Martin Rabanus

Martin Hermann Rabanus (born 2 September 1971 in Fulda, Hesse) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag. He holds a Hesse state-list seat and was the SPD candidate in constituency 177, Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg, at the 2025 federal election. A Diplom political scientist, he holds the civil-service grade of Ministerialrat. The Bundestag’s biography, based on his own disclosure, lists him as Roman Catholic, married and the father of two children; his residence is given as Taunusstein in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis.

He performed civilian service in Wiesbaden from 1990 to 1991 and gained the Abitur in 1993. From 1993 to July 1998 he studied political science, with electives in law, sociology and history, at Goethe University Frankfurt, and graduated with a Diplom. He joined the SPD in 1993. In 1994 he was state executive secretary of the Hessian pupil representation and, until 1998, personal assistant to Armin Clauss, then chair of the SPD group in the Hessian Landtag and a former state minister. He remained with that group as a staff member and, from 1999 to 2013, as a policy adviser, and from 2022 to 2024 he was a department head in the Landtag administration.

In the Rheingau-Taunus district he has sat on the Kreistag since 2001 and has been deputy chair of the SPD group there since 2006. He chaired the SPD in Taunusstein from 2002 to 2003 and the district SPD from 2007 to 2017. At the direct election for Landrat on 12 March 2023 he received 14,531 votes (24.91 percent) and finished second to Sandro Zehner of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who won in the first round with 30,812 votes (52.83 percent).

Rabanus first entered the Bundestag on 22 October 2013 and was a member of the 18th and 19th Bundestag until 2021, on the committees for education, research and technology assessment and for culture and media, and he was the SPD group’s culture-policy spokesperson from 2018 to 2021. He was not returned at the 2021 election and re-entered on 26 January 2024 as successor to Kaweh Mansoori, who had given up his seat in the 20th Bundestag to join the Hessian state government. At the election of 23 February 2025 he again missed the constituency: Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU) took 66,648 first votes (36.8 percent) to Rabanus’s 40,101 (22.1 percent), on a turnout of 84.2 percent. Rabanus returned through place 7 on the SPD list in Hesse.

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member and Obmann (group coordinator) of the Committee on Culture and Media and an ordinary member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, and since 21 May 2025 he has been spokesperson of the SPD working group on culture and media. He is a deputy member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, and deputy chair of the parliamentary group on Southern Africa. Since May 2019 he has chaired the German Adult Education Association (Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband); the association’s assembly in Frankfurt re-elected him on 15 June 2023 with 107 of 111 valid votes, and he also chairs the shareholders’ meeting of telc gGmbH. Disclosed offices include the administrative board of Deutsche Welle and, from September 2025, the administrative board of the Filmförderungsanstalt.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Martin Hermann Rabanus was born on 2 September 1971 in Fulda, Hesse. The Bundestag lists him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children. In a 2018 interview he called Fulda “erz-katholisch” (arch-Catholic) and said that, as a young man, he had never belonged to what he termed the “Hauptsache-dagegen-Fraktion” (roughly, those whose main aim is to be against things). He described an early engagement with Catholic social teaching and said he came to feel more at home in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which he associated with tolerance, consideration and practical social action, while still wanting to argue from Christian values. A 2021 profile added that he came from a Catholic parental home.

From 1977 to 1981 he attended primary school in Marbach, in the district of Fulda. From 1981 to 1987 he was a pupil at the Rabanus-Maurus-Schule, Fulda’s Domgymnasium, which the SPD group’s biography describes as a classical-language Gymnasium. The school traces its history to a monastery school founded in 748 and states that it has been run as a humanist Gymnasium since 1835; the name Rabanus-Maurus-Schule has stood beside Domgymnasium since 1948. From 1987 to 1989 he attended the Wigbertschule in Hünfeld, the Gymnasium of the rural district of Fulda, whose catchment is the north of that district; the SPD biography calls it a modern-language Gymnasium. He broke off school attendance in 1989.

In 1991 he returned to school at the Marianum in Fulda. That school is a state-recognized Catholic institution in independent sponsorship: its operating company was founded in 1959 by members of the Marianist order, and since 2000 the Stiftung Marianum Fulda, whose board includes the Diocese of Fulda, has been the sole shareholder. It combines a Realschule, opened in 1951, with an upper secondary branch (gymnasiale Oberstufe) that began in 1978; the Abitur taken there is the Allgemeine Hochschulreife. Rabanus’s own accounts, which describe the Marianum as a Catholic Gymnasium, place him there from 1991 to 1993. He received the Allgemeine Hochschulreife in 1993.

University and civilian service

Before resuming school he performed Zivildienst (civilian service) from 1990 to 1991 in Wiesbaden. The assignment was with the mobile social-assistance service (Mobiler Sozialer Hilfsdienst) of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt.

He joined the SPD in 1993, after the Abitur. He later said he had delayed membership because, as a pupil representative, he did not want to be sorted by party. According to the Bundestag biography, he studied political science (Politologie) from 1993 until July 1998 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, taking law, sociology and history as elective subjects, and graduated with a Diplom. The SPD group’s curriculum vitae dates a course in law, sociology and history to 1994–1998 and records the conferral of the academic Diplom in Politologie in 1998; it gives his profession as Diplom-Politologe. An English curriculum vitae he issued in 2019 matches the Bundestag account of the subject, the electives and the 1993–1998 dates.

In 1994 he served as Landesgeschäftsführer of the Hessian pupils’ representation (Hessische Schülervertretung). He has said that, in the early 1990s, while Hesse had a red-green state government, the post let him take part in revising the Land’s school law, and that studying political science after the Abitur followed from that experience. From 1994, still during his studies, he also worked for the SPD parliamentary group in the Landtag of Hesse.

Career in the Hessian Landtag

Adviser to the SPD parliamentary group

From 1994 until he entered the Bundestag in 2013, Martin Rabanus worked in Wiesbaden for the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Landtag of Hesse. That start overlapped his studies, which ran from 1993 to July 1998. From 1994 to 1998 he was personal assistant (persönlicher Mitarbeiter) to the group chairman, Armin Clauss, a former state minister (Staatsminister a.D.). Clauss, born in 1938, sat for the SPD from 1 December 1970 to 4 April 2003. He chaired the group from 7 December 1974 to 18 October 1976 and from 25 January 1994 to 19 June 2001, so the assistantship fell inside the second chairmanship, and he was Hessian minister for social affairs in 1976–1984 and 1985–1987, with a few months in 1984 as minister for labour, the environment and social affairs.

In 1998–1999 he handled external contacts, events and internal coordination for the group. From 1999 to 2013 he was a Referent, a policy adviser, on schools and culture and on science and the arts, the brief both the group curriculum vitae and his own archived site give as that post's responsibility. The Bundestag biography records the Referent years without the subject areas.

The adviser post was a civil-service appointment rather than a contract with the group. On 25 March 2014 Rabanus wrote on Abgeordnetenwatch that the groups cannot themselves create a Beamtenverhältnis. The Landtag, he said, employs staff and assigns them to the groups, which repay the cost from group funds; the groups may draw on a limited number of employee and civil-service posts, including posts for heads of unit that are not tied to one legislative term. He said he had held one of those civil-service posts with the SPD group as a Regierungsdirektor, a higher-service grade. The Hessian Faction Act of 5 April 1993, as amended through 2008, allows the Landtag to place staff at a group's disposal and reduces the group's public funds by the budgeted salaries when it does. Those funds, staff and services are confined to the group's parliamentary work and may not be used for party purposes.

Return to the Landtag administration

He was a member of the Bundestag from 2013 to 2021. After that membership ended he returned to the Landtag. The Bundestag biography lists him there as a Bereichsleiter, a head of unit, from 2022 to 2024. On a page of his site archived on 16 January 2023 he wrote that he was again at the Landtag, heading health management and occupational safety (Gesundheitsmanagement und Arbeitsschutz).

The Bundestag's disclosure of activity before membership enters that employment as the Hessian Landtag, Wiesbaden, in the grade of Ministerialrat, with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). A 2018 briefing by the Bundestag Research Services states the rule behind that label. Sections 5 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act cover federal and Land civil servants who sit in the Bundestag. Section 5 suspends the rights and duties of the service relationship, including pay, for the membership and until retirement at latest, and bars a new office or a promotion while it rests. Section 6 provides that a civil servant who applies within three months of leaving is in principle reinstated within a further three months, in an office of the same or an equivalent career with at least the same final basic salary. In 2014 he had given Regierungsdirektor for the group post; the disclosure for the later Landtag employment uses Ministerialrat.

Party offices and local politics

SPD posts in Taunusstein and the district

Martin Rabanus joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1993. He later said he had waited until after his Abitur because, as a student representative, he did not want to be identified with a party. In Taunusstein, where he lives, he chaired the local SPD from 2002 to 2003, and from 2007 to 2017 he chaired the SPD in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis, in Hesse. On the federal party, he sat on the board of the SPD’s education working group (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Bildung) from 2014 to 2020. Since 2017 he has been a board member of the media and network-policy commission and of the Kulturforum at the SPD federal executive; the Bundestag register of interests also lists a board seat at the Kulturforum der Sozialdemokratie in Berlin.

District council and the 2023 Landrat election

Rabanus has sat on the district council (Kreistag) of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis since 2001 and has been deputy chairman of the SPD group there since 2006. The same register records that Kreistag seat, and membership of the district monument advisory board (Denkmalbeirat), as unpaid and running until 31 March 2026, the end of the municipal term. In November 2024 he entered the Taunusstein city council (Stadtverordnetenversammlung) in place of Thorsten Gromes of Watzhahn, who was leaving it. He said it was an honour to take municipal responsibility in his home town as well. That seat is also listed as unpaid until 31 March 2026.

The independent Landrat Frank Kilian did not stand again. On 13 September 2022 the advisory board of the SPD sub-district (Unterbezirk), drawn from the local branches, nominated Rabanus, who had been a member of the Bundestag from 2013 to 2021, by unanimous vote for the election the following March. An extraordinary sub-district congress in the Bornbachhalle at Heidenrod-Laufenselden confirmed him on 24 September 2022: 73 of 76 delegates voted for the then 51-year-old, one voted against and two ballots were invalid, a result reported as 98.6 percent, the share of the valid votes. In his speech he said social democracy’s task was to keep in view “the people who work hard every day and do not know how they are going to make ends meet.” He was standing against the mayor of his own town, Sandro Zehner of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). Alliance 90/The Greens had nominated Sigrid Hansen of Eltville.

The direct election was held on 12 March 2023. The district election committee certified the result on 14 March: of 146,463 eligible voters, 58,828 voted, 58,325 ballots were valid and 503 invalid, a turnout of 40.2 percent. Zehner received 30,812 votes (52.83 percent) and was elected because more than half of the valid votes fell to him, so there was no runoff. Rabanus received 14,531 (24.91 percent), Hansen 7,227 (12.39 percent), Frank Grobe of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 4,143 (7.10 percent), and the independent Oliver Eibeck 1,612 (2.76 percent). The district said Zehner, still mayor of Taunusstein, would succeed Kilian on 5 July 2023. A second round had been widely expected, including by Zehner. He led throughout the count, with his strongest shares near 60 percent in Bad Schwalbach (59.48 percent), Aarbergen (59.24 percent) and Taunusstein (59.1 percent); in the Rheingau they were mostly in the forties, apart from Lorch (55.22 percent) and Rüdesheim (50.81 percent).

In answers to the Wiesbaden chamber of industry and commerce, Rabanus called for a deliberate shift from fossil fuels, through savings in county buildings and more renewables, with the contracts kept in the region, and for reviving the local Mittelstand alliance. He set 2045 as the climate-neutrality date and said the district should enable projects rather than block them. He wanted gigabit funding steered to weaker broadband areas, a direct line for firms into the administration, and, alongside digital services and transport, more education from day care through vocational schools and adult education tied to the local labour market.

Bundestag candidacies and mandates

Direct candidacies in Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg

Martin Rabanus has been the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) candidate for the Bundestag constituency Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg at every federal election from 2005 through 2025, each time against the Christian Democratic Union incumbent Klaus-Peter Willsch, who won the seat on every occasion. The narrowest margin was in 2021, when 2,877 first votes separated them.

The constituency is the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis plus, from Limburg-Weilburg, Bad Camberg, Brechen, Dornburg, Elbtal, Elz, Hadamar, Hünfelden, Limburg an der Lahn, Selters (Taunus) and Waldbrunn (Westerwald). It was constituency 179 in 2005, 178 from 2009 through 2021, and 177 at the election of 23 February 2025.

On 18 September 2005, 175,769 of 220,619 eligible voters cast ballots (79.7 percent). Of 171,615 valid first votes the CDU received 81,513 (47.5 percent) and the SPD 62,690 (36.5 percent); of 172,264 valid second votes the CDU had 68,569 (39.8 percent) and the SPD 54,870 (31.9 percent). On 27 September 2009 turnout was 75.2 percent (166,456 of 221,226). First votes were 75,224 for the CDU (46.1 percent) and 45,127 for the SPD (27.7 percent); second votes were 60,875 (37.2 percent) and 36,352 (22.2 percent).

On 2 December 2012 an SPD constituency conference nominated Rabanus, with 98.3 percent of the delegates, to challenge Willsch again after 2005 and 2009. At the election of 22 September 2013, turnout was 75.1 percent (165,788 of 220,668). The CDU took 84,489 first votes (52.1 percent) and the SPD 47,152 (29.1 percent); second votes were 73,599 (45.5 percent) for the CDU and 40,718 (25.1 percent) for the SPD, and Willsch remained the member.

The Hesse statistical office listed Willsch and Rabanus as the CDU and SPD candidates in constituency 178 for 24 September 2017. Turnout was 78.8 percent (173,627 of 220,342). First votes were 71,555 for the CDU (41.8 percent) and 43,427 for the SPD (25.3 percent); second votes were 59,346 (34.6 percent) and 35,604 (20.7 percent). The same two candidates stood on 26 September 2021, when turnout was 78.1 percent (172,247 of 220,466). Willsch received 51,318 first votes (30.2 percent) and Rabanus 48,441 (28.5 percent); second votes were 44,413 for the CDU (26.1 percent) and 43,708 for the SPD (25.6 percent).

On 23 February 2025 turnout was 84.2 percent (182,782 of 217,091 eligible voters). Willsch won with 66,648 first votes (36.8 percent, 6.6 points above 2021). The Federal Returning Officer recorded Martin Hermann Rabanus as runner-up with 40,101 (22.1 percent, down 6.4 points). Second votes were 60,697 for the CDU (33.4 percent) and 30,840 for the SPD (17.0 percent).

List seats, the 2021 defeat and the 2024 return

Rabanus did not win a constituency seat in any of these elections. On the SPD state list in Hesse he was placed 19th in 2005 and 16th in 2009, and was not elected. In 2013 he was 11th and entered the 18th Bundestag on that list. In 2017 the state statistical office placed him seventh, and he was returned on the list again; the Bundestag records him as a member of the 18th and 19th Bundestage from 2013 until 2021.

For 2021 the same office listed him ninth, with Kaweh Mansoori third. The SPD won enough Hessian constituencies that most of its successful candidates did not need a list seat. Using the preliminary result, the Frankfurter Neue Presse counted 15 SPD members from Hesse, did not include Rabanus, and identified Mansoori as entering via the list. Rabanus therefore had no seat when the 20th Bundestag began.

Mansoori resigned the mandate on 25 January 2024. From 18 January he was Deputy Minister-President of Hesse and minister for the economy, energy, transport, housing and rural areas, and Rabanus succeeded him on 26 January 2024 for the rest of the 20th term.

At a state party congress in Gießen in December 2024, the SPD placed Rabanus seventh on its Hesse list for the Rheingau-Taunus/Limburg area. Lennart Oehl, who was placed 13th, challenged him for seventh place and lost. Rabanus again missed the direct seat but was elected on the state list, in seventh place, to the 21st Bundestag. The Bundestag lists a constituency office at Wiesbadener Straße 26 in Idstein. The SPD parliamentary group also lists Wiesbaden, constituency 178, as a constituency he looks after.

Culture and media policy

Committee roles and the culture spokespersonship

Martin Rabanus sat on the Bundestag Committee for Culture and Media from 2013 to 2021 and, on the parliament’s biography, was the SPD group’s culture-policy spokesperson from 2018 to 2021. The group elected him on 20 March 2018, after Michelle Müntefering left the post to become a minister of state in the Foreign Office. The committee of the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 21 May 2025 with Rabanus among four SPD members and Sven Lehmann of Alliance 90/The Greens as chair. As of 30 October 2026 the biography lists him as an ordinary member and as the SPD Obmann; the group lists him as spokesperson of its Culture and Media working group from 21 May 2025.

In Politik & Kultur that June he called culture and media “democratic infrastructure” and named a modern copyright law, fair streaming pay, and rules for artificial intelligence as the social-democratic tests of the term. He wrote that during the COVID-19 pandemic he had helped adjust Neustart Kultur for freelancers and institutions, and that a platform levy sought by the SPD had been taken up early by the new culture minister.

Film funding and copyright

On 15 January 2026 he told the Bundestag that German film was in a “veritable crisis”: the traffic-light coalition had amended the Film Funding Act but not what he called its main pillars, and the new coalition was split over a statutory investment duty. Only a statute, he said, would bring transparency and reliability; voluntary pledges were “in reality” mere declarations of intent, and when a Left deputy asked if the SPD would give way he interjected, “Natürlich nicht! Wir kämpfen!” The federal film fund’s rise to €250 million was, he said, already done; he expected a decision before the Berlinale.

The cabinet adopted a draft Media Services Investment Obligation Act (MedienInvestVG) on 27 May 2026. As the Bundestag press service summarized Drucksache 21/7820, domestic and foreign audiovisual providers would invest 8 percent of annual net turnover, with at least 60 percent of that sum for production of European works, at least 80 percent for productions in German as an original language, and at least 70 percent for works of independent producers. A firm investing at least 12 percent voluntarily could depart from some detailed rules; the Federal Film Board (Filmförderungsanstalt, FFA) would supervise the duty and could levy a compensatory charge of 75 percent. epd medien reported that Wolfram Weimer had wanted voluntary pledges and that the SPD insisted on a statute; Tagesspiegel reported the draft was to take effect at the start of 2027, beside federal film money doubled to €250 million a year. epd noted qualified praise from the producers’ alliance and sharp criticism from Bitkom.

At first reading on 24 September 2026 he called an Alternative for Germany attack “vollkommen krude.” U.S. streamers, he said, might earn well in a market economy, but it was “mehr als recht und billig” that some of those profits return to German production; 8 percent was moderate beside earlier talk of “20 Prozent und mehr,” the quotas and rights reversion did not overburden anyone, and he still wanted a tax incentive so the reform would be of one piece. Lehmann, for the Greens, called the draft the minimum beside a 20 percent duty and a 30 percent production-cost incentive, and asked for firmer rights reversion and more for cinemas. Anja Weisgerber of the CDU/CSU, whom he credited with Wiebke Esdar for the compromise, said legal opinions and the European Union Commission had warned of disproportionate interference and that the text had to be free of legal doubt. heise online reported that former constitutional justice Udo Di Fabio, in an opinion commissioned by Amazon Prime Video, found the draft in conflict with the Basic Law and European law, above all on rights reversion and German-language quotas. The Bundestag disclosure lists Rabanus on the FFA board from September 2025; the SPD group’s list dates the seat from 4 June 2025, and neither page explains the difference.

In November 2020 he told an Initiative Urheberrecht conference, as reported by heise online, that the EU copyright directive was “ohne technische Hilfsmittel kaum umzusetzen,” that fear of a “Zensurmonster” was “Quatsch,” and that the coalition line against upload filters came from a “hysterischer Situation,” though machines must not have the last word. On 31 July 2026 the Munich Regional Court I largely upheld GEMA against the U.S. generator Suno, treating unlicensed use, including in training, as infringement; the judgment was not final. With Helge Lindh he called it a signal that commercial AI trained on protected works needs transparency and fair pay: “KI darf Kultur nicht entwerten.”

Public broadcasting and cultural debates

On 16 September 2026 n-tv, citing the Catholic News Agency, reported that Weimer had complained at a Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference of double structures between ARD and ZDF and had suggested privatizing ZDF and reducing ARD to four or five larger broadcasters, without calling for public broadcasting to be abolished. Rabanus answered the same day that public broadcasting had to become more efficient, but that privatizing ZDF, “wie sie Kulturstaatsminister Wolfram Weimer vorschlägt,” was the wrong path; reforms already agreed by the Länder, who hold responsibility for the broadcasting order, should be carried out and assessed rather than replaced at once by another rebuild. n-tv quoted him that the difficult position of private media did not justify setting public and private providers against each other, and that the CDU, CSU and SPD had committed themselves in the coalition agreement to the dual system and a plural public broadcaster.

The sharpest row of his first spokespersonship was the 2018 Echo. After Kollegah and Farid Bang received the hip-hop prize for Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend 3, whose lines included a comparison with Auschwitz prisoners and “Mache wieder mal ’nen Holocaust,” Rabanus told t-online on 17 April 2018, “Die Veranstalter des Echo haben versagt.” The prize, he said, had to be rebuilt: its criteria could not keep out antisemitic, xenophobic and misanthropic works, the lyrics had crossed artistic freedom, and the advisory board had been wrong to tolerate them. He called right-wing ideas in youth culture a “großes Problem,” better met by political education than by new youth-protection clauses, a line close to Erhard Grundl of the Greens.

Education and adult learning

Parliamentary education work

In the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) Martin Rabanus was an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). When the committee was constituted for the 19th term, on 31 January 2018, he was again an ordinary member. A 2022 compilation by the Bundestag’s scientific services, using the archived biographies, records that this ordinary membership lasted from 2018 to 2019 and that he was then a deputy, his full seat having moved to the Committee on Culture and Media. His biography, based on members’ own statements, also lists the education committee for 2013–2021 and a place on the federal board of the SPD’s Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Bildung from 2014 to 2020.

In July 2016 the SPD parliamentary group named him rapporteur for the amendment of the Upgrading Training Assistance Act (Aufstiegsfortbildungsförderungsgesetz), known as Aufstiegs-BAföG or Meister-BAföG. The group said the amendment, in force from 1 August 2016, raised the maximum maintenance grant for a single person from 697 to 768 euros and the ceiling on course and examination costs from 10,226 to 15,000 euros, and extended eligibility, including to some bachelor’s graduates.

From 21 May 2025 to 7 September 2026 he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the SPD working group of the same name. The Bundestag list published on 30 October 2026 does not include that committee. On 16 October 2025 he spoke against a motion by Die Linke to make education funding a permanent federal task and to remove the constitutional limit on certain joint federal–Land financing. He argued that schools remained a responsibility of the Länder, that Article 104c of the Basic Law, added in 2019, allowed the federation to invest in municipal education infrastructure, and that the SPD wanted a second Digital Pact to cover continuing education.

The German Adult Education Association

The Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband (DVV) is a registered non-profit association. Its Bundestag lobby-register entry says that it promotes continuing education and the educational work of the Volkshochschulen and represents its members at federal, European and international level; on 2 July 2026 it reported 16 organisational members. The assembly of the 16 Land associations elects the board. A DVV press release dated 8 May 2019, issued from Weimar, reported that the assembly had elected Rabanus chair with 81.7 percent of the votes. He succeeded Ernst Dieter Rossmann, then chair of the Bundestag education committee, who had led the DVV board since 2007 and had to leave after three terms under the statutes; the assembly named him honorary chair unanimously. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, president since 2015, was confirmed with 91.4 percent. Susanne Deß, of the Mannheimer Abendakademie, and Winfried Ellwanger, of the vhs in Landkreis Cham, were confirmed as deputy chairs.

On 15 June 2023 in Frankfurt the assembly re-elected Kramp-Karrenbauer as president and Rabanus, a board member since 2019, as chair, each with 107 of 111 valid votes. Deputies were Deß and Winfried Krüger (vhs Ammerland). Heike Richter (vhs Leipzig) remained an additional member, Arne Zielinski (Bildungscampus Nürnberg) was newly elected as one, and Daniela Schneckenburger (German Association of Cities) continued for the municipal associations. The lobby-register entry amended on 29 October 2026 still names Rabanus as chair, with Deß and Krüger as deputies, and the Bundestag publishes the chairmanship as unpaid.

In October 2022, while he was out of parliament, the Frankfurter Rundschau quoted his warning that value-added tax on part of the course programme would raise fees and reduce participation, after rulings of the European Court of Justice on municipal services that private providers can also supply. He and Kramp-Karrenbauer, identified there as the former chair of the Christian Democratic Union, asked the federal government to clarify the exemption. The same disclosure lists him as unpaid chair of the shareholders’ meeting of telc gGmbH in Bad Homburg. telc, managed by Jürgen Keicher, states that it is a DVV subsidiary providing language examinations and teaching materials. The disclosure also lists an unpaid board seat at Volkshochschule Rheingau-Taunus e.V. in Taunusstein, Hesse; the association’s legal notice names a board chaired by district deputy Sabine Muth and does not include him. He sits on the National Platform on Education for Sustainable Development, which the responsible ministry calls the senior steering body for Germany’s implementation of UNESCO programmes. A list dated 1 June 2026 enters him as DVV chair, and the disclosure records the seat as unpaid under the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Development policy and parliamentary diplomacy

The Southern Africa parliamentary group

The Bundestag's parliamentary groups are cross-party associations of members, without their own statutes, for dialogue with partner parliaments, governments and civil society. The Southern Africa group is assigned twelve countries—Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa—each a member of the Southern African Development Community, though not every SADC state. The SPD group's office lists record Martin Rabanus as chair of the SADC-states group from 21 November 2016 and of the Southern Africa group from 14 May 2018; the Bundestag biography summarizes the chairmanship as 2017–2021.

In June 2019 the group spent nine days in South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini to maintain parliamentary relations and, in Eswatini, to open them. Talks covered developments under President Cyril Ramaphosa, cooperation, energy and vocational education in South Africa; education, the economy and health in Botswana; and the political system of the small monarchy in Eswatini. In an interview the Bundestag published that August, Rabanus said South Africa wanted to be a partner rather than only a recipient of aid, and argued for mixing projects of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development with private investment, including water and energy work by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit. On Botswana he cited stable institutions and press freedom and passed on a request that intermediaries such as the Goethe-Institut and the German Academic Exchange Service work in the country rather than only from South Africa; in Eswatini, after meetings with government and opposition, he said contact with civil society should continue, and he tied the follow-up to German commercial interests.

The President's report for 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2021 records no further delegation by the group. After Rabanus returned to the Bundestag, the SPD group lists him as deputy chair from 15 September 2025.

Economic cooperation and foreign cultural policy

The SPD group lists him, in the 18th electoral term, as a deputy member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union from 13 January 2014 and of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy from 18 February 2014, and again as a deputy on that subcommittee from 14 May 2018 and from 16 October 2025. The subcommittee, the first of the Foreign Affairs Committee, deals with foreign cultural and educational policy, including the Goethe-Institut and academic exchange, cultural-property conventions and intercultural relations. On 2 October 2015 he told the plenary, during debate on the government's 17th and 18th reports, that the policy was a pillar of German foreign policy rather than an optional extra, and called for more academic exchange and online courses for newly arrived refugees.

From 9 June 2026 the SPD group records him as a full member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, the Bundestag forum for worldwide economic cooperation and for subjects such as education, health, gender equality, climate and governance, and its members also review German projects abroad. From May 2025 he has been an unpaid member of the Parliamentary Advisory Board for Population and Development of the German Foundation for World Population, an informal cross-party body created by the foundation in 2003 and staffed by it, which seeks stronger Bundestag and government commitment to the 2030 Agenda, especially health and gender equality under the Sustainable Development Goals, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and population dynamics.

In March 2026, as the SPD group's culture and media spokesperson, he opposed a Federal Foreign Office plan to end the volunteer service kulturweit, which the group called part of foreign cultural and educational policy since 2009, with a last cohort due in September 2026, calling such programs a core of cultural policy rather than a dispensable extra.

Supervisory and advisory offices

Broadcasters, film and cultural bodies

Seats outside Rabanus's committees are published on his Bundestag biography. That disclosure is separate from the biographical prose, which, in the paragraph on 2013–2021, still refers to board memberships and names the German National Library, the House of History and the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The same disclosure records his unpaid chairmanship of the German Adult Education Association and of the shareholders' meeting of telc gGmbH.

The administrative board of Deutsche Welle supervises the director-general's management outside programming. On 19 April 2024 its broadcasting council recorded Rabanus as the member named by the Bundestag; the board page still lists him in that capacity. In the 19th legislative period the archived disclosure listed him only as a deputy member.

The Filmförderungsanstalt in Berlin supports the structure of the German film industry and the artistic quality of German film. Three of the 36 members of its administrative board are named by the Bundestag. On 18 September 2025 parliament, without debate, elected Rabanus and Melanie Bernstein on a joint CDU/CSU–Social Democratic Party of Germany proposal and rejected an AfD nominee. The disclosure dates the seat from September 2025; the SPD group dates it from 4 June 2025, when the first nomination was published, ahead of a revised proposal on 16 September. The 19th-term disclosure had already listed him on the board and on its guidelines committee.

The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media awards the German Short Film Award annually and describes it as the highest-endowed short-film prize in Germany, with nominations proposed by independent specialist juries. Rabanus's disclosure records an honorary membership of the award's jury and does not name a panel or a term.

Since 4 June 2025 the SPD group has listed him as a deputy member of the Kunstbeirat, the Bundestag body for art in parliament, chaired by the president and drawn from every group. Since 7 July 2025 he has sat on the advisory board of the Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul. Its members come from the Bundestag, the Foreign Office, the culture commissioner and the Goethe-Institut; it appoints the stipend jury and advises on guidelines and the award procedure. From 6 June 2025 the disclosure records an honorary seat on the advisory board of the Bundesstiftung Livekultur, which seeks to secure cultural spaces and funding for live culture.

The 19th-term disclosure, not repeated on the current list, also recorded three supervisory seats named in the biographical prose. He was on the administrative board of the German National Library, which decides matters of fundamental or considerable economic importance; the library now publishes Johannes Volkmann as its Bundestag member and shows the second seat vacant. He sat on the supervisory board of the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, which decides budget, programme outlines and important appointments for museums of German history since 1945, and on the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, 22 Bundestag members who review the agency's effectiveness and political balance. The same archived list included the Hörfunkrat of Deutschlandradio, which monitors compliance with the statutory rules for its services, and a documentary pre-selection commission of the Deutsche Filmakademie for the German Film Award.

Memorials and local cultural boards

The disclosure lists an honorary seat on the advisory board of the Hadamar Memorial in Hadamar, Hesse. The memorial states that, in the centrally directed phase of the Nazi Aktion T4 programme, more than 10,000 patients were murdered at the former institution by the stop on 24 August 1941.

The association that supports the memorial publishes him on that board as a Regierungsdirektor and member of the Bundestag. Its organs are an executive board, a members' meeting and the advisory board, and it collects donations for remembrance of the victims and for historical-political education about the Nazi crimes.

Until 31 March 2026 the disclosure also listed an honorary seat on the monument advisory board of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis. Under section 7 of the Hessian Monument Protection Act, an expert advisory board, not subject to instruction, is appointed at each lower monument-protection authority to advise and support it.

Positions outside the culture portfolio

Recorded votes and constituent correspondence

On 29 November 2018 the Bundestag, on a Green roll-call, extended to 31 December 2020 the period for castrating male piglets without anaesthesia. The printed final result was 421 yes, 142 no and 87 abstentions; Rabanus, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, voted yes. Animal-welfare groups and Renate Künast (Greens) attacked the delay industry had sought; she called the coalition the “parliamentary arm of the farmers’ association and the slaughter industry.” A constituent called the vote a scandal. He replied in August 2019 that experts at the 2018 hearing had backed the extension because alternatives were not ready, that the ministry had to regulate them by 30 May 2019, and that 38 million euros would buy equipment. He said imports under lower standards would otherwise follow, and called the vote animal welfare despite CDU/CSU resistance.

In May 2015 he defended Heiko Maas’s April guidelines on data retention: ten weeks for specified call data, including IP addresses for internet telephony, and four weeks for cell data, excluding email, content and pages visited. Access, he wrote, would be limited to the most serious offences under a judicial order, with professional secrets barred, and would be stricter than the law the Federal Constitutional Court had struck down and than CDU/CSU demands. On 16 October 2015 he voted for that storage bill (Drucksachen 18/5088 and 18/6391); it passed 404 to 148, with seven abstentions.

In July 2015 he wrote that he rejected fracking as risky and wanted a commercial ban on the unconventional form, tighter rules for conventional extraction, and a final say for the Bundestag rather than an expert commission. In June 2016 he called opposition total-ban motions “window dressing” for omitting the conventional-gas rules. On 24 June 2016 he voted for the amended water and nature-conservation package, passed 435 to 109 with nine abstentions. It banned unconventional fracking in shale, clay, marl and coal-seam rock except for at most four scientific trials with Land consent, and set a Bundestag review for 2021.

On 7 June 2019, on an Alternative for Germany interpellation about alleged “hunts” in Chemnitz on 26 August 2018, he called images of Hitler salutes and masked aggression documented fact and the AfD account a “Chemnitz lie,” and he endorsed Steffen Seibert’s description of mobs hunting people of a different appearance. He set a defence of press freedom and freedom of speech against AfD talk of a “lying press,” and said democracy lived on controversy, “but certainly not on violence and populism.” Thomas Ehrhorn (AfD) called the hunts story a propaganda lie; Rabanus said that showed a parallel world.

On 22 March 2024, in an AfD hour on speech in schools after a case in Ribnitz-Damgarten, he called it “downright disgusting” that the AfD was using “an obviously misguided girl.” He said the party was attacking institutions, not defending opinion, and that antisemitism and fascism were crimes rather than opinions, though legitimate views could be spoken and answered. AfD members replied that the headteacher and police were suppressing speech.