# Kathrin Gebel

# Kathrin Gebel

Kathrin Gebel (born 5 April 1997 in Recklinghausen) is a German politician of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) and a member of the Bundestag. She took her seat when the 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025, having been elected on the party's state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the federal election of 23 February 2025 she stood in constituency 128, Münster, where Die Linke polled 14,083 first votes, 6.8 percent of the valid vote; the constituency mandate went to [Sylvia Rietenberg](/people/sylvia-rietenberg) of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) with 31.2 percent. The state returning officer placed Gebel seventh on the Left list and recorded her occupation as student and her residence as Oer-Erkenschwick. In the same constituency the party's second-vote share rose from 5.0 percent in 2021 to 12.5 percent (25,927 votes).

The Bundestag biography, which it states is based on the member's own information, records that she passed the Abitur in 2015 at the Gymnasium Petrinum in Recklinghausen and studied psychology at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg from 2015 to 2020, completing a Bachelor of Science in 2020. From 2016 to 2022 she held a scholarship from the [Rosa Luxemburg Foundation](/organizations/rosa-luxemburg-foundation). Since 2020 she has been enrolled in a master's programme in psychology at Saarland University, and the chamber still lists her profession as student.

The same biography lists her as a federal spokesperson of Linksjugend ['solid], the youth organization of Die Linke, from 2018 to 2020, and as a member of the party's federal executive since 2022. In a 2024 statement seeking re-election to that executive, filed for the Saarland branch, she described the 2022–2024 term as youth-policy spokesperson and spokesperson for feminism, said she had been a party member since 2015, and referred to a migration background of her own from the Soviet Union.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, a deputy member of the Committee on Health, and deputy chair of the parliamentary group for the Southern Cone states. Since 1 October 2025 she has also sat on the board of trustees of the Federal Foundation for Gender Equality. The Bundestag press office identified her in February 2026 as the Left group's spokesperson on women's policy. In an interview for the weekly *Das Parlament*, released in advance on 26 February 2026, she called violence against women an epidemic of gender-specific structural violence and argued that electronic ankle monitors proposed for high-risk cases would not replace funding for shelters, specialized courts, and women's economic independence. On 16 October 2026 the Bundestag, without debate, rejected an appeal by [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) member Martin Reichardt against a disciplinary fine imposed the day before for a remark directed at Gebel; President Julia Klöckner quoted the remark and described that kind of speech about women in the chamber as overreaching and disrespectful.

## Early life and education

### Upbringing

Kathrin Gebel was born on 5 April 1997 in Recklinghausen. The Bundestag biography that gives this date and place states that members' biographical entries are based on their own information.

A profile published by the Burg Hülshoff Center for Literature describes her as the daughter of a single mother who worked as a tax clerk (*Steuerfachangestellte*) and as having grown up in Oer-Erkenschwick. The same profile says that her family immigrated to Germany from the Soviet Union in the mid-1990s. In a written statement for her 2024 candidacy to the federal executive of Die Linke, submitted for the Saarland state association before the Halle party congress, she referred to her "own migration background from the Soviet Union" and wrote that this perspective mattered especially to her. The Bundestag biography does not repeat that family account. In a short interview recorded for Medienforum Münster's citizens' radio before the February 2025 federal election, she spoke about her origins in the Ruhr.

### Schooling and university

In 2015 she passed the Abitur, the general higher-education entrance qualification, at the Gymnasium Petrinum in Recklinghausen.

The school's own history traces a Latin school to a 1421 endowment, recorded in the Westerholt family archive, for a schoolmaster and pupils who were to sing at vigils and mass at the parish church of St Peter; the schoolhouse and its papers were lost in the town fire of 1500. On 23 August 1730 Elector-Archbishop Clemens August of Cologne licensed a five-class Franciscan gymnasium. The name Gymnasium Petrinum became official in 1929. In 1963 it was the first boys' gymnasium in Recklinghausen to admit girls, four of them under a special permit, and coeducation followed in 1974.

From 2015 to 2020 she studied psychology at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and in 2020 received a Bachelor of Science in the subject. The university, in Magdeburg, capital of Saxony-Anhalt, was founded in 1993 by merging the technical university, the college of education and the medical academy, and it maintains an Institute of Psychology.

From 2016 to 2022 she was a scholarship holder of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung), again as recorded in the Bundestag biography. The foundation is a political-education body close to Die Linke and one of thirteen *Begabtenförderungswerke* supported by the federal research ministry. Its *Studienwerk* funds students and doctoral researchers with strong academic results and social or political engagement in the foundation's sense; where achievement is comparable, it says it prefers women, people in financial need and people with disabilities. Domestic grants are awarded under the ministry's supplementary conditions and require eligibility under section 8 of the federal training-assistance law (BAföG). Student support, uniform across the thirteen works, combines a monthly study-cost allowance—currently 300 euro—with a non-repayable sum scaled to income on the BAföG model, currently up to 812 euro, plus seminars and other non-material support.

Since 2020 she has been enrolled in a master's course in psychology at Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes) in Saarbrücken, Saarland, whose psychology department offers a general master's in the subject. The Bundestag profile, that of a member of the 21st Bundestag, still lists her occupation as a student and the master's as unfinished.

The Burg Hülshoff profile places a half-year stay in Münster, in North Rhine-Westphalia, in 2020, when she supported her sister and cared for a nephew, followed by the master's in Saarbrücken and a return to Münster at the end of 2024. In a July 2026 interview with the *Berliner Morgenpost* she said she had originally wanted to train as a psychotherapist, preferably with a further specialization in trauma. She described a therapeutic attitude as shaped by listening and by not judging too quickly, and said politics often worked the other way—assessing fast, sharpening a point, and being ready to speak at once. She added that, at the time of the interview, it was easier in Germany to become a member of parliament than a psychotherapist, including in financial terms.

## Linksjugend ['solid]

### Joining the party and the youth wing

Kathrin Gebel's 2024 candidacy for the executive of Die Linke stated that she had been a party member since 2015. In an October 2024 interview, the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* wrote that she had been active in the party since the age of 18. A program biography at the Burg Hülshoff Center for Literature says that in 2015, at 18, she joined both the party and Linksjugend ['solid]. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own information, lists Linksjugend ['solid] among her memberships and records her as a Bundessprecherin of the organization from 2018 to 2020.

On its own account, Linksjugend ['solid], the youth organization of Die Linke, was founded on 18–20 May 2007 at the Kosmos on [Karl-Marx](/people/karl-marx)-Allee in Berlin, at a conference that was also the ninth federal delegate conference of ['solid] – die sozialistische jugend, itself founded in Hanover in June 1999 by young members and sympathizers of the [Party of Democratic Socialism](/organizations/party-of-democratic-socialism). Ahead of the merger that created the party, that predecessor took in young members of the PDS, of Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative and of regional PDS youth groups; the party recognized the refounded association, which defines itself as socialist, antifascist, grassroots-democratic and feminist.

In March 2019 *politik&kommunikation* put membership at about 10,000, against about 62,000 for Die Linke, and wrote that internal currents ran from anti-German positions to Trotskyist ones. It reported the association's view of itself as a platform for radical social criticism and for overcoming capitalism, its rejection of Die Linke entering government, and demands that included an enforceable basic right to vocational training and to being hired afterwards, more direct democracy, and voting rights for residents of Germany regardless of citizenship. The magazine also noted that there is no single chair, only a Bundessprecher:innenrat. A 2021 account by the Lower Saxony branch describes that council as the collective executive between congresses: elected each year by the Bundeskongress, a meeting of 200 delegates, it handles press work, carries out congress decisions, keeps the organization running and coordinates the state associations.

### Federal spokesperson council

Gebel was one of several equal spokespersons, not a sole chair. Her 2024 executive candidacy listed the Bundessprecher*innenrat from 2018 to 2020, the same span the Bundestag biography gives for the title Bundessprecherin.

The XI Bundeskongress met in Erfurt in April 2018 and, as *nd* reported on 15 April, elected a new council. The paper quoted Paul Gruber, identified as one of the newly elected members, on the decision to seek a youth candidate for a promising place on Die Linke's list for the 2019 European elections. Delegates passed a lead motion calling the European Union undemocratic, socially unjust, militarist and unecological, while treating easier movement across borders and greater self-determination for women and for people of different sexual orientations or identities as gains to be defended against the right. A motion to bar dual membership with the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative (SAV) failed, because a change to the statutes needed a two-thirds majority; Gruber said it fell 15 delegate votes short. In March 2019, before the next congress, *politik&kommunikation* named the ten spokespersons then in office as Luisa Albrecht, Kathi Gebel, Paul Gruber, Lucas Kannenberg, Jakob Migenda, Noro Schlorke, Sinem Ergüzel, Nadine Bendahou, Piet Jakobs and Konstantin Gräfe.

The first session of the XII Bundeskongress, held in Essen from 5 to 7 April 2019, adopted the resolution "Klimagerechtigkeit bleibt Handarbeit," which called on state associations and local groups to join nationwide [Fridays for Future](/organizations/fridays-for-future) strikes, committed the organization to the Ende Gelände actions in the Rhineland from 19 to 24 June 2019, and instructed the Bundessprecher:innenrat, together with the working group Umpflügen, to form an action group, produce a leaflet and fund the mobilization. The Lower Saxony branch recorded the council elected at that April congress as Natalie Prautsch, Kathi Gebel, Franzi Lucke, Franziska Liebich, Konstantin Gräfe as treasurer, Benny Schwarz, Maximilian Schulz and Michael Neuhaus.

## Work on the party executive

### Youth policy and feminism portfolios

Kathrin Gebel has been a member of the federal executive (Parteivorstand) of Die Linke since 2022. At the first session of the 8th party congress, held in Erfurt from 24 to 26 June 2022, delegates elected her youth-policy spokesperson, the post listed for Linksjugend ['solid]. The congress also chose [Janine Wissler](/people/janine-wissler) and [Martin Schirdewan](/people/martin-schirdewan) as co-chairs and, as *Neues Deutschland* reported, cut the executive from 44 to 26 members.

On 10 July 2022 the executive assigned her, with Didem Aydurmus, Daphne Weber, and Jana Seppelt, education, youth, and higher-education policy, and, with Bettina Gutperl and Maja Tegeler, women's and equality policy and queer policy. In the candidacy she later filed from Saarland, she described the 2022–2024 office as youth-policy spokesperson and spokesperson for feminism.

The Erfurt congress had answered #linkemetoo by adopting, nearly unanimously, the motion "Den Grundkonsens erneuern. Für eine feministische Linke," and a Feminist Commission then drafted the guideline on sexism, queer-hostile boundary violations, and sexist violence that the 2023 congress in Augsburg adopted. Gebel wrote that she had helped shape that text, that she afterwards visited ten district associations to work on party practice, and that she had pushed networking among members with a migration history, which she tied to her own family's migration from the Soviet Union. She asked to be re-elected because, she argued, the party needed a feminist Left that put care—in waged work and in the household—at the center of its politics.

### Internal organizing and party currents

The first session of the 9th congress met in Halle (Saale) from 18 to 20 October 2024 and elected [Ines Schwerdtner](/people/ines-schwerdtner) and Jan van Aken co-chairs. Gebel was not returned as youth-policy spokesperson: Lisa Pfitzmann of Linksjugend ['solid] and Margarita Kavali of Die Linke.SDS took the youth and student posts, and the party recorded Gebel at 54.8 percent on the list used to secure the minimum quota of women. The Saarländischer Rundfunk reported that result as election as a Beisitzerin, an ordinary member of the 26-person executive rather than a designated spokesperson, and noted that she was also deputy chair of the Saarbrücken district executive. Shortly before the congress she told the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* that she was seeking another term. Reporting from Halle described compromises, including on the war in Gaza, that kept the meeting from splitting.

A resolution of 12 January 2025 shared out the new executive's briefs. Gebel was given education policy with Candy Boldt-Händel and Sabine Ritter; women's and equality policy and queer policy with Nina Eumann and Boldt-Händel; the Feminist Commission with Eumann; and migrant networking with Kavali. Youth policy went to Pfitzmann, Kavali, and Sabine Berninger. She does not appear on the executive published for 2026–2028.

The members' meeting of the inner-party current Bewegungslinke, on 16 December 2023 in Hanover, elected her to a ten-person coordinating circle for two years. The current says it wants an organizing party in workplaces, universities, neighborhoods, and local branches, and criticizes a party life built around elections and committee work. *Neues Deutschland* traced it to a 2018 break from the Sozialistische Linke over migration-policy demands associated with the circle around [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), and to its founding as a party working group at the end of 2019. After Erfurt the paper counted a Bewegungslinke majority—Wissler, three of four deputy chairs (Jana Seppelt, Ates Gürpinar, and Lorenz Gösta Beutin), and nine of 18 ordinary members—while the Sozialistische Linke took no seats and a reform-oriented camp kept Schirdewan, deputy chair Katina Schubert, and treasurer Harald Wolf. That 2022 count named the co-chair and three deputy chairs it attributed to the current, not Gebel.

## 2025 Bundestag election

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025, Kathrin Gebel stood for Die Linke in two capacities: as the party's candidate in Bundestag constituency 128, Münster, and in seventh place on its state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The election filled a Bundestag of 630 seats, allocated from second votes by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method, with a constituency win counting only when it was covered by that allocation. The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025. The chamber's biography of Gebel records her as elected for that term on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list and, separately, as the constituency candidate in Wahlkreis 128.

### Münster constituency

Constituency 128 comprises only the independent city of Münster. Of 237,654 people eligible to vote, 207,991 did so, a turnout of 87.5 percent, up from 83.9 percent at the federal election of 26 September 2021 and above the 82.2 percent recorded in North Rhine-Westphalia as a whole. Valid first votes numbered 206,815. Sylvia Rietenberg of Alliance 90/The Greens won the direct seat with 64,528 votes, 31.2 percent. Stefan Nacke of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) was second with 58,996 (28.5 percent), and [Svenja Schulze](/people/svenja-schulze) of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) third with 42,553 (20.6 percent). The state's returning officer listed Rietenberg in 13th place on the Green state list, Nacke in 14th on the CDU list and Schulze in fourth on the SPD list.

Gebel, entered on the ballot as the Linke candidate with state-list place 7, received 14,083 first votes, 6.8 percent, and finished fourth. She was 657 votes ahead of Helmut Gerhard Birke of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, who took 13,426 votes (6.5 percent). Smaller shares went to Franziska Brandmann of the Free Democratic Party with 6,779 (3.3 percent), Maren Chiara Berkenheide of Volt with 3,808 (1.8 percent) and Jurian Maximilian Thomas of Die PARTEI with 2,642 (1.3 percent). In 2021 the Linke candidate in Münster had received 7,078 first votes, 3.6 percent, so the 2025 share was 3.2 percentage points higher. The Green first-vote share, by contrast, slipped from 32.3 percent (63,160 votes) to 31.2 percent, while the CDU rose from 26.2 to 28.5 percent and the SPD fell from 24.1 to 20.6 percent. Rietenberg's plurality was covered by the Greens' second-vote seats: in the final distribution she was the second of three successful Green constituency candidates in the state. Nacke and Schulze, who lost the direct contest, were nevertheless returned on their parties' state lists.

The second votes in the same constituency ranked the parties differently and gave Die Linke a much larger share than Gebel's personal vote. Of 207,223 valid second votes, the Greens led with 55,144 (26.6 percent), ahead of the CDU on 53,313 (25.7 percent) and the SPD on 37,437 (18.1 percent). Die Linke received 25,927 second votes, 12.5 percent. That was 7.5 points above the 9,746 votes, 5.0 percent, the party had taken there in 2021, and nearly twice Gebel's first-vote share. The AfD followed with 14,210 second votes (6.9 percent), the FDP with 9,629 (4.6 percent) and Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht with 5,525 (2.7 percent). Against 2021, the constituency's second-vote changes were a Green decline of 4.1 points, a CDU gain of 3.3, an SPD decline of 5.4, an FDP decline of 6.0 and an AfD gain of 4.0.

### North Rhine-Westphalia state list

The state association adopted its Bundestag list on 11 January 2025 at a meeting of 220 delegates in the Stadthalle in Kamen, choosing a slate of 20 candidates. Its account of the meeting named Sascha H. Wagner and Cansin Köktürk as the first two places. Before polling day, WDR described the admitted list as headed by Wagner, Köktürk, [Lea Reisner](/people/lea-reisner), Ulrich Thoden and [Sonja Lemke](/people/sonja-lemke). The North Rhine-Westphalian electoral committee admitted the state lists, including Die Linke's, on 24 January 2025, and the Landeswahlleiterin published them on 30 January. In the official annex Gebel appears in seventh place, after [Mirze Edis](/people/mirze-edis) and before [Fabian Fahl](/people/fabian-fahl), with the occupation "student," a birth year of 1997 in Recklinghausen and a residence in Oer-Erkenschwick. The same annex gives the order around her as Wagner, Köktürk, Lea Valeska Anissia Reisner, Thoden, Sonja Janet Lemke, Edis, Gebel and Fahl, continuing through [Katrin Fey](/people/katrin-fey), Uwe Foullong, [Mareike Hermeier](/people/mareike-hermeier), Jan Tobias Köstering and Charlotte Antonia Neuhäuser in places 9 to 13.

Statewide, Die Linke polled 877,123 second votes, 8.3 percent of 10,526,134 valid second votes, a gain of 4.6 points on 2021. Its first-vote total was 714,177, or 6.8 percent, up 3.6 points. It did not finish first in any of the state's 64 constituencies. Nationally the party received 4,356,532 second votes, 8.8 percent, up 3.9 points, which the upper distribution converted into 64 seats, 25 more than in 2021. Six of those 64 were covered constituency seats, four in Berlin and one each in Saxony and Thuringia; the remaining 58 were list seats. The sub-allocation gave the North Rhine-Westphalia list 13 seats. With no constituency plurality to set against that figure, all 13 were list seats, filled in list order from Wagner through Neuhäuser and therefore including Gebel in seventh place. The same calculation assigned North Rhine-Westphalia 136 members of the 630-seat Bundestag.

## Roles in the 21st Bundestag

Gebel has been a member of the 21st Bundestag for Die Linke since the chamber’s constituent sitting on 25 March 2025. She was elected on the party’s state list in North Rhine-Westphalia and had also stood in constituency 128, Münster. There, Die Linke’s first-vote share—the votes cast for its constituency candidate—was 6.8 percent (14,083 votes, up 3.2 points); the direct seat went to Sylvia Rietenberg of Alliance 90/The Greens with 31.2 percent, while Die Linke’s second-vote share in the constituency was 12.5 percent. The Bundestag lists her occupation as student. It publishes a parliamentary office in Berlin and two constituency offices, at Frohnhauser Straße 259 in Essen and Achtermannstraße 19 in Münster.

### Faction offices

On 24 June 2025 the Die Linke group in the Bundestag elected the executive that was to lead it for the electoral term. Heidi Reichinnek and [Sören Pellmann](/people/soren-pellmann), who had held the chair only in an acting capacity since the February election, were confirmed as co-chairs with 94.8 and 72.4 percent. [Ina Latendorf](/people/ina-latendorf) was elected lead parliamentary business manager (*Erste Parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin*) with 87.9 percent, in place of [Christian Görke](/people/christian-gorke). The same meeting elected as deputy chairs Janine Wissler and [Desiree Becker](/people/desiree-becker) (both 88.1 percent), Nicole Gohlke and [Clara Bünger](/people/clara-bunger) (both 81.3 percent), [Luigi Pantisano](/people/luigi-pantisano) (70.7 percent) and Gebel (82.1 percent). Party co-chairs Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken also sit on that executive. The ballot followed the party’s return with 64 members and 8.8 percent of the national vote, which restored its status as a full parliamentary group after it had sat only as a *Gruppe*.

By February 2026 the Bundestag press office, in a preview for the weekly *Das Parlament*, identified Gebel as the group’s spokesperson on women’s policy (*frauenpolitische Sprecherin*). She had been elected a deputy chair of the group on 24 June 2025.

### Committees and other bodies

She is an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The Bundestag describes that committee, which has 38 members, as the body concerned with strengthening families, children and young people, with combining family and employment, with equality of women and men, and with the main choices in education policy; against demographic change it also works on the conditions for a largely self-determined life in old age.

She is a deputy member of the Committee on Health. That committee works on keeping statutory health and long-term-care insurance financially viable and care available locally, and on working conditions and training in medicine and nursing, in a system the Bundestag describes as under pressure from an ageing population and rising spending.

She is deputy chair of the Parliamentary Group for the Cono Sur states. Parliamentary groups of this kind are reconstituted each electoral term from members of all *Fraktionen*; they maintain the Bundestag’s relations with legislators in partner countries through conferences, information visits, specialist meetings and personal contacts, and the allocation of their chairs follows the relative strength of the parliamentary groups. The Bundestag has described the Cono Sur group as responsible for relations with Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag elected her to the board of trustees (*Stiftungsrat*) of the Federal Foundation for Equality (*Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung*) in Berlin, with [Maik Brückner](/people/maik-bruckner) as substitute; every group except the Alternative for Germany supported Die Linke’s nomination in printed paper 21/1646, while the AfD’s own nominees were rejected. The foundation records eight members of the Bundestag for this term, rather than the ten seats the establishing statute assigns to the house, under the chair of Federal Minister Karin Prien of the CDU. Gebel’s notifiable-posts entry on the Bundestag biography dates her membership of the *Stiftungsrat* from 1 October 2025. The foundation’s stated purpose is to strengthen equality of women and men in Germany and to connect the Federation, the Länder, municipalities, civil society, academia and business. As its highest organ, the *Stiftungsrat* supervises the directorate and decides matters of fundamental importance, including the work programme, the statutes and the annual budget and staffing plan.

The same biography, which rests on members’ own disclosures, lists membership of the services union ver.di, of Linksjugend ['solid] and of Die Linke.SDS. ver.di (*Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft*) describes itself as a union of about 1.8 million people drawn from roughly 1,000 occupations. Linksjugend ['solid] presents itself as a socialist, antifascist, grassroots-democratic and feminist youth organization for apprentices, pupils, students and young workers. Die Linke.SDS (*Sozialistisch-Demokratischer Studierendenverband*) is the student association associated with the party and, on its own account, works through base groups at universities.

## Legislative focus

### Gender-based violence and equality

Kathrin Gebel, women's-policy spokesperson of the Die Linke group in the Bundestag and, from 1 October 2025, a member of the board of the Federal Foundation for Gender Equality, has used her motions mainly on violence against women, sexual offences and reproductive rights.

In an interview for the Bundestag weekly *Das Parlament* (28 February 2026) she called violence against women "an epidemic" and "gender-specific, structural violence," citing the Federal Criminal Police Office and linking it to unpaid care, the tax system and a lack of affordable housing. The occasion was the government bill of 11 February 2026 (Drucksache 21/4082) to add electronic location monitoring and perpetrator programmes to the Protection against Violence Act. A GPS signal, she said, "does not mean safety." Where Länder already used such monitoring, a question from her group had found only about 100 domestic-violence orders since 2017; she argued that many women stay for lack of an income and that the Spanish model also included economic support, campaigns and specialised courts, while federal shelter money under the Violence Assistance Act was in her account secured only until 2036.

The motion she signed first on 29 January 2026 (Drucksache 21/3918), calling for an overall strategy instead of single measures, was debated with that bill on 27 February; Justice Minister [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig) spoke for the government. It cited 132 women killed in partner violence in 2024 and about 12,000 missing shelter places, and asked for a binding plan under the [Istanbul Convention](/facts/istanbul-convention), federal shelter funding, risk assessment, femicide statistics and family-law rules so that joint custody and contact with both parents would not be presumed after partner violence. For migrant women it sought to drop the minimum marriage duration in section 31 of the Residence Act. Gebel said an ankle monitor would not help most women still living with the perpetrator.

After Collien Fernandes's allegations, she told *taz* on 27 March 2026 that digital sexualised violence "is violence" and often continues offline abuse. She said Hubig's draft was a list of offences without a strategy and, scoring the Social Democratic Party while governments sought to cut shelter funds, answered "12" out of ten: "That is not policy, that is hypocrisy." She said both that text and a Greens draft still lacked an identity-misuse offence, platform duties and strong victims' rights, and pointed to the January motion instead of a criminal bill of her own. Her question of 10 July 2026 (Drucksache 21/7054) asked how the draft would meet Directive (EU) 2024/1385 by 14 June 2027. On 7 October 2026 the cabinet adopted a bill on pornographic deepfakes, digital voyeurism and cyberstalking.

At the 23 April 2026 first reading of the Greens' consent bill (Drucksache 21/5480), which would base section 177 on the absence of consent, Gebel backed "only yes means yes," arguing that many women freeze or cannot safely refuse. [Susanne Hierl](/people/susanne-hierl) (CDU/CSU) said the existing offence already covered shock; [Johannes Fechner](/people/johannes-fechner) (SPD) was open but raised problems of proof; [Knuth Meyer-Soltau](/people/knuth-meyer-soltau) (Alternative for Germany) called the bill a reversal of the burden of proof.

On abortion she led the motion of 25 February 2026 (Drucksache 21/4299) to delete sections 218 and following, replace the Pregnancy Conflict Act, and make abortion, contraception and wider fertility treatment statutory health benefits. On 27 February, beside a Greens supply motion, she said church hospitals used special labour law to ban abortions, including medically indicated ones, though financed by public money rather than church tax. Hierl said she had lost the thread of a supply debate; [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl) (SPD) treated local services as mainly a Länder duty. A motion she led on 21 May 2026 (Drucksache 21/6105) would make Land lists alternate women and men under section 17 of the Political Parties Act. It put women's share of the Bundestag at 32.4 percent, down 2.4 points, cited Article 3(2) of the Basic Law, and said people registered as neither female nor male could stand outside that order.

On 6 November 2025 she spoke on the Greens' motion for 25 years of Resolution 1325 (Drucksache 21/2555), which was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee; the official summary records the Union for an "interest-led" foreign policy and another Left speaker, [Cansu Özdemir](/people/cansu-ozdemir), accusing the government of having no concept. At the 12 June 2026 first reading she spoke on the government bill on psychosocial court support (Drucksache 21/6214), which would widen the non-legal accompaniment introduced in 2017, including for serious domestic violence, and add incitement offences to accessory prosecution.

### Family, youth and education

Gebel is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. She co-signed the question of 24 February 2026 on spouse splitting (Drucksache 21/4258), which cited a 16 percent gender pay gap in 2025 and argued that *Ehegattensplitting* privileges married couples and a single-earner model.

On 8 October 2026 she co-signed a motion led by [Mandy Eißing](/people/mandy-eissing) and Nicole Gohlke on maternity protection for the self-employed (Drucksache 21/8461), citing about 27,000 births a year and Article 8 of Directive 2010/41/EU, which requires at least 14 weeks of maternity benefit that the Maternity Protection Act does not give the self-employed. She also co-signed a motion to keep the University Guarantee Fund (Drucksache 21/8393), a programme since 1965 the text says has supported more than 600,000 immigrants, against a closure announced for 31 December 2026. A question she signed (Drucksache 21/8777) warns that the Child and Youth Welfare Structural Reform Bill (Drucksache 21/8274) could replace individual educational assistance with an infrastructural service and shift the burden of proof against children with disabilities.

### Health and related motions

She is only a deputy member of the Health Committee; no separate health programme is documented beyond bills that touch care and sexual violence. The abortion motion was proposed for that committee as well, and her 27 February speech treated bans in church-run hospitals as a failure of health provision under the Basic Law.

On 13 November 2025, at the final reading of changes to the New Psychoactive Substances Act on nitrous oxide and knockout drops, she called the bill largely ineffective while the substances stayed lawful for industry, welcomed an end to vending-machine sales, and said regulating "2 of 100" possible knockout substances did not address sexual violence. The CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens passed the text; Die Linke and the AfD abstained.

## Parliamentary debates

### Speeches on violence and equality

On 27 February 2026, in the 60th sitting of the 21st Bundestag, Gebel spoke for Die Linke in an *Aktuelle Stunde* requested by Alliance 90/The Greens, “Kein Wegschauen auf Kosten der Betroffenen – Gewalt gegen Frauen, sexuellen Missbrauch und Netzwerke des Machtmissbrauchs aufklären und bekämpfen.” The Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that the member from North Rhine-Westphalia, then 28, became tearful at the lectern.

The record gives her account as: “Ich war 17. Er war 34. Er lockte mich unter dem Vorwand, einen Film mit Klassenkameraden zu gucken, in seine Wohnung. Früher arbeitete er an meiner Schule. Es war spät, ich war allein, und ich wusste nicht, wie ich nach Hause komme. Als ich ankam, waren keine Klassenkameraden da.” She did not say what followed. She had opened with [Virginia Giuffre](/people/virginia-giuffre), 16 when recruited for Jeffrey Epstein and dead at 41, and called the files a “Gewaltskandal,” not a sex scandal: “Minderjährige Frauen gibt es nicht! Es waren Mädchen!” She said powerful names were blacked out while those affected could be identified, that two-thirds of German proceedings for sexualised violence were discontinued, and that the Fonds Sexueller Missbrauch had ended without a replacement. Against investigations in France, Poland, Norway and Britain she set “kein einziges Wort von Friedrich Merz.” She closed: “Wir glauben dir. Du bist nicht schuld. Und es tut mir leid, dass wir dich nicht gesehen haben.”

Vice-president [Omid Nouripour](/people/omid-nouripour) said it was not his place to comment on substance, thanked the House that “eine solche Rede” was possible, and thanked those who had helped an “emotionale Rede” to be given. dpa reported that group colleague Clara Bünger was among those who then embraced her.

On 19 March 2026, on the Alternative for Germany motion to record killings “im Namen der Familienehre” (Drucksache 21/4752), Gebel said such cases were rare beside other femicides and that almost all perpetrators were men. The problem, she said, was “männlichen Besitzanspruch,” not origin; the motion sought names and nationalities rather than protection. She asked for funded shelters, full use of the Istanbul Convention, work with perpetrators, protection against digital violence, and a residence right independent of marriage.

On 23 April 2026, at the first reading of a Greens bill for a consent-based sexual criminal law (Drucksache 21/5480), she said she “konnte nicht Nein sagen,” that 70 percent of women freeze during rape, and that fewer than 3 percent of assaults are reported, with no conviction in 87 percent of those cases. She argued that sex requires consent, that nobody has a claim on another body, and that the rule should be “Nur Ja heißt Ja,” citing Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Greece and the Istanbul Convention.

On 24 June 2026 she introduced the Left motion for parity *Land* lists, “Demokratie stärken – Chancengerechtigkeit durch Geschlechterparität” (Drucksache 21/6105). She said women performed 72 billion hours of unpaid care work, more than all paid work, while the share of women in the Bundestag had stayed near 30 percent for decades. Quoting Article 3 of the Basic Law on the equality of women and men and the state’s duty to make it effective, she said: “Wir wollen nicht nur unser Stück vom Kuchen. Wir wollen unsere Hälfte der Bäckerei.”

### Exchange with Martin Reichardt

In that 19 March debate, after Reichardt laughed, Gebel said: “Also, Herr Reichardt, die Klitoris hat 3 000 Nervenenden, und Sie sind trotzdem empfindlicher. Das muss man echt mal schaffen.” The protocol notes laughter and applause from the Left, the Greens and some SPD members. She was not called to order. She later corrected the number on Instagram. *Der Spiegel* quoted her: “Die Klitoris hat gar keine 3000 Nervenenden – die hat 10.000.” The *Berliner Morgenpost* reported that she called the error unsurprising because textbooks had only recently depicted the clitoris accurately, and treated that as an example of neglected women’s health.

On 15 October 2026, in the 102nd sitting, during debate that included a Greens motion on maternity protection for the self-employed, Reichardt addressed Gebel and [Ralf Stegner](/people/ralf-stegner) of the Social Democratic Party: “Sie beide haben mir sehr geholfen – Sie mit Ihrer unqualifizierten Zwischenbemerkung und Sie mit Ihrer Unkenntnis über Ihre eigene Klitoris.” Acting president [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) ([Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria)) had the extract produced. Without repeating the word, she said he had charged a colleague with ignorance of her own sexual organ. Even as an allusion to March, it was “einen zutiefst beleidigenden verbalen Übergriff in die Intimsphäre einer Kollegin,” as well as tasteless and degrading. She said “Es reicht!,” cited earlier warnings about his language, and set an *Ordnungsgeld* under section 37(2) of the rules of procedure.

Reichardt appealed the same day to President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) (Christian Democratic Union), calling the remark a “sachliche Feststellung” and noting that Gebel, who had used the word first, had not received “nicht einmal einen Ordnungsruf.” On 16 October the 103rd sitting rejected the appeal without debate. Klöckner quoted “Sie mit Ihrer Unkenntnis über Ihre eigene Klitoris,” likened it to claims that women in the House were childless, and said: “Diese Übergriffigkeit und Respektlosigkeit lassen wir hier als Präsidium nicht gelten.” Women were 32 percent of members, she said, and disrespectful speech with and about women would in future draw an *Ordnungsgeld* at once. Only the AfD voted for the appeal; the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Left voted against.

## Public reception

### Press coverage

After Kathrin Gebel entered the Bundestag in 2025, German coverage clustered around her statements on violence against women. On 26 February 2026 the Bundestag press office published an interview with Sören C. Reimer for the weekly *Das Parlament*. Speaking as women's-policy spokesperson of Die Linke, she called domestic and partner violence "an epidemic" of structural, gender-specific violence and said an electronic ankle monitor was not the Spanish model the federal government was invoking.

The next day the Deutsche Presse-Agentur moved a short report that the Süddeutsche Zeitung ran unedited and that *Die Zeit* and the Münster daily *Westfälische Nachrichten* also carried. It said the 28-year-old cried at the lectern while indicating, without further detail, an incident at age 17, then returned to the debate. Vice President Omid Nouripour of Alliance 90/The Greens thanked the house that "such an emotional speech" had been possible.

In the Berliner Morgenpost series "Jung. Direkt. Politisch." on 23 July 2026, Gebel said a video of that speech had gone viral and that reactions were "overwhelmingly positive": strangers approached her in the street with their own stories. Anonymous comments, she told Katharina Engeln and Daniel Weidmann, had questioned those few sentences, which she described as a familiar denial of credibility to people reporting sexualized violence. The response, she said, showed how taboo the subject remained; she had not wanted the speech to be about her.

On 27 March 2026 *taz* published Lotte Laloire's interview on digital sexualized violence after allegations by actress Collien Fernandes. The headline used Gebel's line on the Social Democratic Party of Germany—"That is not politics, that is hypocrisy"—after she scored its approach "12" on a scale of one to ten, arguing that protection had to be funded and that Social Democratic and Green drafts still had gaps.

A later cluster concerned her March exchange with Martin Reichardt of the Alternative for Germany. [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) and *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* reported that video of her reply—the clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings, "but you are still more sensitive"—went viral, *Welt* adding that it also circulated abroad, and that she later corrected the number to 10,000. On 15 October 2026 Reichardt told her she showed "ignorance about your own clitoris." Acting president Andrea Lindholz imposed a disorder fine for what she called a degrading intrusion into a colleague's intimate sphere. The Bundestag rejected his appeal the next day; he had called the remark a "factual statement" and objected that Gebel had not been called to order for using the word. President Julia Klöckner said such disrespect toward women, 32 percent of members, would not be accepted. The Bundestag text archive recorded a promise of an immediate call to order; *Spiegel*, after a correction, reported that she had spoken of a disorder fine.

Brigitte, in a profile first published on 14 July 2026, wrote that the retort was widely celebrated and quoted her telling the BBC that women should not fear answering or, sometimes, being unpleasant. The same article quoted communications author Dana Buchzik, who warned that the wish for a line that silences the right can become what she called left-wing populism: uncivil debate, she said, weakens trust in institutions, while platforms profit from humiliation.

### Online presence

Gebel uses @genossin.gebel. *Brigitte* reported in summer 2026 that about 270,000 people followed that Instagram account and that a newer English-language account had nearly 60,000 followers; it also said one video had almost 700,000 likes. The self-description it quoted, "your riot Barbie in the Bundestag" (*Eure Krawallbarbie im Bundestag*), matched her TikTok biography, which in late October 2026 showed about 103,000 followers and 3.5 million likes. [BBC News](/organizations/bbc-news) Mundo on 8 July 2026 released a short video in which she called the parliamentary moment somewhat embarrassing, because the nerve-ending figure had been wrong and she had apologized.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/kathrin-gebel