# Linda Heitmann

# Linda Heitmann

Linda Heitmann (born 2 August 1982 in Hamburg) is a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) in Germany and a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Hamburg-Altona. The biography published by the Bundestag records that she is married and has one child. She sat in the 20th Bundestag, which held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, and was returned for the 21st term at the federal election of 23 February 2025.

Constituency 19 covers the borough of Altona. At the 2021 federal election Heitmann took the direct mandate with 45,063 first votes (29.7 percent), 1,636 votes ahead of the incumbent Social Democratic member Matthias Bartke, who received 43,427 (28.6 percent). Turnout in the constituency was 81.4 percent of 187,705 eligible voters, and the Greens also led the party-list vote, with 46,162 second votes (30.4 percent). In 2025 she held the seat with 43,372 first votes (27.5 percent). The [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) followed with 36,941 (23.4 percent), the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) with 33,415 (21.2 percent) and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) with 25,285 (16.0 percent). Turnout rose to 84.1 percent, and the Greens remained the largest party on the list vote at 23.7 percent.

Heitmann attended the Gymnasium in Schenefeld from 1994 to 2002 and, from 2003 to 2008, studied political science and geography in Hamburg and in Cork, Ireland. The same biography states that she has been active in Alliance 90/The Greens since 2004, including as state chair of the Green Youth, as a member of the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft and as a member of the state executive. She held the Bürgerschaft seat as a substitute: on 3 December 2010 the Berlin newspaper *taz* reported that she and another substitute were leaving the Green parliamentary group because the former senators Christa Goetsch and [Till Steffen](/people/till-steffen) had resumed their dormant mandates.

From 2016 the Bundestag lists her occupation as managing director of the Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen, the umbrella organisation of more than 40 addiction-treatment, self-help and prevention bodies in Hamburg. The archived biography for the 20th term places her on the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and also lists the committees on labour and social affairs and on family, senior citizens, women and youth. In the 21st term she is a full member of the Committee on Health and one of the Bundestag's secretaries, and a deputy member of the environment committee, of the committee on election scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure, and of the study commission on the coronavirus pandemic. She is also the Greens’ ordinary member of the Wahlprüfungsausschuss.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Linda Heitmann was born on 2 August 1982. The biography issued by the Bundestag, which notes that its personal details rest on information from the member, gives Hamburg as the place of birth. Her own website names the quarter Hamburg-Schnelsen and states that she took the Abitur at the Gymnasium Schenefeld in 2002. Statistikamt Nord lists Schnelsen under the borough of Eimsbüttel in its regional database for Hamburg. The parliamentary biography does not name her parents or describe her childhood, and it does not say where the family lived while she was at school.

The Bundestag biography records attendance at that Gymnasium from 1994 to 2002. The school is in the Schulzentrum Achter de Weiden at Achter de Weiden 30, 22869 Schenefeld, which it describes as Schenefeld near Hamburg, and it says the Gymnasium has existed since 1972. The district of Pinneberg, in Schleswig-Holstein, presents Schenefeld as one of its towns. The parliamentary biography does not explain the choice of a school outside Hamburg, record her subjects there, or say what she did between the Abitur in 2002 and the start of university study in 2003.

### Studies in Hamburg and Cork

Heitmann studied political science for a Diplom at the University of Hamburg, with geography as a required elective (*Wahlpflichtfach*). A portrait of her on the website of the GAL group in the Hamburg Parliament, captured in the [Internet Archive](/organizations/internet-archive) on 10 September 2008, said that she had been enrolled since the beginning of 2003 and that, as part of the degree, she had spent a semester in Cork, Ireland, in 2005. That page still gave her occupation as student. Her XING profile, a résumé she maintains, dates the Hamburg course from April 2003 to October 2008 and lists comparative government and the government of the Federal Republic among the subjects; the same entry records five months of political science at University College Cork, from August to December 2005. The Bundestag summary is shorter, stating only that she studied political science and geography in Hamburg and Cork from 2003 to 2008, and the directory describes her as a social scientist (*Sozialwissenschaftlerin*).

A 2021 statement in which she applied for a place on the Hamburg Greens' state list for the Bundestag calls her a *Diplom-Politologin* after studies in Hamburg and Cork, consistent with the 2003–2008 span in the parliamentary biography.

Her diploma thesis, dated 2007 at the university's Institute of Political Science, is *Das politische System Nordirlands – Die Entwicklung der Konkordanzdemokratie auf Grundlage des Karfreitagsabkommens* (*The Political System of Northern Ireland: The Development of Consociational Democracy on the Basis of the Good Friday Agreement*). GRIN Verlag, which distributes the 137-page text, records the mark 2.0 on the German scale, where 1 is the highest grade. The publisher's summary treats the 1998 [Good Friday Agreement](/facts/good-friday-agreement) as an instance of consociationalism—joint government by groups in a segmented society—and states the thesis that neither voters nor political elites in Northern Ireland showed the willingness to cooperate that long-term stability would require. When that portrait was archived on 10 September 2008, it listed her both as a student and as a member of the Hamburg Parliament who had taken her seat in 2008.

## Professional career

Before she entered the Bundestag, Linda Heitmann’s paid work ran from party press and organisational jobs to the management of addiction services in Hamburg. In the archived biography for the 20th electoral term, the Bundestag gave her occupation as Geschäftsführerin in der Suchtkrankenhilfe (managing director in addiction services) and stated that she had managed the Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen from 2016. The biography for the 21st term lists her instead as a Sozialwissenschaftlerin. It still records, in wording the parliament says rests on members’ own information, “Geschäftsführung in der Hamburgischen Landesstelle für Suchtfragen ab 2016”, and lists Geschäftsführerin of the Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen e.V. as a professional activity before membership. Abgeordnetenwatch uses the description Geschäftsführerin in der Suchtkrankenhilfe, gives the qualification Diplom-Politologin, and files the Landesstelle post as prior employment for both the 2021–2025 and 2025–2029 mandates.

Party employment appears in Green announcements rather than in that parliamentary file. In a notice that gave her age as 28, the Baden-Württemberg association of Alliance 90/The Greens said its press office would be reinforced over the coming months by Heitmann, who had studied politics and geography and had been state chair of the Green Youth in Hamburg and a member of the Hamburg Bürgerschaft; it listed her under Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit as the media contact. The notice did not call her deputy press spokesperson. A profile on the Hamburg Greens’ website, as captured in August 2016, described that work as a completed post as press spokesperson of the Baden-Württemberg association, said she had also worked for the parliamentary group, and stated that, with additional training in press and public relations, she was then managing the affairs of the district association and of the borough group in Wandsbek.

### Addiction services in Hamburg

The Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen e.V. (HLS) describes itself as Hamburg’s central networking office for addiction help and addiction policy, and as the umbrella of more than 40 facilities in addiction help, addiction self-help and addiction prevention. It says it links its members, moderates differing interests, informs the public, politics and the administration, and supports addiction services through cooperation, projects, events and the transfer of practice. An advisory board draws on the health-insurance funds, Deutsche Rentenversicherung Nord, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Freien Wohlfahrtspflege Hamburg and the Hamburg administration. The association belongs to the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Landesstellen für Suchtfragen, works with the Deutsche Hauptstelle für Suchtfragen, and takes part in the city’s Fachrat Drogen und Sucht, set up by the social authority. It is a registered association (Vereinsregister VR 9098), represented outwardly by the board, with day-to-day work run from Burchardstraße 19; a nonprofit subsidiary, SUCHT.HAMBURG gGmbH, works on information, prevention, help and networking. The board on the association’s site was chaired by Bianca Kunze, with Sarah Kessler named as Geschäftsführerin.

Heitmann dates her own management of the HLS to 2016–2021, more than five years before she entered the Bundestag, and describes daily contact with facilities, staff and clients. On 4 October 2021 the *Ärztezeitung* still presented her as that managing director and called the Landesstelle the umbrella for more than 40 institutions of Suchtkrankenhilfe and Suchtprävention in Hamburg. The Bundestag classifies the post as professional activity before membership.

### Writing, teaching and foundation work

In 2015 the Berlin publisher via reise (Via-Reise-Verlag) issued her guidebook *Mit Kindern in Hamburg*, catalogued by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek with a subtitle indicating excursions in the surrounding area and many tips for families, at 168 pages. The bibliography also records a 2017 edition from via reise verlag, again 168 pages, and a 2019 printing designated the 3rd edition, 168 pages, ISBN 978-3-945983-72-0.

The Hamburg body of the [Heinrich Böll Foundation](/organizations/heinrich-boll-foundation)—legally Politisches Bildungswerk, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Hamburg e.V.—describes itself as the city’s Landesbildungswerk of the foundation, offering Green-oriented political education, with events open to the public. Its profile of Heitmann states that she had been on the board since April 2018, that she was then managing director of the Landesstelle, and that she also worked as a freelance author and lecturer. After she won a direct mandate in the September 2021 Bundestag election, the profile said her board activity was suspended for that reason and that the place would be filled at the next members’ meeting. She dates the honorary board membership to 2018–2021. The foundation’s current board listing names Dr. Stefanie Wodrig, Antje Möller and Reiner Scholz, and does not include her.

## Party and Hamburg politics

### Green Youth and party offices

The Bundestag biography, drawn from Heitmann’s own statements, dates her membership of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen from 2004. A September 2008 profile by the party’s Hamburg parliamentary group, when the state association still campaigned as the Grün-Alternative Liste (GAL), said she had been politically active since 2003, had sat on the executive of the Hamburg Grüne Jugend since 2005, and had been its state chair since 2006. *Kürschners Volkshandbuch* and her later chronology both run the chairmanship through 2008; the September 2008 profile still called her state chair, so the office had not ended when she entered the Bürgerschaft that May.

She dates the chairmanship of the Greens’ district association in Altona to 2008–2010. An August 2016 profile on the Hamburg Greens’ site listed that post among earlier offices and stated that since May 2015 she had been an assessor (*Beisitzerin*) on the state executive and its spokesperson for women’s policy. In June 2017 she stood against the Bürgerschaft member Martin Bill for the deputy state chair; before the members’ assembly, the *tageszeitung* called the contest open. Her chronology ends the executive role in 2017.

### Hamburgische Bürgerschaft

At the Hamburg election of 24 February 2008, the CDU of First Mayor Ole von Beust lost the absolute majority it had won in 2004 with 47.2 percent. Election-night projections put the CDU a little above 42 percent, the SPD just under 34 percent and the GAL at about 9.5 percent. [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia), projected above 6 percent, entered the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft for the first time; the FDP was projected below 5 percent. Von Beust said the CDU would talk to both the SPD and the GAL. On 27 April the Greens approved a coalition agreement by a large majority; the next day 210 CDU delegates voted for it and one abstained. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* called this the first CDU–Green coalition in a German state and reported that von Beust would stand for re-election on 7 May. In the official count the GAL received 12 of 121 seats. The parliament meets in Hamburg City Hall.

Heitmann stood for the GAL in constituency 3, Altona, fifth on the list. She received 4,131 personal votes, second on that list behind Christa Goetsch, who received 21,826 and won the seat on personal votes. The Statistikamt Nord named Heitmann as Goetsch’s first successor. Article 39 of the Hamburg constitution bars senators from exercising a Bürgerschaft mandate: the mandate rests while they sit in the Senate, and statute decides who exercises it. The city’s 2008 report lists Goetsch as a GAL member of the Bürgerschaft until 7 May 2008 and Heitmann from that date, and records Goetsch as senator for schools and vocational training and as second mayor. The faction profile of September 2008 named Heitmann, for Altona, as spokesperson for health and drug policy and for youth participation.

The coalition lasted about two and a half years. Disputes included the Moorburg coal plant, the deepening of the Elbe, and the defeat of the school reform in a referendum in summer 2010. After von Beust resigned, [Christoph Ahlhaus](/people/christoph-ahlhaus) became first mayor. On 28 November 2010 the GAL said it would leave office and seek a new election. State chair Katharina Fegebank said the “common spirit” had gone, and Goetsch said agreements were no longer reliable. The 2010 report lists Heitmann only until 29 November 2010 and Goetsch again from 30 November. Jenny Weggen, who had held Till Steffen’s seat, left on the day Steffen returned.

She did not re-enter at the next three elections. On 20 February 2011 she was fifth on the GAL list in Altona, with 4,113 constituency votes and fifth place in the count. Goetsch kept the seat; Heitmann was only the third successor. On the state list she was ninth, with 2,921 personal votes, and appears among successors rather than those allocated seats. On 15 February 2015 she stood in Blankenese, not Altona, third on the Green list, with 5,217 votes and third place. Phyliss Demirel took the constituency seat and Heitmann was the second successor; on the state list she was 19th, with 539 personal votes. On 23 February 2020 she stood only on the state list, in 41st place, with 354 personal votes, and was not among those to whom seats were allocated.

### Deputations and local roles

Hamburg’s specialist authorities (*Fachbehörden*) then each had a deputation. A September 2015 paper from the Bürgerschaft president, citing section 7 of the *Gesetz über Verwaltungsbehörden*, described one as the senators assigned to the authority plus 15 citizen members. The Bürgerschaft elected those citizens for its own term from residents eligible for a district assembly. Members of the Bürgerschaft could not sit on a deputation. For the Behörde für Inneres und Sport, the same paper gave the Green group the right to nominate two of the 15.

The 2008 faction profile said Heitmann had been a GAL deputy in the Behörde für Inneres from 2006 to 2008, the period before she entered parliament. *Kürschners Volkshandbuch* and her own chronology record a second term, 2015–2020, in the Behörde für Inneres und Sport, again while she was not a Bürgerschaft member. The same handbook notes that in 2007–08 she was also a research assistant to the GAL parliamentary group on migration and integration.

## Bundestag elections

### 2021 contest in Hamburg-Altona

Hamburg-Altona is constituency 19 for elections to the Bundestag. The Federal Returning Officer defines the seat as the borough of Altona in its entirety. In the structural data issued for the 2025 election, that area covered 77.9 square kilometres and, on 31 December 2023, had 265,500 inhabitants, of whom 221,000 were German citizens, a foreign-national share of 16.8 percent, and a density of 3,407.9 people per square kilometre. The city describes Altona as Hamburg's westernmost borough and notes that it contains both some of the city's wealthiest quarters and some of its lowest-income ones, among them the Schanzenviertel and the Elbe suburbs of Nienstedten and Blankenese.

At the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election), held on 26 September 2021, 152,720 of 187,705 eligible voters in the constituency cast a ballot, a turnout of 81.4 percent and 2.8 percentage points above 2017. In the final result Linda Heitmann of Alliance 90/The Greens won the direct mandate, awarded to the candidate with the most first votes, with 45,063 votes, or 29.7 percent of 151,883 valid first votes. She finished 1,636 votes, and 1.1 percentage points, ahead of Matthias Bartke of the Social Democratic Party, who received 43,427 votes (28.6 percent). Bartke had held the same constituency as a directly elected member in the 19th electoral term. In 2017 the SPD had carried the seat with 28.9 percent of first votes, and the Green first-vote share in 2021 was 15.3 percentage points higher than the party's 2017 result there.

The other principal candidates were further back. Marcus Weinberg of the Christian Democratic Union received 25,441 votes (16.8 percent, down 9.2 points). [Cansu Özdemir](/people/cansu-ozdemir) of Die Linke received 14,716 (9.7 percent, down 3.9). Fabrice Henrici of the Free Democratic Party received 12,380 (8.2 percent, down 0.5). [Bernd Baumann](/people/bernd-baumann) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany received 5,191 (3.4 percent, down 1.7). On second votes, which determine the parties' proportional strength, the Greens led with 46,162 (30.4 percent, up 12.4 points), ahead of the SPD on 38,865 (25.6 percent, up 5.1), the CDU on 22,478 (14.8 percent, down 10.1), the FDP on 16,543 (10.9 percent, down 0.4), Die Linke on 13,667 (9.0 percent, down 6.7) and the AfD on 5,036 (3.3 percent, down 2.2). A *Süddeutsche Zeitung* comparison, drawn from Federal Returning Officer data and presented as an automatically generated constituency note, placed that Green second-vote share among the party's ten best results nationally and the AfD share among its ten worst, and classed the seat as urban, a setting in which the Greens generally exceeded their nationwide figure. The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021.

### 2025 re-election

Heitmann stood again in Hamburg-Altona at the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025. Turnout rose to 84.1 percent, with 158,855 of 188,984 eligible voters taking part, 2.7 points higher than in 2021, and 157,644 first votes were valid. She again received the most first votes: 43,372, or 27.5 percent, which was 2.2 points below her 2021 share but 6,431 votes ahead of the runner-up. The Federal Returning Officer listed her as elected in the constituency and named Sören Maximilian Platten of the SPD as the leading unsuccessful candidate, with 36,941 votes (23.4 percent, down 5.2 points).

The next candidates, as reported with those same shares by NDR, were Kaja Steffens of the CDU, Norbert Hackbusch of Die Linke, Baumann again for the AfD, and Bo Müller of the FDP. Their final first-vote totals were 33,415 for the CDU (21.2 percent, up 4.4 points), 25,285 for Die Linke (16.0 percent, up 6.4), 11,911 for the AfD (7.6 percent, up 4.1) and 5,283 for the FDP (3.4 percent, down 4.8). The gap from Heitmann to Platten was wider than her 2021 margin over Bartke, even though her own share fell and the CDU and Die Linke both gained.

On second votes the Greens remained first, at a lower level and with less distance to the parties behind them: 37,470 votes, or 23.7 percent, down 6.7 points. The SPD followed on 32,518 (20.6 percent, down 5.0), the CDU on 30,874 (19.5 percent, up 4.7) and Die Linke on 28,476 (18.0 percent, up 9.0 points, the largest shift among these parties). The AfD received 11,602 (7.3 percent, up 4.0) and the FDP 7,381 (4.7 percent, down 6.2). Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), which had no candidate in the first-vote table, took 5,245 second votes (3.3 percent). The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025.

## Parliamentary work

### Committees and offices in the 20th term

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025), Linda Heitmann, of Alliance 90/The Greens, is recorded in the archived official biography as an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and as a parliamentary secretary (*Schriftführerin*), and as a deputy member of the committees on labour and social affairs, on family, senior citizens, women and youth, and on health. Standing committees prepare the plenary’s decisions in a defined portfolio. When the Health Committee first met, on 15 December 2021, it had 42 ordinary members; its work covers care financing, local provision, and training in medicine and nursing. In that term the environment committee’s title still included consumer protection; the Bundestag describes the successor body as covering climate policy, extreme weather, biodiversity, resources and nuclear waste. The labour committee covers pensions, the labour market, unemployment support and inclusion. Secretaries, elected at the start of a term, join the presiding officer in pairs—one from a majority party and one from the opposition—keep the speakers’ list and count votes.

Her health seat changed during the term. At the committee’s constitution she was one of seven Green ordinary members. The minutes of 29 November 2023 still list her as ordinary and Maria Klein-Schmeink as a deputy. By the 107th sitting, on 3 June 2024, those places were reversed, and the end-of-term biography records Heitmann as a deputy. No comparable mid-term change is published for the environment seat, which that biography lists as ordinary.

Within the Green Bundestag group she became environmental-policy spokesperson in February 2024, succeeding [Jan-Niclas Gesenhues](/people/jan-niclas-gesenhues) after he became a parliamentary state secretary in the environment ministry. In April 2024 the group called her spokesperson of its working group on the environment and consumer protection, and *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* identified her as the group’s rapporteur on drug and addiction policy.

### Committees and offices in the 21st term

The 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025. The current biography again lists her as a secretary—the factions proposed her for that election on 20 May 2025—and as an ordinary member of the Health Committee, with deputy seats on the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, on the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and Rules of Procedure, and on the study commission on the corona pandemic. The Health Committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with her among the Green ordinary members. In April the group had named five ordinary members for that committee, including her, and re-elected [Janosch Dahmen](/people/janosch-dahmen), not Heitmann, as health-policy spokesperson. On her own site she describes herself as co-leader of a faction working group on the future of the social-security systems, especially statutory health and long-term-care insurance.

The rules committee, where she is a deputy, interprets the rules of procedure, deals with disputes in the plenary and in committees, and oversees members’ immunity. A separate *Wahlprüfungsausschuss* prepares decisions under Article 41 of the Basic Law on the validity of Bundestag elections and of the election of German members of the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament); the plenary’s decision can be challenged in the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court). On 26 June 2025 the House elected the members named in Drucksache 21/597: Heitmann as the Greens’ ordinary member and [Helge Limburg](/people/helge-limburg) as substitute. Chaired by [Macit Karaahmetoğlu](/people/macit-karaahmetoglu), the committee constituted itself the next day. The biography’s standing-committee list does not repeat that seat.

The study commission “Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse”, constituted on 8 September 2025 with Franziska Hoppermann as chair, has 14 members of parliament and 14 outside experts. It is to account for causes, course, consequences and state measures in the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) and to report by 30 June 2027. The biography lists Heitmann as a deputy member.

### Parliamentary friendship groups

Parliamentarian groups are cross-party associations without statutes of their own. Their stated purpose is dialogue with parliamentarians of partner countries; the Council of Elders fixes their number at the start of a term, chairs follow faction strength, and a member may join at most three. They do not legislate as committees do.

In the 20th term the Bundestag’s list of group executives, dated 12 July 2024, names [Stephan Pilsinger](/people/stephan-pilsinger) (CDU/CSU) as chair of the German-Irish group and Heitmann as one of four deputy chairs, with Ariane Fäscher (SPD), Katja Adler and [Dirk Brandes](/people/dirk-brandes). A delegation led by Pilsinger and including Heitmann travelled to Ireland from 17 to 20 June 2024, visiting Dublin, Dundalk, Belfast and Galway. The published focus was cooperation between Ireland and Northern Ireland under the Good Friday Agreement, and offshore wind.

In the 21st term the biography lists her as chair of the German-Irish Parliamentarian Group, the only entry under memberships in other bodies, and the Bundestag’s group pages place her with that group. Her own site also lists membership of the German-Nordic parliamentarians’ group and co-leadership of informal circles on marine policy and on Low German. Those roles are not on the official biography, and the July 2024 executive list does not name her as an officer of the Nordic group.

## Health and addiction policy

### Cannabis regulation

Heitmann has spoken for the Green parliamentary group on drug policy in the Bundestag debates that produced Germany's partial legalisation of cannabis. At first reading on 18 October 2023 she defined youth protection as no advertising, no access for under-18s, no fruit flavours or sales-driven packaging, and honest information about risks rather than adulterants from the illegal market, and said those rules would also apply to a planned second pillar. Removing cannabis from the Narcotic Drugs Act would, she said, decriminalise it and place it "more or less" alongside alcohol and tobacco, for which the coalition agreement required structural youth protection, including a review of alcohol advertising, no sale of spirits or e-cigarettes to minors, and no softening of so-called accompanied drinking.

The Cannabis Act passed on 23 February 2024 by 404 votes to 226, with four abstentions; Heitmann voted yes. The Federal Ministry of Health states that adults may possess up to 25 grams of dried cannabis in public and 50 grams at home, and may grow up to three plants. Cultivation associations are limited to 500 adult members who have lived in Germany for at least six months, must set a minimum membership of three months, and may hand out only unmixed cannabis: 25 grams a day and 50 grams a month, or at most 30 grams a month for members under 21. The ministry commissioned an external evaluation, EKOCAN, with interim reports in October 2025 and April 2026 and a full report four years after entry into force.

Licensed retail was left to a second pillar of regional, time-limited projects with commercial supply chains. Heitmann told the chamber in 2023 that youth-protection rules would apply there too. On abgeordnetenwatch she later wrote that decriminalisation, home growing and clubs did not go far enough for her or the Greens, and that she still wanted licensed adult sales, citing projects prepared in Hanover and Frankfurt.

The CDU, CSU and SPD government formed in 2025 did not authorise that pillar. In printed paper 21/2862, Heitmann and other Green members noted that the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food had received 65 applications under the research clause in section 2(4) of the Konsumcannabisgesetz, had approved none and had rejected nine, including projects from Hanover, planned with Hannover Medical School, and from Frankfurt. The questioners called those rejections a missed chance to study health protection, youth protection and the illegal market. Answering on 3 December 2025, the government said the coalition agreement "does not provide for implementation of the so-called second pillar (regional model projects with commercial supply chains)," confirmed that none had been granted as of 21 November 2025, and said it did not regard research under the act as obstructed.

In statements to *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* at the start of 2023, reported by *Focus*, Heitmann called for a "general rethink" so that alcohol and tobacco would no longer be sold under what she called the almost unrestricted law of the free market. She questioned round-the-clock sales of cigarettes and e-cigarettes from vending machines, supermarkets and petrol stations, and said higher taxes on alcoholic drinks were in principle sensible. FDP spokesperson Kristine Lütke replied that Italy and Spain taxed such products less yet saw fewer alcohol excesses, so higher tax was not necessarily effective. Federal drug commissioner Burkhard Blienert (SPD) said beer advertising did not belong in prime time or on stadium boards.

### Harm reduction and treatment services

In June 2023, before drug checking had a national legal basis, Heitmann and SPD health politician Dirk Heidenblut asked Health Minister Karl Lauterbach to amend the Narcotic Drugs Act and attach the change to the bill on medicine shortages. She told *Die Welt* that policy had to accept drug use and make it as safe as possible, which might also reduce drug deaths, and that dealers would "have to offer their customers better stuff" if purchases could be tested. Lütke called drug checking useful prevention but did not join the request, warning against a rushed amendment. A ministry spokesperson said contamination should be avoided, but that drug use would not become safe.

Paediatric bodies welcomed testing but said health risks remained, while CDU spokesperson [Simone Borchardt](/people/simone-borchardt) said it could reduce harm only if it did not trivialise use and stayed tied to counselling. On 23 June 2023 the Bundestag, in the medicine-shortage act, let the Länder authorise model projects that analyse substances people are carrying and combine the result with a risk assessment and health information. Blienert called the vote a step "away from punishment, towards protection and help," and said it did not normalise consumption.

### Health insurance and long-term care

*Deutsches Ärzteblatt* has identified Heitmann as the Green group's rapporteur for financing of statutory and private health insurance. After a government finance commission set out savings and revenue options in March 2026, she said Health Minister [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) was again missing the chance to put reforms before parliament, and that "the real problem is not a lack of findings — it is a lack of political will."

On 11 September 2025 the GKV-Spitzenverband voted to sue the federal government over lump-sum contributions for people on Bürgergeld. The association said the payment covered about a third of the cost, a gap of about €10 billion a year on IGES Institute figures, and noted that cost-covering contributions had been in the 2018 and 2021 coalition agreements but not in the 2025 CDU/CSU–SPD agreement. Warken had in principle favoured full federal funding, but the 2025 and 2026 budgets did not provide it. Heitmann called the lawsuit a "long overdue signal" and said the Greens explicitly supported it. Die Linke's Ates Gürpinar backed the case and argued for health and long-term care insurance "into which everyone pays."

A December 2025 paper by the group's care spokesperson, [Simone Fischer](/people/simone-fischer), proposed a binding cap of €1,000 on co-payments in residential care, with a lower cap at home, financed by a citizens' insurance that would also cover the self-employed and civil servants, a higher contribution ceiling, and tax funding of training costs, carers' pension contributions and pandemic extra costs. CDU politician [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann), asked about an SPD proposal to cap nursing-home care costs, told ZDF that a cap was "highly dangerous," would not go to the coalition's reform commission, and that he preferred socially manageable supplements.

## Environment, climate and consumer policy

### Committee work and spokesperson role

From 26 October 2021 until 25 March 2025, in the 20th Bundestag, Heitmann was a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, a Bundestag secretary, and a deputy on the health, labour and family committees.

On 22 February 2024 EUWID reported that the Alliance 90/The Greens group had elected her environmental-policy spokesperson after Jan-Niclas Gesenhues became a parliamentary state secretary in the environment ministry under [Steffi Lemke](/people/steffi-lemke). A faction brochure titles the post spokesperson for environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection. She named biodiversity, waste prevention, easier enforcement of consumer rights, rules against greenwashing, and the overlap with energy and climate policy as priorities. On 9 August 2024 the Bundestag press office, previewing a *Das Parlament* interview on water policy, called her the group's *umweltpolitische Sprecherin* and said she had held the post since February.

In the 21st term, from 25 March 2025, she is only a deputy member of the renamed Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Consumer protection is no longer in that committee's name. She is a full member of the health committee and still a secretary; her faction profile lists no environmental spokesperson role.

### Nature, oceans and consumer rules

On 20 October 2023, still before that spokesperson election, she closed the debate on a CDU/CSU motion (Drucksache 20/8859) asking the traffic-light government to weigh the proposed EU packaging regulation and to prefer low-bureaucracy rules. [Björn Simon](/people/bjorn-simon) had opened for the Union; [Michael Thews](/people/michael-thews) and [Helmut Kleebank](/people/helmut-kleebank) spoke for the SPD, Gesenhues for the Greens and Ulrike Harzer for the FDP. Heitmann described returning a reusable cup between Hamburg and Berlin, said an EU rule could make such returns work across borders, and called a reuse figure she put at 10 percent for beverage and transport packaging by 2030 unambitious beside a German 70 percent target. She cited key points Lemke had issued for amending the Packaging Act and said the Union motion would wait on Brussels. The Bundestag sent the motion to committee, where she said a hearing should test how the EU text and the national amendment fit.

After the Federal Constitutional Court upheld Tübingen's tax on single-use takeaway packaging, she told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, in remarks carried on 23 January 2025, that municipalities no longer had an excuse to ignore packaging litter and that Tübingen should be copied. She said many restaurants missed the duty to offer reusable containers, and that enforcement plus a widespread tax could cut litter; she blamed the FDP for blocking Lemke's federal key points. Ingrid Hartges of DEHOGA, in the same round of interviews, rejected a tax and preferred incentives.

On 6 June 2024 she spoke in the second and third reading of the coalition bill writing climate protection into immission-control law and speeding permits (Drucksachen 20/7502 and 20/11657). Carsten Träger spoke for the SPD and Gesenhues for the ministry; Ulrich Lange and [Anja Karliczek](/people/anja-karliczek), for the CDU/CSU, said acceleration stopped halfway and favoured selected technologies. Heitmann, citing floods in southern Germany that week, said the bill made climate a central aim, steered industrial waste heat toward district heating where possible, and sped permits for wind repowering and green hydrogen without lowering environmental standards. The final vote was 377 to 257, with 9 abstentions; the bill passed.

In the August 2024 interview she argued that, even after rain had refilled aquifers, cities needed more unsealed soil, the country needed monitoring of groundwater recharge and abstraction, and abstraction charges should be uniform so firms would not choose the cheapest water. She criticised the Bundesrat's rejection of a fertiliser-law amendment aimed at nitrate and warned of a renewed EU infringement case. She called work on the March 2023 National Water Strategy mostly administrative, and cited peatland and floodplain funding under the Natural Climate Action programme plus greywater reuse in Hamburg's Jenfelder Au.

A 2024 marine fund was not a bill in her name. On 28 November 2024 the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt opened a North Sea and Baltic Sea line of about 10 million euros a year, from a 400-million-euro environment-ministry endowment taken from Offshore Wind Energy Act compensation, for species, reefs, seagrass and less damaging offshore wind. As a deputy on the environment committee she was first signatory, with [Lisa Badum](/people/lisa-badum), Gesenhues and others, of a Green motion of 26 October 2026 (Drucksache 21/8792) asking the government to cut underwater noise: Marine Strategy Framework Directive limits by 2030, speed limits in a revised North Sea navigation ordinance including water taxis and pleasure boats, quieter ships, bubble curtains for pile-driving and munitions, no new hydrocarbon permits and a 2030 cap on existing oil and gas approvals, and routes avoiding protected areas and the harbour porpoise.

## Public debate and reception

### Language and notable speeches

On 2 March 2023 the 88th sitting of the 20th Bundestag debated the 25th anniversary of the [European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages](/facts/european-charter-for-regional-or-minority-languages), with several speeches in the languages themselves. [Johann Saathoff](/people/johann-saathoff) (Social Democratic Party) opened in Low German; Linda Heitmann, for Alliance 90/The Greens, Gyde Jensen (Free Democratic Party) and [Andreas Mattfeldt](/people/andreas-mattfeldt) (CDU/CSU) did so as well. [Stefan Seidler](/people/stefan-seidler) of the South Schleswig Voters' Association greeted the House in North Frisian, spoke Low German and closed in Danish; Astrid Damerow began in North Frisian, and Simona Koß gave a Sorbian greeting. The sitting came from the new cross-party parliamentary circle on Low German, of which Heitmann spoke as a member.

She said the charter required use in schools, administration and the media, not only at home, and asked whether there was much to celebrate. Set against Irish — a compulsory school subject, and in parts of Ireland’s mid-west the language of media, signs and administration, which exchange students could take in Cork, where she studied — she said Low German stood “lange nicht so gut”. She had learned it in northern Germany and was the only Green member to speak it that day. In Hamburg, past the Ohnsorg-Theater, a few school songs and [Norddeutscher Rundfunk](/organizations/norddeutscher-rundfunk) programmes, everyday use was scarce; she wanted policy debates in Low German, not only debate about the language.

### Election scrutiny and other disputes

On abgeordnetenwatch, for questions in the current mandate, her profile listed an 81 percent response rate (22 of 27). The Bundestag’s rules-of-conduct disclosures list her former post as managing director of the Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen e.V. and no current paid outside work; the biography also makes her a substitute on the committee for electoral scrutiny, immunity and rules of procedure, separate from the election-review committee.

On 23 February 2025 the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht took 2,472,947 second votes (4.981 percent), 9,529 short of five percent. On 22 April the party and ten other objectors sought a recount, citing counting errors, anomalies and confusion with [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland). On 26 June the Bundestag elected her unanimously as one of nine full members of the Wahlprüfungsausschuss. On 4 December the committee — CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke against the Alternative for Germany — recommended rejecting the recount parts of WP 893/25 and WP 894/25 as unfounded, finding no mandate-relevant breach of electoral law. The plenary agreed on 18 December, 427 to 129, with one abstention.

Sahra Wagenknecht called it the scrutiny of a “banana republic”, with members judging their own cause, and blamed the committee for using up three quarters of a year. Chair Macit Karaahmetoğlu denied bias and delay: every Land returning officer had been asked, and the BSW’s representative had sought more time. Only the AfD argued that a recount was needed to remove all doubt. On 9 February 2026 tagesschau reported that the BSW meant to ask the Federal Constitutional Court on 18 February for a full recount, a step Article 41 of the Basic Law allows only after the Bundestag has decided.

On 14 October 2025 the journalist Norbert Häring called hypocritical her abgeordnetenwatch reply that a recount, still outstanding after more than seven months, was a matter for an independent committee working both quickly and carefully, and that the Greens rejected any charge of delay.

On 5 December 2025 she and eleven other Green members explained in writing, under § 31 of the rules of procedure, votes against the Military Service Modernisation Bill: a stronger Bundeswehr and compulsory assessment were justified, but the text sketched a return to conscription as suspended in 2011, for men only and, if needed, by lottery, rather than a service open to civilian placements as well.

## Personal life

### Family and residence

The biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on the member's own information, records that Linda Heitmann was born on 2 August 1982 in Hamburg, is married, and has one child. It does not name her spouse or the child. A profile in the Hamburger Morgenpost on 27 September 2021, the day after that year's federal election, reported that she lived with her husband and a daughter in Sülldorf and intended to keep her main residence there while serving in Berlin. The City of Hamburg describes Sülldorf as a quarter (*Stadtteil*) of the borough of Altona, in the west of the city. A profile kept by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Hamburg also calls her the mother of a daughter, without naming the child.

A first-person sketch published by the Altona district association of Alliance 90/The Greens, presented with her Bundestag work after her re-election in February 2025, says she lived earlier in Altona-Altstadt and in Rissen and now lives with her family in Sülldorf.

### Civic memberships

Under *Veröffentlichungspflichtige Angaben*, the disclosures required by the members' code of conduct, the same Bundestag page lists only her occupation before she entered parliament: managing director of the Hamburgische Landesstelle für Suchtfragen e.V. in Hamburg. Filings appear there only after the parliament has checked whether a duty to publish applies, so a missing entry does not itself show that she holds no unpaid memberships. abgeordnetenwatch.de reproduces that prior post for the 2021–2025 and 2025–2029 terms; the record was last changed on 9 October 2026 and no other side activity is listed.

The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Hamburg, the city's political-education association affiliated with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and close to the Greens, states that Heitmann joined its board in April 2018. After her direct mandate in September 2021, the foundation wrote that her board work was suspended and that the seat would be filled at the next members' meeting.

In March 2022 the Deutsche Stiftung Verbraucherschutz, a Berlin foundation set up in 2010 by the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband and its member organisations to support consumer education, announced that its foundation council had appointed her to the advisory Kuratorium as the member sent by the Green Bundestag group. The foundation says the Kuratorium meets once a year and advises the executive board and the foundation council. Its published list no longer includes her; the Green Bundestag member named there is Till Steffen.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/linda-heitmann