to end the yearly political argument. She said she hoped more employers would offer the job ticket, and asked for common rules such as children travelling with a subscriber. Victoria Broßart of the Greens called a fixed federal subsidy, with the fare left to rise, "gentle euthanasia" for the ticket. [Luigi Pantisano](/people/luigi-pantisano) of Die Linke said many people would no longer afford it. [Wolfgang Wiehle](/people/wolfgang-wiehle) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany said the money came at the expense of the rest of the railway.

### Rail, roads, cars and industrial policy

When transport minister Patrick Schnieder presented a Deutsche Bahn strategy in September 2025, *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported a goal that at least 70 percent of ICE and IC trains should arrive without a major delay by the end of 2029, a rate the company had already promised for the following year. On Deutschlandfunk she called Evelyn Palla's appointment as chief executive a good decision, said the punctuality targets could have been more ambitious, and said other parts of the package raised questions. A June 2026 Bundestag press notice, trailing an interview in *Das Parlament*, headlined her call to end planning procedures that take 20 years, the delay affecting both rail and road schemes.

On cars she has preferred tax rules to open-ended purchase grants. At a September 2023 meeting of the energy association BDEW she said company-car tax already favoured electric vehicles, but not enough, and that the SPD would weight CO2 more heavily. She called electric company cars the main route to a used electric market, and said purchase bonuses could not continue indefinitely. A later paper with [Sebastian Roloff](/people/sebastian-roloff) and [Jakob Blankenburg](/people/jakob-blankenburg), reported via the *Handelsblatt*, proposed raising the flat monthly taxable benefit for a combustion-engine company car from 1 percent of the list price to as much as 1.5 percent by CO2 output, and limiting the 0.5 percent plug-in-hybrid rate to cars driven mostly on electricity. The authors wrote that the industry's future was electric and that European Union CO2 fleet limits were the central climate tool in transport, with company fleets meant to reinforce them.

## Positions on health, energy and foreign affairs

### COVID-19 vaccination proposals

On 7 April 2022 the Bundestag rejected, by 296 votes to 378 with nine abstentions, a merged cross-party bill on preparedness for COVID-19 (Drucksachen 20/899, 20/954 and 20/1353). Its account of the sitting says the text would have required vaccination from age 60 from 15 October 2022. Isabel Cademartori voted yes. She later wrote that she had backed a time-limited mandate from 60 in order to limit severe illness and protect the health system. She voted no on the other motions, all defeated: a CDU/CSU Impfvorsorgegesetz on vaccination preparedness (172–496, nine abstentions); a motion led by [Wolfgang Kubicki](/people/wolfgang-kubicki) to raise willingness to vaccinate without a general mandate (85–590, 12 abstentions); and an Alternative for Germany motion against any statutory COVID-19 mandate (79–606).

### Nuclear power and the energy crisis

In 2022 she argued for keeping nuclear generation past the planned year-end shutdown. On 22 February she wrote that energy independence would matter more, urged the CDU/CSU in the Länder to accept more wind power, and said it should be examined whether the three remaining plants were needed beyond 2022. On 1 August she wrote that security of supply, climate targets, industry and avoiding one-sided dependencies led her to lifetime extension and a reactivation of nuclear energy. A November *Spiegel* profile described her as fighting for nuclear power.

The coalition stayed split. On 17 October 2022 Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) ordered a legal basis for Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland to run until 15 April 2023 at the latest. Tagesschau reported Green criticism, an FDP welcome as clarity in the energy crisis, and SPD parliamentary approval of what was called a pragmatic step. The order was limited continued operation, not the reactivation she had argued for in August.

### Israel, Palestine and arms policy

In May 2024, after Spain, Norway and Ireland moved to recognise Palestine, she told *Stern* that Germany should press recognition in a joint European initiative if the hostages were freed and a ceasefire agreed, as a step toward coexistence of Israel with a Palestinian state that did not threaten Israel's security. [Ralf Stegner](/people/ralf-stegner) took a similar line. [Michael Roth](/people/michael-roth), then chair of the foreign affairs committee, called the recognitions the wrong signal at the wrong time, citing the lack of a functioning Palestinian state and a risk of treating the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 as a gain. *Spiegel* reported that the government still wanted a negotiated two-state outcome and treated recognition as the product of direct talks.

In May 2025 she urged limits on arms exports to the government of [Benjamin Netanyahu](/people/benjamin-netanyahu). *Spiegel* reported her warning that deliveries could implicate Germany in war crimes and before international courts, particularly tank ammunition and spare parts. In *Vorwärts* she called Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip, including what she described as starvation and expulsions, contrary to international law, and said stopping some exports—not soldiers' protection or Iron Dome—would press that government toward talks and aid. She called the SPD line long too uncritical, said Scholz had not enforced a Rafah "red line", backed talks on recognition along a French initiative, and said an International Criminal Court warrant against Netanyahu should be executed in Germany.

On 31 August 2025 *Bild* reported a post calling the Netanyahu government "rechtsradikal" and the federal refusal of European Union sanctions—measures that would have hit joint research—"historisches Versagen", because it shielded that government from consequences for what she called the gravest human-rights violations in Gaza. Volker Beck, president of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, told *Bild* this was doubly wrong: pressure belonged on Hamas and on Qatar, Turkey and Iran, since if Hamas disarmed and freed the hostages the war would end, and he accused her of being "von Hass auf den jüdischen Staat zerfressen". *Bild* reported that other SPD members distanced themselves privately but not in public. She called Beck's charges "haltlos" and "absurd", said "rechtsradikal" was pointed but not wholly wrong given far-right parties in the coalition, and that EU consequences were urgent for what she called breaches of international law in Gaza and the West Bank.

### Colonia Dignidad and Latin America

The Bundestag elected her on 24 March 2022, and again on 18 December 2025, to the joint commission of parliament and government on Colonia Dignidad. The commission follows a unanimous resolution of 29 June 2017 on clarification with Chile of crimes at the settlement founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer, later Villa Baviera, including abuses committed with the DINA under Augusto Pinochet.

On 11 June 2024 she welcomed President [Gabriel Boric](/people/gabriel-boric)'s plan to expropriate part of the site for a memorial, citing Germany's historical responsibility. Deutsche Welle put the area at 117 hectares of buildings and other places where crimes were committed. In 2026 the government of [José Antonio Kast](/people/jose-antonio-kast) moved to reverse that step; the housing minister cited cost, and Kast said a memorial of 117 hectares was not reasonable. She told Deutsche Welle this was, in her view, a grave error: work including a visit by President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) would be wasted, while Chilean victims expected concrete recognition. She still wanted a joint memorial but doubted it could proceed; a foreign-ministry spokesperson said the government still supported one.

Since 7 July 2025 she has chaired the SPD group's Latin America and Caribbean circle, and since 22 September 2025 she has sat on the Cono Sur and Brazil parliamentary groups, listed by the Bundestag as deputy chair of both. Since 7 July 2025 she has been a member and deputy leader of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Union for the Mediterranean](/organizations/union-for-the-mediterranean). She is a full member of the subcommittee on international order, the United Nations and international organisations; the SPD group dates that from 17 October 2025, with her as its Obfrau until 23 June 2026 and deputy chair from 24 June 2026.

## Leadership of the Baden-Württemberg SPD

### State executive before 2026

Before the 2026 leadership change, Isabel Cademartori already held office in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Baden-Württemberg. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, lists her as deputy district chair of the SPD in Mannheim and as a member of the Präsidium of the state executive, beside her seat on the Mannheim city council from 2019 to 2022, when she was also deputy chair of the SPD council group. That text gives no separate dates for the party posts. The archived biography for the 20th Bundestag grouped the council mandate, the deputy district chair and the Präsidium as offices held since 2019.

In the state statute in the version dated October 2016, the Präsidium is the smaller board that carries out the state executive's decisions and runs day-to-day political and organisational work. It comprises the state chair, the deputy chairs, the general secretary, the treasurer and three further members chosen by the executive from its own ranks. The state chair before 2026 was Andreas Stoch, leader of the SPD group in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg since 2016 and state party chair since 2018.

### The 2026 state election and dual chairmanship

On 19 June 2026 a state party congress in Ulm elected Cademartori and Robin Mesarosch as equal state chairs, the first dual leadership of the SPD Baden-Württemberg. Delegates gave Cademartori 87.8 percent and Mesarosch 78.5 percent. The *Stuttgarter Zeitung* counted a little over 300 delegates and reported that the vote confirmed a member survey the pair had won by an absolute majority.

The contest followed the [2026 Baden-Württemberg state election](/facts/2026-baden-wurttemberg-state-election) on 8 March 2026. In the final result the SPD took 5.5 percent of the second votes, 298,297 ballots, 5.5 points below 2021. It won no constituency and ten list seats in a Landtag of 157, clearing the five-percent threshold. Alliance 90/The Greens received 30.2 percent and 56 seats, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) 29.7 percent and 56 seats, and the Alternative for Germany 18.8 percent and 35 seats. Turnout was 69.6 percent. SWR called 5.5 percent the worst SPD result ever in a German Landtag election; in 2021 the party had taken 11.0 percent.

Stoch, the lead candidate for a second time, told supporters in Stuttgart on election night that he would draw personal consequences and help the Landtag group elect a new leadership that week. He announced his resignation as state party chair and as chair of the parliamentary group. In March the group elected Sascha Binder, until then general secretary, as its chair; Binder did not stand again for general secretary. Stoch did not run for party chair. At Ulm he gave what SWR called his last speech in the post and urged the party to stay together.

A member survey preceded the congress. SWR reported on 16 June that Cademartori and Mesarosch had 56.5 percent of the valid votes, Dorothea Kliche-Behnke 24.5 percent and Carsten Lotz 16.9 percent. A little under 30,000 members were eligible, and more than 13,000 voted. Kliche-Behnke, a Landtag member from Tübingen and a state deputy chair since 2018, and Lotz, a former management consultant, did not stand at the congress. The congress adopted, in amended form, state-executive motion PO01, replacing section 14 of the statute. The new rule allows either one chair or two equal chairs, one of them a woman. The congress chooses the form by simple majority, and the chairs are elected in separate ballots.

Mesarosch, from Sigmaringen, was a member of the Bundestag from 2021 to 2025 for Zollernalb–Sigmaringen and lost the seat in 2025 because of the SPD's result. SWR reported that he had been a social-media adviser to [Martin Schulz](/people/martin-schulz), Andrea Nahles and Heiko Maas, and placed him, then 35, on the party's left. Cademartori, then 38, had been the Mannheim member of the Bundestag since 2021 and the SPD group's spokesperson on transport; SWR associated her with the Seeheimer Kreis, and both described the joint ticket as a way of holding the two wings together.

They said the state party should run two or three campaigns a year rather than send out several messages a week, and they named affordability, health care, jobs and climate policy as themes. In the Ulm nomination speech Mesarosch criticised Chancellor Friedrich Merz, saying he found it wrong to be lied to by a chancellor and to be governed in an amateurish way. The next day the congress elected Jan-Peter Röderer, unopposed, as general secretary, together with four deputy chairs.

In an interview published on 23 October 2026, after federal co-chair [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas) had resigned, Mesarosch told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* that he considered Merz "absolut ungeeignet" as chancellor. He said the next federal leadership need not stand beside every statement Merz made, and that the SPD had to win support for its own positions and not act only as a coalition partner. The report added that the party would elect its whole federal leadership at a congress in Bremen on 16 and 17 January, and that the remaining chair, Finance Minister [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil), had not said whether he would run again.

## Political alignment and public reception

### The Seeheimer Kreis and intra-party profile

Isabel Cademartori is publicly placed in the Seeheimer Kreis, which the Federal Agency for Civic Education describes as the association of the party right inside the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Formed in the mid-1970s in reaction to the [New Left](/organizations/new-left), it is the oldest informal current in the SPD group in the Bundestag; the agency sets it beside the Parlamentarische Linke and Netzwerk Berlin, a younger circle from 1998 that calls itself centrist but stands close to the Seeheimers on substance. Reporting a 2024 strategy paper, *Der Spiegel* called the grouping the conservative Seeheimer Kreis and wrote that it then counted 95 SPD members of the Bundestag by its own account.

Coverage has used that affiliation to distinguish her from the party left and from the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos). When she and Robin Mesarosch were chosen in June 2026 to lead the Baden-Württemberg SPD, the *Staatsanzeiger* described her as a well-networked member of the conservative Seeheimer Kreis, with her Mannheim seat standing for an urban clientele, and Mesarosch as a left-wing figure based in rural Sigmaringen. The portrait that fixed the “ultra-pragmatist” label came earlier. In November 2022 *Der Spiegel* presented her as “die Anti-Grüne bei den Jusos” and asked who “diese Ultrapragmatikerin unter den Linken” was: the article said she fought for nuclear power, thought highly of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and could not stand Alliance 90/The Greens. A caption quoted her that, in habitus, the Greens were “eine Wohlstandspartei.” A February 2023 *Tagesspiegel* interview ran under her line that “die linken Rituale der Jusos” had “etwas Folkloristisches.” In the *taz* in March 2022 she argued that older politicians and party institutions still mattered, and she objected to an anti-establishment tone that treated political experience as replaceable by new faces.

Her Bundestag biography, drawn from her own statements, lists the chair of the Freunde und Förderer des Herschelbads in Mannheim, membership of the services union ver.di, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and the German Red Cross, and several local civic associations. Under the parliament’s disclosure rules the same page records one published benefit tied to political activity: in 2025 the Körber-Stiftung covered travel costs of 6,743 euros. No other paid outside posts are listed there.

### Media coverage and controversy

Longer national writing on her has been interview portraiture more than investigation. In November 2024 the *Mannheimer Morgen* reported that the business magazine *Capital* had included her in its “Top 40 unter 40” selection, and that the listing was a repeat. The exchange that drew the sharpest public rebuke came at the end of August 2025. *Bild* reported that, on X, she had called it a “historisches Versagen” of the federal government to hold a protective hand over the “rechtsradikale” government of Benjamin Netanyahu in the European Union and thereby spare it consequences for what she called the most serious human-rights violations. The post concerned Berlin’s refusal to join EU measures that would have restricted joint research projects, including at universities. The paper called the wording a “schlimme Entgleisung” and wrote that SPD colleagues, asked by *Bild*, distanced themselves firmly, though none would do so in public.

Volker Beck, president of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft and a former Green member of the Bundestag, said she was “von Hass auf den jüdischen Staat zerfressen.” He called the statement “doppelt daneben”: pressure, he argued, belonged on Hamas and on Qatar, Turkey and Iran rather than on Israel, and steps against Israeli universities would hit many critics of Netanyahu. Carsten Ovens, head of Elnet and a former CDU politician, said that criticism among partners belonged in direct conversation, not on the internet. CDU member Johannes Volkmann warned against a “Täter-Opfer-Umkehr” in Israel’s war with Hamas. Cademartori replied that Beck’s accusations were “haltlos” and “absurd.” She said describing the whole government as *rechtsradikal* was “vielleicht eine zugespitzte Formulierung, aber in der Sache nicht ganz falsch,” citing far-right parties in the coalition, and she maintained that EU consequences were urgently needed given what she described as breaches of international law in Gaza and the West Bank.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/isabel-cademartori