Marc Henrichmann

Marc Henrichmann (born 1 June 1976 in Münster) is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, holding the direct mandate for Coesfeld – Steinfurt II in North Rhine-Westphalia, a seat numbered 127 at the 2017 and 2021 elections and 126 at the 2025 election. Since 26 June 2025 he has chaired the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium), the Bundestag body that supervises the federal intelligence services.

According to the biography he supplied to the Bundestag, he attended the Gymnasium Paulinum in Münster from 1986 to 1995, did basic military service in 1995–96, studied law at the University of Münster from 1996 to 2001 and completed his legal traineeship at the Landgericht Münster from 2002 to 2004. He has practised as a lawyer in Havixbeck since 2004, including in his own firm from 2021, and from 2014 to 2017 was managing director of the Jägerstiftung natur+mensch, a charitable foundation based there. The Bundestag notes that these biographical details rest on members' own statements.

He won the constituency at the 2017 German federal election with 51.6 percent of the first votes. The Federal Returning Officer recorded 79,677 votes for the CDU candidate, ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 23.5 percent, with turnout at 81.3 percent. In 2021 he was re-elected with 40.9 percent (65,402 votes). At the 2025 election, held on 23 February, he took 45.6 percent (76,819 votes), ahead of Johannes Waldmann of the SPD on 20.3 percent; turnout in the constituency was 87.4 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag the parliament lists him as an ordinary member of the Interior Committee and as a substitute member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation. On 26 June 2025 the plenary elected six of the nine members provided for the oversight panel under Article 45d of the Basic Law: three from the CDU/CSU, two from the SPD and Konstantin von Notz of Alliance 90/The Greens. Nominations from the Alternative for Germany and Die Linke did not receive the required majority. The panel, which oversees the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, then chose Henrichmann as chair and von Notz as deputy chair.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in 2026 that Henrichmann argues any widening of the services' powers should be paired with stronger oversight, and that the panel issued one of its rare public statements after the arrest of former BND president August Hanning on suspicion of espionage and treason.

Early life and education

Schooling and military service

Marc Henrichmann was born on 1 June 1976 in Münster. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which states that its entries rest on members' own information, also records that he is Roman Catholic. A profile of the Christian Democratic Union in North Rhine-Westphalia gives the birth date as 1 June 1975, while Henrichmann's own site says that he was born in Münster in 1976.

From 1986 to 1995 he attended the Gymnasium Paulinum in Münster. The school's alumni association, the Vereinigung der Alten Pauliner, lists him in the Abitur class of 1995.

The Paulinum is a municipal Gymnasium of the City of Münster at Am Stadtgraben 30. Its own history traces a schola paulina to 797, as the school attached to the monastery that the missionary Liudger dedicated to Saint Paul at Mimigernaford, the later Münster, and treats the dispute with the Gymnasium Carolinum in Osnabrück over which institution is older as historically unsettled. The city took over the school in 1974. Coeducation began in 1978, eight years before Henrichmann enrolled, when the former boys' school was opened to girls.

The Bundestag biography next records Grundwehrdienst, basic military service, from 1995 to 1996, without a unit, rank or branch of the Bundeswehr. Conscription was still in force for young men. The Federal Agency for Civic Education dates the Wehrrechtsänderungsgesetz to 1 January 1996 and records that it cut Grundwehrdienst from twelve months to ten, followed by two months on standby during which conscripts could be called up again. Published accounts give only the years of his service. The CDU state association's short curriculum vitae repeats the same sequence: the Paulinum from 1986 to 1995, then basic service in 1995–96.

Legal training

From 1996 to 2001 Henrichmann studied law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, the name then borne by the University of Münster. After a vote of the university senate and approval by the state ministry for culture and science, the reference to Wilhelm II was dropped, and the institution has been called Universität Münster since 1 October 2023. The parliamentary biography does not record a grade, a specialisation, or the date on which he sat the first state examination.

The law faculty describes qualification for the legal professions as two stages: a university course closed by a first examination, then a two-year practical preparatory service, the Referendariat, closed by the second state examination. Only both stages together confer the Befähigung zum Richteramt, the qualification for judicial office and for the other classical legal careers, including practice as a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt).

His Referendariat is dated 2002 to 2004 at the Landgericht Münster, a state regional court of ordinary jurisdiction. The biography does not list the stations of that service or any examination result. It places the start of work in a Havixbeck law office in 2004, the year the preparatory service is recorded as ending, and the Bundestag gives his occupation as Rechtsanwalt.

Legal practice and foundation work

Practice in Havixbeck

Henrichmann has practised as a Rechtsanwalt in Havixbeck, in the district of Coesfeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, since 2004. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, and the archived text for the 19th electoral term set out the firms.

From April 2004 to December 2006 he was in the office-sharing arrangement Bürogemeinschaft Rechtsanwälte Henrichmann & Dreesmann. From January 2007 to December 2009 the arrangement was Bürogemeinschaft Rechtsanwälte und Notarin Henning & Henrichmann, a shared office of lawyers and a notary, and from January 2010 to December 2014 it was the civil-law partnership Sozietät Rechtsanwälte und Notarin Henning & Henrichmann GbR. From January 2015 he was in Rechtsanwälte/Fachanwälte Henning, Henrichmann & Dr. Carré-Jersch GbR, which the current biography dates through 2020. The style shows that specialist lawyers (Fachanwälte) worked in the firm; the biographies do not give Henrichmann that title. A Deutsche Anwaltauskunft entry, still under Henning & Henrichmann at Johannesstraße 5, lists family law among his fields and does not call him a Fachanwalt.

Since 2021 the biography names Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Henrichmann. The same disclosure lists Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Marc Henrichmann in Havixbeck as paid work continued alongside membership of the Bundestag.

Jägerstiftung natur+mensch

In its report for 2005/2006 the Deutscher Jagdverband (DJV), the national hunting association, wrote that a unanimous vote of its delegate assembly had created the foundation under the name „Stiftung natur + mensch – gemeinsam Zukunft stiften“, and that the district government in Cologne recognised it in early May 2005 as an independent civil-law Stiftung. The report placed the office in the association's building at Niebuhrstraße 16c in Bonn, with Jochen Borchert, then DJV president, as chair and Rolf Eversheim as managing director.

The foundation directory of the North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry records recognition on 6 May 2005 under file 05/08, legal seat Bonn, the postal address Johannesstraße 5 in Havixbeck, and the purposes of nature conservation, environmental protection and animal protection. The statute the foundation publishes, which it says was settled with the revenue authorities and the Cologne district government, gives the present name as „Jägerstiftung natur + mensch – gemeinsam Zukunft stiften“, the seat as Havixbeck and supervision to the Bezirksregierung Köln; it defines the purposes as environmental, nature and animal protection and landscape care—through habitat and species work, funded research and public education, including nature pedagogy, and against alienation from nature—and assigns the assets on dissolution to the Deutscher Jagdschutz-Verband – Vereinigung der deutschen Landesjagdverbände e.V. Vorstand and Stiftungsrat serve without pay, and the three-member board may appoint a managing director.

The Allgemeine Zeitung reported on 15 May 2014 that Henrichmann, then 37, had been elected honorary managing director in succession to Eversheim. Borchert, named as chairman, said the foundation should gather hunters' interests and speak in public; the paper also reported its view that nature conservation and nature use should not be separated, and a Lernort-Natur-Koffer for school lessons. The Bundestag biography dates the managing-director post from May 2014 to 2017, overlapping the Carré-Jersch partnership.

In March 2016 the hunting magazine Wild und Hund reported unease about the foundation's future after it sold the communications project Natürlich Jagd, started to give non-hunters information about hunting, to a clothing firm in Erkrath. Henrichmann, as managing director, attributed the end of the project under the foundation to a lack of funds. The magazine wrote that money collected to defend hunting law in North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg appeared already to have been spent, that the office was by then at Johannesstraße 5 in Havixbeck, and that the foundation meant to go on raising donations for research and environmental education.

The archived biography for the 19th electoral term lists him as Vorsitzender of the Jägerstiftung in Havixbeck. The archived disclosure for the 20th term is more specific: chairman of the Vorstand until 30 June 2024, and a member of the Stiftungsrat from that date. The current biography still lists membership of the Stiftungsrat. The foundation's own page on its organs, which carries a 2024 copyright notice, names Georg Graf von Kerssenbrock-Praschma as chair of the Vorstand and does not include Henrichmann among the Stiftungsrat members it displays. The state directory's list of legal representatives names Kerssenbrock-Praschma, Peter H. Konermann and Robert Vornholt.

Party and local politics

CDU offices

Henrichmann’s party posts have been in the Christian Democratic Union in Havixbeck and in the Coesfeld district, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member’s own disclosures, states that he chaired the CDU Gemeindeverband Havixbeck from 2009 to 2013 and has chaired the CDU Kreisverband Coesfeld since 2011. A June 2011 Allgemeine Zeitung report, catalogued by the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, records a member survey for the district chairmanship in which the Havixbeck lawyer finished first with 39.14 percent.

He was still municipal chair in April 2012, when he told the Gemeindeverband’s annual meeting that the party should campaign as a unit before an early state election. On 12 April 2013 the Westfälische Nachrichten reported that the association had unanimously elected Anke Leufgen as chair and had elected Henrichmann, the outgoing chair, as an ordinary board member (Beisitzer).

He kept the district chair while seeking other nominations. The Westfälischer Anzeiger later noted that he had stood for mayor of Havixbeck, and that about a year before November 2016 he had narrowly lost the CDU’s internal contest for the Landrat nomination to Christian Schulze Pellengahr, who then won the office. At the nomination meeting in the Stadthalle in Olfen on Saturday, 21 February 2015, Henrichmann led the first ballot with 219 votes, ahead of Schulze Pellengahr (187) and Gerrit Tranel (132). Schulze Pellengahr won the runoff by 269 votes to 264. Henrichmann said he would consider whether to remain district chair. He stayed. A September 2021 Allgemeine Zeitung clipping in the same library records a further election as district chair with 94.4 percent. At the 60th district conference in the Bürgerhalle in Coesfeld, reported on 6 June 2023, delegates re-elected him with 130 of 142 votes (91.55 percent). District manager Hans-Peter Egger was leaving after 37 years, with Hendrik Klöpper named to succeed him.

The district chairmanship was also the route to the CDU candidacy for the Bundestag constituency made up of Kreis Coesfeld and Altenberge, Laer and Nordwalde in the Steinfurt district. In September 2016 the sitting member, Karl Schiewerling, said he would not run again after twelve years in parliament and put Henrichmann forward; the Coesfeld district executive adopted that proposal, and no other candidate stood. At the constituency delegates’ meeting in Dülmen on the evening of Thursday, 3 November 2016, Henrichmann, then 40, received 129 votes in favour and 27 against, reported as 82 percent, from delegates of Kreis Coesfeld and the three Steinfurt municipalities.

For the 2021 election, the Westfälische Nachrichten reported on 16 May that an assembly on the Freilichtbühne in Coesfeld had given him 56 yes votes and three no votes out of 59 representatives (94.92 percent). Christina Schulze Föcking, chair of the CDU in Kreis Steinfurt, attended. He was nominated a third time, again unopposed, for the election of 23 February 2025. The Allgemeine Zeitung reported on 22 November 2024 that the assembly for constituency 126, meeting in Billerbeck, recorded 104 votes for him among 109 participants, one ballot invalid (96.3 percent).

Municipal advisory roles

Separate from those party offices, he sat on committees as a sachkundiger Bürger, which is not membership of a municipal council or a Kreistag. The municipal code lets a council appoint such citizens to committees other than the main committee; the district code lets a Kreistag do the same. Appointment is voluntary. They are committee members with a vote. The statutes set them apart from sachkundige Einwohner, and from persons added so an unrepresented group can follow a committee, who have only a consultative voice. Their number must stay below that of the elected members. A committee is quorate only if more elected members than sachkundige Bürger are present, and is treated as quorate until a lack of quorum is declared. The codes republished on 1 November 2025 also require appointees to be at least 16 and otherwise eligible for the council or Kreistag.

The Bundestag biography states that Henrichmann was a sachkundiger Bürger of Havixbeck from 2008 to 2011 on the committee for economic development, tourism and culture, and from 2011 to 2023 a sachkundiger Bürger of Kreis Coesfeld on the committee for finance, economic development and digitalisation. On 12 October 2023 the CDU group on the Kreistag proposed that the district council, at its sitting of 24 October, replace him on that committee with Hendrik Klöpper.

Bundestag elections

2017 election

At the election to the 19th German Bundestag on 24 September 2017, Marc Henrichmann of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the direct mandate in Wahlkreis 127, Coesfeld – Steinfurt II, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Returning Officer's final result gave him 79,677 first votes, 51.6 percent, 4.4 percentage points below the CDU share in 2013. Of 192,946 eligible voters, 156,813 cast ballots, a turnout of 81.3 percent (up 2.7 points from 2013); 154,379 first votes were valid.

The constituency returning committee, meeting on 29 September 2017, identified the other constituency candidates and recorded the same percentage shares later published as final: Ulrich Hampel of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) 23.5 percent (36,250 votes), Daniel Fahr of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 10.5 percent (16,195), Friedrich Ostendorff of Alliance 90/The Greens 8.2 percent (12,680), and Dr. Gernod Röken of Die Linke 6.2 percent (9,577). The Alternative for Germany (AfD) fielded no constituency candidate; on second votes it took 6.1 percent (9,496). Second votes otherwise went to the CDU with 44.0 percent (68,636), the SPD 21.0 percent (32,787), the FDP 13.6 percent (21,116), the Greens 7.5 percent (11,667) and Die Linke 5.4 percent (8,394).

Members elected in 2017 took office at the constitutive sitting of the 19th Bundestag on 24 October 2017. The directly elected member for Wahlkreis 127 in the preceding, 18th Bundestag was Karl Schiewerling (CDU), who had sat in the Bundestag since 2005. At the 2013 election the CDU had won the same constituency with 56.1 percent of first votes (83,175), against 26.8 percent for the SPD, on a turnout of 78.5 percent.

2021 election

Henrichmann again won Wahlkreis 127 at the election of 26 September 2021, with 65,402 first votes, 40.9 percent, down 10.7 points from 2017. Turnout rose to 82.7 percent: 161,064 of 194,695 eligible voters participated, and 159,946 first votes were valid. The district returning officer's count, issued on 29 September 2021 as a preliminary result, named Johannes Waldmann (SPD) second and Dr. Anne Monika Spallek (Greens) third; their vote totals, 40,145 and 27,069, are those of the final result, 25.1 and 16.9 percent. The same local count named Arning (FDP) with 12,409 votes, Dr. Leonhard Martin (AfD) with 7,241, Klaus Julius Stegemann (Die Linke) with 4,242, Stephan Heitbaum of the Free Voters with 1,858 and Heinz Eul of the Grassroots Democratic Party (dieBasis) with 1,580, matching final shares of 7.8, 4.5, 2.7, 1.2 and 1.0 percent.

On second votes the CDU still led, with 34.5 percent (55,230), ahead of the SPD on 26.6 percent (42,647), the Greens on 15.9 percent (25,506), the FDP on 11.2 percent (17,927), the AfD on 4.6 percent (7,339) and Die Linke on 2.6 percent (4,093). The district returning officer stated that Spallek entered the Bundestag on the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens' state list, and noted that Ostendorff, who had represented the Greens in the Bundestag, had said in October 2020 that he would not stand again.

2025 election

The constituency was contested on 23 February 2025 as Wahlkreis 126, still named Coesfeld – Steinfurt II, in the election to the 21st Bundestag. The Federal Returning Officer's final result records Henrichmann as elected in the constituency with 76,819 first votes, 45.6 percent, up 4.7 points from 2021, and Waldmann (SPD) as runner-up with 34,152 votes, 20.3 percent. Turnout was 87.4 percent, up 4.7 points: 169,671 of 194,072 eligible voters took part, and 168,529 first votes were valid.

The constituency committee had admitted seven candidates on 24 January 2025. Besides Henrichmann (CDU) and Waldmann (SPD), they were Hanna Hüwe (Greens), Erwin Schwar (AfD), Sonja Crämer-Gembalczyk (Die Linke), Sebastian Loest (FDP) and Diana Diel (Volt Germany). The parties' final first-vote shares were 12.8 percent for the Greens (21,571), 12.2 percent for the AfD (20,615), 4.6 percent for Die Linke (7,708), 3.2 percent for the FDP (5,338) and 1.4 percent for Volt (2,326).

Second votes were led by the CDU on 40.2 percent (67,891, up 5.7 points), then the SPD on 17.9 percent (30,231, down 8.7), the Greens on 13.5 percent (22,841), the AfD on 12.6 percent (21,368, up 8.1), Die Linke on 5.5 percent (9,221), the FDP on 4.2 percent (7,159, down 7.0) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on 2.8 percent (4,776). Volt received 0.7 percent of second votes (1,143), and the Tierschutzpartei 1.0 percent (1,664).

The constituency

Coesfeld – Steinfurt II comprises the whole of Kreis Coesfeld and, from Kreis Steinfurt, the municipalities of Altenberge, Laer and Nordwalde. That territorial description was the same for Wahlkreis 127 in 2017 and 2021; for 2025 the constituency kept the name and the described area but was renumbered 126, and the numbers of the neighboring constituencies shifted with it. Kreis Coesfeld consists of eleven towns and municipalities: Ascheberg, Billerbeck, Coesfeld, Dülmen, Havixbeck, Lüdinghausen, Nordkirchen, Nottuln, Olfen, Rosendahl and Senden.

In the federal elections of 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 the direct mandate went to the CDU, with first-vote shares of 56.1, 51.6, 40.9 and 45.6 percent. The SPD was the runner-up in each of those four contests. The remaining municipalities of Kreis Steinfurt lay outside this seat, in other constituencies.

Committee work

Interior Committee

Henrichmann has been an ordinary member of the Bundestag interior committee in each term since he entered parliament, sitting for the CDU/CSU. In the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025) the body was the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community (Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat). In the 21st Bundestag his official biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on Internal Affairs (Innenausschuss). An independent membership register records the same ordinary seat for 2025–2029 and does not list him as a substitute on that committee.

The Innenausschuss has 42 members and a remit that runs from migration and asylum policy to civil protection and disaster relief. It is meant to hold internal security for the community and the civil rights of the individual in balance, to oversee the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the federal authorities under it, to prepare major bills before the plenary decides them, and to take evidence from experts. In the 19th term the committee secretariat described an added “Heimat” responsibility, defined as social cohesion and equivalent living conditions. Over that term the committee held 154 sittings, including 62 public hearings and 30 special sittings, and laid 228 recommendations before the plenary; of 117 bills referred to it as lead committee, 57 were in the end passed as law. The same note places the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education with that committee and records six meetings of the board during the term.

Digital policy, petitions and other committees

In the 19th Bundestag he was an ordinary member of the Petitions Committee and a substitute member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs (Ausschuss für Arbeit und Soziales), and the archived list of offices also names him as a secretary of the Bundestag (Schriftführer). That list, and the later membership register, do not place him on a digital-affairs committee or on the Parliamentary Oversight Panel during the 19th term.

The Petitions Committee is the Bundestag’s point of contact with citizens. Its 26 members take up requests, complaints and suggestions, whether made in a personal matter or in the general interest, and examine those that fall within federal competence; matters that belong to the Länder lie outside it because of the federal division of tasks. The 20th-term biography no longer lists the Petitions Committee, while it still lists Labour and Social Affairs as a substitute seat; the 21st-term biography lists neither, and the membership register matches that pattern.

In the 20th term he was a substitute member of the Committee on Digital Affairs (Ausschuss für Digitales) as well as of Labour and Social Affairs. In the 21st Bundestag he is a substitute member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation (Ausschuss für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung). That committee has 30 members and gathers digital change, concepts for a state fit for the future, digitalisation of administration and the cutting of bureaucracy, from rules on the use of artificial intelligence to simpler administrative procedures and legislation judged by its effects.

On 22 February 2024 the 20th Bundestag elected him to the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium); the election and his later work on the panel are treated in the section on intelligence oversight. In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the panel and, from its constitution on 26 June 2025, its chair.

Board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education

The board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) consists of 22 members of the Bundestag, with the parliamentary groups represented according to their strength in the house. At the beginning of an electoral term the President of the Bundestag appoints the members on proposals from the groups. The board reviews the agency’s work for effectiveness and political balance. The agency itself is a subordinate authority of the interior ministry. Its stated task is to help interested citizens deal with politics, to promote understanding of political questions, to strengthen democratic awareness and the willingness to take part in political life, and to do so independently and across party lines, with a network of state civic-education centres and other educational bodies. The board’s Bundestag contact runs through the interior-committee secretariat. Beside the 22 ordinary members, the Bundestag also names substitute members (stellvertretende Mitglieder).

In the 19th term Henrichmann was one of those substitute members, not an ordinary member and not a chair or deputy chair. In the 20th term the archived disclosure of offices in public-law bodies records him as deputy chair of the board from June 2022. The agency’s report for 2022–2023 lists him among the board’s members with that title; the chair in that period was Elisabeth Kaiser of the Social Democratic Party of Germany until June 2023, and Simona Koß, also of the SPD, from June 2023.

He did not keep the deputy chair into the 21st Bundestag. A Bundestag list of substitute members dated 11 September 2025 names “Henrichmann, Marc” on the CDU/CSU side, while the ordinary members are chaired by Christina Stumpp (CDU/CSU). The Bundestag’s own member feed for the board still listed him among the substitute members, and Stumpp as chair, when that feed was read on 28 October 2026.

Intelligence oversight

The Parliamentary Control Panel

Article 45d of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany requires the Bundestag to appoint a body to scrutinise federal intelligence work, with the detail left to statute. That body is the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, PKGr). It controls the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the Military Counterintelligence Service (Germany) (MAD) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The government must brief it on the services' general activity and on matters of particular importance. It may demand files and data, enter any service premises, and question staff, who must answer completely and truthfully.

Its deliberations are secret. Members stay bound to confidentiality, including toward other members of parliament and after they leave. A public assessment needs the prior consent of two-thirds of the members present; a dissenter may then publish a separate opinion, and the service presidents are heard in public once a year. The Bundestag elects the members from its own ranks and sets their number. Election requires the votes of a majority of the members of the Bundestag — the absolute majority of the house, the threshold known as the chancellor's majority — not a majority of ballots cast. A member who leaves the Bundestag or their parliamentary group loses the seat.

On 22 February 2024 the 20th Bundestag elected Henrichmann with 521 yes votes, above the required 369, on a CDU/CSU nomination. He replaced André Hahn of Die Linke, a member since 2014. After the split around Sahra Wagenknecht the Left fell below the size of a Fraktion and continued as a Gruppe; the administration then stopped inviting Hahn, who said the plenary had elected him personally for the term. The Federal Constitutional Court rejected his injunction that day without ruling on the merits. An Alternative for Germany nominee, Gereon Bollmann, received 68 yes votes and was not elected.

Chairmanship and membership disputes

The governing groups proposed nine members (printed paper 21/563). By group strength that was three Union seats, two each for the SPD and the AfD, and one each for the Greens and the Left. On 26 June 2025 only six candidates reached the required 316 votes. They were Heiko Hain of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (500), Henrichmann of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (502), Alexander Throm (CDU, 477), Daniel Baldy (477) and Sonja Eichwede (486) of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and Konstantin von Notz of Alliance 90/The Greens (406). Martin Hess and Gerold Otten of the AfD received 121 and 127 yes votes; Heidi Reichinnek of the Left received 260. The result was three CDU/CSU members, two Social Democrats and one Green. The same day, under vice-president Josephine Ortleb, the panel elected Henrichmann chair and von Notz, its previous chair, deputy. Other groups argued that a party observed by the domestic service, and one they linked to Russia and China, should not oversee that service. CSU state-group leader Alexander Hoffmann called Reichinnek's nomination a partisan provocation over her view of property rights. She replied that the constitution does not protect capitalism and that democratic groups customarily all sit on the panel. Left co-chair Sören Pellmann called the result a power play. SPD interior specialist Lars Castellucci said there was no reason not to elect her, unlike the AfD candidates. With some decisions requiring a two-thirds majority, one absence among six members can block part of the business.

Reported cases and the reform debate

Marc Henrichmann, chair of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel, in a tagesthemen interview on 6 October 2026 about the arrest of former BND president August Hanning.

Early on 6 October 2026 federal police arrested former BND president August Hanning at his house in Nordwalde, near Münster, and his former office chief, Manfred D., in Bavaria. Nordwalde lies in constituency 126, Coesfeld – Steinfurt II, the seat Henrichmann holds. The Federal Prosecutor General confirmed the arrests. NDR, WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported suspicions of treasonous espionage, reconnoitring state secrets, attempted treason and intelligence-agent activity against Hanning, and of aiding those offences against D., who had remained at the BND until spring 2026. Reporting said that, for money and until at least 2022, D. was suspected of passing about 2,000 secret documents, years after Hanning left office in November 2005. Nothing had yet been tried.

On tagesthemen that evening Henrichmann said the allegations had "shaken the foundations" and, if confirmed, entered "the realm of treason" by an official twenty years out of office. He demanded an investigation that left no stone unturned, noted that police rather than the BND had uncovered the case, and treated Hanning's reported insolvency as a vulnerability opposing services exploit. He doubted that earlier rules on what officials may do after leaving office were sufficient.

On 7 October 2026 the panel issued a public assessment under section 10(2), signed by Henrichmann (printed paper 21/8450). It recorded "the greatest concern", said the government had briefed it, and ordered its permanent commissioner to open an ad-hoc inspection under section 5a. It pointed back to its 10 May 2023 warning about unchecked private work by former officials with deep intelligence knowledge.

The arrest overlapped a cabinet bill, adopted in August 2026, to give the services operational powers beyond collecting intelligence. As Tagesschau summarised the draft, defined threat situations would allow the BfV and BND to divert cyber-attacks, disrupt weapons, enter homes covertly, search devices online and use artificial intelligence on data; the BND could keep content for six months and metadata for twelve, with targeted killing still forbidden and prior review by an Independent Control Council. Henrichmann told AFP that the post-1945 limit to information-gathering no longer matched disinformation, hacking and sabotage, so the services had to react themselves. After the arrest he rejected putting them "back on a short leash" of bureaucracy, and argued instead for operational powers paired with stronger parliamentary and judicial control.

Von Notz accepted wider BND powers against what he called daily Russian attack, but called the domestic expansion, including covert entry of homes, "a serious mistake" and "excessive", and doubted it would survive the Federal Constitutional Court. Wolfgang Kubicki of the Free Democratic Party (Germany) called the bill a historical breach of a taboo and said he wanted no secret police. For the Left, Clara Bünger described operational powers and state "hack-backs" as a new secret police. AfD member Gottfried Curio called the domestic plans a "Stasi 2.0", while supporting operational powers for the BND.

Positions on domestic security

As a CDU member of the Bundestag Interior Committee, Henrichmann has argued on weapons rules, migration measures tied to policing, and what he calls hybrid threats.

Firearms law

In an open letter the Verband Deutscher Büchsenmacher und Waffenfachhändler published on 14 October 2024, Henrichmann called himself the CDU/CSU group's rapporteur on weapons law; the association used the same title. From 2014 to 2017 he was managing director of the Jägerstiftung natur+mensch. He has described himself as a hunter.

He opposed the weapons clauses of the then coalition's security package after the attacks in Mannheim and Solingen, which he treated as Islamist. The Solingen attacker, he wrote in a PIRSCH commentary and in the letter, had used a knife already barred by section 42 of the Weapons Act at a festival where knives were forbidden, so the draft would not have stopped him, while wider reliability checks would put legal hunters, sport shooters and collectors under general suspicion and overload weapons authorities. He preferred individual bans under section 41 against people judged dangerous, enforced by the police.

On 18 October 2024 he voted against the bill "to improve internal security and the asylum system." Abgeordnetenwatch describes it as tightening the Weapons Act so extremists and terrorists would find weapons harder to obtain and easier to remove, and as also changing asylum and domestic-intelligence rules. The Bundestag passed it, 357 to 289, with eight abstentions.

In April 2015, before he entered parliament, he told the Nordwest-Zeitung that joy at the wolf's return was not the same as acceptance, and that "the wolf belongs in hunting law," citing animals seen without fear of people. In February 2025 Cosima Lindemann of NABU Rheinland-Pfalz argued the opposite for that state's law: listing the wolf would only seem to protect livestock keepers and could increase kills if shooting replaced herd protection, which she called the only largely effective measure.

Migration and policing

On 31 January 2025 he voted for the CDU/CSU draft to limit what it called the illegal influx of third-country nationals. Abgeordnetenwatch summarises the bill as suspending family reunification for people with subsidiary protection, letting the federal police end residence at certain stations, and restoring "limitation" as an aim of the Residence Act. The Bundestag rejected it, 349 to 338, with five FDP abstentions.

In September 2025, with the Interior Ministry reported as counting 1,867 voluntary Syrian departures that year, he told Bild that staying must not be the better economic choice: "It must not be an economic decision." He asked for stabilisation and security cooperation so people could "in good conscience" be told they could leave, said new arrivals in Europe should not know which country they would reach lest social benefits be the motive, and urged a Bürgergeld reform aimed at recognised refugees unwilling to integrate or work.

After a suspected Islamist attack on Berlin's Christopher Street Day in July 2026, he told Handelsblatt that liberty rights of known extremists and Islamists "must no longer be overstated, at the latest when life and limb are endangered," and that such a "declaration of war" should not be met "with kid gloves." He asked for data exchange, analysis, "appropriate stockpiling of data," and longer evaluation of material on terrorist suspects. SPD interior specialist Sebastian Fiedler told Deutschlandfunk that the criminal law was less the problem than its application, and that higher penalties demanded only because an offence had occurred were too simple.

In August 2026, after tens of thousands of migrants reached Ceuta, he told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that a hybrid attack on the European Union could not be excluded, listing as plausible, without a "smoking gun," Moroccan pressure as in 2021, smugglers, or Russian social-media bots as claimed by Ukraine. Baltic, Polish and Scandinavian services, he said, already knew "migration as a weapon." Der Spiegel reported that Spain said almost all of those who entered had returned.

Cybersecurity and hybrid threats

In July 2025 he told ZDF frontal that he shared Thomas Haldenwang's formula, "Russia is the storm, China is climate change," describing Russian action as open, from the shadow fleet to unmarked soldiers, and Chinese action as espionage behind trade. He favoured detaining suspicious Baltic tankers and questioning crews, as Finland and Estonia had done, rather than sinking ships. Files the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) received from partners, he said, still had to be blacked out by hand before sharing.

After an explosive drone was found at Leipzig/Halle Airport, he told the Rheinische Post that cyberattacks, sabotage, espionage and unauthorised drones were "now a reality for which we must be better prepared," and that the BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution needed powers to detect threats early. On Welt TV on 11 August 2026 he said collection alone would not suffice: the services should ideally disable a drone, or the factory making it, in Russia before it threatened a German airport — "The best drone is the one that never takes off." He linked that aim to an intelligence-law reform he said he was helping to prepare. Deutschlandfunk reported that the draft would let the BND, in defined cases, intervene to avert danger rather than only collect information.

Konstantin von Notz of Alliance 90/The Greens called such a reform overdue but said parliamentary control was not being strengthened. The Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte feared a "massive increase in the power of the intelligence services"; Kai Dittmann said wider state trojans, artificial-intelligence analysis "practically without safeguards," access to private cameras and hackbacks would cut into fundamental rights at thresholds that were vague and too low, and called much of the draft unconstitutional.

Outside offices and disclosed interests

Civil protection and data protection

The Bundestag’s register of outside interests lists Marc Henrichmann as president of the THW-Landesvereinigung Nordrhein-Westfalen e.V., with Hilden given as the place—an office the 2021–2025 disclosure dates from November 2022—and, from 18 April 2026, as honorary vice-president of the THW-Bundesvereinigung e.V. in Berlin. The association lists him as president. Its statute names the body Vereinigung der Helfer und Förderer des Technischen Hilfswerkes Nordrhein-Westfalen and places the registered seat in Gelsenkirchen.

These are helper and support associations, not command posts in the Technisches Hilfswerk. The state statute describes a charitable body supporting the Bundesanstalt, civil protection and youth work, and not a competitor of the agency or of the helpers’ elected representation. The federal association describes itself as a partner that supports the Bundesanstalt financially, materially and otherwise and lobbies for volunteers. On 5 May 2026 the Bundesanstalt reported that the association’s assembly had in mid-April re-elected Martin Gerster as president and that the vice-presidencies would pass to Henrichmann, Maik Pawlowsky and Markus Jaugitz; Andrea Lindholz and Christian Herrmann did not stand again. Sabine Lackner, president of the Bundesanstalt, congratulated Gerster. The association states that Henrichmann was elected vice-president in April 2026 with 98 per cent of the vote.

The disclosure also lists him on the advisory board of the Stiftung Datenschutz in Leipzig and on the foundation council of the Jägerstiftung natur+mensch. The Bundestag elected him to that unpaid board on 14 February 2019 as a CDU/CSU nominee; it advises the executive board and administrative council. The foundation, set up in 2013 and based in Leipzig, calls itself an independent body for promoting data protection and a forum on data policy. On 13 November 2025 the Bundestag elected new parliamentary members—for the CDU/CSU, Joachim Ebmeyer, David Gregosz and Stephan Mayer—and not Henrichmann. The foundation’s May 2026 list does not name him either, although the disclosure still does.

The 2021–2025 disclosure also recorded him, from June 2022, as deputy chair of the Kuratorium of the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Bonn; that office is treated with his parliamentary roles.

Savings-bank advisory role and side income

He is disclosed as an honorary member of the advisory board of Sparkasse Westmünsterland in Dülmen. A 2025 council paper in Nottuln describes the board as advising the executive board on the regional economy, keeping contact with the public and local business, and making suggestions. It lists regional Bundestag members as ex officio members and records no financial effect for the municipality from filling a council seat.

The paid activity now disclosed is his law practice, Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Marc Henrichmann in Havixbeck: for 2026, 2,489.72 euro gross from client 76, a private individual. For 2021–2025 the archive gives further gross sums from the same practice: client 19, other services, 5,364.64 euro in 2022 and 7,672.01 euro in 2024, and client 66, a private individual, 1,456.61 euro in 2022. On 29 October 2024 the Allgemeine Zeitung reported 14,493 euro in notifiable side income since autumn 2021, of which 7,672 euro fell in 2024 and the rest in 2022, from that practice. Published figures are gross, including compensation and benefits in kind; expenses are not deducted, and the sum is not taxable income.

For 2017–2021 the archive records a profit share, marked “Gewinn”, from Rechtsanwälte Henning, Henrichmann & Dr. Carré-Jersch GbR in Havixbeck: level 4 in 2017, level 5 in 2018, level 4 in 2019, level 3 in 2020 and level 2 in 2021. Under the ten-level scale used for those disclosures, level 1 was 1,000 to 3,500 euro and the next levels ran up to 7,000, 15,000, 30,000 and 50,000 euro. Where a gross partnership figure could not be established, the distributed profit share was published instead.

Personal life

Family and residence

The Bundestag biography of Marc Henrichmann, which an editorial note says rests on members' own statements, records that he was born on 1 June 1976 in Münster, is Roman Catholic, is married and has one child, and does not name his spouse or child. It gives no private home address, places his law practice in Havixbeck, and the disclosures beside it still list Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Marc Henrichmann there. His Bundestag office is at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and his constituency office is at Zapfeweg 18, 48653 Coesfeld.

In June 2023 the Westfälische Nachrichten called him a Havixbeck man who kept a flat in Berlin. A CDU page in Rosendahl from the 19th Bundestag says he grew up in Havixbeck, and a profile revised on 21 October 2026, citing the 2021 candidate list, still gives Havixbeck as his residence for that election. CDU Coesfeld pages with a 2026 copyright line, but still using constituency number 127, list Havixbeck contact addresses at Oststraße 28 and Johannesstraße 5 without calling either a home. On 17 February 2025 Berlin Morgen wrote that he had for some months been living with his family in Münster. The Bundestag page dated 28 October 2026, and the CDU/CSU group profile, which gives Münster only as his birthplace, do not repeat that claim.

Associations

The same self-reported biography lists Kolpingfamilie Havixbeck, the DRK, Hegering Nottuln-Havixbeck, the Reit- und Fahrverein Havixbeck-Hohenholte and the St. Dionysius Bruderschaft Havixbeck.

Kolpingfamilie Havixbeck is a local group of the Kolping Society (Kolpingwerk). The national body describes a Kolpingsfamilie as its local unit and its members as a Christian community for fellowship, faith, education and action.

The entry "DRK" names no branch. The German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) describes itself as Germany's national society in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, assisting people in conflict, disaster and social or medical need.

Hegering Nottuln-Havixbeck is one of eleven local hunting groups of the Kreisjägerschaft Coesfeld, a district association of more than 2,500 members within the state and national hunting associations, concerned with game populations and their habitats.

The Reit- und Fahrverein Havixbeck-Hohenholte is a riding and carriage-driving club at Herkentrup 4 in Havixbeck. The Westfälische Nachrichten reported in 2025 that it was founded in 1925, merged with the Hohenholte club in 1965 and had about 350 members.

The St. Dionysius Bruderschaft Havixbeck describes itself as part of the Catholic parish of St Dionysius and St George, tracing its tradition to a late-medieval burial confraternity, and it holds an annual Schützenfest. Its website has reported 712 members.