Kerstin Vieregge

Kerstin Vieregge (born 6 September 1976 in Rinteln) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia. She has sat in the Bundestag since 2017, holding the direct mandate for Lippe I in the district of Lippe in the 19th electoral term, when the seat was constituency 135, and again in the 21st term, when it is constituency 134. In the 21st Bundestag the parliament lists her as a full member and Obfrau of the CDU/CSU group on the Defence Committee, a deputy member of the Committee on Tourism, a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin), a full member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and a member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. When the Defence Committee was constituted on 21 May 2025 she was among the 13 CDU/CSU members of the 38-member body, which elected Thomas Röwekamp as chair.

The Bundestag biography, based on her own account, records a 1996 Abitur in Lemgo, an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk (Industriekauffrau) completed in 1998, and a 2002 qualification as a state-certified business economist (staatlich geprüfte Betriebswirtin). Until 2010 she was a scientific assistant to a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament. She then became an assistant to the management of the Lippische Landes-Brandversicherungsanstalt in Detmold, latterly working in regional marketing, and in 2012 she qualified as an insurance specialist and marketing assistant. The biography published for the 19th term also describes her as Reformed Protestant (evangelisch-reformiert) and unmarried.

She joined the Junge Union in 1998 and the CDU in 1999, chaired the CDU branch in Extertal from 2000 to 2011, and chaired the CDU district association in Lippe from 2013 to 2018. She has been a member of the Lippe district council since 2004 and was deputy district administrator (stellvertretende Landrätin) from 2011 to 2018. On 15 January 2018 the district association announced that she was stepping down as chair after Lennart Hildebrand, its business manager, alleged irregularities in campaign financing, travel-expense claims and a mini-job. The board said it would appoint an auditor to check the documents individually and that deputy chair Volker Heuwinkel would lead the association until a new executive was chosen in March.

At the federal election of 24 September 2017 the North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer recorded her as elected in constituency 135, Lippe I, with 46,526 first votes (36.6 percent), against 40,908 (32.1 percent) for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Turnout was 75.6 percent of 170,501 people eligible to vote. In 2021 the SPD won the constituency with 52,359 first votes (30.7 percent) to the CDU's 44,650 (26.2 percent), and Jürgen Berghahn held the direct mandate. Vieregge stood 17th on the CDU state list and remained a member of the Bundestag. In 2025, with the seat renumbered 134, she regained the direct mandate with 56,640 first votes (31.3 percent), ahead of Julien Pascal Thiede of the SPD on 23.5 percent; turnout was 82.4 percent.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Kerstin Vieregge was born on 6 September 1976 in Rinteln. The town presents itself as a place on the Weser in the Weser Uplands. The biography published by the German Bundestag states that its personal details are the member’s own information; the North Rhine-Westphalia organisation of the Christian Democratic Union prints the same date and place of birth.

She describes her roots as a farm in Extertal, where she grew up and still lives. In a September 2017 interview in the CDU paper Blomberg Top, she recalled harvest work on the fields of the farm in the village of Göstrup — days outside and evenings over a simple meal — and said that her persistence and directness came from that life. Göstrup, in the district of Lippe, is the smallest of Extertal’s twelve villages: the municipality recorded 187 inhabitants there on 31 December 2024, in the valley of the Alme at about 150 to 200 metres, inside a municipality of 11,446 people, and the neighbouring village of Silixen lies directly against Rinteln. A Westfalen-Blatt profile that month described her as living in Göstrup with 195 other residents, and noted that poor mobile reception sometimes left her unreachable by telephone.

The parliamentary biography says she passed the Abitur in Lemgo in 1996 and names no earlier school. Her curriculum vitae places that Abitur at the Hanse-Berufskolleg Lemgo, again without an earlier school. The college’s Wirtschaftsgymnasium is a three-year programme leading to the Allgemeine Hochschulreife, the general university-entrance qualification, with further general education and vocational knowledge in business and administration; on its present rules, admission requires a mittlerer Schulabschluss (Fachoberschulreife) carrying the Q-Vermerk for the gymnasiale Oberstufe.

Vocational training

She then trained as an Industriekauffrau, a recognised apprenticeship in industrial commercial work. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training lists the standard duration as 36 months. A chamber of industry and commerce may shorten training if all parties to the contract agree; for an Abitur the usual reduction is up to twelve months, and the chamber decides on the application. Her curriculum vitae dates the apprenticeship from August 1996 to June 1998, names no firm on that line, and does not say a chamber approved a reduction, although the length fits the shortening an Abitur can support; a separate line lists purchasing and work preparation at Decor Metall through May 1999 while dating the start to August 1989, when she was twelve, and the same document places her at the Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Berufskolleg from August 1999 to June 2002 as a staatlich anerkannte Betriebswirtin. The Bundestag biography records the apprenticeship as completed in 1998 and a Weiterbildung to staatlich geprüfte Betriebswirtin in 2002, the title parliament gives as her occupation; the state CDU profile follows that wording. The college, at Elisabethstraße 86 in Detmold, awards “Staatlich geprüfte Betriebswirtin” through its Fachschule für Wirtschaft. It describes the present course as three years of part-time further training for candidates with a mittlerer Schulabschluss and a completed commercial apprenticeship, or one still in progress, places the award at level 6 of the German Qualifications Framework, and now also uses the designation Bachelor Professional in Wirtschaft. That additional title is not in the 2002 entry of her parliamentary biography.

Professional career

The Bundestag lists Kerstin Vieregge’s occupation as staatlich geprüfte Betriebswirtin, a state-certified business administrator. Its biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members’ own information, records an Abitur in Lemgo in 1996, completion of an apprenticeship as an Industriekauffrau (industrial clerk) in 1998, and further training to that business qualification in 2002. Industriekauffrau is a state-recognized dual vocational occupation in commercial administration for industry. In North Rhine-Westphalia the title staatlich geprüfte Betriebswirtin is the certificate of a Fachschule for business: a post-secondary further-education qualification covering economic analysis, business decisions and operational responsibility in areas such as marketing, procurement, controlling, finance and personnel.

The same Bundestag account says that until 2010 she was a staff member of a deputy in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The archived biography for the 19th electoral period specifies the role as wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin. Neither text names the member.

She then worked as Assistentin der Geschäftsführung (assistant to the management) of the Lippische Landes-Brandversicherung, latterly responsible for regional marketing, and in 2012 took further training as a Versicherungsfachfrau and a Marketingassistentin. In the disclosures members must publish under the Members of the Bundestag Act, her occupation before entering parliament is given as marketing assistant at the Lippische Landes-Brandversicherungsanstalt in Detmold.

The Anstalt is the insurer founded on 11 February 1752. The law of the Land Lippe of 16 April 1924, as amended by North Rhine-Westphalia on 24 March 2009, defined it as a legally capable institution under public law whose business was to be conducted on commercial principles with regard to the common good, and for which profit was not the main purpose. According to the company’s history, that 1924 act replaced monopoly rights and compulsory building fire insurance with competition as a composite insurer, and in November 1995 the administration moved into a new building at Simon-August-Straße 2 in Detmold.

While Vieregge was employed there, the undertaking was still that public-law institution. The conversion into a stock corporation was initiated on 3 March 2020 and took effect on 8 May 2020. The resulting Lippische Landesbrandversicherung AG writes primary non-life insurance mainly in the territory of the former Free State of Lippe within the borders of 1924 and operates, with other regional composite insurers, inside the Provinzial group. It is registered at the Amtsgericht Lemgo under HRB 9974, with its registered office at Simon-August-Straße 2 in Detmold. Until 7 May 2020 supervision lay with the finance ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia; from the conversion it passed to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

Local politics in Lippe

Party offices before 2018

Kerstin Vieregge's organised party activity in Lippe began in the youth wing. She joined the Junge Union in 1998 and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1999, and in 2006 the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA), the party's employee association. From 2000 to 2011 she chaired the CDU municipal association in Extertal.

The move onto the district executive came at a CDU Lippe congress in Bad Meinberg, a district of Horn-Bad Meinberg, on 6 April 2011. Already chair in Extertal, she stood for one of three deputy-chair posts. Of 123 delegates, 88 voted for her, level with Volker Heuwinkel, the CDU chair in Bad Salzuflen, and ahead of Christian Tennie of Lügde, who received 68 after a late nomination. Birgit Tornau of Barntrup, chair of the Lippe Frauen-Union and until then a deputy district chair, was not re-elected. The same congress returned Cajus Julius Caesar, district chair since 1990 and a member of the Bundestag, although about a fifth of those present withheld their votes.

Vieregge was a deputy district chair from 2011 to 2013. Caesar's party biography records that he left the Lippe chair on 12 October 2013; she held it from 2013 until January 2018. In that office she was the association's public lead on candidate selections. On 25 August 2016 the Lippische Landes-Zeitung described her, then 39, as party chair, deputy Landrätin and chair of the district economy committee, and as one of three CDU members seeking the nomination for Bundestag constituency Lippe I after Caesar chose not to stand again.

District council

The Kreistag is the elected assembly of Kreis Lippe and meets in Detmold. With the Landrat and the Kreisausschuss, it is one of three organs of district self-government: it sets policy principles and oversees the administration. It has 60 elected members plus the Landrat, a statutory member and the chair. Under the Kreisordnung of North Rhine-Westphalia, the council elects at least two honorary deputies of the Landrat from its members for the term. They stand in for the Landrat in chairing meetings and in representation, not in day-to-day administration.

Before a voting seat, the session register lists her from 25 October 1999 to 30 September 2004 as a substitute representative of the welfare associations on the youth-welfare committee. She then sat for the CDU through the 2004–2009 term. From 8 November 2004 she was on the environment committee and a deputy on the finance and personnel, audit and election-review committees, later on the youth-welfare committee and, from 27 September 2005, a deputy on public order, traffic and civil protection.

In the term that followed the municipal election of 30 August 2009 she joined the committee for public order, traffic and road maintenance on 2 November 2009 and chaired it from 2 July 2012 until 31 May 2014. Her Bundestag biography dates that transport chairmanship to 2010–2014; the council register does not show the chair before July 2012. In the same term she was a deputy member of the committee for the economy, tourism and municipal holdings. From 1 May 2011 the register lists her as second honorary deputy Landrätin.

After the council election of 25 May 2014, in which the CDU won 21 of 60 seats, the register shows her as second deputy on 16 June 2014 and as first honorary deputy Landrätin from 17 June 2014 until 31 December 2018. By November 2016 the Lippische Landes-Zeitung referred to her in that office under Landrat Axel Lehmann (SPD). From 30 June 2014 until 31 October 2020 she chaired the committee for the economy, tourism and future questions in rural areas — named in her Bundestag biography as the committee for the economy, tourism and rural development. She also sat on the Kreisausschuss, was a deputy on the supervisory boards of Klinikum Lippe GmbH and Kreissenioreneinrichtungen Lippe GmbH until 15 December 2019, and from 14 March 2016 sat on bodies of Lippe Tourismus & Marketing GmbH.

Voting membership ends with that term, apart from a one-day Kreistag entry on 8 November 2020. From 23 November 2020 the register lists her as a sachkundige Bürgerin — a non-elected expert citizen with the CDU group — and as deputy member of the committee for the economy, tourism and public order until 31 October 2025. From 1 December 2025 she is deputy member of the committee for the economy, labour, building, planning and tourism. Her Bundestag biography still says she has been a Kreistag member since 2004, and separately notes the expert-citizen role.

Party finances and resignation

Allegations

On 15 January 2018 the Lippe district association of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) announced that Kerstin Vieregge, the member of the Bundestag from Extertal, was resigning as district chair. Deputy chair Volker Heuwinkel would act until March. It would commission an auditor for a voucher-by-voucher review and would not comment until the reports were in. Isabelle Fischer, spokeswoman for the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, said the federal party had been asked to subject Lippe’s statement of accounts to a special audit.

The claims were those of Lennart Hildebrand, district business manager since July 2016. After Friedel Heuwinkel, Lippe’s former Landrat, and Vieregge told him in September 2017 that they were dissatisfied, he signed a termination with the state party effective 31 January 2018 and said he felt mobbed. On 9 January he sent general secretary Josef Hovenjürgen about 30 pages and more than 100 annexes — later described as a 130-page dossier.

He wrote that candidates were customarily given €3,000 and expected to bear further costs, but that her Lippe I Bundestag campaign had cost €70,386, including a press employee hired, he said, without the board’s knowledge and charged to the association. She had raised €25,675 in donations, and the association had absorbed a shortfall of a little over €44,000 without a board resolution. He also wrote that until October 2016 she was paid €400 a month as a mini-job bookkeeper, that no 2016 bookings existed when he arrived, and that a bookkeeper hired that October was dismissed in 2017 on her instruction.

On travel, Hildebrand wrote that Heuwinkel filed €3,782 for 2016 and €3,369 for 2017 with no board authority to reimburse him, and received donation receipts instead of money, which Hildebrand considered impermissible, and that joint trips had been claimed separately. Heuwinkel called this an unprecedented parting shot and baseless: he had taken donation receipts, never mileage money, and his tax adviser had confirmed that was in order. Vieregge did not comment. Senior prosecutor Ralf Vetter said the Detmold prosecution had opened a file and was gathering information, but could not start formal preliminary inquiries against a Bundestag member because of immunity, and that he saw no occasion to investigate in any case.

Audit, repayment and aftermath

On 17 March 2018, 249 members met in Lage under Ralph Brinkhaus, then the CDU’s Bezirk chair. The Westfalen-Blatt reported that the auditor’s closed interim report found a personal campaign spokesman charged to the association and a cash box of about €1,000 absent from the financial report. Deputy chair Dirk Tolkemitt told the Lippische Landes-Zeitung that excessive travel claims were still unproven, but that the “black cash box” was explained: sums under €1,000 had been repaid in cash and not booked. The board was not discharged. The association intended to demand a five-figure repayment.

Members elected Lars Brakhage, 27, of Kalletal and chair of the Young Union in Ostwestfalen-Lippe, by 168 votes to 47. He would not discuss the audit. Vieregge stayed away. Heuwinkel said contact had lapsed, though the party still had to work with her.

In early July Brakhage told the extended board that the auditor had confirmed a repayment, a “mid-five-figure” sum. Vieregge said she did not yet know the figure, that repayment from her own money had been clear during the campaign, and that she was “not mistress of the proceedings.” Brakhage said only the bookkeeping was settled. A sanction by the Bundestag administration was expected because about €1,500 had wrongly gone into a “joy-and-sorrow” fund (Freud- und Leidkasse). Receipts issued in 2016, including to Heuwinkel after he left office, should not have been issued. He said the office had prompted the claims and sent the receipts unasked, and that he might amend his 2016 return. Who knew what was still open, and the board considered hiring a lawyer.

In October they settled: she paid €22,400 and the association bore a similar sum, plus legal and audit fees the Westfalen-Blatt, on unconfirmed information, put in five figures. A claim by the President of the Bundestag over the cash box remained possible. Brakhage said the inquiries had found “no criminally relevant conduct.” The paper reported that the lawyer had not used that phrase and had instead written that proving such conduct was a problem. The papers do not report a charge.

On 22 November the CDU in Lemgo, on a motion by mayor Reiner Austermann, voted by a two-thirds majority to demand that she give up her Bundestag and district-council seats. Members were told of a black-money box, unapproved five-figure spending and improper receipts, including separate claims for what were described as 77 joint events with Heuwinkel in 2017. Austermann called the events intolerable; Harald Pohlmann, the local CDU group leader, said her name was known to Chancellor Angela Merkel. She did not comment and kept the Bundestag seat. Her Bundestag biography lists the district chairmanship, and the deputy Landrätin office held since 2011, as both ending in 2018. In 2021 the Westfalen-Blatt reported that Brakhage’s board had spent more than two years reconstructing the books under state and federal scrutiny, and that the accounts audit had produced a four-digit penalty paid to the President of the Bundestag.

Bundestag elections

Kerstin Vieregge has sat in the Bundestag since the 2017 federal election, from Lippe I in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia. The seat was then constituency 135 and, in the federal returning officer's description, covered ten municipalities of Kreis Lippe: Bad Salzuflen, Barntrup, Blomberg, Dörentrup, Extertal, Kalletal, Lage, Lemgo, Leopoldshöhe and Oerlinghausen. The rest of the district was in constituency 136, Höxter – Lippe II. Results separate first votes for a constituency candidate from second votes for a party list.

2017 election

On 24 September 2017, 128,938 of 170,501 eligible voters took part (75.6 percent), and 127,277 first votes were valid. The Christian Democratic Union received 46,526 (36.6 percent) and the Social Democratic Party 40,908 (32.1 percent). The state returning officer recorded Vieregge (CDU) as elected, 5,618 votes ahead of the SPD. Alternative for Germany took 13,005 (10.2 percent), the Free Democratic Party 10,690 (8.4 percent), Alliance 90/The Greens 7,671 (6.0 percent), Die Linke 6,870 (5.4 percent) and the Free Voters 1,607 (1.3 percent). Against 2013 the SPD was down 9.0 percentage points and the CDU 3.6, while the AfD was up 7.7 and the FDP 6.1.

Second votes went to the CDU with 40,214 (31.5 percent), the SPD with 35,509 (27.8 percent), the FDP with 15,916 (12.5 percent), the AfD with 14,147 (11.1 percent), the Greens with 8,869 (7.0 percent) and Die Linke with 8,399 (6.6 percent). The Bundestag constituted itself at 11:00 on 24 October 2017 in the Reichstag, the last day Article 39(2) of the Basic Law allows. Vieregge's biography dates her membership from 2017.

2021 election

For 2021 the returning officer added Detmold to the ten municipalities already in Lippe I, still numbered 135, and left the rest of Kreis Lippe in constituency 136, Höxter – Gütersloh III – Lippe II. Eligible voters rose to 224,415.

On 26 September 2021 the SPD won. Jürgen Berghahn, an electrician from Blomberg, was directly elected. The SPD received 52,359 first votes (30.7 percent of 170,505 valid votes) and the CDU 44,650 (26.2 percent), 7,709 behind. The Greens took 26,932 (15.8 percent), the FDP 16,648 (9.8 percent), the AfD 16,221 (9.5 percent) and Die Linke 5,283 (3.1 percent); Die PARTEI, dieBasis and the Free Voters took 1.8, 1.7 and 1.3 percent. On the returning officer's comparison with 2017, the CDU was 9.9 percentage points lower and the Greens 9.1 higher. Turnout was 76.8 percent (172,402 voters).

Second votes put the SPD on 53,130 (31.1 percent), the CDU on 39,001 (22.8 percent), the Greens on 23,276 (13.6 percent), the FDP on 20,221 (11.8 percent), the AfD on 16,789 (9.8 percent) and Die Linke on 6,414 (3.8 percent). Vieregge was returned on the state list rather than as the constituency member. The file of candidates elected from state lists gives her as CDU place 17, a Betriebswirtin in Extertal; the constituency-winner file names Berghahn for Lippe I. Her biography for the 20th term (2021–2025) says she was elected via the state list and identifies Wahlkreis 135 Lippe I.

2025 election

For the 21st Bundestag, Lippe I kept the same eleven municipalities, including Detmold, but was renumbered 134. Former constituencies 72 to 255 were renumbered after one seat moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, on the population of 30 September 2023, under Annex 2 to the Twenty-seventh Act Amending the Federal Elections Act of 7 March 2024 (in force 14 March 2024). North Rhine-Westphalia kept 64 constituencies, numbered 86 to 149. Lippe I was not redrawn; the rest of Kreis Lippe stayed in the neighbouring seat, now constituency 135, Höxter – Gütersloh III – Lippe II.

On 23 February 2025, 182,679 of 221,604 eligible voters took part (82.4 percent); 180,757 first votes were valid. Vieregge, of Extertal, received 56,640 (31.3 percent) and is recorded as elected in constituency 134; she had also been placed 11th on the CDU state list. Julien Pascal Thiede (SPD, list place 61) received 42,552 (23.5 percent) and Udo Theodor Hemmelgarn (AfD, list place 17) 39,427 (21.8 percent), 3,125 votes behind Thiede. Robin Till Nils Johannes Wagener (Greens, list place 10) received 21,911 (12.1 percent), Eduard Schneider (Die Linke, no list place) 10,896 (6.0 percent), Torben Hunni Hundsdörfer (FDP, list place 30) 5,474 (3.0 percent) and Ralf Ochsenfahrt (Free Voters) 3,857 (2.1 percent). Against 2021 the CDU was up 5.1 percentage points, the SPD down 7.2 and the AfD up 12.3.

Second votes ranked the AfD ahead of the SPD. The CDU received 49,204 (27.1 percent), the AfD 39,517 (21.8 percent), the SPD 37,926 (20.9 percent), the Greens 19,245 (10.6 percent), Die Linke 12,324 (6.8 percent), the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 8,069 (4.4 percent) and the FDP 7,713 (4.3 percent). The Alliance had no candidate on the constituency ballot. Vieregge appears in the file of constituency winners for Lippe I and not in the file of candidates elected from state lists. Her current biography records a constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 134 Lippe I.

Parliamentary roles

Kerstin Vieregge has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017, sitting in the CDU/CSU group. Across the 19th, 20th and 21st legislative periods her offices have been on the Defence Committee and the Committee on Tourism, among the parliamentary secretaries, and in the German delegations to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The narrative on her Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is the member's own information, dates the secretaryship, the deputy tourism seat and the CDU/CSU Obfrau role on the Defence Committee only through 2025. The same page's current membership block, and the registers for the 21st period, which opened on 25 March 2025, still record those offices.

Defence committee

Article 45a of the Basic Law requires a Defence Committee. It prepares plenary decisions on items referred to it and oversees the Federal Ministry of Defence, the armed forces and the Bundeswehr administration. It meets as a closed committee, with attendance limited to members and substitutes, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, group chairs, the Bundestag president and other authorised, security-cleared persons. It is also the only Bundestag committee that may constitute itself as a committee of inquiry.

The archived biography for the 19th Bundestag lists Vieregge as a full member of the Defence Committee and of that committee's first inquiry under Article 45a(2), concerning external consulting contracts (Beraterverträge). Her self-reported account says that she has been a member of the Defence Committee since 2017 and that she was Obfrau of the CDU/CSU group on the committee from 2022 to 2025.

Each parliamentary group names one Obmann or Obfrau on a committee. The Bundestag glossary describes them as the group's main contacts with its leadership: they help set its line and formulate its interests in committee, agree agendas and plan the business, and report the state of the detailed work back to the group.

The Defence Committee of the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 21 May 2025 in a meeting chaired by Vice-President Omid Nouripour. Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU) was elected chair by secret ballot, with 29 votes in favour and nine abstentions. The committee has 38 full members, 13 of them from the CDU/CSU, and the Bundestag's report of the sitting names Vieregge among those 13; it does not name the Obleute, who are designated by the groups rather than elected by the committee. The committee's member register marks her function as Obfrau, and the structured data on her Bundestag profile record both the full membership and the Obfrau role with a start date of 25 March 2025.

Tourism committee and other offices

In the 19th Bundestag the archived biography lists her as a full member of the Committee on Tourism, a deputy member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture, and a parliamentary secretary. The self-reported narrative dates the full tourism membership to 2017–2021, a deputy tourism membership to 2021–2025, and the secretaryship to 2017–2025.

The Committee on Tourism of the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 21 May 2025 with 14 full members. Anja Karliczek (CDU/CSU) was elected chair: of 14 secret ballots, 11 were in favour and three were abstentions. Vieregge is not among the full members named in that report. The committee's register lists her as a deputy member, as does the current membership block on her biography, whose structured data date that deputy seat from 25 March 2025.

Parliamentary secretaries (Schriftführerinnen and Schriftführer) are elected at the start of a legislative period on proposals from the groups. Two of them, customarily one from the majority groups and one from the opposition, form the presiding board with the member in the chair. They keep the speakers' list, take requests to speak and motions, and collect and count ballots. The 21st Bundestag has 64 secretaries. Vieregge is on that list as a full member, and her profile records the office from 25 March 2025, past the narrative's end date.

NATO and OSCE assemblies

Since 1955 the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has accompanied NATO. The Bundestag describes a forum of 281 parliamentarians from 32 member states; it sends 12 members, spread across five committees, and the Bundesrat sends six. The Assembly's member page lists Vieregge, of the CDU, as a member since 2022, on the Committee on Democracy and Security, the Defence and Security Committee and the Economics and Security Committee, and on sub-committees covering resilience and civil security, future security and defence capabilities, transatlantic defence and security cooperation, transition and development, and transatlantic economic relations. The Bundestag's current register lists her as one of 12 full members, with 12 substitutes. Its notice of the November 2022 annual session in Madrid includes her in the German delegation.

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly is the parliamentary institution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Bundestag's overview records 57 participating states, 323 delegate seats and a German delegation of 13 members. On Vieregge's biography the OSCE role is given as Delegationsmitglied, not as head or deputy head of the delegation. The current register places her among 13 delegation members, with a further 13 substitutes. For the Assembly's winter meeting of 24–25 February 2022, a Bundestag notice named her in a German delegation of 12.

Defence and security policy

Zeitenwende and the Bundeswehr

On 3 June 2022 Kerstin Vieregge voted with the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union for the amendment of Article 87a of the Basic Law and for the act creating the €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr. The recorded results were 568 in favour, 96 against and 20 abstentions on the constitutional change, and 590 in favour, 80 against and seven abstentions on the fund, the majorities sought after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech. On 25 April 2024 she told the Bundestag it was “unfortunately no surprise that the special fund is not enough,” and that “without an increase in the regular defence budget the Zeitenwende cannot succeed,” which she said the Union had argued for two years.

In the Westfalen-Blatt on 31 July 2022 she said that anyone who used a word as large as “Zeitenwende” had to act on it, and that promised deliveries were hesitant and slow. Industry, she said, reported almost no contact with the government; a possible transfer of 200 Fuchs carriers was not even under discussion. She called Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht the wrong appointment if Lambrecht was, as Vieregge judged, estranged from the force. The tank ring-exchange was “not a ring, but an unfinished semicircle”: Poland’s interest in Korean replacements for retired Leopard 2s was, she said, a loss of trust inside NATO and Germany’s fault. She agreed with Friedrich Merz that the Union had lost confidence in the pledges, and she said the Free Democrats, including committee chair Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, and the Greens were nearer the Union on arms than Scholz’s Social Democrats.

The April 2024 speech measured the budget against the commissioner’s 2023 report. Defence, she said, had ranked below other headings in two years of coalition talks, while the minister’s request for another €6.7 billion was what the announcements required. Interest payments and pensions for former National People’s Army soldiers, counted toward the NATO 2 per cent figure, did not raise combat power or repair “rotten barracks.” A soldier had told her the Zeitenwende still ran on “the processes and regulations of the day before yesterday.” About 2,000 fewer uniformed personnel served than two years earlier, and it was unclear whether 203,000 was enough or whether ammunition was funded. She adopted Christian Mölling’s call for a “security-policy decade” of military and civil defence, “not for one year, not in the form of a special fund,” and “not because we want to, but solely because we must.”

After the Union entered government she pressed capacity. On 21 May 2025 she listed stagnant strength, slow procurement and missing ammunition, and said that if the Bundeswehr was to grow—“and it must”—it needed more and better barracks; mouldy washrooms, “as for example in the Südpfalz barracks,” were why people left. She thanked Eva Högl for backing a general societal service, “without which it will certainly not work.” In October 2025, in a coalition row over the military-service bill, she described volunteers first, persuasion after examination second, and a lottery among those examined third. About 20,000 volunteers a year, later perhaps 35,000, and a gross starting salary of €2,700, could work, she said, and she saw no fairer method than the lot. A brief veto by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius was an overreaction, but the first reading would still be held as planned.

Ukraine and alliances

Her line in opposition was that the war in Ukraine had to be won there, and that German delay changed the course. After a CDU/CSU visit to Kyiv, Irpin and Borodianka she told the Westfalen-Blatt that the destruction affected her more than television, and that “this war must be won in Ukraine. That is beyond question for us.” Hesitation had to stop if the war was to end before winter, “but that only works if we equip Ukraine accordingly”; from Kyiv she heard “as fast and as much as possible.” Ukraine should make no concessions, she said, because the grain deal showed that “one can rely on Putin’s word not at all,” and normal gas from Russia could not be discussed until the war’s outcome was clear.

In March 2023 she called herself one of the “absolute supporters” of main battle tanks. Scholz had delayed for months against his partners and the Union; leaving that “brake-block phase” was welcome, “yet this decision came much too late,” and Ukraine had to hope it could still meet a Russian spring offensive. At an OSCE Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Vienna, the Russian delegation, she said, had called the others neo-Nazis and said they should have thanked Russia for “liberating” Ukraine. “With this aggressor” an end to the war was not then possible.

On 13 March 2024 the Neue Westfälische ran an interview under her sentence “Putin succeeds because Scholz shows fears,” in the dispute over Taurus KEPD 350 missiles and a leaked Luftwaffe call. On 25 April she cited the arrest of two alleged Russian spies in Bavaria, and indications of planned attacks on German military aid, as proof that the Zeitenwende and state resilience were mandatory. Germany was “still surrounded by friends, but our partners are not,” and its security was “inseparably bound up with that of our NATO and EU allies in the east.”

The same sitting joined that claim to veteran care. On a cross-party motion making 15 June a national Veterans’ Day, she said injury-recognition cases still lasted years, bureaucracy left people with post-traumatic stress disorder “even sicker,” and some veterans sued their former employer. “No wounded or traumatised soldier who has been waiting four years for recognition of his degree of injury feels valued.” The day must not remain a gesture. In May 2025, after NDR and tagesschau reported on that fight for recognition, she told NDR Info that traumatised veterans needed more recognition and compensation, and that war trauma had to be corrected for in a targeted way.

Constituency and domestic policy

CDU member Kerstin Vieregge holds the direct mandate for Lippe I in the Bundestag. The seat, in the Lippe district of North Rhine-Westphalia, is numbered 134 for the 2025 election and was numbered 135 in 2017 and 2021. The Federal Returning Officer assigns it Bad Salzuflen, Barntrup, Blomberg, Detmold, Dörentrup, Extertal, Kalletal, Lage, Lemgo, Leopoldshöhe and Oerlinghausen; the rest of the district lies in the neighbouring constituency. The Bundestag lists her constituency office at Emilienstraße 12 in Detmold. On the district council she chaired the transport committee from 2010 to 2014 and, from 2014 to 2020, the committee for the economy, tourism and rural development. In the Bundestag she was a full member of the tourism committee from 2017 to 2021 and a substitute member from 2021.

In the 8 November 2019 debate on a national tourism strategy she argued for including Germany’s spa and health resorts, which she put at more than 350 places and about a quarter of guest overnight stays, and called for a “spa offensive” tying tourism, health services and infrastructure together in structurally weak rural areas. She presented Lippe and the Teutoburg Forest as a case of walking, cycling, spa services and culture, noted demand for farm holidays, and warned that global booking platforms and private short-term lets moved value out of regions and, in large cities, added to housing pressure. At the tourism committee’s hearing on 5 November 2025 she asked the German Hiking Association whether walking’s health effects, including forest bathing, could support bids to the health ministry for prevention programmes or to the interior ministry for sports-facility funds, and how trail work was coordinated with other local bodies.

Mobility has been the other continuation of that district-council work. On 22 July 2019 the Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe reported a Lemgo campus discussion she had arranged with then CDU/CSU group leader Ralph Brinkhaus on the university project PostfossilMobil NRW, a platform for testing several future fuels in town and country. Vieregge welcomed trials “in city and countryside alike”; Brinkhaus said drivetrain policy should keep options open rather than proceed dogmatically.

In December 2022 the Lippische Landes-Zeitung reported that Hildegard Müller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, visited the same project at Vieregge’s invitation. Vieregge’s statement in the paper said battery-electric cars alone would not meet carbon-dioxide targets, and that rural private motoring, farming, the technical-relief and fire services, heavy goods traffic and the existing combustion-engine fleet also needed solutions. On 8 November 2024 she was present in Berlin, with Lippe members Robin Wagener and Christian Sauter, when a certificate signed by Federal Minister Volker Wissing awarded the university 18 million euros for a “Mobilitätszentrum UrbanLand” on the Lemgo innovation campus, a centre for mobility and integrated energy systems in rural areas.

A September 2017 Westfalen-Blatt profile, from her time as deputy district administrator, placed her in Göstrup, an Extertal locality the paper said had 195 other residents and unreliable mobile reception. She contrasted urban housing shortages with cheaper building in villages, and named medical care, shopping and mobility for older people, plus internet for telemedicine, as open problems; jobs, childcare and schools kept younger households, she said, and “every village is different.” On Abgeordnetenwatch in November 2020 she told a constituent in Dörentrup that she had discussed federal broadband aid for Lippe with the district and state secretary Steffen Bilger, linked a late-2018 start to fast internet for almost 5,000 households, and said using the money and paying the 10 percent local share were for the district administrator. A written question answered on 6 September 2024 asked whether posting monthly heating-consumption notices under the Heating Costs Ordinance could be charged to tenants; the government said the cost is part of central-heating operating costs and may be passed on.

Party affiliations and civic roles

The offices Kerstin Vieregge discloses as a member of the Bundestag, apart from her district party posts, lie in the social and women's organizations of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and in associations linked to the Bundeswehr.

She joined the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA) in 2006. The CDA calls itself the CDU's social-policy wing, one of the party's seven associations, and a voice for employees and their families. The Arbeitnehmergruppe of the CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU) Bundestag faction says it speaks for working people and their families and is committed to the social market economy. It elected her a deputy chair for the 20th electoral term, reported on 12 January 2022, and again on 20 May 2025 for the 21st term.

The Frauen Union, the CDU's women's organization, describes itself as a lobby for women in the party and in politics. In July 2026 its Lippe association re-elected Birgit Tornau of Barntrup as chair for two years and chose Vieregge, from Extertal, and Andrea Nolting of Dörentrup as deputies. The CDU/CSU faction's Gruppe der Frauen lists her as a member.

The Gesellschaft für Sicherheitspolitik (GSP), based in Bonn, was founded in 1952. A report of 18 July 2025 on its federal assembly described more than 6,000 members in 80 sections and about 400 events a year. The assembly re-elected Hans-Peter Bartels, a former parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, as president and elected Vieregge, retired General Eberhard Zorn and Antje Nötzold as vice-presidents. The association lists her in that office, which the Bundestag disclosure dates from 27 June 2025.

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Wehrtechnik (DWT) states that it was founded in 1957, with support from the Federal Ministry of Defence, and that since 1967 it has been a forum on security and defence policy, defence technology and the defence industry. Its praesidium advises the board and elects the president and vice-president. The 2023 annual report, filed through the Bundestag lobby register, says that body again elected Claus Günther president and elected Vieregge vice-president. She is not in the praesidium elected on 2 June 2026 for 2026–2029, although the Bundestag biography of 28 October 2026, drawn from members' own declarations, still lists the Bonn vice-presidency.

Since 23 September 2025 she has sat on the praesidium of the Förderkreis Deutsches Heer, founded in Bonn on 11 October 1995 as a forum on the German Army and the industrial base for its equipment. Since July 2025 she has been a trustee of the Soldaten- und Veteranen-Stiftung, founded in 2013 to promote recognition of serving soldiers and veterans. She was on the council of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung in Bonn, which assists Bundeswehr personnel, former National People's Army members and their families in hardship that may arise from their duties, until 17 December 2025. In Detmold, the disclosure lists her on the advisory board of Stiftung „Für Lippe“, founded in 2005 to support civic engagement and young people's vocational training.

Personal life

Kerstin Vieregge was born on 6 September 1976 in Rinteln, the birthplace given in her Bundestag biography. The town describes itself as a Weser town in the Weser Uplands and groups local buses under the district of Schaumburg. A notice on the municipal site treats the Lower Saxony border, beyond the Rinteln locality of Möllenbeck, as the line toward Kalletal in Lippe. Rinteln counted 26,265 inhabitants with a main residence on 31 December 2024.

Her published residence is not Rinteln but Extertal, a municipality in the Lippe district of North Rhine-Westphalia, the state's northeastern Landesteil. On the CDU state list for the 2021 Bundestag election she was entered with the residence Extertal, and Abgeordnetenwatch lists the same place. At the end of 2025 the district, citing the state statistical office, put Lippe at 346,212 inhabitants and Extertal at 11,138. Extertal's own profile of its twelve villages describes Silixen as directly adjoining Rinteln, and places Göstrup in the valley of the Alme at about 150 to 200 metres, with a printed figure of 187 inhabitants, woodland paths and an old bakehouse.

On 4 September 2017, when she was 40, the Westfalen-Blatt wrote that she lived in Göstrup with 195 other inhabitants, that poor reception sometimes left her unreachable by telephone, and that the gap between the village and Berlin was wider than for any other Bundestag candidate from Ostwestfalen-Lippe. On her own website she writes that she grew up on a farm in Extertal and still lives there. A leaflet issued in her name, dated 30 June 2021, says she returns from Berlin to Lippe, Extertal and Göstrup, where she lives with her family.

The Bundestag's archived biography for the 20th electoral term, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, describes her as evangelisch-reformiert and ledig (unmarried). The CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia repeats the Rinteln birth entry with both the confession and the unmarried status. The biography for the 21st term keeps the date and place of birth but omits confession and family status. The Westfalen-Blatt reported that her 2017 campaign poster showed her with a niece and a nephew, and that she put family first in her politics as well. The published biographies do not name a spouse or children.