Kathrin Michel

Kathrin Michel (born 17 April 1963 in Forst (Lausitz)) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag from Saxony. She has been one of the two state chairs of the SPD in Saxony since October 2021. The Bundestag lists her occupation as an industrial clerk (Industriekauffrau). Before her mandate she spent her working life at the chemical works in Schwarzheide, the former Synthesewerk that became BASF Schwarzheide GmbH.

She passed the Abitur in Forst in 1981 and trained as an industrial clerk. From 8 March 1983 to 14 October 2021 she was employed at the Schwarzheide site, in roles the biography lists as clerk, works-council member, personnel manager, head of skilled-worker recruitment and supply-chain team leader; the job is recorded as suspended, with a right to return. In 2014 she completed a certificate course, “Partizipationsmanager”, at the Technical University of Dortmund. The same biography lists membership of the mining, chemicals and energy union IG BCE and of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt. She joined the SPD in 2012, is recorded as chair of the local association in Kamenz and of the Bautzen district association, and was a member of the Saxony state executive from 2018 to 2021. She is married and has three children.

At the 2021 federal election she was the SPD candidate in constituency 156, Bautzen I, where the party’s first votes totalled 21,006 (13.4 percent). She entered the 20th Bundestag on the Saxony state list; that Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021. On 21 December 2024 a nominating conference in Dresden elected her, unopposed, to first place on the SPD’s Saxony list for the next federal election, with 84.8 percent of the delegate votes. In the early election of 23 February 2025 she stood again in Bautzen I, now numbered constituency 155. The SPD candidate received 11,384 first votes (7.1 percent, 6.3 points lower than in 2021), while Karsten Hilse of the Alternative for Germany won the constituency with 48.3 percent. The SPD’s second-vote share in Saxony was 8.5 percent. Michel was returned on the state list and is a member of the 21st Bundestag.

In that term she is a full member of the Budget Committee, the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the federal financing body under section 3 of the Federal Debt Management Act, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues, and she is a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin). She is a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Finance Committee, and the Bundestag lists her as the SPD rapporteur (Obfrau) on the sustainability council. In the SPD parliamentary group she has been a member of the extended executive and chair of the eastern Länder group since 3 June 2025, and the group’s officer for secularism and humanism since 25 June 2025.

Early life and education

Family and childhood in Forst

Kathrin Michel was born on 17 April 1963 in Forst (Lausitz), a town in Lower Lusatia. Abgeordnetenwatch records her birth name as Bischof. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members’ own statements, gives neither a middle name nor a birth name. Forst then lay in the German Democratic Republic, in Bezirk Cottbus; the town is now in Brandenburg. It had long been a centre of the Lower Lusatian cloth industry. During her childhood the local mills were consolidated in the VEB Forster Tuchfabriken, from 1970 a part of the Textilkombinat Cottbus and the GDR’s largest producer of carded-yarn cloth. In 1990 the enterprise became a limited company and was then wound up.

The Bundestag biography states that she is married and has three children. In the self-description carried by Abgeordnetenwatch she says that she is married with three daughters, that she was born in Forst/Lausitz, and that she has lived in Saxony’s district of Bautzen since 1983—for many years in the village of Grüngräbchen and, from 2006, in Kamenz. On her own website she writes that she grew up as a worker’s child with three siblings; that sport and music were emphasised at home; that she, like her siblings, raced canoes for the club Einheit Forst, training five times a week with regattas at weekends; and that she had classical piano lessons for many years. The same account says that her present marriage is her second, that the three daughters are adults, and that she continued to work full-time while raising them. In a July 2021 interview for impuls, the magazine of IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie, given while she was still employed at BASF Schwarzheide, she said that commitments beyond a job depended on a partner and that her husband had always supported her.

Schooling and vocational training

She passed the Abitur in Forst in 1981. The Bundestag lists her trained occupation as Industriekauffrau (industrial clerk). The same biography associates her with the Synthesewerk Schwarzheide in 1984 and states that she was employed by the Synthesewerk Schwarzheide, later BASF Schwarzheide GmbH, from March 1983 until October 2021, when the employment was suspended. Abgeordnetenwatch gives the qualifications as industrial clerk and personnel manager. The 2021 union portrait described her as a trained industrial clerk who had been at the Schwarzheide site for more than 30 years and was then a team leader in supply-chain management.

Her website states that the apprenticeship began in the early 1980s at the Synthesewerk Schwarzheide, where she was placed in railway logistics, and a career table on that page lists her as a railway-logistics dispatcher from 1985 to 1994. BASF’s published company history records that in 1990 BASF took over Synthesewerk Schwarzheide AG and continued the Lower Lusatian works as the subsidiary BASF Schwarzheide GmbH, producing polyurethane basic products and specialities.

Industrial career and labour representation

Employment at the Schwarzheide chemical works

Before she entered the Bundestag, Kathrin Michel worked as an industrial clerk (Industriekauffrau) at the chemical site in Schwarzheide, in Brandenburg’s Lusatia. The Bundestag biography, based on members’ own statements, records employment at the Synthesewerk Schwarzheide and later BASF Schwarzheide GmbH from March 1983 to October 2021, an Abitur in 1981 in Forst (Lausitz), the commercial qualification, and 1984 at the Synthesewerk.

In October 1990, the month of German reunification, BASF took over the Synthesewerk. In February 1991 management told a works meeting that employment would fall that year from about 4,650 to between 3,300 and 3,400, citing lost sales of crop-protection products, transfers of facilities to public bodies, and restructuring left from the former works.

The Bundestag lists her functions as clerk, works councillor, personnel manager, head of skilled-worker recruitment, skilled worker (Facharbeiter) and team leader in supply-chain management. Dates for the commercial posts appear on her own website: dispatcher in the works’ rail logistics from 1985 to 1994, after an apprenticeship in that department; clerical work in crop protection, including the plant office of the Azol section, from 1994 to 2003; supply-chain manager for styrenic copolymers from 2003 to 2008; and team leader in supply-chain management from 2017 to 2021. In February 2021 impuls, the magazine of the IG BCE, described her as a trained industrial clerk with more than 30 years at BASF in Schwarzheide, then a supply-chain team leader.

Works council, supervisory board and IG BCE

The same biography lists her as a works councillor (Betriebsrätin) and as a member of IG BCE. She states that she began as a shop steward (Vertrauensperson), the link between colleagues and the works council, later chaired the shop stewards’ committee, was elected to the works council and to the supervisory board, and from 2008 to 2011, as a full-time released councillor, chaired the committee for personnel and pay. The biography and the outside offices published for the current parliament do not record a continuing Schwarzheide board seat.

In February 2021 impuls still called her a shop steward and a works councillor, so the representative role outlasted the years of full release. The profile said she had chaired the north-east regional women’s committee and sat on the regional executive and the federal women’s committee. It also said that she then chaired the Cottbus district women’s committee, sat on the north-east regional executive and its motions committee, and had been elected to the motions committee for the union congress.

Further training and the pause in employment

In 2014 she completed a continuing-education certificate at the Technical University of Dortmund, which the Bundestag records as “Partizipationsmanager.” The university’s programme then was “Management und Partizipation,” run by the Faculty of Business and Economics with the Centre for Higher Education for works and staff councils and for specialists and managers, mainly in personnel, taught in mixed groups; by a 2018 relaunch it had run 13 groups and more than 250 participants and still ended in a university certificate. She describes her own studies as part-time personnel management focused on participation, and dates HR advice to production managers to 2011–2014 and leadership of skilled-worker recruitment (“Fachkräftesicherung Facharbeiter”) to 2015–2017.

On 25 September 2017 the Cottbus chamber of industry and commerce awarded BASF Schwarzheide a seal for excellent training quality. The report quoted Michel, in that recruitment post, as saying apprentices received a formal training and project work beyond the immediate trade.

The biography ends the Schwarzheide employment in October 2021 and marks it as currently dormant (aktuell ruhend); the published register of pre-mandate activity names her as team leader at BASF Schwarzheide GmbH with a right to return (Rückkehrrecht). Section 5 of the Members of the Bundestag Act suspends the rights and duties of a civil servant’s public-law employment for the term of membership. Section 2, the protection that applies to private-sector employment, forbids blocking a candidacy or a mandate and related disadvantage at work, bars dismissal because of the mandate, allows other dismissal only for cause, and runs that protection from nomination until one year after the mandate ends. Members must state their last occupation and whether a right of return, or dismissal protection under section 2(3), exists.

Party career before the Bundestag

Membership and local offices

Kathrin Michel joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2012. The date, together with the local offices that followed, is given in the biography published by the German Bundestag, which states that its biographical entries rest on information supplied by the members themselves. Those offices were in Kamenz and in the district of Bautzen in eastern Saxony.

The Bundestag biography lists her as chair of the local branch Kamenz und Umgebung and as chair of the SPD district association in Bautzen (Kreisverband). On her own account the district chairmanship began in 2021, and she remained chair of the Kamenz branch until 2022. In March 2021 the Sächsische Zeitung, reporting from the district, already described her as the new chair of the Bautzen Kreisverband.

From 2018 to 2021 she sat on the SPD's Saxon state executive (Landesvorstand) as a Beisitzerin, a member of the board without one of its executive offices. In October 2021 she said that she and Henning Homann had worked together on that executive since 2018.

2019 Landtag election

Michel's first candidacy for the Landtag of Saxony was at the state election of 1 September 2019. The district returning officer's notice of 5 July 2019, published in the Bautzen district gazette of 12 July, admitted her as the SPD candidate in constituency 53, Bautzen 2, describing her as a personnel manager, born in 1963 in Forst (Lausitz) and resident at Bautzner Straße 37 in Kamenz. She was also placed 26th on the SPD state list for the election to the seventh Landtag.

As delimited for that election, the constituency lay entirely inside Landkreis Bautzen. It comprised Arnsdorf, Crostwitz, Elstra, Großnaundorf, Großröhrsdorf, Haselbachtal, Kamenz, Lichtenberg, Nebelschütz, Ohorn, Panschwitz-Kuckau, Pulsnitz, Räckelwitz, Ralbitz-Rosenthal, Schönteichen and Steina.

The joint constituency committee certified the final result on 5 September 2019. Of 48,460 people entitled to vote, 33,075 cast ballots, a turnout of 68.3 percent. Michel received 1,560 of 32,631 valid constituency votes (Direktstimmen), equal to 4.8 percent. The mandate went to Aloysius Mikwauschk of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, with 12,987 votes, or 39.8 percent. Christian Friedrich Schultze of the Alternative for Germany was second with 9,918 votes (30.4 percent), and Marion Junge of Die Linke third with 3,409 (10.4 percent). Matthias Schniebel of the Free Democratic Party received 1,955 (6.0 percent), the Freie Wähler slate 1,698 (5.2 percent) and Gerd Kirchhübel of Alliance 90/The Greens 1,104 (3.4 percent), so Michel placed sixth of the seven constituency candidates.

The SPD list vote in the constituency was 1,931, or 5.9 percent of 32,697 valid list votes, below the 7.7 percent the party took statewide on both the constituency ballot and the list ballot. Against 2014, the SPD share of constituency votes in Bautzen 2 fell by 4.8 percentage points and its list share by 3.7 points. In Kamenz itself the SPD constituency vote was 441 of 8,593 valid ballots (5.1 percent).

Statewide the SPD won 10 of the 119 seats in the new Landtag, none of them in a constituency and all 10 from the state list. The returning officer's roll of elected SPD list candidates runs only through list place 10, Albrecht Pallas; Michel's 26th place did not produce a seat. She later wrote that she had not received the votes required to enter the Landtag, and that campaigning while working full time had been difficult.

Bundestag candidacies

2021 federal election

In the September 2021 federal election, Susanne Kathrin Michel stood for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as direct candidate in constituency 156, Bautzen I, and in second place on the party’s state list in Saxony. The Federal Returning Officer’s final count gave the SPD 21,006 first votes in the constituency, 13.4 percent of valid first votes and 3.4 percentage points more than in 2017. The same table identifies the winner only by party: the Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 52,492 first votes (33.4 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 40,929 (26.0 percent). Contemporary reports name those candidates as Karsten Hilse (AfD), who defended the direct mandate he had held since 2017, and Roland Albert Ermer (CDU); t-online’s constituency table lists Michel herself, as Susanne Kathrin Michel, on the 21,006 SPD first votes.

SPD second votes in the district were 26,674, or 17.0 percent, up 7.9 points from 2017. Turnout was 77.0 percent of 206,895 eligible voters. Across Saxony the SPD received 474,804 second votes, 19.3 percent and 8.7 points above 2017. In the official seat calculation that share produced eight SPD seats from Saxony: one constituency seat and seven seats from the state list. Michel did not win Bautzen I and entered the 20th Bundestag through list place 2.

2025 federal election

For the early federal election of 23 February 2025 the same district was numbered constituency 155, Bautzen I. MDR reported that the number had been 156 through 2021 and changed because one constituency was moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, shifting the numbering of constituencies 72 to 255. On 21 December 2024 the SPD’s state nominating conference in Dresden, attended by 80 delegates, elected Michel unopposed as lead candidate with 84.8 percent of the votes.

She was again the SPD direct candidate in Bautzen I. MDR’s candidate list for the constituency names eight contenders, among them Hilse (AfD), Michel, Steffen Roschek (CDU) and Caren Lay of Die Linke. In the final result the SPD’s first-vote total was 11,384, 7.1 percent, down 6.3 points from 2021. The Returning Officer records Hilse as elected with 48.3 percent and Roschek as runner-up with 24.1 percent; the underlying counts are 77,339 AfD first votes and 38,643 CDU first votes. Die Linke, whose candidate MDR identifies as Lay, took 15,654 first votes (9.8 percent).

SPD second votes in the district were 10,373, or 6.5 percent, 10.5 points lower than in 2021. Turnout was 80.6 percent of 200,639 people entitled to vote. In Saxony as a whole the SPD received 217,144 second votes, 8.5 percent and 10.8 points below 2021. The electoral reform of 2023, used for the first time, capped the Bundestag at 630 members and ended overhang and balance seats: a party may return only as many members as its second votes justify, a rule known as Zweitstimmendeckung. On that basis the SPD’s Saxon second votes were worth three seats, and the party had no constituency plurality in the state, so all three seats were list seats. The official roll of members elected from Saxon state lists gives those places to Michel (place 1), Holger Mann (place 2) and Rasha Nasr (place 3), and records Hilse as the member for constituency 155.

Constituency and list mandate

Voters cast a first vote for a local candidate and a second vote for a party’s state list. In 2021, constituency winners were seated first and further seats were filled from the state lists; Michel’s first-vote share left the Bautzen I seat with Hilse, and her place in the 20th Bundestag was one of the SPD’s seven Saxon list seats. In 2025 the second-vote total fixed the SPD’s Saxon contingent at three before any constituency result was applied, and with no SPD plurality to absorb one of those seats the first three names on the list were elected, Michel among them. The Bundestag’s biography for the 21st electoral term lists her as returned on the Saxony state list, with a constituency candidacy in Wahlkreis 155.

Constituency 155 covers most of the district of Bautzen, including the towns of Bautzen, Hoyerswerda and Kamenz; the district’s remaining municipalities are in constituency 159, Dresden II – Bautzen II. The Bundestag lists constituency offices for Michel at Goschwitzstraße 36 in Bautzen, Friedrichsstraße 13B in Hoyerswerda and Bautzner Straße 29 in Kamenz.

Parliamentary activity

Budget Committee and federal financing

During the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025), the archived official biography lists Kathrin Michel of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as a full member of the Budget Committee, of the parliamentary body under section 3 of the Federal Debt Management Act (the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium), and of the Budget Committee's subcommittee on questions of the European Union, and as a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. In the 21st Bundestag the current biography again lists full membership of the Budget Committee and of the financing body. The SPD parliamentary group dates the Budget Committee seat, and membership of its budget working group, from 21 May 2025, and membership of the financing body from 25 June 2025.

The Bundestag elects the financing body for one legislative term from members of the Budget Committee. The Federal Ministry of Finance informs it on all matters of federal debt management; the ministry and the Bundesrechnungshof are permanently represented, and members must keep secret what they learn in that work. The Bundestag also uses the body for reports on the Federation's holdings in private-law companies and for oversight of designated federal stabilisation funds.

Plenary minutes name Michel among the committee's rapporteurs for individual chapters of the federal budget. On 24 November 2022, at the second reading of the 2023 budget, the report states that she and five members of other groups were the rapporteurs for Einzelplan 11, the estimate of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. On 8 September 2022 the SPD group had described her as the responsible rapporteur of its budget working group for a labour and social affairs allocation it put at more than 163 billion euro. On 4 September 2025 the group again called her its responsible budget rapporteur for Einzelplan 11. At the second reading of the 2026 budget, on 28 November 2025, the minutes again listed her among the rapporteurs for that chapter.

For the finance ministry, the 21st-term record is explicit. On 16 September 2025 the report named her among the rapporteurs for Einzelplan 08, the ministry's own estimate, taken together with the Bundesrechnungshof chapter; Mechthilde Wittmann of the CDU/CSU referred to her in the debate as a co-rapporteur for the finance budget. On 8 September 2026 the SPD group, again identifying Michel as the responsible rapporteur, commented on the first reading of the 2027 federal budget, including additional investment it said was planned for the customs administration.

Other committees and parliamentary offices

The 21st-term biography lists Michel as a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and Future Issues, and as Obfrau of that council. The SPD group dates the environment-committee seat, and membership of its environment working group, from 25 June 2025, and lists her from 15 September 2025 as spokesperson of its working group on the advisory council. The biography lists substitute membership of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Finance Committee; the group dates both substitute seats, and the corresponding substitute places on its labour and finance working groups, from 4 June 2025. From 7 July 2025 the group also lists her as a substitute member of the programme advisory board for special-issue postage stamps (Programmbeirat for Sonderpostwertzeichen) at the Federal Ministry of Finance, a post that does not appear on the Bundestag biography.

On 18 December 2025 the Bundestag elected her a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin), on the SPD group's proposal, to succeed Dr. Christos Pantazis. Secretaries form the sitting presidium with the president in the chair, receive requests to speak and motions, keep the list of speakers and establish the results of votes. The SPD profile dates that office from 16 December 2025, two days before the election recorded in the official minutes.

On 3 June 2025 the SPD Bundestag group elected 25 members, Michel among them, to its extended executive (erweiterter Fraktionsvorstand). Its member page dates her place on that executive, and the chair of the Landesgruppe Ost, from the same day. The group describes the Landesgruppe Ost as the further grouping of its deputies from Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, and lists Michel as chair. On 24 June 2025 the group announced that its meeting that day had appointed her spokesperson for secularism and humanism; the member page dates the mandate from 25 June 2025.

Disclosed outside activities

The Bundestag publishes the interests members must declare under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act. Both the current biography and the 20th-term archive list her pre-parliamentary employment at BASF Schwarzheide GmbH as team leader, with a right to return; the biographical note describes the employment, from March 1983 to October 2021, as currently dormant.

The current disclosure lists a seat on the supervisory board of Toll Collect GmbH from 1 January 2026, remunerated at 4,000 euro gross a year. Toll Collect states that it operates Germany's truck-toll system on behalf of the Federation, and its supervisory-board page names Michel as a member and an SPD member of the Bundestag. The SPD group page instead dates the same seat from 15 September 2025; neither page accounts for the difference in dates.

The current biography lists her as a member of the board of Netzwerk Berlin e.V.; the 20th-term disclosure dated that role from 25 January 2022. That earlier disclosure, which the current biography does not repeat, also records an honorary seat on the foundation council of the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt in Neustrelitz from 1 September 2023 to 25 March 2025. For 2025 the current disclosure records that ELNET Deutschland e.V. met travel costs of 3,427.34 euro.

Political positions

Structural change in Lusatia and industrial policy

Michel has treated the lignite exit in Lusatia as a question of jobs, not of one year. On 30 March 2023, in the Bundestag debate on a Die Linke motion, “Sicherheit und Klarheit beim Strukturwandel in der Lausitz” (Drucksache 20/4417), she opened in Sorbian and said members were arguing about dates instead of people. Born in Forst (Lausitz), she described the 1990s break, when, she said, employment in mining and power stations fell from 80,000 to 8,000 and more than a third of the population left. She credited the Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment with setting 2038 by agreement among firms, unions, environmental groups and municipalities, and cited the 2020 coal-region investment law as the instrument.

From the 2021 coalition talks on climate and energy she took the line “erst einsteigen, dann aussteigen”. Fights over 2030 or 2038, she said, would fall on workers in the districts. Pace should follow secure, affordable supply and a change that worked: renewables, storage, grids, hydrogen-capable gas plants, an eastern pipeline into the hydrogen network, and promised rail projects. Lusatia, which she said then supplied about 10 percent of Germany’s generating capacity, had to remain an energy region, with local say over the shift.

A week later she told the SPD paper vorwärts that a debate only about the date “geht völlig am Kern der Sache vorbei”. She set Cottbus, in Brandenburg — a teaching hospital, the technical university and a Deutsche Bahn works with more than 1,000 jobs — against Saxon Lusatia, where large employers sat in the Dresden semiconductor cluster. Replacing one flagship with another was not structural change; small firms and crafts had to gain too. CDU member Lars Rohwer said the rail link to Görlitz and the A4 had not been newly prioritised. Alliance 90/The Greens pressed for an earlier eastern exit, which Brandenburg and Saxony criticised; Michel said the binding conditions were secure supply, affordable power and a successful structural change.

Labour, social affairs and public finance

In the 21st Bundestag she has reported on the finance budget (Einzelplan 08) and the labour and social budget (Einzelplan 11). On 16 September 2025 she defended the 2025 finance estimates as investment and fairness spending together, and a 500-billion-euro special fund to loosen what she called an “Investitionsbremse”. Neither spending nor revenue should be taboo, she said, and 2026 should test every euro more strictly. She asked for 500 extra posts against undeclared work, arguing that money laundering, tax evasion and illegal work cost billions.

On 28 November 2025 she called 197 billion euros in the 2026 labour and social budget “mehr als eine Zahlenkolonne”. She linked labour migration to growth and to pensions. In the east, she said, 70 percent of pensioners lived only on the statutory pension. She defended a 48 percent level, financing fair across generations, and recognition of broken careers, especially those of women and of eastern workers. Job centres were to get 9.95 billion euros for integration, and an “Aktivrente” was for people able to work longer.

Co-rapporteurs shifted the emphasis. For the AfD, René Springer treated the social budget as a threat to the welfare state and argued for tight limits on Bürgergeld for non-citizens. Green rapporteur Leon Eckert said the level guarantee, the Aktivrente and other extensions mostly burdened pensions, and that cutting the Bürgergeld line, including a change of status for Ukrainians, chased a figure even where it cost more and slowed entry into work. CDU/CSU rapporteur Yannick Bury, supporting the chapter, stressed job-centre efficiency and savings in basic income rather than the size of social spending.

Sustainability, secularism and humanism

Since 15 September 2025 she has spoken for the SPD group in the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and Future Issues. On 24 June 2026, on the government paper “Nachhaltigkeit für ein modernes und zukunftsfähiges Deutschland” (Drucksache 21/2696), she defined sustainability as acting so that tomorrow’s problems do not arise, and tied it to renewables, grids, storage and faster innovation. A Chancellery action plan, she said, had to name goals, duties and measures of progress. No draft fit to discuss, and no firm timetable, had appeared; a workshop was not parliamentary participation. The council could recommend but not step in when targets were missed, so a sustainability test belonged inside the decision.

On 24 June 2025 the SPD group made her its first spokesperson for secularity and humanism; its member page dates the office, listed as Beauftragte, from 25 June 2025. The same sitting named Hubertus Heil commissioner for churches and religious communities. She told katholisch.de that an SPD working group, founded in 2021, had long sought the post, and that she took it to “Brücken bauen” between worldviews, not to oppose Heil. Lars Castellucci and other religious colleagues doubted a separate post was needed and feared it would take something from the large churches. She said the aim was equal treatment, not displacement. She is unaffiliated and was not baptised; a Protestant grandmother, she said, taught her respect for religion rather than rejection.

She named state collection of church tax and churches’ labour law as privileges others lack, and said believers were sometimes belittled in schools. Church exits, she argued, belonged with falling membership in unions, parties and clubs. She favoured a careful update of religious clauses in the Basic Law, mostly taken from the Weimar Constitution, “zum Wohl aller, auch der Kirchen”, and had no fixed view on the preamble’s reference to God. She called historic state payments to the churches “aus der Zeit gefallen”, regretted that ending them had failed, and wanted another attempt despite seeing no majority; she would also meet groups critical of religion. For 16 January 2026 she invited a Bundestag meeting, “Säkular. Solidarisch. Dialogbereit.”, on those payments and on a place for secular and humanist bodies in dialogue. The Central Council of the Non-Religious welcomed the role; chair Philipp Möller called it an overdue balance inside the SPD.

Leadership of the SPD in Saxony

Election as co-chair

On 9 October 2021 a state conference of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Saxony, meeting in Neukieritzsch near Leipzig, elected Kathrin Michel and Henning Homann as the state association's first dual leadership. Of 132 delegates, Michel, then a newly elected member of the Bundestag, received 93 percent and Homann, then state general secretary, 90 percent. There were no other candidates. They succeeded Martin Dulig, who stepped down after twelve years as chair.

Michel said the horizon was the 2024 state election and a "strong double-digit" result, after 7.7 percent in 2019, which reporting then called a historic low. The SPD was already in coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Alliance 90/The Greens. Weeks earlier, in the federal election, it had taken 19.3 percent of second votes in Saxony, behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and ahead of the CDU.

Later party conferences

Delegates confirmed both chairs on 24 June 2023 in Chemnitz. Michel received 93.2 percent and Homann 88.6 percent, close to the 2021 margins. Freie Presse reported sharp words, including toward the Greens, and described the leadership as turning on the CDU, its coalition partner alongside the Greens, with labour, health and education set as 2024 campaign themes.

Kathrin Michel, holding a bouquet, and Henning Homann at an SPD lectern.

On 21 June 2025 the state conference in Dresden re-elected them without opponents, on a lower vote. Of 125 valid ballots Michel received 108 yes votes, 86.4 percent, and Homann 96, 76.8 percent. Torsten Ruban-Zeh, mayor of Hoyerswerda, and Sophie Koch became deputy chairs. The party said it then had just under 5,000 members. MDR the same day put the shares at about 86 and about 77 percent, against about 93 and about 89 percent two years earlier.

Michel said the SPD needed genuine renewal, not merely an update. Homann set a return to double digits as the claim for Saxony, where the party had taken 8.5 percent at the Bundestag election of 23 February 2025. A lead motion called for an honest review of those results, more members, and a role as a "network party."

Before the ballot Dulig, by then a Landtag member, said he would not vote for Homann. He said a small group was treating the party as its prey, cited mistakes in forming the government and in the biennial-budget talks, and said the leadership lacked a strategy for 2029 and had not pressed hard enough for social associations and cultural clubs. Michel answered that debate had to leave room for criticism; Homann called the result honest. Federal chair Lars Klingbeil spoke later that day.

The SPD in Saxon state politics

The state party remained small beside Saxony's larger organizations. A dpa survey at the start of 2025 counted 4,551 SPD members, behind the CDU at 9,500 and Die Linke at about 7,086, and just ahead of the Greens at 4,502. State business manager Jens Wittig said the figure had been fairly constant for years. Around the 2024 election, with Petra Köpping as lead candidate, the SPD gained 448 members and, after resignations and deaths, a net 104. In December 2024 dpa put the roll at about 4,600.

On 1 September 2024 the SPD won 172,021 list votes, 7.3 percent of 2,347,973 valid list votes, and no constituency seats, in a poll with 74.4 percent turnout (2,367,607 of 3,182,683 eligible voters). On 13 September the state returning officer assigned list seats as 41 CDU, 40 AfD, 15 Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, 10 SPD, 7 Greens and 6 Die Linke. With one Free Voters constituency seat, the Landtag of Saxony has 120 members and no overhang seats.

CDU and SPD, with 51 seats, then formed a minority government under Minister-President Michael Kretschmer. On 18 December 2024 the Landtag re-elected him on a second, secret ballot with 69 votes, after 55 on the first had missed the absolute majority of 61. The Left had said it would support him; the BSW did not commit its deputies to one candidate. The government excluded cooperation with the AfD, whose Saxon branch the state domestic-intelligence service classed as confirmed right-wing extremist.

The SPD's posts went to Köpping, who stayed minister for social affairs, health and social cohesion and became deputy minister-president, and to Dirk Panter, the Landtag group's leader, who replaced Dulig at the ministry for the economy, labour, energy and climate protection. The state presidium had proposed both unanimously, subject to members approving the coalition agreement. Michel and Homann thanked Dulig, who said the decision saddened him but that power was temporary. Kretschmer presented the cabinet on 19 December and said it had no majority of its own.

Public profile

Media coverage

Regional reporting on Kathrin Michel gathered pace in August 2021, when she and Henning Homann bid to lead the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Saxony. The German press agency called the ticket the first dual leadership in the state party's history and described Michel, then 58, as a trade unionist from eastern Saxony. Bild treated the candidacy as a surprise: Homann, the general secretary, had been expected, while Michel, a BASF employee from Kamenz, was "largely a blank slate" on the Saxon stage, despite already holding second place on the state list for the Bundestag. Her Bundestag biography dates SPD membership to 2012, after decades at the Schwarzheide works as a works-council member and a member of IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie.

A year after she entered parliament, the Lausitzer Rundschau presented her as a newcomer from Kamenz representing Lusatia who was watching Labour Minister Hubertus Heil closely. In June 2024, during the European and Saxon campaigns, dpa reported that she had complained of growing aggression. Speaking in Dresden, she cited a fatal knife attack in Mannheim, urged a severe sentence to reduce imitation, and said nobody wanted a society shaped by violence. She also asked opponents to "be careful with the word" and said she did not shout across the Bundestag. Homann said violence was carried by language as well, and that speech had grown less inhibited.

MDR reported in December 2024 that delegates in Dresden elected her, unopposed, as the Saxon SPD's Bundestag lead candidate with 84.8 percent. She called for making Upper Lusatia a showcase of structural change and stressed wages, pensions, and removing section 218 from the criminal code. The day after the February 2025 federal election, Deutschlandfunk interviewed her on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) result. In June 2025 the state conference returned the dual leadership—Michel with 86.4 percent (108 votes) and Homann with 76.8 percent (96), with no opponents. She said there must be no "carrying on as before" and that the party needed "a real renewal," not merely an update. Former chair Martin Dulig refused to back Homann, spoke of "a small group" making the party "its prey," and criticised government formation and budget talks. Homann aimed to restore a double-digit SPD vote in Saxony. The party reported just under 5,000 members.

Electoral setting in Saxony

The state SPD has long been small in the Landtag of Saxony. dpa called its 7.7 percent in 2019 a historic low. On 1 September 2024 it won 7.3 percent of list votes and 10 of 120 seats. The Christian Democratic Union led with 31.9 percent, the AfD took 30.6 percent, and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht entered on 11.8 percent. CDU and SPD then negotiated a minority government; in December 2024 Minister President Michael Kretschmer and Homann presented a coalition agreement still subject to party approval. By mid-2025 that cabinet was in office and dependent on opposition votes.

The Bautzen area was weaker still for the SPD. In the state constituency Bautzen 1, the AfD took 41.9 percent of list votes and the SPD 4.3 percent. Federally, Bautzen I has been an AfD direct seat. In 2021 the AfD won it with 33.4 percent of first votes; the SPD took 13.4 percent of first votes and 17.0 percent of second votes. In February 2025 Karsten Hilse (AfD) was re-elected with 48.3 percent of first votes. The SPD's first-vote share fell to 7.1 percent and its second-vote share to 6.5 percent, below its statewide 8.5 percent (down 10.8 points). The AfD's statewide second-vote share was 37.3 percent. Michel did not win the constituency. She entered the Bundestag in 2021 from second place on the state list and, named lead candidate in December 2024, remained a member of the 21st Bundestag.