# Kerstin Griese

# Kerstin Griese

Kerstin Griese (born 6 December 1966 in Münster) is a German historian and a politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). She was a member of the Bundestag from 2000 to 2009 and has been a member again since July 2010. Since 14 March 2018 she has been Parliamentary State Secretary (Parlamentarische Staatssekretärin) at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Hubertus Heil appointed her that day, when he was sworn in as federal minister, together with Anette Kramme, who had already held the office in the previous legislative period.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from her own disclosures, records her as Protestant. She passed the Abitur in 1985 and studied modern history, Eastern European history and political science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, graduating with a Magister Artium. From 1987 to 1997 she was a freelance member of staff, and from 1997 to 2000 a research associate, at the memorial for the victims of National Socialism in Düsseldorf. She joined the SPD in 1986, sat on its federal executive from 1995 to 2011 and again from 2013, and chaired the SPD in the district of Mettmann from 2008 to 2018.

From 2002 to 2009 she chaired the Bundestag committee on family, senior citizens, women and youth, and in the 18th electoral term until 13 March 2018 she chaired the committee on labour and social affairs. The *Rheinische Post* reported in January 2014 that the member from Ratingen would lead the labour committee, and noted that she had missed re-election in 2009, served on the board of the Diakonisches Werk until 2010, and then returned to the Bundestag as a successor. The parliamentary biography specifies that 2009–2010 post as the social-policy seat on the board of the Diakonisches Werk of the Evangelical Church in Germany. On 11 March 2018 the same newspaper quoted Heil confirming her appointment as parliamentary state secretary after her years as labour-committee chair.

She was a deputy member of the EKD Synod from 1997 to 2003 and a full member from 2003, and she has belonged to the EKD Council since 2015. Since 2008 she has been spokesperson of the SPD working group of Christians (Arbeitskreis Christinnen und Christen in der SPD). The same biography lists membership of Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie, the Willy Brandt Center Jerusalem association, the Society for Christian–Jewish Cooperation, the German-Israeli Society and Kindernothilfe, among other welfare bodies. In the 21st Bundestag she holds her seat through the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia and was the candidate in constituency 104, Mettmann II. In the 2025 federal election she received 32,169 first votes there (25.0 percent), 5.7 points below her 2021 share, and finished behind [Peter Beyer](/people/peter-beyer) of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), who received 46,152 votes (35.9 percent). Labour minister [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas) reappointed her in May 2025; the ministry announced on 7 May that Griese had already held the office in the previous term. On 13 October 2026 the new minister [Alexander Schweitzer](/people/alexander-schweitzer) appointed her again, together with Katja Mast.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Kerstin Griese was born on 6 December 1966 in Münster and is Protestant. She is the daughter of the Protestant clergyman Erhard Griese. In a 2014 interview she said that he had come from a non-Christian family, had become a believer as a youth, and had remained “always in search of original Christianity.” She recalled services with Pentecostal elements, and said that church involvement was not expected at home and that her faith also came from being free to choose it.

She has described growing up in Düsseldorf, where Protestant youth work shaped her. From 1979 to 1989 she took part in the youth work of the Protestant parish of Düsseldorf-Urdenbach and the Düsseldorf church-district association, including municipal youth policy, contacts with non-state church youth organizations in Poland and the German Democratic Republic, delegation trips to Poland and to the memorial at Auschwitz, and seminars for volunteers; in 1987–89 she was a youth delegate to the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and in 1988–89 to that of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. Exchanges with partner congregations in Poland and East Germany, she later said, gave her a view of German and European history and turned her toward studying it, especially what could be learned from the National Socialist period. She passed the *Abitur* in 1985.

### University studies

Griese remained in Düsseldorf. From 1985 to 1997 she studied modern history, Eastern European history and political science at the university there—renamed Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf during her course—and completed a Magister Artium, alongside voluntary commitments and paid work. Her own account of the programme lists contemporary and social history, German-Jewish history, the didactics of history and the history of medicine; Polish history; and the history of political ideas, comparative government and Middle East policy. The Magister thesis was *Kulturzionismus und die Bedeutung des Ostjudentums* (cultural Zionism and the significance of Eastern European Jewry). She has said she chose the city because its history course was well regarded and because she wanted to continue her voluntary work at home.

She worked in the history students’ council, the student parliament and the general students’ committee (AStA), which she chaired in 1989–90. The naming of the university after the poet Heinrich Heine was still disputed. On 20 December 1988 the senate voted 15 to 5, with one abstention, for Heine’s name, and a ceremony on 19 June 1989, under rector Gert Kaiser, marked the change. Griese later said that most professors had rejected Heine as too revolutionary or too insignificant, while students, and the AStA in particular, treated the name as a symbol of reform, co-determination, openness and change.

That historical interest became a job before the degree was finished. In 1987, as a student assistant to Peter Hüttenberger at the chair of modern history, she helped research and design the permanent exhibition *Verfolgung und Widerstand in Düsseldorf 1933–1945* (“Persecution and Resistance in Düsseldorf, 1933–1945”). The exhibition was shown until 2011 at the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, which the city opened on 17 September 1987 in the historic Stadthaus at Mühlenstraße 29, a building that had housed perpetrator institutions. Griese was a freelance member of the memorial’s staff from 1987 to 1997 and on its scientific staff from 1997 to 2000. With other history students she also researched the National Socialist past of the university’s predecessor, the Medical Academy Düsseldorf. She has said that the work produced a book and a lecture series, and that her own part concerned psychiatry—how far medicine became a perpetrator—and the expulsion and persecution of Jewish physicians, especially in pediatrics.

## Historical scholarship

### Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf

In July 1986 the council of Düsseldorf, with the votes of every party then represented, decided to establish a municipal memorial to the victims of National Socialism in the historic Stadthaus at Mühlenstraße 29. The Mahn- und Gedenkstätte für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus opened there on 17 September 1987 as a municipal cultural institute. The listed building, put up in stages from the mid-seventeenth century, had housed the state police headquarters from 1926. Until April 1934 the presidium remained there. In the weeks after the Nazi seizure of power, people from the political opposition were held, interrogated and mistreated in the building, and from April 1933 the Düsseldorf office of the Gestapo, responsible for the whole administrative district, developed inside the presidium. Later users included an SS regiment, military offices and municipal departments involved in persecution and forced labour. In 1987 the memorial opened in the western part of the building.

From 1987 to 2011 the permanent exhibition "Verfolgung und Widerstand in Düsseldorf 1933–1945" used documents, photographs, objects and witness accounts to present people and groups who were persecuted in the city or who resisted. The memorial describes itself as a place of learning, research and remembrance for all victims of National Socialism in Düsseldorf, and as the central documentation centre for the city's history between 1933 and 1945, working in a biographical mode.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, lists Griese as a freelance staff member from 1987 to 1997 and as a scientific staff member from 1997 to 2000. Her curriculum vitae is more specific. It dates the start to 1987, as a student assistant to Peter Hüttenberger at the chair of modern history at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, on research and design for the opening exhibition, then freelance work with school classes, youth groups and adults: tours, courses, publications and public relations. From 1997 to 1999 she lists a scientific post for pedagogy, teacher training and editing, including German-Jewish history and the periodical *Augenblick*, and in 1999 a pupil project for 9 November. For 2000 she records a project with the memorial's support association on Düsseldorf victims of forced sterilisation and Nazi "euthanasia", rather than a continuing staff contract.

### Publications on persecution and Jewish history

The printed work from those years falls into Nazi medicine and "euthanasia", Jewish life and emigration from Düsseldorf, and the pedagogy of memorial sites. *Die Medizinische Akademie Düsseldorf im Nationalsozialismus* appeared in 1997 with Klartext in Essen, 365 pages, as volume 47 of the *Düsseldorfer Schriften zur neueren Landesgeschichte und zur Geschichte Nordrhein-Westfalens*. The German National Library names Michael G. Esch first among the editors. The contents credit the introduction jointly to Wolfgang Woelk, Frank Sparing, Kerstin Griese and Michael G. Esch, and give Griese "Düsseldorf-Grafenberg: Psychiatrische Klinik der Akademie und Heil- und Pflegeanstalt", from page 228, beside chapters on the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in Düsseldorf, forced labourers, and Friedrich Panse's research on psychiatric heredity. In 2001 the memorial issued *Opfer von Zwangssterilisierungen und NS-"Euthanasie" in der Rheinprovinz*, a teaching folder of about 94 illustrated pages (ISBN 3-9807674-0-X), by Griese in collaboration with Regine Gabriel and Angela Genger. The sections move from pre-1933 eugenics and the sterilisation law through Jewish patients, Aktion T4, short biographies, child "euthanasia" in Düsseldorf, the churches, postwar prosecutions and psychiatry after 1945.

*Aspekte jüdischen Lebens in Düsseldorf und am Niederrhein* (Mahn- und Gedenkstätte, 1997, 277 pages) names the memorial as publisher and Angela Genger and Kerstin Griese for the editing and preparation. Griese's contribution, "Die Zionistische Bewegung in Düsseldorf. Von einer aktiven Minderheit zur wichtigen Auswanderungsinstanz", sits among essays on rabbis, schools, youth groups and Eastern European Jews in the city. *Vertreibung jüdischer Künstler und Wissenschaftler aus Düsseldorf 1933–1945* (Droste, Düsseldorf, 1998, 244 pages) is catalogued as a publication of the university's chair for modern regional and contemporary history together with the memorial. An introduction by Kurt Düwell, Angela Genger, Kerstin Griese and Falk Wiesemann opens the contents, which include Griese and Wolfgang Woelk, "Jüdische Ärztinnen und Ärzte in Düsseldorf und in der Emigration", from page 177.

For the Arbeitskreis NS-Gedenkstätten in North Rhine-Westphalia, she and Angela Genger are named as conceiving *Forschen – Lernen – Gedenken* (Düsseldorf, 1998, 124 pages), a survey of educational programmes at memorials in the state. With Genger she wrote "Entwicklungen und Veränderungen in der pädagogischen Arbeit der Gedenkstätten in Nordrhein-Westfalen", from page 7; her own chapter, from page 86, is on work with witnesses at the Düsseldorf memorial. The same year the Arbeitskreis issued *Den Opfern gewidmet – auf Zukunft gerichtet*, a 132-page illustrated guide to memorials in the state, with Griese and Genger named for the editing and preparation.

## Social Democratic Party

### Jusos and student representation

Griese joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1986, while a student at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In the university group of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) she chaired the General Student Committee (AStA) in 1989/90. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs curriculum vitae also lists her as president of the student parliament from 1990 to 1992. As AStA chair she helped organize the first student congress between the Federal Republic and the GDR, opened in Düsseldorf on 26 January 1990 under the motto “Wider die Vereinigung – unser Haus heißt Europa” and continued in Leipzig the next month. She later said she had campaigned for the university’s renaming after Heinrich Heine in 1989.

From 1989 to 1993 she sat on the federal board of the Juso university groups and on the Juso federal board. From 1994 to 1997 she was deputy chair of the Juso district Niederrhein, the Lower Rhine organization in North Rhine-Westphalia.

### Party offices

She was first elected to the SPD federal executive in 1995, aged 28, while [Helmut Kohl](/people/helmut-kohl) was still chancellor. The vote came at the November 1995 federal congress in Mannheim, where delegates replaced party chair [Rudolf Scharping](/people/rudolf-scharping) with [Oskar Lafontaine](/people/oskar-lafontaine). She later said that speech had demanded dual citizenship, an energy transition, an ecological tax, and an end to the governing coalition’s social cuts.

The ministry biography lists her as chair of the executive’s youth commission from 1996 to 1999, and as head from 2008 to 2011 of a *Gesprächskreis Jugendpolitik*. The executive set up that circle in January 2008 to treat youth policy as its own field; its paper “Leben, Lernen, Zukunft” fed the youth sections of the 2009 programme.

At the December 2011 congress in Berlin she said she had been elected to the executive 16 years earlier and was now stopping. Chair Sigmar Gabriel, seeing off departing members on her birthday, said she was leaving reluctantly and credited her family and youth work and her contacts with churches and other religious communities. She returned at the November 2013 congress in Leipzig: 574 of 612 ballots were valid, and she was elected on the first round with 362 votes as one of 26 additional members. The ministry biography also lists her, from 2000, in the Netzwerk Berlin, which *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* has described as the smallest of the three main currents in the SPD Bundestag group, between the Seeheimer Kreis and the Parliamentary Left.

She chaired the SPD in the Mettmann district from 2008 to 2018. At the district congress in Hilden in September 2018 she did not stand again, saying the parliamentary state secretary’s post was hard to combine with preparations for the local and European elections. Jens Geyer, from Monheim, succeeded her.

In June 2025 she did not stand for the federal executive. Co-chairs Bärbel Bas and [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) farewelled her on the Berlin congress stage; she had helped lead the congress from the presidium. She said she had served under eleven SPD chairs and five acting chairs and that younger members had to be given room. Leaving the executive, she said, was not a withdrawal from politics.

### Christians in the SPD

Informal circles of Christians in the SPD had long used the church desk created at the party executive in 1973. At its January 2008 retreat the executive recognized the Arbeitskreis Christinnen und Christen in der SPD (AKC) as an official working group. In April 2008 the circle elected its first speakers: Griese, then the SPD Bundestag group’s representative for the churches and a member of the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany; Benno Haunhorst, head of the episcopal grammar school in Hildesheim; the Westphalian pastor Dietmar Kehlbreier; and Bundestag vice-president Wolfgang Thierse. Dagmar Mensink was confirmed as managing director.

The general secretary’s report to the 2009 Dresden congress said the AKC had no membership by religion and would not ask members whether they were religious. It was meant to connect Christian social teaching with the SPD values of freedom, justice and solidarity without merging church and party. Biographies list Griese as a speaker since 2008. On 18 April 2026, at a retreat in the Willy-Brandt-Haus, the AKC enlarged its board to ten and elected Griese and Lena Wallraff as dual leaders, each with 26 of 26 votes, and thanked Karin Kortmann and Andreas Weigel for long engagement in the group.

## Bundestag elections

### Entry in 2000 and direct mandates

Kerstin Griese entered the Bundestag on 11 May 2000, during the 14th electoral term. Opening the sitting the next day, Vice-President Hermann Otto Solms announced that Willfried Penner of the Social Democratic Party of Germany had resigned his membership on 11 May and that Griese had acquired it the same day as his successor. Penner, a Social Democrat in the Bundestag since 1972, had been elected Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces on 14 April 2000, with 424 votes in favour, 77 against and 42 abstentions, and was sworn in on 11 May, the day his membership ended.

At the federal election of 22 September 2002 she won a direct mandate in constituency 106, Mettmann II. The Bundestag’s constituency results name her as directly elected for the SPD. The seat comprises the towns of Heiligenhaus, Ratingen, Velbert and Wülfrath in the Mettmann district of North Rhine-Westphalia. The SPD received 62,777 first votes, 45.3 percent, against 56,285 (40.6 percent) for the Christian Democratic Union. The Free Democratic Party took 7.1 percent, Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) 4.4 percent and the PDS 1.1 percent. Turnout was 81.7 percent of 171,143 eligible voters. Detlef Parr of the FDP entered from the state list.

She held the constituency on 18 September 2005. The state returning officer recorded her as elected with 43.5 percent of the valid first votes, 58,157 of 133,760. The CDU polled 55,728 votes (41.7 percent), 2,429 behind. [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) received 4.7 percent, the FDP 5.3 percent and the Greens 3.9 percent. Turnout was 79.4 percent.

### Defeat in 2009 and return

On 27 September 2009 the direct mandate passed to Peter Beyer of the CDU, elected with 39.8 percent (48,276 votes). The SPD share fell to 35.6 percent (43,173), 5,103 votes behind. The FDP took 9.4 percent, the Greens 7.0 percent and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 6.9 percent, and turnout fell to 72.9 percent. The *Westdeutsche Zeitung* reported that evening that Beyer, a lawyer from Heiligenhaus standing for the Bundestag for the first time, had taken the seat from Griese, who had won it in 2002 and 2005, and that it was still unclear whether a list place would return her.

The seat she later filled was opened by Angelica Schwall-Düren. The North Rhine-Westphalian returning officer recorded that Schwall-Düren had resigned with effect from 15 July 2010 and that Griese, of Ratingen, succeeded her from the SPD state list with effect from 23 July 2010. The same 15 July, the Landtag swore in the ministers appointed that day by Minister-President Hannelore Kraft, among them Schwall-Düren as Minister for Federal Affairs, Europe and Media in the minister-president’s department.

### List seats and recent results

The four towns have remained the constituency while its number has changed. It was constituency 105 for the 2013, 2017 and 2021 elections and constituency 104 in 2025; the other municipalities of the Mettmann district form the neighbouring seat.

On 22 September 2013 Beyer kept the direct mandate with 45.6 percent (55,307 votes). The SPD received 37.1 percent (45,091). The Greens took 4.9 percent, the Left 4.3 percent, [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany 3.2 percent and the FDP 2.4 percent. Turnout was 74.3 percent. Griese was seated from place 8 on the SPD state list.

The margin stayed wide on 24 September 2017. Beyer won with 39.3 percent (48,689 of 123,986 valid first votes), and the SPD polled 30.2 percent (37,468). The AfD rose to 9.0 percent, ahead of the FDP on 8.7 percent, the Greens on 6.1 percent and the Left on 5.5 percent. Turnout was 76.9 percent. Griese again entered from state-list place 4.

The election of 26 September 2021 was the closest of the series. Beyer held the seat with 31.3 percent (38,429 votes) to the SPD’s 30.7 percent (37,635), a margin of 794 votes. The Greens reached 14.5 percent, the FDP 9.1 percent, the AfD 7.3 percent and the Left 2.8 percent, on a turnout of 77.3 percent. Tagesschau identified Griese as the SPD candidate in second place, and the state returning officer’s list of members elected from state lists gives her SPD list position 4.

On 23 February 2025, in constituency 104, Beyer was directly elected with 46,152 first votes (35.9 percent). The federal returning officer named Griese as runner-up, with 32,169 votes (25.0 percent). The AfD took 17.2 percent, the Greens 11.1 percent, the Left 6.6 percent and the FDP 3.9 percent. Of 156,872 people eligible to vote, 82.8 percent did so, 5.5 points more than in 2021. On second votes the CDU led with 32.0 percent, the SPD fell to 19.4 percent and the AfD reached 16.8 percent. Griese was returned on place 10 of the North Rhine-Westphalian SPD list and sits for that list in the 21st Bundestag.

## Committee work

Kerstin Griese (SPD) chaired two standing committees of the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag): the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2002 to 2009, and the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs in the 18th electoral term and until 13 March 2018, the day before she became parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

### Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth

She held the family chair through the 15th and 16th terms, until the 2009 election. The main files were childcare for children under three and the replacement of flat-rate Erziehungsgeld by an earnings-related allowance.

In June 2006 Family Minister [Ursula von der Leyen](/people/energy-ursula-von-der-leyen) (CDU) took the Elterngeld to cabinet. A parent who paused work for a child born after 2006 was to receive 67 per cent of the last net income for a year, capped at €1,800, with two further “fathers’ months” if the other parent also took leave, and 14 months for a single parent. Griese called this “a huge success for a family policy fit for the future.” The extra months were a compromise with the CSU, which had rejected reserved months as state interference and accepted them only as a bonus on twelve. CSU spokesman Johannes Singhammer said the Union had prevented “state coercion” toward one family model; FDP and Green speakers said the benefit would fail without enough care from the first year. The family committee was the lead committee and issued the report put to the plenary.

In September 2008 the coalition passed the Child Promotion Act. From 1 August 2013 every child past the first birthday was to have a legal claim to a place in a crèche, a Kita or with a childminder, and a place was supposed to exist for one child in three. The federal government committed €4 billion. About 15.5 per cent of children under three were then in care, and in western Germany about one in ten. The CSU had tied that expansion to a Betreuungsgeld for parents who did not use institutional care. In February 2008 von der Leyen and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück left the design to the 2013 legislature and said it would remain free. At the final debate SPD deputy floor leader Christel Humme said the payment was not in the statute; Singhammer said it was, and would come. Green deputy leader Krista Sager called it an “early-education deterrent premium.” Griese told *Der Tagesspiegel* that private operators taking public investment aid would have to meet the same quality rules and parent fees as non-profit and municipal ones.

### Labour and Social Affairs

When the 18th Bundestag’s committees were constituted, Griese became chair of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, then 41 members and the lead committee for the labour market, pensions and basic security for jobseekers. At the start of the 19th Bundestag, Vice-President [Wolfgang Kubicki](/people/wolfgang-kubicki) conducted the sitting at which she was again chosen chair of a committee that now had 46 members. She stood down on 13 March 2018. Matthias Bartke (SPD) succeeded her, and Matthias W. Birkwald (Die Linke) remained deputy chair.

On 5 May 2014 most experts saw little risk of a wave of early retirement from a deduction-free pension at 63 after 45 contribution years. The draft also improved recognition of child-raising periods (the “mothers’ pension”), disability pensions and rehabilitation. Some called the pension at 63 an unjustified privilege that would push the pension level down further than planned. On 30 June the committee heard evidence on a nationwide minimum wage of €8.50 from 2015; specialists said several points in the draft still needed changing.

On 30 May 2016 a hearing on simplifying the Hartz rules in Book II of the Social Code left most experts unconvinced that job centres would be relieved. The Bundestag passed an amended text with the coalition’s votes. A plan to split a child’s standard rate between separated parents by days of residence was dropped, and “one-euro jobs” could last 36 rather than 24 months within five years. Parliamentary State Secretary Annette Kramme said sanctions on claimants under 25 were not settled; opposition speakers called the result fewer rights and more bureaucracy. That autumn Labour Minister Andrea Nahles defended limits on temporary-agency work: equal pay after nine months and a maximum assignment of 18 months, with room for collective agreements. Opposition speakers called this label-fraud, because most assignments ended sooner and the cap could create a revolving door. With Griese in the chair on 17 October, experts favoured a more flexible move into retirement but doubted any effect on old-age poverty or skill shortages. On 7 November a majority criticised the draft Federal Participation Act despite some gains. Nahles had told the plenary nobody should be worse off; the opposition warned that requiring limitations in five of nine areas of life would exclude people from integration assistance.

## Parliamentary State Secretary

### Appointment and portfolio

Parliamentary state secretaries are members of the Bundestag attached to a federal minister. They support that minister and hold a public-law office. The federal president appoints them on a proposal from the chancellor, made with the minister's agreement, and the office ends when the minister's term ends. On 14 March 2018 Hubertus Heil of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) took over the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs from caretaker minister [Katarina Barley](/people/katarina-barley). The same day, at the ministry's Berlin seat, he appointed Kerstin Griese parliamentary state secretary, together with Anette Kramme, who already held the post. Griese had chaired the labour and social affairs committee until 13 March 2018.

She stayed in the office through Heil's tenure. After the 2025 election, [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) of the Christian Democratic Union formed a coalition with the SPD, and the new cabinet was sworn in on 6 May 2025. Bärbel Bas became labour minister and retained Griese, now alongside Katja Mast, who succeeded Kramme. Griese described the job as the link between government and Bundestag. She named as coalition priorities a pension level of 48 percent, a law requiring adherence to collective agreements, and further work on accessibility and on bringing people with disabilities into the labour market. She also said she wanted to continue Heil's reform of basic income support and to do more to place people in lasting jobs.

Bas resigned as minister and as SPD co-leader on 12 October 2026, with immediate effect, citing her stepdaughter's death and public attacks, including from the coalition partner. The Union had criticised the ministry for not yet tabling drafts on working time and pensions agreed in the coalition committee in July. President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) appointed Alexander Schweitzer, a former minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate, on 13 October 2026; he took the oath the next day. On 13 October he also reappointed Griese and Mast.

### Minimum wage and basic income support

The statutory minimum wage was raised by act of parliament, outside the usual recommendation of the Minimum Wage Commission, to €12 an hour from 1 October 2022. The Bundestag passed the law on 3 June 2022 and the Bundesrat agreed on 10 June. The act carried out a commitment of the SPD–Green–FDP coalition and also lifted the earnings ceiling for marginal jobs and widened the transitional "midi-job" band. Later changes returned to the commission. An ordinance set €12.41 from 1 January 2024 and €12.82 from 1 January 2025. On 27 June 2025 the commission recommended, unanimously, €13.90 from 1 January 2026 and €14.60 from 1 January 2027; the government turned that recommendation into an ordinance. The German Trade Union Confederation presented the two steps as a compromise moving the wage toward 60 percent of the median. Employer representatives called the rise demanding for firms but preferable to a political rate, and the discussed figure of €15 was not adopted.

Basic income support was rebuilt in the same period. Bürgergeld replaced unemployment benefit II, the payment associated with the Hartz reforms, from 1 January 2023, after the Bundestag and the Bundesrat accepted a mediation-committee compromise in November 2022. The rules that then applied included a one-year waiting period for assets. The Confederation of German Employers' Associations attacked the reform as a route into benefit receipt rather than into work, arguing that waiting periods and a weaker priority for placement would blunt incentives. In its statement on the draft, the Institute for Employment Research treated the higher standard rate as appropriate and did not expect the proposed waiting period to cut labour supply substantially.

The Merz cabinet revised the benefit again. After a cabinet decision on 17 December 2025, the Bundestag passed a law on 5 March 2026 and the Bundesrat on 27 March. It took effect in stages on 1 July 2026. The cash benefit was renamed Grundsicherungsgeld. Rapid placement again took priority over training, the one-year asset waiting period was replaced by age-related allowances, housing costs in the first year were capped at one and a half times the local appropriateness limit, and a breach of specified duties could cut the standard need by 30 percent for three months. Research for the Hans Böckler Foundation's Institute of Economic and Social Research found that full-time minimum-wage work still left clearly more disposable income than basic security alone, a gap that widened slightly in 2026 because standard rates were frozen while the minimum wage rose. Director Bettina Kohlrausch said prejudice had outweighed those figures in the debate.

### Pensions, inclusion and the labour market

The basic pension (Grundrente) is a supplement in the statutory pension insurance for people with long insurance records and below-average earnings. The Bundesrat agreed to the law on 3 July 2020, after the Bundestag had passed it. It was promulgated on 18 August 2020 and took effect on 1 January 2021. The Bundesrat put the number of people with small pensions who would receive a supplement at about 1.3 million. Speaking for the government in the Bundestag on 25 November 2020, Griese called the decision a success for people on low incomes, who from the following year would have a higher pension after a working life.

A later pension package was meant to hold the pension level at 48 percent and to build a publicly financed fund, the Generationenkapital. Employer president Rainer Dulger called the draft the most expensive social statute of the century and demanded that it be stopped, putting the extra cost at €500 billion over 20 years. The Free Democrats in the governing coalition shared the concern about higher contributions. The package was not on the statute book when the government changed. In May 2025 Griese said the new coalition still intended to secure the 48 percent level and to bring into parliament work that had begun the year before.

The Participation Opportunities Act added two wage subsidies for long-term unemployment: placement aid under section 16e of Book II of the Social Code, and a longer "participation in the labour market" subsidy under section 16i for people particularly far from work. The Institute for Employment Research evaluated both from 2019 to 2023, including their effects on social participation, employability and labour-market chances. Under Bas, Griese still counted labour-market inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities as part of her brief, with pensions and basic security.

## Protestant Church and social ethics

### Synod and Council

Griese’s offices in the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) followed youth work in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. She was a youth delegate to the EKD synod from 1987 to 1989 and to the Rhineland synod in 1988 and 1989, a deputy member of the EKD synod from 1997 to 2003, and a full member from 2003. From 2001 to 2016 she was also a deputy member of the Rhineland synod. The Bundestag lists the synod seat and the later council seat as unpaid.

On 10 November 2015 the synod in Bremen elected her to the Council, the EKD’s 15-member governing body, which also includes the synod president ex officio. A two-thirds majority was required. In the third ballot she received 109 of 138 votes, above the threshold of 92. The synod, meeting digitally, re-elected her on 9 November 2021 in a fourth ballot with 103 votes, again a two-thirds majority of a body meant to represent German Protestantism and to speak on church and society.

### Diakonisches Werk

After missing re-election in September 2009, she was appointed that October, on a contract to the end of 2011, as the social-policy member of the four-person board of the Diakonisches Werk der EKD, then an employer of more than 435,000 people in 27,500 institutions. She returned to the Bundestag in July 2010 and held both posts for several months. LobbyControl said the mandate had to remain her main activity, and the Diakonischer Rat, chaired by Württemberg bishop Frank Otfried July, expected her to choose. She left the board on 31 December 2010. July credited her with carrying Diakonie positions into politics after president Klaus-Dieter Kottnik had resigned.

Still on the board, she attacked the government’s answer to the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment of 9 February 2010, which required a realistic and transparent assessment of the subsistence minimum. She called a planned rise in the Hartz IV rate of five euros, to 364 euros, scandalous, against Diakonie estimates of well above 400. She objected to shrinking the reference group from the poorest 20 percent of households to 15 percent and to removing nearly 20 euros for alcohol and tobacco, and she set 620 million euros for the new rates against cuts of 13.9 billion euros by 2014.

### Assisted dying and church employment

On 6 November 2015 the Bundestag passed a cross-party bill introduced by [Michael Brand](/people/michael-brand) (CDU/CSU), Griese of the Social Democratic Party, Kathrin Vogler (The Left) and Harald Terpe (Greens). The third reading produced 360 of 602 votes in favour, 233 against and nine abstentions. It made commercial assistance in suicide an offence, whether or not the helper sought a profit, punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison. On 26 February 2020 the Second Senate declared § 217 of the Criminal Code void: the general right of personality includes a right to a self-determined death and to seek voluntary help, and the ban largely emptied that freedom, though regulation remained possible if enough room was left. In Karlsruhe Griese said she was shocked and worried that pressure on old and ill people would grow—“I am afraid that the number of suicides will now increase”—while sponsors of the 2015 law called the judgment disappointing and assisted-suicide organizations welcomed it.

In March 2022 she co-sponsored a bill led by [Lars Castellucci](/people/lars-castellucci) and Ansgar Heveling that would again have punished commercial assistance by up to three years or a fine, except where defined safeguards were met. On 6 July 2023 the committee version failed, 302 to 362 with 23 abstentions; Griese voted yes. A bill associated with Katrin Helling-Plahr and [Renate Künast](/people/renate-kunast), which regulated assistance without a new ban, failed 286 to 375 with 20 abstentions; she voted no. A motion to strengthen suicide prevention passed 687 to one, with four abstentions, and she voted for it.

On the “Third Way,” under which church institutions set pay in parity commissions rather than by strike-backed agreements, she wrote in 2013 that unions treat the strike as indivisible while the churches treat the “service community” as part of their character. Both, she said, had reasons, but low pay and outsourcing in parts of the Diakonie and Caritas had weakened the churches’ case. She read a November 2012 judgment of the Federal Labour Court as requiring union participation, binding wage rules and arbitration—failing which ver.di could strike—without abolishing the Third Way. She proposed a consensual sectoral agreement for health and social care rather than a statute imposed on the churches.

## Remembrance and civic engagement

### Civic and welfare organizations

The Bundestag biography of Kerstin Griese, drawn from members' own declarations, lists civic memberships apart from party and church office: the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), the Deutscher Kinderschutzbund, Kindernothilfe, the union IG BCE, the supporters' association of the Technisches Hilfswerk in North Rhine-Westphalia, United4Rescue, the Johannes-Rau-Gesellschaft, and Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie.

She was unpaid ASB vice-president in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2006 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2018. The ASB's own report of its 2014 reception names her as vice-president and speaker for the Ruhr "Wünschewagen" project. From 2009 until 31 December 2025 she was an unpaid member of the board of the Duisburg-based Kindernothilfe foundation; the biography also lists the AWO, founded on 13 December 1919 at Marie Juchacz's initiative.

A March 2017 capture of her 18th-term biography recorded an unpaid seat on the executive board of Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie, then based in Bonn. The current biography still lists membership, but not a board office among the posts that must be disclosed, and the association's published executive board does not name her. The association describes a non-partisan network of more than 2,300 members and about 40 regional groups working on remembrance and education against extremism. Separate disclosures list, from 1 January 2026, the Kuratorium of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste, and until June 2025 an unpaid seat on the board of the Leo Baeck Foundation. The Johannes-Rau-Gesellschaft was founded in Düsseldorf on 16 January 2024, with Christoph Zöpel as chair and Sarah Philipp and Reiner Hoffmann as deputies, to carry the legacy of former federal president [Johannes Rau](/people/johannes-rau) into public debate; Rau's widow Christina Rau attended.

### German-Israeli dialogue

The same biography lists the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, a Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit, and the association Willy-Brandt-Zentrum Jerusalem. Until 31 December 2025 she sat on the jury of the Shimon Peres Prize at the Deutsch-Israelisches Zukunftsforum.

Griese calls herself a co-founder of the 1996 project of the Social Democratic Party of Germany's Young Socialists, Israeli Labor Party youth and Fatah youth. A centre account says a delegation under then chair Andrea Nahles met the partners in Ramallah, where Ofer Dekel, Sabri Tomezi and Nahles signed for an encounter centre recalling [Willy Brandt](/people/willy-brandt). On 8 October 2003 a report described that month's opening in Abu Tor as a meeting place for young Israelis, Palestinians and Europeans. Griese writes that the house stands on the ceasefire line, that she still supports it, and that she travels to the region about once a year.

In December 2020 Christian Lange, a Social Democratic parliamentary state secretary at the justice ministry, left the support association chaired by Nahles after a Jusos congress apologised for earlier resolutions he saw as friendly to Israel and gave Fatah youth a veto over Jusos decisions. He wrote that he would not be "neutral" on antisemitism or Israel's existence, called "doppelte Solidarität" unclear, and demanded a clear rejection of antisemitism, hatred of Israel and the [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions](/organizations/boycott-divestment-and-sanctions) campaign; Jewish [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) in the party also sought a correction.

In July 2023 [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) invited viewers to a film about Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who hijacked airliners in 1969 and 1970. Israel's Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Germany objected that the event glorified a terrorist; *Welt* also reported that a partner invitation compared Israeli policy with Nazi persecution. The centre said it did not adopt that wording, cancelled the screening, and apologised for a first announcement that lacked a critical framing.

On 10 October 2024, a year after the Hamas attack, Griese told the Bundestag that freeing hostages still held in Gaza was the priority, and she called the killings the largest number of Jews murdered in one day since 1945, adding that Arab Israelis were killed and that Hezbollah struck northern Israel the next day. She said Germany stood with Israel, which she called the only real democracy in the Middle East, mourned civilian deaths in Gaza, where she said Hamas used civilians as shields, and rejected any "Ja, aber" that would weigh one child's life against another's. She held to a two-state perspective, said the attack had destroyed or badly hampered many encounter projects, and described a wave of antisemitism to be opposed from the right, the left, the centre, extremist Christian traditions and Islamist circles, together with anti-Muslim hatred.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/kerstin-griese