Marlon Bröhr

Marlon Andreas Paul Bröhr (born 3 April 1974 in Geilenkirchen) is a German dentist and politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). He has been a member of the Bundestag in the CDU/CSU group since 2021, holding the constituency seat of Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück in Rhineland-Palatinate. In the 2021 German federal election, held on 26 September 2021, he received 45,364 first votes as the CDU candidate in constituency 200 Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück, more than any other candidate, and the constituency electoral committee declared him elected to the 20th Bundestag. The federal returning officer recorded the CDU share of valid first votes there at 34.3 percent, on a turnout of 78.7 percent. At the 2025 German federal election he was returned in constituency 199, still named Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück, with 53,505 first votes (38.2 percent); the runner-up was Umut Kurt of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, on 19.3 percent, and turnout was 84.3 percent.

Bröhr attended the Bischöfliche Marienschule in Mönchengladbach from 1984 to 1993, spent 1989–90 on an exchange in Groton, South Dakota, and passed the Abitur in 1993. He studied dentistry at RWTH Aachen University from 1993 to 1998, worked as a preparatory assistant in the Aachen practice of Martin Emmerich, and took his doctorate at RWTH Aachen in 2002. From 2003 to 2006 he kept his own dental practice in Kastellaun.

From 2007 to 2014 he was mayor of the town of Kastellaun and of the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun, serving as Stadtbürgermeister from 2009 to 2014, and from 2015 to 2021 he was Landrat (district administrator) of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in the Hunsrück. In that office he brought criminal complaints against Protestant pastors whose parishes had given church asylum to nine people from Sudan; in April 2019 the Landgericht Bad Kreuznach quashed warrants to search parish offices and the pastors’ private studies, finding no apparent offence of aiding unlawful residence because the stays had been reported to the foreigners’ authority. In April 2021 he went to court in a private capacity against a night-time curfew that the district under his authority had imposed. On 12 April 2021 the Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz refused interim relief (3 L 313/21.KO): with a seven-day incidence above 100, it held that the public interest in enforcing the order outweighed his interest in being spared it for the time being.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member and the Obmann (group spokesperson) of the Petitions Committee and a full member of the Defence Committee. He is a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and a deputy member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The same official biography, drawn from members’ own disclosures, records that he is married with two children, and that since July 2024 he has also sat on the Rhein-Hunsrück district council. His published outside posts are chair of the supervisory board of the citizen-energy cooperative HunsrückSonne Kastellaun, a seat on the administrative board and a deputy seat on the credit committee of Kreissparkasse Rhein-Hunsrück, and the presidency of the Rhein-Hunsrück district branch of the German Red Cross.

Early life and education

Schooling in Mönchengladbach and South Dakota

Marlon Andreas Paul Bröhr was born on 3 April 1974 in Geilenkirchen, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The curriculum vitae printed with his dental dissertation names his parents as Manfred Bröhr, a Notar (civil-law notary), and Ute Bröhr-Locatelli, listed there as a homemaker. He was educated in Mönchengladbach, at the Grundschule Lochnerallee from 1980 to 1984 and then, from 1984 to 1993, at the Bischöfliche Marienschule, a Catholic Gymnasium.

The Marienschule was founded in 1830 as a Höhere Töchterschule and, under a Franciscan order, remained a girls' Gymnasium until 1980, when the Diocese of Aachen assumed sponsorship and introduced coeducation. In 1987, while Bröhr was a pupil, the school left the Kaiserstraße site it had used since 1895 for a building on Viersener Straße. He took the Abitur there in 1993.

In the 1989–1990 school year he attended Groton High School in Groton, South Dakota. His Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own information, records the same year abroad in Groton. A November 2017 Rhein-Zeitung profile, published while he was Landrat of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, noted that he had lived for a time in the United States and had studied dentistry in Aachen from 1993 to 1998.

Dentistry and doctorate at RWTH Aachen

From 1993 to 1998 Bröhr studied dentistry (Zahnheilkunde) at RWTH Aachen University. In 1998 he received the Approbation as a dentist, the state license to practice, which is distinct from the research doctorate he completed later. The Bundestag biography next lists him as a Vorbereitungsassistent in the Aachen practice of Dr. Martin Emmerich; his own site dates that assistantship to 1999–2002 and calls the post Assistenzarzt. Under section 3 of the Zulassungsverordnung für Vertragszahnärzte, registration for practice with the statutory health-insurance system requires the Approbation and, in the ordinary case, a preparatory period of at least two years, part of which must be spent as an assistant or deputy to a contracted dentist.

The medical faculty accepted his dissertation for the degree of doctor of dentistry (Dr. med. dent.), with the oral examination on 11 March 2002. The title page names as reviewers Professor B. Heintz—Bernhard Heintz in the university catalogue—and University Professor J. Greven. The thesis, Einfluß unterschiedlicher klinischer und anamnestischer Parameter auf die Erfolgsaussichten der perkutanen transluminalen renalen Angioplastie: eine retrospektive Studie, appeared the same year on the university's publication server.

It examines percutaneous transluminal angioplasty of the renal artery as a treatment for renovascular hypertension. From 1993 to 1998 the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the University Hospital of RWTH Aachen, then directed by Professor R. W. Günther, carried out the procedure on 171 patients after a renal-artery stenosis had been diagnosed. The analysis followed 116 of them—those with a morphologically successful dilation of a single-sided stenosis and no recurrence—for up to two years, drawing on hospital files and later information from family doctors about blood pressure and drugs. Bröhr compared women and men, smokers and non-smokers, patients younger than 64 with those 64 and older, atherosclerotic with fibromuscular disease, and cases treated with and without a stent. For the comparison he defined a blood-pressure index that assigned points by blood-pressure grade and added two points for each antihypertensive drug.

Among the 116 patients, the stenosis was attributed to atherosclerosis in 100 and to fibromuscular dysplasia in 16, and the summary reports a more favorable course of pressure, medication and the index in the fibromuscular group. The stent group started at 16 patients, fell to two after one year and to one after two years, and the thesis treats that comparison as not representative. Mean serum creatinine moved from 1.22 mg/dl before angioplasty to 1.04 mg/dl at two years. Creatinine clearance, measured only immediately before and after the procedure, changed from 77.2 to 80.3 ml/min, which the text describes as no meaningful improvement.

Municipal offices in Kastellaun

Dental practice

Before he held municipal office, Bröhr worked as a dentist. A biography issued for the 20th electoral period of the Bundestag, compiled from his own information, records a preparatory assistantship (Vorbereitungsassistent) in the Aachen practice of Martin Emmerich, a doctorate in 2002, and then self-employed practice in Kastellaun. Kastellaun is a town in the Hunsrück, in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis of Rhineland-Palatinate. His curriculum vitae dates the Kastellaun practice more narrowly, to 2003–2006. The same span appears on a Bundestag information page that likewise relies on members’ own biographical statements, which then moves directly to municipal office in 2007. The shorter 20th-period text instead places the start in 2002 and gives no end year. Abgeordnetenwatch lists his professional qualification as dentist and his place of residence as Kastellaun.

Mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde and of the town

The offices were exercised from the Rathaus, which the municipality says was occupied in 1970, after two earlier town halls on the same site, and given its present façade at the end of the 1980s. It is the seat of the administration of the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun, described there as the administration for the town and 34 villages, and it houses both the Verbandsgemeinde mayor and the mayor of the town.

In Rhineland-Palatinate a Verbandsgemeinde mayor is chosen by popular vote. The state returning officer’s list of Verbandsgemeinde mayors elected up to 2008 gives the Kastellaun result immediately before Bröhr’s as that of 27 September 1998, when Fritz Frey, with EB rather than a party name in the party column, received 89.5 percent. The Kastellaun branch of the Social Democratic Party later described Frey as a former Verbandsbürgermeister of the town and the Verbandsgemeinde.

The next direct election did not produce a majority on the first ballot. The Trierischer Volksfreund, reporting the count of 17 September 2006, wrote that Bröhr stood as an independent candidate even though he was a member of the Christian Democratic Union. He received 41.8 percent of valid votes, the CDU’s candidate Ralf Hippert 33.8 percent, and Karl Maull of the SPD 24.4 percent, so Maull dropped out and a runoff was set for 1 October. Bröhr told the paper he was almost speechless with surprise; Hippert said the intermediate target had been met and the race was open again. The returning officer’s table, whose columns are election day, Verbandsgemeinde, name, party and percentage, records the 1 October 2006 result in Kastellaun as Dr. Marlon Bröhr, with EB in the party column, on 65.9 percent. The Volksfreund report is what identifies that EB candidacy as an independent run by someone who was already a CDU member, not as a run by someone outside the party. A Bundestag information page drawn from his own statements dates the Verbandsgemeinde mayoralty from 2007.

The town mayoralty was a separate, honorary office. At the communal elections of 7 June 2009 the returning officer’s list of elected honorary Ortsbürgermeister and Stadtbürgermeister enters “Kastellaun, Stadt” as Dr. Bröhr, Marlon, CDU, 74.4 percent. The same self-reported Bundestag biography places the Stadtbürgermeister office in 2009–2014 and carries the Verbandsgemeinde post through 2014. The abbreviated Bundestag biography does not separate the two: it has a single entry, “Bürgermeister der Stadt und Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun”, for 2007–2014.

Both of those datings end in 2014. On 25 May 2014 Rhineland-Palatinate held communal elections that included a large number of mayoral contests as well as the councils. In the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun the mayoralty went to a runoff. The Rhein-Zeitung reported on 8 June 2014 that Christian Keimer had won by 66.7 percent to 33.3 percent and was the successor of the incumbent, Marlon Bröhr; the caption to the result graphic named Bröhr’s wife as Nandi and recorded her among those congratulating Keimer and his wife, Sandra. A later list of direct mayoral elections published by the state returning officer records Christian Helmut Keimer as elected in Kastellaun on 16 January 2022 with 81.1 percent, standing under the voter-group name Keimer.

Landrat of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis

Election and term of office

On 28 September 2014 the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, in Rhineland-Palatinate, elected Marlon Bröhr of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as Landrat, the directly elected head of the district administration. He succeeded Bertram Fleck, also of the CDU, who had held the office for 26 years and did not stand again. The only other candidate was Michael Maurer of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The district’s final result gave Bröhr 20,085 votes (68.7 percent) and Maurer 9,153 (31.3 percent), on a turnout of 35.8 percent among 82,899 eligible voters, so no runoff was required. An election-night count in the Rhein-Zeitung was marginally higher, at 68.8 percent (20,163 votes) to 31.2 percent (9,157), with turnout of 35.9 percent. In the final figures his strongest area was the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun, where he had been mayor, at 80.0 percent.

Bröhr took over from Fleck on 3 May 2015. He did not stand when the office was filled again. By the January 2022 election he was described as the Landrat who had moved to the Bundestag, and the contest was held to choose his successor.

Energy transition and municipal economy

The district’s renewable-energy policy predated Bröhr. The Agency for Renewable Energies, profiling the county in November 2018, called Fleck one of the initiators of a decentralised transition and dated the build-out from a single wind turbine in 1995, then sized for about 200 households.

The programme continued under Bröhr rather than beginning with him. Deutsche Welle reported in November 2017 that the district generated about three times as much renewable electricity as its roughly 102,000 inhabitants used. At a documentary premiere on 5 November 2018, Bröhr and state environment minister Ulrike Höfken of Alliance 90/The Greens said wind, sun and biomass covered about 300 percent of electricity consumption. Bröhr put annual municipal value added from renewables and efficiency savings at about 44 million euros, local-council reserves at 84 million euros, and municipal debt in the district at about 20 percent of the Rhineland-Palatinate average. The agency’s 2018 profile repeated those figures, counted 271 turbines supplying electricity for more than 300,000 households, and said 60 of 137 municipalities received wind-lease income. It also recorded about 4,400 photovoltaic systems, covering 18 percent of electricity demand, and described the district as one of the first inland counties with a balance-sheet zero for emissions from electricity, heat and waste. After 2015 Fleck continued, at the request of Bröhr and the district bodies, as honorary ambassador of the local transition.

In November 2018 the district received the first “Energie-Kommune des Jahrzehnts” title, at the Zukunftsforum Energiewende in Kassel. Bröhr accepted it with Fleck and climate-protection manager Frank-Michael Uhle; the prize cited engagement by residents and municipalities, not a programme identified with one Landrat.

The Mittelrheinbrücke dispute

A fixed Rhine crossing between Sankt Goar and Sankt Goarshausen, near the Lorelei in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, stayed unresolved during the term. The dispute was over responsibility. Transport minister Volker Wissing of the Free Democratic Party favoured a district road, with state grants; Bröhr treated the bridge as a state road so the district would not finance and maintain it.

In June 2017 the Kreistag groups of the SPD, the Free Voters and the FDP asked Bröhr to agenda a motion commissioning the state mobility agency, for a fee, to prepare a Raumordnungsverfahren (regional planning procedure), requesting that the state open it quickly, and leaving further spending to an agreement with the state and the neighbouring district. He refused, arguing that the council could discuss only its own tasks and that a report and the state court of audit pointed to a state or federal bridge. The groups sued. Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that they, like the Rhein-Lahn district, had a contribution of about 100,000 euros in view.

On 23 January 2018 the Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz (1 K 759/17.KO) largely upheld the claim. The motion had to go on the next agenda as the item “Mittelrheinbrücke”, subject to the council board’s consent. The court held that a locally rooted project gave the council a right to discuss it even if another authority would decide, and that a Landrat could block such a motion only where the lack of competence was obvious. The studies Bröhr cited did not meet that test: they rested on a 2009 traffic survey using data from 2000 and did not show where crossing journeys began and ended. An appeal lay to the Oberverwaltungsgericht, and one was pending between Bröhr and the three groups.

The Kreistag dealt with the motion on 12 March 2018 and backed a spatial-planning procedure. The same sitting rejected, by 22 votes with 20 abstentions, placing the bridge on the district road-building programme. Bröhr called that a unanimous refusal of municipal sponsorship, while noting that the council welcomed joint planning with the state. He then asked that the appeal be treated as moot, and the plaintiff groups agreed. On 13 April 2018 the court said no hearing was required; spokesman Thomas Stahnecker said the proceedings were finished.

Succession

On 16 January 2022 no candidate won a majority. Of 83,631 eligible voters, 39.47 percent took part. The Rhein-Zeitung gave Christian Klein of the CDU 35.5 percent and the independent Volker Boch 34.2 percent. The Wochenspiegel’s preliminary final count put the independent Rita Lanius-Heck, the first district deputy, at 27.19 percent and Roger Mallmenn of the Left at 3.15 percent.

In the runoff on 30 January Boch received 17,437 votes (56 percent) and Klein 13,677 (44 percent), on a turnout of 37.6 percent. N-tv reported that the SPD and the Greens had supported Boch, that his best share was 62.8 percent in the Verbandsgemeinde Simmern-Rheinböllen, and that Klein led in Boppard with 55.8 percent. The result ended continuous CDU tenure of the office since 1980. On the evening of 3 March 2022, at a council session in Simmern with interior minister Roger Lewentz present, Lanius-Heck formally installed Boch as Landrat.

Disputes over asylum, deportation and pandemic rules

While Landrat of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, Marlon Bröhr of the Christian Democratic Union was party to three public legal disputes: criminal complaints he filed over church asylum and over a primary-school protest against a removal, and a private lawsuit against a night-time COVID-19 restriction he had signed on a state instruction.

Church asylum and the 2019 searches

In 2018 congregations of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland in the Hunsrück, including Rheinböllen, Büchenbeuren and Kirchberg, gave church asylum to nine people from Sudan whom the district administration in Simmern sought to transfer to Italy under the Dublin Regulation. In June a police attempt to end one church asylum was stopped by the Rhineland-Palatinate integration ministry, which forbade force and proposed mediation. Bröhr declined, telling the Protestant press service that the authority had no discretion and that talks with the church were already respectful.

On 30 August 2018 he confirmed complaints in nine cases, against congregation officers and the refugees. Unlawful residence was an offence, he said, and assisting it was potentially criminal; filing the complaints had been his duty. He called it deeply troubling that even the smallest parish could paralyse the asylum system, and said church asylum was tradition, not statute: parliament should regulate it, or the law should bind the churches too. He added that he wanted no confrontation with the church. The regional church replied that parishes acted only after finding a concrete humanitarian hardship, so the state could review its own decision. In a Monitor interview of 14 March 2019 he called church asylum a pre-medieval practice no longer needed in a state under the rule of law.

The prosecutor's office in Bad Kreuznach investigated five pastors, among them Wolfgang Jöst in Rheinböllen, for aiding unlawful residence. On the morning of 31 January 2019 more than a dozen officers searched, at the same time, offices and private workrooms of three pastors in Kirchberg and one each in Büchenbeuren and Rheinböllen. Warrants had been sought, the prosecution said, because documents were not produced in time; it initially left unread material that might contain pastoral records. The regional church and the defence called the searches disproportionate, because the authorities already knew where the Sudanese were and unrelated pastoral data had been taken. Jöst described the searches as feeling like a raid. Präses Manfred Rekowski called church asylum a matter of individual hardship, not a threat to the constitutional order.

On 5 April 2019 the Landgericht Bad Kreuznach, in case 2 Qs 42/19, held that this open church asylum was not punishable aiding under section 95(1) no. 2 of the Residence Act and section 27 of the Criminal Code. The persons were obliged to leave once a hardship dossier with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had ended, and church asylum gives no right to a tolerated stay. Housing and support were still "neutral" acts: the pastor had repeatedly reported their location, so non-removal was the authority's choice, taken out of respect for the church, not concealment. A wider reading would, the court said, criminalise landlords, doctors and donors of clothing. On 12 April the court announced that no criminal conduct by the pastors was discernible, quashed the search warrants and ordered seized material returned. The prosecution said the investigation was not yet closed. Its account to reporters was that the judges had found no initial suspicion against the pastors: the authorities could have removed the Sudanese and had not done so.

On 13 June 2019 the prosecution discontinued the cases against the five pastors, two women and three men in Protestant reports. It did not treat the April ruling as removing all suspicion. Church news services gave the ground as slight guilt and disproportionate effort. Another agency report said the office still held, citing the Federal Court of Justice, that aid need only "somehow promote" the offence and that church asylum had encouraged the Sudanese to stay, but that no appeal lay against the Landgericht, so the case stopped.

The Bad Salzig teachers’ letter

On 9 November 2018, the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, authorities removed a five-person Armenian family from Haus Helvetia in Bad Salzig, part of Boppard. The Rhein-Zeitung reported that several court decisions underlay the removal. Teachers at the Grundschule Bad Salzig wrote to the district foreigners' authority on school paper, over the collective signature "Lehrerinnen und Lehrer der Grundschule Bad Salzig", which the head teacher confirmed. The letter asked "9 November 1938? No, 9 November 2018!" and said the family had been "deported" to Frankfurt. Bröhr said a line had been crossed: public servants had equated police and the foreigners' authority, carrying out a legal duty, with the murderers of the Nazi dictatorship. He filed an insult complaint against the unnamed teachers and, a local report of 13 December 2018 added, a supervisory complaint in the school service.

By early April 2019 the Bad Kreuznach prosecution was reported to have discontinued the investigation; Bröhr had not then commented. On 13 June 2019 senior prosecutor Martin Brandt told the Rhein-Zeitung that a second insult complaint by Bröhr against the same teachers, over that removal and the word "deported", had also already been dropped. Those reports confirm the discontinuation. They do not quote a finding that the letter was covered by freedom of expression.

The 2021 curfew challenge

In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, the district's seven-day incidence exceeded 100 on five consecutive days. The state health ministry, under the 18th coronavirus ordinance, required Bröhr to issue a model general order. The order of 7 April barred leaving home between 21:00 and 05:00 except for a valid reason, reported first as lasting until 20 April and, before the higher court, until 25 April. As a private citizen he said a red line had been crossed: no night-time infection had been shown in the rural district, and spread was by day. Christian Keimer, mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun, objected in his own name. Bröhr was the second Landrat in the state, after Joachim Streit of Bitburg-Prüm, to sue privately against his own order.

On 12 April 2021 the Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz refused interim relief (3 L 313/21.KO). Exit restrictions were lawful in principle during an epidemic of national scope, but proportionality, including the evidence on curfews and local infections, needed a full hearing. With the merits open, protection of health and of the health system, at an incidence above 100, outweighed a temporary exemption. Bröhr had not shown a severe personal effect, and a valid reason already allowed going out.

Both appealed. On 23 April 2021 the Oberverwaltungsgericht dismissed Bröhr's complaint. The orders, 6 B 10553/21.OVG and 6 B 10567/21.OVG, also covered a resident of Bad Dürkheim. The merits stayed open after the federal "emergency brake" of that day, which restricted going out from 22:00. The district rule was stricter: it began at 21:00 and, unlike section 28b of the Infection Protection Act, allowed no solitary exercise outdoors between 22:00 and midnight. The state had said it would align its ordinance, so little time remained. A later finding of unlawfulness would cause no lasting harm, and immediate enforcement therefore prevailed. The Rhein-Zeitung reported that Keimer had received an equivalent rejection earlier that week.

Contest for the CDU lead candidacy

Candidacy against Christian Baldauf

The contest was for the lead candidacy of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Rhineland-Palatinate ahead of the 2021 state election, in which the party would campaign for the Landtag against Minister-President Malu Dreyer of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). On the evening of 17 June 2019 the state executive, meeting in Mainz, unanimously accepted a proposal by state chair Julia Klöckner, then federal minister of food and agriculture, that Landtag group leader Christian Baldauf take the role. Klöckner herself declined to lead the campaign; the executive’s nomination still had to be confirmed by a party conference.

Bröhr, Landrat of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, had already objected to the way seats on that executive were filled. At the state party conference in Wittlich on 18 November 2016 he stood for one of 15 assessor posts although his Bezirk had not nominated him. He told delegates that the party could not go on as it was and called for an end to “Postengeschacher” and proportional thinking about offices; among 16 candidates he recorded by far the worst result and was not elected.

On 29 October 2019, in Simmern in the Hunsrück, the 45-year-old dentist announced that he would oppose Baldauf at the conference set for 16 November in Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Standing before a poster with the slogan “Rheinland-Pfalz kann mehr!”, he presented himself as a credible fresh start after 30 years in which the CDU had not won a Landtag election, citing his own wins as honorary mayor, mayor of a Verbandsgemeinde and Landrat. He called the financing of municipalities the most urgent question in state politics, said the state government was squeezing them “like a lemon”, and promised that if he became minister-president he would give local authorities an immediate 500 million euros from the state budget. He wanted the lead candidate chosen by the membership rather than by delegates—a motion to that effect had been filed by the CDU local association in Kirchberg, in his county—and said that if he lost the vote he would stand behind Baldauf “like a man”. Within the party he was criticised for refusing to fit into its structures.

The November 2019 party conference

The conference met on 16 November 2019 in the Saalbau in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, where former minister-president Bernhard Vogel was among those present. Delegates first rejected the Kirchberg motion for a membership ballot by a large majority, and only then voted on the candidate. Klöckner opened the sitting with a call for a fair contest and again backed Baldauf, whom the June nomination and his long service as opposition leader had made the favourite. Bröhr, who had no experience in state-level office and had declared his candidacy only two and a half weeks earlier, spoke for just under 20 minutes and drew little applause; Baldauf spoke for about half an hour.

Of 400 valid votes, Baldauf received 321, or 80.25 percent, and Bröhr 79. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reporting from Neustadt, described the challenge as a rebellion from the Hunsrück that had come to nothing. Bröhr was the second person to congratulate Baldauf and said he would stand beside the lead candidate and work as part of the team. Klöckner called the margin a convincing result after a fair contest and pointed to the unity with which the state party would enter the campaign.

Baldauf led the CDU into the election on 14 March 2021. The party took 27.7 percent of the list vote and 31 of 101 seats, behind the SPD on 35.7 percent and 39 seats, and did not replace Dreyer’s SPD-led government.

Bundestag elections

Nomination in 2021

The Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück seat had been held for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) by Peter Bleser, whom regional reporting described as having represented the constituency in the Bundestag for 30 years. Bleser, the CDU direct candidate at previous elections, did not stand in 2021.

On 9 January 2021 a joint delegate meeting of the CDU district associations of Rhein-Hunsrück, Cochem-Zell and Bernkastel-Wittlich, held in the Bürgerhalle in Sohren, nominated Marlon Bröhr, then Landrat of the Rhein-Hunsrück district, as direct candidate for constituency 200. The Rhein-Hunsrück association had proposed him the year before. The vote was 71 in favour and four against. In the official delimitation for that election the constituency covered the districts of Cochem-Zell and Rhein-Hunsrück and, inside Bernkastel-Wittlich, the municipality of Morbach, the collective municipalities of Bernkastel-Kues and Thalfang am Erbeskopf, and six municipalities of Traben-Trarbach, including the town of Traben-Trarbach. The rest of Bernkastel-Wittlich belonged to another constituency. Before polling day, Südwestrundfunk noted that a Bundestag seat would require Bröhr to give up the Landrat office, and that CDU candidates had until then taken the constituency's direct mandate.

The 2021 result

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September, 134,717 of 171,102 people eligible to vote in the constituency cast a ballot, a turnout of 78.7 percent. Of 132,369 valid first votes, Bröhr received 45,364, or 34.3 percent, 9.8 percentage points below the CDU share in 2017. Michael Maurer of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second with 35,570 votes (26.9 percent). Carina Konrad of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) received 15,664 (11.8 percent), Julian Joswig of Alliance 90/The Greens 12,833 (9.7 percent), and Harald Bechberger of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 10,646 (8.0 percent). Smaller shares went to Heinz Alfred Wößner (Free Voters), Wolfgang Link (dieBasis), Detlef Barsuhn (Volt), Erik Hofmann (ÖDP) and the independent Hermann Krämer.

The constituency electoral committee confirmed that result on 30 September 2021 and declared Bröhr elected as the member for constituency 200. On the second vote the CDU finished just ahead of the SPD, with 38,664 votes (29.0 percent, down 12.6 points) against 38,015 (28.5 percent, up 5.5). The FDP took 12.5 percent, the Greens 9.2 percent and the AfD 8.3 percent. Konrad returned through the FDP state list; Maurer and Joswig did not, and Bröhr succeeded Bleser in the seat. The Rhein-Zeitung later recorded that he had entered the Bundestag on that constituency mandate and had therefore left the Landrat post; the district council farewelled him in March 2022 when a successor was sworn in.

The 2025 result

For the 2025 German federal election the same territory was numbered 199. The federal returning officer's descriptions of 2021 constituency 200 and 2025 constituency 199 list the same districts and municipalities, and Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück was not among the 16 constituencies whose boundaries were redrawn. The number changed because population shifts moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, which renumbered the former constituencies 72 to 255. Rhineland-Palatinate kept 15 seats, now numbered 196 to 210 instead of 197 to 211, and the number 200 passed to Kreuznach. The division, based on the territorial status of 30 September 2023, is set out in the Twenty-seventh Act Amending the Federal Elections Act of 7 March 2024, in force from 14 March 2024.

Bröhr stood again for the CDU. A state delegate assembly in Bingen on 14 December 2024 placed him ninth on the Rhineland-Palatinate list, the order the state returning officer published after the state electoral committee admitted the lists on 24 January 2025. The published entry gives his full name as Marlon Andreas Paul Bröhr, born in 1974 in Geilenkirchen and resident in Kastellaun. Südwestrundfunk listed nine constituency candidates, among them Umut Kurt for the SPD, a teacher from Boppard, Jörg Zirwes for the AfD, a former professional soldier from Blankenrath, and again Joswig for the Greens and Konrad for the FDP.

Polling was on 23 February 2025. Turnout rose to 84.3 percent, with 142,248 of 168,705 eligible voters taking part, 5.6 points above 2021. Bröhr received 53,505 first votes, 38.2 percent and 3.9 points more than in 2021. The federal returning officer recorded Kurt as runner-up. Kurt and the AfD each took 19.3 percent: 27,079 votes for the SPD, down 7.6 points, and 27,060 for the AfD, up 11.3 points. The Greens fell to 10,039 votes (7.2 percent) and the FDP to 7,588 (5.4 percent). Since the 2023 amendment of the electoral law, a party candidate with the most first votes is elected only if that place is also covered by the party's second-vote seats; there is no longer an automatic direct mandate. The federal returning officer listed Bröhr as elected in the constituency, so the seat was the constituency mandate rather than the ninth list place. Second votes in the constituency were 34.9 percent for the CDU (49,310, up 5.9 points), 19.6 percent for the AfD and 17.8 percent for the SPD.

Parliamentary work

Defence committee and Bundeswehr sites

Marlon Bröhr has sat in the Bundestag since 26 October 2021 and remained a directly elected member of the CDU/CSU after the February 2025 election, for the renumbered constituency 199, Mosel/Rhein-Hunsrück. In the 20th term the archived biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Defence Committee and as a deputy member of the study commission on lessons from the war in Afghanistan. The Defence Committee constituted itself on 15 December 2021 with 38 members; he was one of ten from the CDU/CSU. The Afghanistan commission constituted itself on 19 September 2022, with Michael Müller (SPD) as chair; the CDU/CSU substitutes were Michael Brand, Bröhr and Katja Leikert. In the 21st Bundestag the same 38-member committee again listed him among the CDU/CSU ordinary members at its May 2025 constitutive meeting, and the current biography records that seat. The Rhein-Zeitung reported in May 2022 that the group had made him its rapporteur for the Bundeswehr medical service; Ärzte Zeitung repeated that in February 2025.

Within months of joining the committee he visited sites in what was then constituency 200. The paper listed Tactical Air Force Wing 33 at Büchel Air Base, the medical support centre in Cochem, Information Technology Battalion 282 and a medical supply centre in the Hunsrück-Kaserne at Kastellaun, the service-dog school in Ulmen, an ABC material centre in Kappel and the Erbeskopf radar station. The Luftwaffe describes the Büchel wing as one of two Panavia Tornado stations, with about 2,000 personnel and 46 aircraft for air-to-ground attack, including close air support. The Cochem centre coordinates eleven supply centres, including Kastellaun, covers about 17,000 soldiers and keeps flight-accident readiness for Büchel; the Ulmen school breeds and trains service dogs. In November 2022, during a Berlin education week, officers of the Kastellaun battalion met him at the Platz der Republik to discuss security policy.

In May 2024 Bröhr and Josef Oster, the CDU member for Koblenz, wrote to Defence Minister Boris Pistorius about the structural reform. Blick aktuell, which called Bröhr the Union’s medical-service rapporteur, reported that they asked whether parts of the service would move to Bonn, whether a new support command would downgrade the medical service and the Joint Support Service, and what the change would mean for the Bundeswehr Central Hospital, the planned medical campus and civil-military care. Pistorius replied in July that cutting posts and abandoning sites was not the aim; a support command would first be stood up at Koblenz’s Falckenstein barracks and at Bonn’s Hardthöhe, with the final stationing of the medical service still open, while overall posts would be unchanged and Koblenz with Lahnstein would remain the largest Bundeswehr site. Oster called the no-closure assurance a first piece of good news; Bröhr said it remained to be seen how the reform would work in practice, and both said they would keep watching.

On 25 April 2024, debating a national Veterans’ Day on 15 June, he welcomed recognition comparable to Veterans Day, Remembrance Day and the Jour du Souvenir, and said respect had to show in equipment, not only symbols. He estimated a gap of 30 to 40 billion euros a year in the defence budget from 2027, once the special fund was spent, said the force had lost 2,000 posts and that 20 percent of military posts were unfilled, and argued that territorial defence was unrealistic without some form of conscription or service. A report of 9 February 2026 on a visit with CDU colleague Harald Orthey to Medical Regiment 2 “Westerwald” at Rennerod again called him the group’s medical rapporteur; the regiment expected to become a medical battalion, and Bröhr said he would take the discussion into the Defence Committee.

On 15 October 2026 he spoke for the CDU/CSU at the first reading of the Bundeswehr Infrastructure Acceleration Bill (Drucksache 21/8409), as his group’s rapporteur on the draft. He described a new construction act letting the defence administration run projects and found companies, while Länder building administrations remained the main partners; selected disputes over protected areas, land purchase and military airfields would go to the Federal Administrative Court in a single instance, and appeals against Bundeswehr projects would lose their suspensive effect, with emergency protection retained. He asked the committee to make a proposed rule on official quarters for soldiers serving far from home more binding than a spare-capacity reservation, said the Union supported the bill and thanked SPD member Bettina Lugk. The draft went to the Defence Committee in the lead and also to legal affairs, economic affairs, transport, environment, housing and the budget.

Petitions committee

The 20th-term biography also lists him as an ordinary member of the Petitions Committee. On the Bundestag’s list of 15 December 2021, when the committee had 31 members and elected Martina Stamm-Fibich chair, he was one of eight from the CDU/CSU. The 21st-term committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with 26 ordinary members and no elected chair, after AfD nominee Manfred Schiller missed a majority; Bröhr was one of nine CDU/CSU members, and Andreas Mattfeldt took the acting chair as the senior member. The current biography names Bröhr both an ordinary member and Obmann of the committee. The CDU/CSU group lists the same Obmann role and names him deputy chairman of its petitions working group, chaired by Mattfeldt.

On 16 October 2025 he closed the debate on the committee’s 2024 report (Drucksache 21/1900), calling it the Bundestag’s citizens’ committee and thanking the secretariat for the legal preparation of each case. The report records 9,260 new petitions in 2024, down from 11,410 in 2023, of which the Bundestag referred 50 to the government for consideration and 26 for further examination; he cited those figures and Article 17 of the Basic Law, which lets anyone, including minors, petition alone or with others. On 21 October 2025 the Bundestag press office announced that on 28 October he would lead a delegation to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler on three petitions asking that planned road works be altered for flood protection; the committee was to meet authorities and petitioners and later recommend a decision to the plenary.

Legal affairs and the OSCE assembly

The 20th-term biography does not list the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection or the delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Both appear for the 21st term: he is a deputy member of the legal-affairs committee and a deputy member of the German delegation to the assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. When the legal-affairs committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025, the Bundestag notice of 38 ordinary members did not include him among the 13 ordinary CDU/CSU members, which matches a substitute seat; no chair was elected after Stefan Möller of the AfD fell short, and Carsten Müller took the acting chair. The infrastructure bill he spoke on in October 2026 was referred to that committee as well as to defence. The group’s member page lists petitions and defence, not a separate legal-affairs or OSCE line.

Civic roles and private life

Local mandates and honorary offices

Alongside his seat in the Bundestag, Marlon Bröhr sits on two local bodies in the Rhein-Hunsrück district of Rhineland-Palatinate. The district council (Kreistag) was elected on 9 June 2024 for 42 seats. In the final figures published by the state returning officer, the Christian Democratic Union took the largest share, 33.7 percent of the weighted vote and 14 seats. The Social Democratic Party followed with 18.2 percent and 8 seats, Alternative for Germany with 14.5 percent and 6, the voters’ association Freie Wähler Rhein-Hunsrück with 10.7 percent and 5, Alliance 90/The Greens with 7.8 percent and 3, the Free Democratic Party with 5.7 percent and 2, and Freie Wähler with 5.2 percent and 2. Die Linke (1.9 percent) and the ÖDP (1.4 percent) each won one seat; Volt, on 0.9 percent, won none. Turnout was 67.5 percent.

The district election committee adopted that result on 17 June 2024. A transmission error affecting figures from the Verbandsgemeinde Kirchberg, in software used statewide for the first time, had initially assigned the CDU 15 seats and Freie Wähler Rhein-Hunsrück four; the checked count moved one seat from the CDU to that voters’ association. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own statements, records Bröhr as a member of the Kreistag since July 2024. Under the disclosure rules of the Members of the Bundestag Act he is also listed as a member of the council of the Verbandsgemeinde Kastellaun.

The same disclosure names him chairman of the supervisory board of HunsrückSonne Kastellaun eG, a registered renewable-energy cooperative based in Kastellaun. Register summaries give its object as building and maintaining plants that generate renewable energy, in particular photovoltaic installations, selling that energy, advising members and others, and buying such plants jointly. At the 2019 general meeting, the Rhein-Zeitung reported, Bröhr welcomed members for the 2018 financial year, described as one of the sunniest since the cooperative had existed for more than ten years. All 147 members were to receive a dividend of 4.5 percent, reserves were increased, and a larger ground-mounted photovoltaic plant in a municipality in the Hunsrück was being planned.

He is a member of the administrative board and a deputy member of the credit committee of Kreissparkasse Rhein-Hunsrück in Simmern, functions that the Bundestag lists under public-law corporations and institutions. The disclosure states gross payments of 1,585.63 euro for 2025 and 1,321.36 euro for 2026; Abgeordnetenwatch records both sums as one-off payments for administrative-board membership. He is also president of DRK-Kreisverband Rhein-Hunsrück e.V. in Simmern. The association’s legal notice names him, together with the vice-president, the treasurer and the managing director, as a person authorized to represent the district branch of the German Red Cross, registered at the Amtsgericht Bad Kreuznach under VR 561.

Family

The Bundestag biography states that Bröhr is married and has two children, without naming them. Abgeordnetenwatch gives his place of residence as Kastellaun, where the same biography records that he worked as a self-employed dentist from 2003 to 2006 before becoming mayor of the town and of the Verbandsgemeinde.