Martin Gerster

Martin Gerster (born 30 August 1971 in Biberach an der Riß) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag from Baden-Württemberg. The Bundestag’s biography, which rests on the member’s own statements, lists him as an editor, Roman Catholic, married and the father of one child. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005. The 16th Bundestag, the legislative term in which that membership began, held its opening sitting on 18 October 2005. He sits through the Baden-Württemberg state list and is the SPD candidate in constituency 292, Biberach.

He attended the Braith primary school in Biberach from 1978 to 1982 and the Pestalozzi-Gymnasium there from 1983 to 1991, then trained as an editor at the private station Radio 7 from 1991 to 1993. From 1994 to 2002 he studied political science, history and economics at the University of Mainz and graduated with a Magister Artium. Between 1993 and 2002 he worked as a freelance journalist, including for the Schwäbische Zeitung, Radio 7 and ZDF. From 1999 to 2001 he worked with the Democratic National Committee in Washington and on the “Hillary Clinton for Senate” campaign in New York.

Gerster joined the SPD in 1990 and chaired its Biberach district association from 2001 to 2022. He took part in the SPD’s Baden-Württemberg state-election campaign for Ute Vogt and, from 2002 to 2005, was a parliamentary adviser in the state Landtag. In the 19th electoral term he was deputy chair of the Budget Committee, spokesperson of the SPD group on the Public Accounts Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss), and a full member of the confidential panel that approves the secret budgets of the federal intelligence services. In the 20th term he chaired the Public Accounts Committee and again sat on that confidential panel, while remaining a full member of the Budget Committee. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Budget Committee and of the Public Accounts Committee, where he is the SPD group’s spokesperson, and a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization. He has chaired the SPD’s Baden-Württemberg group in the Bundestag since 2022. In May 2025 the group re-elected him, by the Schwäbische Zeitung’s account nearly unanimously; the paper reported that the group then had 13 members, down from 22 in the previous term.

Since 2021 he has been honorary president of the THW-Bundesvereinigung, the association of helpers and supporters of the federal Technisches Hilfswerk, after serving as its vice-president from 2018 to 2021, and he is a member of the Biberach district council. In November 2023 Die Zeit reported that, as the SPD rapporteur for the Interior Ministry’s budget, he was also president of an association whose federal subsidy the 2024 draft proposed to raise from 1.4 million to 2.75 million euro, while the THW’s own allocation was to fall by 42 million euro. The paper described a 12 September video call with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser that covered that budget chapter, and it reported that the association had already taken in 600,000 euro in business donations that year. Gerster told Die Zeit that the honorary post had been entered in the lobby register and disclosed in the Budget Committee; after the article, the committee handled the THW lines through the coalition budget spokespeople, an arrangement the paper called a “Lex Gerster.”

In the 2025 Bundestag election in Biberach, Gerster received 18,225 first votes, 12.7 percent of the valid total and 5.9 percentage points below the SPD candidate’s 2021 share. Wolfgang Jochen Dahler of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany won the direct seat with 40.9 percent, and Paula Agathe Gulde of the Alternative for Germany was the runner-up with 22.4 percent. The SPD’s second-vote share in the constituency was 10.4 percent, and turnout was 85.1 percent.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Martin Gerster was born on 30 August 1971 in Biberach an der Riß, a town on the river Riß in northern Upper Swabia, about 40 kilometres south of Ulm in Baden-Württemberg. The municipal statistics office recorded 34,816 inhabitants on 30 September 2026. The Bundestag biography lists him as Roman Catholic.

From 1978 to 1982 he attended the Braith primary school in Biberach, and from 1983 to 1991 the Pestalozzi-Gymnasium, where he took the Abitur. The school is a nine-year Gymnasium and uses the motto of the educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, "Mit Kopf, Herz und Hand" ("with head, heart and hand"). A Bundestag profile of 4 December 2012, in the series "Wege in die Politik", says that he wanted to become a journalist rather than a politician, but that he already edited the student newspaper and sat in the town's youth parliament, and that a request to interview the mayor met the assumption that he was in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1990, while still at school. The profile presents that step as, at first, a protest against CDU dominance in his hometown — his father was active in the party — and quotes him: "Mir ist richtig aufgestoßen, dass man damals in der CDU sein musste, um für voll genommen zu werden" ("It really rankled me that, back then, you had to be in the CDU to be taken seriously"). He has written that he was a class representative and a member of the school conference, and was elected to what he calls Biberach's first youth council, then among the first in Baden-Württemberg; that he has a younger brother and that his parents separated; and that his father, then on the local CDU executive, later left the party while his mother joined the SPD.

Journalism training and university

From 1991 to 1993 he trained as an editor at Radio 7, which the Bundestag lists as an Ausbildung zum Redakteur. The station belongs to RADIO 7 Hörfunk GmbH + Co. KG in Ulm; the Landesanstalt für Kommunikation Baden-Württemberg, the licensing authority for private broadcasting, records a programme start of 1 July 1988 and an adult-contemporary format. The 2012 profile says the station was seeking a trainee (Volontär) and that Gerster reported on sport and politics, interviewing regional decision-makers including Matthias Weisheit, the SPD member of the Bundestag for Biberach.

From 1993 to 2002 he worked as a freelance journalist, including for the Schwäbische Zeitung, Radio 7 and ZDF. From 1994 to 2002 he studied political science, history and economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Mainz, and graduated with a Magister Artium. In 1994, as the course began, Weisheit asked him to organize the constituency's Bundestag campaign. He told the profile he had never organized one; he did the work anyway, returned in 1998, and moderated an Ulm rally for the SPD chancellor candidate Gerhard Schröder, an event he later described as the point at which campaigning seemed to him "das Tollste" — the best thing of all.

Work in the United States

In 1999 he flew to the United States to work as a volunteer campaign helper, first for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., and on "Hillary Clinton for Senate" in New York. The Bundestag biography dates the work from 1999 to 2001. Hillary Clinton, then First Lady, was elected to the Senate from New York on 7 November 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to 43 percent for the Republican Rick Lazio.

He has written that he met President Bill Clinton at Democratic headquarters and then went to New York City for Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign, and that those encounters encouraged him to take political positions himself rather than only report them. The 2012 profile does not describe a meeting with the president. It quotes him on a signed Christmas card from Bill Clinton that his parents received afterwards: they were delighted, and he said the greeting showed him how much emotion a simple note could produce. The article also records a near life-size cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton, brought from New York, which stood for a time in his Bundestag office, and its opening calls him her former Praktikant (intern), while the account of the trip itself speaks of voluntary campaign work. After his return he worked on the SPD's 2001 Baden-Württemberg state campaign, and in 2002, with the Magister completed, became a parliamentary adviser to the SPD group in the Stuttgart Landtag.

Party career in the SPD

District association and early campaigns

Gerster joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1990. As a student he organized, in the semester breaks of 1994 and 1998, the Bundestag campaigns in the Biberach constituency for Matthias Weisheit, the SPD member he has since called his predecessor, and he records moderating a rally in Ulm addressed by the party's chancellor candidate, Gerhard Schröder.

From 2001 to 2022 he chaired the SPD district association (Kreisverband) Biberach. Simon Özkeles of Ummendorf succeeded him in 2022. At the district party congress in March 2024 the Schwäbische Zeitung reported that Özkeles was re-elected for a second term and that he had replaced Gerster two years earlier. The association's account of its April 2023 annual meeting in Laupheim likewise introduced Özkeles as district chair and Gerster as his predecessor and as the sitting member of the Bundestag.

Landtag staff

The Bundestag biography records his work on the SPD campaign for Ute Vogt at the election to the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. He places that work in the state party's "Kampa" team for the vote of 25 March 2001, after volunteer campaigning in the United States, and describes his later staff brief as schools, youth and sport. The SPD rose by 8.2 percentage points to 33.3 percent and won 45 of 128 seats. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany remained the largest party, with 44.8 percent and 63 seats; turnout was 62.6 percent.

From 2002 to 2005 he was a parliamentary adviser (parlamentarischer Berater) to the SPD group in the Landtag in Stuttgart. The Bundestag's register of members' previous occupations lists the same employer, the SPD Landtag group. The district chairmanship, begun in 2001, continued alongside that appointment.

Baden-Württemberg parliamentary group

Within the SPD's parliamentary group, members from each state meet as a Landesgruppe. The group describes these bodies as a way to pool regional concerns, to discuss how federal decisions affect the Länder, and to keep contact with state and local politicians. In the 21st electoral term its 120 members are organized in 15 Landesgruppen plus an eastern group (Landesgruppe Ost). The Baden-Württemberg group has 13 members, with Gerster as chair and Isabel Cademartori and Derya Türk-Nachbaur as deputy chairs.

He has chaired the Baden-Württemberg group since 2022. Martin Rosemann, the SPD member from Tübingen, led it from 2018 to 2022. In early January 2022 Rosemann gave up the post after becoming the faction's spokesperson for labour and social affairs and a member of the faction executive. The Südwest Presse reported that Gerster, until then deputy chair, succeeded him, and that the new deputies were Cademartori of Mannheim and Türk-Nachbaur of the Schwarzwald-Baar district, both first elected to the Bundestag in 2021. In the 20th electoral term the group had 22 SPD members from the state.

On 12 May 2025 the group re-elected him; he states that the chair sits ex officio as a co-opted member of the presidium of the SPD in Baden-Württemberg. The Schwäbische Zeitung, reporting on 14 May, described the vote as nearly unanimous and wrote that Cademartori and Türk-Nachbaur were confirmed as deputies. Türk-Nachbaur was at the same time elected for the first time as a parliamentary managing director of the SPD Bundestag group, and Johannes Fechner, the member for Emmendingen-Lahr, was confirmed as parliamentary managing director and legal adviser. Gerster tied those two places on the faction's managing executive to the standing of the Baden-Württemberg members, and said the Landesgruppe should go on representing the state's interests in the faction and with the federal government. The state party recorded the same officers and the fall from 22 members to 13. State chair Andreas Stoch congratulated the leadership and said he expected cooperation among the Landesgruppe, the state SPD and the Landtag group to continue.

Bundestag elections

The Biberach constituency

Martin Gerster has been the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) candidate in the Biberach constituency at every election to the Bundestag from 2005 through 2025, and each time he entered parliament on the SPD list in Baden-Württemberg rather than by winning the seat. The constituency is in Upper Swabia. From 2013 it has comprised the whole district of Biberach and four municipalities of the district of Ravensburg—Aichstetten, Aitrach, Bad Wurzach and Kißlegg—with the other Ravensburg municipalities in constituency 294 Ravensburg. The annex to the Federal Elections Act used in 2025 sets the same boundary.

In 2005 the seat was numbered 293 and was much larger: 234,130 people were eligible to vote, against 162,508 in the renumbered constituency 292 in 2009. The Federal Returning Officer's 2009 file also gives the 2005 vote recalculated on the later boundaries. Voters cast a first vote for a candidate and a second vote for a party list. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took the plurality at all six elections.

Results, 2005–2021

On 18 September 2005 Franz Romer (CDU) won constituency 293 with 94,968 first votes (52.4 percent). Turnout was 79.0 percent. Gerster received 37,112 first votes (20.5 percent); Alliance 90/The Greens took 14.0 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 7.2 percent and the Left 2.4 percent. Second votes divided 49.8 percent CDU, 22.3 percent SPD, 11.2 percent FDP and 8.9 percent Greens. Twentieth on the SPD state list, he took his seat when the 16th Bundestag met on 18 October 2005.

Romer did not stand in 2009. Josef Rief won constituency 292 for the CDU with 48,662 first votes (42.7 percent); Gerster was second with 26,275 (23.0 percent). On the new boundaries that was about 3.9 points above the SPD's recalculated 2005 share and about 10.5 points below the CDU's. Turnout was 72.2 percent. The FDP rose to 15.1 percent of first votes and 18.8 percent of second votes; second votes overall were 43.2 percent CDU, 13.7 SPD, 10.9 Greens and 5.8 Die Linke. The SPD conference in Singen on 14 February 2009 elected him 13th; on the list published for the election he was 12th, and he returned for the 17th term from that list.

In 2013 Rief was again directly elected. The CDU took 70,540 first votes (59.0 percent, up 16.3 points) and the SPD 23,786 (19.9 percent, down 3.2), with turnout at 74.3 percent. Second votes were 56.3 percent CDU and 14.8 percent SPD; the Greens had 9.1 percent, the FDP 4.9 percent and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), with no constituency candidate, 4.2 percent. Ninth on the state list, Gerster was re-elected from it for the 18th term.

Rief kept the seat in 2017 with 57,837 first votes (44.5 percent, down 14.5 points). Gerster, the runner-up, had 22,034 (16.9 percent); the Greens took 13.5 percent of first votes, the AfD 11.3 and the FDP 7.5, and turnout was 78.8 percent. Second votes put the CDU on 43.1 percent, the SPD on 12.7, the AfD on 12.5, the Greens on 11.3 and the FDP on 11.0. On 11 March 2017 the state conference in Schwäbisch Gmünd placed Gerster eighth (271 votes in favour, 23 against, 19 abstentions), and he sat in the 19th Bundestag on the list.

On 26 September 2021 the constituency returning officer declared Rief elected with 46,458 first votes. The final count was 35.1 percent for the CDU (down 9.3 points) and 18.6 percent (24,567 votes) for the SPD. Anja Reinalter (Greens) had 17,912 first votes, Rebecca Weißbrodt (AfD) 13,469 and Florian Hirt (FDP) 13,045; turnout was again 78.8 percent. Second votes split 30.6 percent CDU, 17.5 SPD, 14.5 FDP, 13.7 Greens and 10.8 AfD, with the Free Voters at 3.1 percent. A conference in Göppingen in May 2021 again ranked him eighth, and he entered the 20th Bundestag from the list.

The 2025 election and the 21st Bundestag

Rief did not stand in 2025. On 15 December 2024 an SPD delegate meeting placed Gerster fourth on the state list and he was again the candidate in constituency 292. The final result of 23 February 2025 gave the direct seat to Wolfgang Jochen Dahler (CDU), with 58,651 first votes (40.9 percent, up 5.7 points). Paula Agathe Gulde (AfD) was runner-up with 32,077 votes (22.4 percent). The SPD's 18,225 first votes were 12.7 percent, down 5.9 points and Gerster's lowest share in the six contests; the Greens had 10.3 percent, the FDP 3.9 and Die Linke 3.8. Turnout rose to 85.1 percent (144,530 of 169,789 eligible voters).

Second votes were 38.3 percent CDU, 23.2 AfD, 10.4 SPD (14,951 votes, down 7.1 points), 9.8 Greens, 5.1 FDP, 4.5 Die Linke and 3.8 for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. The Bundestag records his seat in the 21st term as awarded from the Baden-Württemberg list, with constituency 292 as his candidacy.

Committee roles

Interior, finance and sport

In the 16th Bundestag (2005–2009), Martin Gerster of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) sat on the Interior Committee from 30 November 2005 until 18 September 2007 and on the Sports Committee from 30 November 2005. In September 2007 he moved to the Finance Committee, which the SPD parliamentary group dates from 10 September 2007. The Interior Committee’s field runs from migration and asylum to civil protection: it oversees the Federal Ministry of the Interior and prepares bills for the plenary. The Finance Committee follows the Federal Ministry of Finance except for budget policy, and it normally leads on tax, customs and financial-market regulation. In the 17th Bundestag he kept both the Finance Committee and the Sports Committee from 10 November 2009, and from 24 November 2009 was spokesperson of the SPD working group on sport.

Budget Committee

The Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) debates the annual federal budget—without the Bundestag’s consent the federal government receives no money from the treasury—and monitors how funds are spent. The SPD group lists Gerster as a deputy member from 12 June 2012. On 12 September 2012 he gave the SPD speech on the development-cooperation estimates, thanked Lothar Binding for having followed that plan for the group for years, and said members of the Budget Committee had received him. From 13 January 2014 he was an ordinary member, as the archived biography for 2013–2017 also records.

In the 19th Bundestag the group dates ordinary membership from 29 January 2018 and the deputy chair from 12 May 2020, the office by which his period biography summarises the term. He told the Schwäbische Zeitung that he had held the deputy chair since mid-May 2020, after Dennis Rohde left it to become the SPD’s budget spokesman. In the 20th Bundestag he was again an ordinary member from 13 December 2021, and on 12 January 2022 the committee elected Bettina Hagedorn deputy chair. The 21st-term biography again lists ordinary membership, which the SPD group dates from 21 May 2025; from 3 June 2025 the group also lists him as deputy spokesperson of its budget working group.

Public Accounts Committee and other bodies

The Public Accounts Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss) is organised like a standing committee. Its members also sit on the Budget Committee, and every ordinary member of the Budget Committee is a deputy member of the audit body. It follows how money was spent, examines federal financial management and prepares the plenary’s discharge of the government from remarks by the Bundesrechnungshof.

Gerster joined on 11 February 2014 and became the SPD spokesperson (Obmann) on 20 September 2016, the role listed in the 18th-term biography. He was Obmann again in the 19th Bundestag; the group dates membership and that spokesperson role from 14 May 2018. On 12 January 2022 the Budget Committee elected him chair and Felix Banaszak of the Greens deputy chair, and the 20th-term biography records the chairmanship. In the 21st Bundestag the biography lists him as an ordinary member and as Obmann, not as chair; the SPD group dates membership from 6 June 2025, and Parliamentwatch records the same Obmann role.

Under section 10a (2) of the Federal Budget Code, the confidential committee (Vertrauensgremium) approves the secret economic plans of the Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Military Counterintelligence Service. That budget scrutiny stands beside the Parliamentary Oversight Panel. The Bundestag elected Gerster on 1 March 2018, with 568 votes, and again on 17 February 2022. The biographies for the 19th and 20th terms list him as an ordinary member; the 21st-term biography does not.

The 19th-term biography also lists deputy seats on building and housing, the interior and the Digital Agenda Committee, and the 18th-term biography an ordinary seat on the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. For 2021–2025 the SPD group and Parliamentwatch list a deputy seat on the Sports Committee from 25 January 2022, which the archived biography’s membership block does not show. In the 21st Bundestag the official biography lists a deputy seat only on the Committee for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, whose remit is digital change, administrative digitalisation and modernising the state. It does not list the Budget Committee’s subcommittee on European Union questions or the Interior Committee. The SPD group’s list additionally records a deputy seat on the Interior Committee from 25 March 2026.

Budget and audit work

Interior, digital and data-protection estimates

The Budget Committee of the Bundestag examines the federal budget by chapter (Einzelplan). For a legislative term, each parliamentary group's coordinators name one rapporteur per chapter. A lead rapporteur arranges meetings with the ministry, the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Bundesrechnungshof; every rapporteur for that chapter, including from the opposition, is to receive the same information. The rapporteurs draft amendments, and the committee discusses each chapter twice with the responsible minister before a final clearing session.

In the 21st Bundestag Gerster, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, is an ordinary member of the Budget Committee. He states that he is his group's rapporteur for Einzelplan 06, the Federal Ministry of the Interior; Einzelplan 24, the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation; and Einzelplan 21, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. On 27 November 2025 the second and third readings took the committee's recommendations on chapters 06 and 21 together, and he spoke on the interior estimates. He said the committee had set the Federal Police budget at €5 billion, with 1,000 additional officers, and had added resources for the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Office for Information Security and other security authorities. He put the rises for the Technisches Hilfswerk and the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance at 42 and 82 percent, including a THW building programme, and reported €377 million more for integration courses. He had spoken on the interior chapter in the first reading of the 2025 budget on 12 September 2024. On 25 November 2025 he spoke on the committee report for chapter 24. A January 2026 audit agenda treats the digital ministry as its own chapter; another member was named rapporteur for a finding on federal networks.

Debt, general finance and discharge

Article 114 of the Basic Law requires the finance minister to account to the Bundestag and the Bundesrat for revenue, expenditure, assets and debt. The Bundesrechnungshof, whose members have judicial independence, audits the accounts and the economy and regularity of federal financial management and reports to both chambers. The Budget Committee's audit subcommittee, the Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss, considers those remarks and prepares the decision on discharging the government.

In the 19th term Gerster was the SPD Obmann (group spokesperson) on the subcommittee and deputy chair of the Budget Committee. On 12 January 2022 the committee elected him chair of the subcommittee; the same sitting elected Bettina Hagedorn (SPD) deputy chair of the Budget Committee. In the 21st term his biography again lists him as SPD Obmann. The agenda for 30 January 2026 names Kerstin Radomski (CDU/CSU) as chair.

The recommendation on discharge for 2022, printed paper 20/12002 of 27 June 2024, is signed by Gerster as rapporteur. It proposed discharge under Article 114 and section 114 of the Federal Budget Code, including special funds with no separate procedure, and asked the government to follow the committee's findings, improve economy and meet reporting deadlines. The committee adopted it with the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP against the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the Left group; the BSW group was absent.

He states that on the subcommittee he reports on Einzelplan 32 (federal debt) and Einzelplan 60 (general financial administration). Agendas name one rapporteur per finding. For 30 January 2026 he was listed for the general-financial-administration remarks, covering a VAT control gap on vehicles bought in the European Union, agricultural and craftsmen's tax relief, profit shifting, and information to parliament on revenue effects, and for an audit-office report on tax concessions in the 30th subsidy report. A debt-chapter finding on green federal bonds was assigned at the 11 July 2025 sitting to Oliver Vogt (CDU/CSU).

Classified intelligence budgets

In the 19th and 20th terms Gerster sat on the Vertrauensgremium under section 10a(2) of the Federal Budget Code, a panel of Budget Committee members. The Bundestag elected him on 1 March 2018 with 568 votes, one of ten members; the AfD candidate Marcus Bühl, with 315 votes, missed the majority of 355. On 17 February 2022 he was elected again, with the SPD members Wiebke Papenbrock, Dennis Rohde and Andreas Schwarz; Bühl, with 106 votes against a majority of 369, was not.

For reasons of secrecy, section 10a lets the Bundestag make spending under classified economic plans conditional on the panel's approval. Unless the Bundestag decides otherwise, the finance ministry submits the federal intelligence services' economic plans to the panel. The panel tells the Budget Committee only the closing totals; members must keep the details secret. The Bundesrechnungshof audits the expenditure and reports to the panel, the Parliamentary Oversight Panel and the responsible authorities. The Bundestag's own account of the 2018 election describes the same task. His biography for the 21st term lists the Budget Committee and the audit subcommittee and does not list the Vertrauensgremium.

Policy positions

Civil protection

Civil-protection funding has figured in Gerster’s Bundestag work through the interior budget rather than through bills in his name. In the first reading of the 2025 federal budget on 12 September 2024, speaking for the SPD on the Interior Ministry chapter, he called the draft a security budget: an increase on the previous year and in the financial plan, drawn up under the debt brake, with what he described as a “security billion” written into the medium-term plan for the Federal Police, the Federal Criminal Police Office and cybersecurity in civil and disaster protection. He said the draft set aside 660 million euros the following year for the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and the Technisches Hilfswerk, carried forward earlier decisions on volunteers and self-protection training, and treated the THW increases as a signal to its helpers after drafts that had often opened with cuts; stronger supplementary disaster protection, he added, was good news for the fire services.

Sport and extremism in clubs

From 24 November 2009 Gerster was spokesperson of the SPD Bundestag group’s sports working group and a member of the Sports Committee. On 11 September 2012 the group tabled a bill to add to Article 20a of the Basic Law the sentence “It likewise protects and promotes culture and sport.” The memorandum called sport Germany’s largest civic movement, with more than 27 million memberships in 90,000 clubs. In the first reading on 28 September 2012 Gerster argued from integration, prevention and club-based values, and said the Bundesrechnungshof had told parliament that a statutory basis was lacking for large federal payments to elite sport. Stephan Mayer (CDU/CSU) called a state objective symbolic and cited elite-sport spending of 250 million euros, up from 216 million in 2005; the Free Democratic Party, though its 2009 programme had favoured some recognition, warned of constitutional litigation. Referred to the Interior Committee in the lead, the bill had still not been decided there by 5 June 2013, while the Legal Affairs Committee had recommended rejection—CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens against the SPD and Die Linke.

On 16 March 2011 Gerster, Sönke Rix and other SPD members moved for case numbers on extremist activity in sport, a chapter in future sport reports, lasting funds for club-level prevention and a quality seal under the government’s “Verein(t) gegen Rechtsextremismus” concept. The motion said right-wing extremists were entering clubs as athletes, coaches, board members or sponsors and using spectator areas for propaganda. The Sports Committee, with Gerster as an SPD rapporteur, recommended rejection: CDU/CSU and FDP against SPD and Die Linke, Alliance 90/The Greens abstaining. On 10 November 2011 Gerster tied the debate to the anniversary of the November pogroms and said the quality seal, announced about ten months earlier, had not been put into effect; the House then rejected the motion, the governing groups outvoting the opposition.

In October 2023, on the Budget Committee, Gerster stopped 600,000 euros in start-up money for a planned foundation meant to allocate about 200 million euros a year in federal elite-sport funds, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he would not let advisory boards spend taxpayers’ money without the Bundestag. The paper reported that the Bundesrechnungshof had criticised sharing authority with the German Olympic Sports Confederation.

Digital affairs and data protection

In the 21st Bundestag Gerster sits on the Budget Committee and is a deputy member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation. On 25 September 2025, in the first reading of the budget for the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, he cited a Bundesrechnungshof report to the Budget Committee, referred to a cyberattack that had disrupted European airports including Berlin Brandenburg, and relayed the audit office’s figure of nearly 180 billion euros a year in damage to the German economy. He called for a cybersecurity strategy with clear responsibilities and control, and said new investment funds would not repair structures by themselves. As a Budget Committee rapporteur on the bill implementing the EU Data Governance Act, he co-signed a report of 25 March 2026 putting annual costs at 1.131 million euros for the Federal Network Agency and about 5.109 million euros in staff for 50 posts at the Federal Statistical Office, to be met from the digital ministry’s budget. The committee found the bill compatible with federal finances: CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens for, the AfD against, Die Linke abstaining.

On surveillance he has argued for judicial thresholds rather than against the powers. In March 2007 he rejected talk of a “rampant surveillance mania” and accepted longer data retention against serious crime if a grave offence was suspected and a court had ordered access. In June 2021 he said he had voted on 10 June for source telecommunications surveillance in the Federal Police Act—reading encrypted messenger traffic on the device, limited to organised crime and available only by judicial order in an imminent danger—while the SPD blocked online searches of stored data; 123 of 152 SPD members, he wrote, backed the bill.

Extra-parliamentary offices

THW Federal Association

The THW-Bundesvereinigung e.V., formally the Bundesvereinigung der Helfer und Förderer des Technischen Hilfswerkes, is a registered association founded in May 1980 as a partner of the federal Technisches Hilfswerk (THW). It supports the agency financially, materially and in non-material ways, lobbies on civil protection and disaster relief, and represents the concerns of THW volunteers toward the Bundestag and other decision-makers.

Social Democratic Party of Germany Bundestag member Martin Gerster joined the board in 2018, as vice-president until 2021 and as honorary president from 2021. In mid-April 2026 the association's federal assembly re-elected him. The THW reported the result on 5 May 2026 and likewise called the office honorary. The vice-presidents elected with him were Marc Henrichmann, also a member of the Bundestag, Dr. Maik Pawlowsky and Markus Jaugitz. Andrea Lindholz, a member of the Bundestag, and Christian Herrmann left the board after not standing again.

Sports acrobatics and the district council

On 23 September 2006 an extraordinary general assembly of the Deutscher Sportakrobatik-Bund elected Gerster unanimously as president, succeeding Kurt Becker, its long-serving chairman, who had died in 2004. The federation is a member organisation of the German Olympic Sports Confederation. Gerster told the assembly that sports acrobatics produced high performance from amateurs, and he named wider television coverage and a stronger political voice for non-Olympic federations as aims. He remained president until 2014, and in an interview the confederation published on 20 April 2026 he said that as Ehrenpräsident he still followed the sport closely.

He is also a member of the Kreistag of Biberach in Baden-Württemberg. The council represents the district's residents; councillors serve five-year terms, and municipal elections in the state follow the same cycle. The election of 9 June 2024, held with the European election, used eight constituencies and 54 regular seats. Gerster has stated that he was first elected for the SPD in 2019 and again in 2024. The Schwäbische Zeitung reported that in 2024 he won an SPD seat in constituency I, the town of Biberach an der Riß, with 3,882 votes, and that the SPD took four seats.

Other honorary roles

From 5 May 2026 that register lists him as an honorary member of the Kuratorium of the Stiftung Bundespräsident-Theodor-Heuss-Haus in Stuttgart. The foundation, created by the Bundestag in 1994, is one of seven federal memorial foundations devoted to politicians. Financed from the federal budget and supervised by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, it combines historical research with civic education at the Theodor-Heuss-Haus, the last home of Theodor Heuss, Germany's first federal president. Its five-member Kuratorium, appointed for five years by the Federal President, decides the foundation's fundamental questions and supervises the executive board.

From 6 December 2025 the register lists Gerster as a board member, by virtue of office, of the Verein des Museums der Deutschen Feuerwehren und des Technischen Hilfswerks in Fulda. On 9 December 2025 the German Fire Brigades Association reported that the members' meeting of the association of the German Fire Brigade Museum had adopted statutes joining that museum to the THW historical collection, held under the THW-Bundesvereinigung, in a body named "Helfen in der Not – Museum der Deutschen Feuerwehren und des Technischen Hilfswerks in Fulda". Gerster, who had taken part in the preparatory talks, became a deputy chair. The statutes place the president of the fire-brigades association, the president of the THW-Bundesvereinigung and the mayor of Fulda on the board ex officio. Karl-Heinz Banse, the association's president, became chair, and Heiko Wingenfeld, mayor of Fulda, the other deputy chair. The association presented the project as a national museum of civil-protection history, backed by eight million euros from the federal KulturInvest programme, with conversion work due the following year, and Gerster pledged the THW-Bundesvereinigung's support.

Conflict-of-interest debate

Reporting in 2023

On 6 November 2023 Die Zeit published “Lobbyismus: Das doppelte Spiel,” by Christian Fuchs and Fritz Zimmermann, about Martin Gerster’s roles in the Bundestag and at the Bundesvereinigung der Helfer und Förderer des Technischen Hilfswerks (THW-Bundesvereinigung). Gerster, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was the group’s rapporteur on the Budget Committee for Einzelplan 06, the Interior Ministry budget. That plan covers both the Technisches Hilfswerk (THW) and the federal grant to the association of which he was honorary president. Die Zeit wrote that it had reported the dual role the year before, and that Gerster had then spoken of a “klare Trennung in personeller und räumlicher Hinsicht” between the functions.

The article said the government’s 2024 draft would give the THW 42 million euro less than in the current year, a further cut of a little more than 10 percent, dropping new property investment and leaving needed vehicles unbought, while raising the association’s subsidy from 1.4 million to 2.75 million euro. The Interior Ministry told the paper that the increase was for the “inhaltliche Um- und Neugestaltung” of the museum of the German fire services and the THW in Fulda, a project of which the association was one carrier. It also confirmed that on 12 September 2023 Gerster, as a member of parliament, held an hour-long video call with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser covering Einzelplan 06 and the coming negotiations. At the association’s assembly in Hamburg on 9 September, a meeting report quoted by Die Zeit had him saying that 600,000 euro in business donations had already been raised that year, during cuts the paper linked to the debt brake and to earlier reductions after the Ahr Valley disaster. The article framed the overlap as a conflict of interest and did not report a legal finding.

The same day, the German chapter of Transparency International carried the piece in its press review. The note called Gerster the association’s president and therefore its “oberster Lobbyist,” said the federal subsidies had doubled, and repeated his account that the honorary role was in the lobby register and had been communicated in the Budget Committee so that no impression of a conflict would arise.

Parliamentary handling and later grants

Die Zeit reported that, after its earlier research appeared, the Budget Committee used an informal practice the paper called a “Lex Gerster”: Gerster remained the formal rapporteur, but the THW and association lines were discussed by the governing parties’ budget spokespeople. The paper said that limited his weight in committee without closing other routes, such as talks with the minister or other members. He told Die Zeit that the honorary work was in the lobby register and had been raised in the committee, and that the rule mattered so that “der Eindruck eines möglichen Interessenkonflikts gar nicht erst aufkommt.” The Bundestag lobby register lists him as the association’s president and as a person conducting its interest representation.

The figure in the draft was kept in the adopted 2024 budget. Under chapter 0629, title 684 01, institutional funding for the Bundesvereinigung was 2.750 million euro, against 1.460 million in the 2023 plan; spending on that line in 2024 was later recorded as 2.744 million. The same 2024 plan cut the THW chapter from 428.629 million euro to 401.568 million, and investment appropriations from 93.157 million to 65.157 million, less than the 42 million euro reduction Die Zeit had reported from the draft. In 2025 the institutional grant was set at 1.560 million euro and the THW chapter at 458.048 million; the association’s lobby-register filing for 2025 states a THW grant of 1,550,001 to 1,560,000 euro. The 2026 plan put the institutional grant at 2.390 million euro and the THW chapter at 727.936 million, of which 275.199 million was for investment.

Personal life and publications

Family and affiliations

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own declarations, records that Martin Gerster was born on 30 August 1971 in Biberach an der Riß, is Roman Catholic, is married and has one child. It does not name his spouse or child.

The same note lists membership of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, the Medienwerkstatt Biberach and the Förderverein Piéla-Bilanga, together with the ACE Automobilclub Europa, the Sozialverband Deutschland and Bürger für artgerechte Nutztierhaltung Oberschwaben. The Piéla-Bilanga association, based in Ochsenhausen, describes its work as partnership engagement in Piéla and Bilanga in Burkina Faso. Separately from those club memberships, the disclosure of functions under the members' rules of conduct lists an unpaid presidency of the supporters' association of the Technisches Hilfswerk and a seat on the council of the district of Biberach.

Books and chapters

With Hartwig Abraham, Gerster is named on Die Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie in Biberach 1874–1999, whose subtitle presents it as a look back over 125 years and a contribution to examining the political development of Biberach an der Riß. The SWB union catalogue records a first edition of 1999, issued in Biberach an der Riß by the local branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, at 365 pages with numerous illustrations and diagrams. The statement of responsibility names Abraham and then Gerster, and identifies the local branch, rather than either man, as the publishing body. The record gives the ISBN 3-00-004690-9 and notes that the ISBN printed inside the book is wrong, the correct number being the one on the dust jacket.

In 2009 he co-edited Strategien der extremen Rechten: Hintergründe – Analysen – Antworten with Stephan Braun and Alexander Geisler. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften in Wiesbaden issued the first print edition under ISBN 978-3-531-15911-9; the SWB catalogue records that printing at 681 pages, while the publisher's electronic edition (ISBN 978-3-531-91708-5) is given as 667 pages, with a 2009 copyright and an online publication date of 17 November 2010. A second, updated and expanded edition followed from Springer VS: the softcover (ISBN 978-3-658-01983-9) is dated 14 August 2015 and the ebook (ISBN 978-3-658-01984-6) 5 August 2015. The publisher numbers it as the second edition, lists X + 698 pages, carries a 2016 copyright for Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, and describes the revision as updated and expanded after the debate over the National Socialist Underground.

The three editors wrote the opening essay, titled in the 2009 contents "Die extreme Rechte. Einleitende Betrachtungen". In the later edition the corresponding chapter, "Strategien der extremen Rechten – Einleitende Betrachtungen", is credited to Alexander Geisler, Stephan Braun and Martin Gerster and occupies pages 11–35. With Geisler, Gerster also wrote "Fußball als Extrem-Sport – Die Unterwanderung des Breitensports als Strategieelement der extremen Rechten", on pages 189–207 in the 2009 edition and pages 469–494 in the later one. The later chapter's summary begins with a march on the last Sunday of October 2014, when, it states, 4,800 football hooligans and right-wing extremists gathered at Cologne main station under the name "Hooligans gegen Salafisten" (HoGeSa) and clashes injured almost 50 police officers; the chapter treats the use of grassroots football as one strategic device of the extreme right. The 2009 volume's note on the editors identified Gerster as a member of the Bundestag and deputy spokesperson of the SPD parliamentary group's working group on right-wing extremism.