# Matthias Miersch

# Matthias Miersch

Matthias Miersch (born 19 December 1968 in Hanover) is a lawyer and politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005 for the constituency of Hannover-Land II in Lower Saxony. Since 7 May 2025 he has chaired the SPD parliamentary group, after serving from October 2024 as the party's acting general secretary.

He passed the Abitur in 1988 at the [Albert-Einstein](/people/albert-einstein)-Schule in Laatzen and studied law at the University of Hanover, completing the first state examination in 1993. After a supplementary course at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer in 1996 and the second state examination in 1997, he was admitted as a lawyer in July 1997. In 1999 he received a doctorate in constitutional law and legal history from the University of Hanover, and since 2000 he has been a specialist lawyer in criminal law. He joined the SPD in 1990, sat on the Laatzen city council from 1991 to 2018, and chaired the SPD council group there from 1995 to 2005.

In parliament he was the SPD group's spokesperson for sustainable development from 2005 to 2009 and its environment-policy spokesperson from 2009 to 2017. From 2017 to 2024 he was a deputy chair of the parliamentary group, covering environment, energy and agriculture and, from 2021, climate protection and consumer protection, and from 2015 to 2024 he was a spokesman of the Parliamentary Left inside the group. On 7 October 2024 [Kevin Kühnert](/people/kevin-kuhnert) resigned as general secretary, citing his health and saying he would not stand again for the Bundestag. The same day the party chairs [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) and [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) proposed Miersch as successor, and the party's leading bodies approved him that evening as acting general secretary.

He ran the SPD campaign for the snap 2025 German federal election, in which the party took 16.4 percent of the second votes and 120 seats. He kept Hannover-Land II with 31.8 percent of the first votes, ahead of CDU candidate [Tilman Kuban](/people/tilman-kuban) on 30.0 percent. After Klingbeil entered the cabinet of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) as vice-chancellor and finance minister, the SPD group elected Miersch its chair on 7 May 2025 with 83.2 percent of the votes. He said he would give up the general-secretary post by the party congress at the end of June 2025.

## Early life and education

### Family and schooling

Matthias Miersch was born on 19 December 1968 in Hanover. He spent his first years with his family in Ronnenberg, then moved to Laatzen, where he grew up in the town centre. He has a twin sister, born three minutes before him, who he has said still regards herself as his protector. In a 2025 interview he described his father as an educator in a youth home and his mother as a nursing assistant in a hospital run by nuns, and said that the lack of charity and the bigotry they encountered there were why they did not raise the twins in the church. His mother, Erika Giesemann, was described by the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe as a founding member of more than 60 years' standing; an uncle, Hermann Fraatz, long sat on a regional board in Lower Saxony. Miersch is Protestant.

He took his Abitur in 1988 at the Albert-Einstein-Schule in Laatzen, a Kooperative Gesamtschule (cooperative comprehensive school). On a return visit in 2025 he recalled that the upper-secondary classes of his year had been housed in the building of what was then called the Sonderschule (special school) and had shared sports lessons with its pupils, an arrangement he said taught that very different people could still achieve something together.

From 1983 to 1993 he volunteered with the CVJM, the German YMCA, and with the Thomasgemeinde, the Protestant parish in Laatzen. He and his sister joined confirmation classes when their friends did; he later described a politically engaged pastor and his own work leading a children's Bible group, organising summer camps, and helping to run a Teestube, an open youth café in a poorer part of Laatzen. He has attributed his move into party politics to a plan by the Laatzen council to cut subsidies for those camps, after which he stood for the Social Democratic Party of Germany; the Bundestag biography records membership from 1990. In sport he started in 1979 as a goalkeeper at BSG Laatzen and in the mid-1980s took up refereeing. He was a football referee in the Hanover Kreis and Bezirk from 1985 to 1995 and has said he officiated up to Bezirksliga level before turning to local politics.

From 1988 to 1996 he performed alternative civilian service (Ersatzdienst) in the Johanniter rescue service and disaster protection, as a first-aid helper with the then local association Deister in Ronnenberg. He later recalled a station at Hagacker in Ronnenberg, a former sauerkraut factory, and 240 hours a year, served partly at the Springe marksmen's festival and the Contidrom test track.

### University and doctorate

Alongside that service he studied law at the University of Hanover, now Leibniz University Hannover, and passed the first state examination in law in 1993. In 1996 he completed supplementary studies (an Ergänzungsstudium) at the Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften in Speyer, and in 1997 he passed the second state examination in law.

In 1999 the university awarded him a doctorate in constitutional law and legal history. The dissertation, *Der sogenannte référé législatif. Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis Gesetzgeber, Gesetz und Richteramt seit dem 18. Jahrhundert*, appeared in 2000 from Nomos in Baden-Baden as volume 36 of the series Fundamenta juridica, at 323 pages. It examines the référé législatif—the duty of a judge, where a statute's meaning was doubtful, to refer the question to the legislator rather than decide it—from the early eighteenth century into the twentieth, and ties that practice to changing ideas of sovereignty, statute, and the judicial office.

Reviewing the book for volume 119 of the *Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte* (Germanistische Abteilung), Ulrike Seif summarised a territorial history covering France, Austria, Prussia, Hesse-Kassel, Saxony, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and the Electorate of Hanover, a comparison of constitutional backgrounds, a discussion running to the judiciary under National Socialism, an account of weekly reports in the German Democratic Republic as a later form of the référé, and a closing view of the Basic Law. She found that history and the comparison—around the concept of statute, the image of the judge, and the balance of executive and legislature, including review by the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court)—convincing. She criticised the appeal to Hobbes, Montesquieu and Rousseau, arguing that Hobbes and Locke were detached from their common-law setting and that their reception in the deliberations studied was not shown, while still calling the book clear, stringent and thoroughly researched.

## Legal career

### Admission and specialization

Matthias Miersch completed the two German state examinations in law: the first in 1993 at the University of Hanover, a supplementary course in 1996 at the school of administrative sciences in Speyer, and the second in 1997. He has been admitted as a lawyer (*Rechtsanwalt*) since July 1997 and, since 2000, has used the title *Fachanwalt für Strafrecht*, a specialist designation in criminal law. Under the Federal Lawyers' Act, a regional bar may permit that title only after a chamber committee has examined evidence of special knowledge and experience in the field. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own statements, also lists him from 2000 as a speaker and expert in agriculture committees of the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament).

From 2000 to 2010 he was a partner in the Hanover firm Rischmüller – Pörtner und Kollegen, and since 2010 the biography records a partnership with Bernzen Sonntag Rechtsanwälte.

### Practice alongside politics

Before he entered parliament, the disclosure describes him as a self-employed lawyer in Hanover. He kept a reduced practice afterwards. On 26 May 2008 he told Abgeordnetenwatch that he had built an independent practice over eleven years and meant to keep it: self-employed lawyers lacked the leave and return arrangements usual in the public service, large companies, trade unions and associations, and employees depended on the office. Published sums, he wrote, were gross receipts, much of which went to costs and salaries, and he wanted rules better able to show conflicts of interest.

The current filing lists two paid legal activities beside the mandate and gives no euro amount for either: lawyer at BERNZEN SONNTAG Rechtsanwälte Steuerberater Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB, marked in liquidation, in Hamburg, and lawyer at Beismann Dr. Miersch Rechtsanwälte GbR in Hanover. A separate line records participations in BERNZEN SONNTAG Rechtsanwälte Steuerberater Partnergesellschaft mbH, also in liquidation, in Hamburg, and in Jens Beismann und Dr. Matthias Miersch Rechtsanwälte GbR in Hanover. Abgeordnetenwatch dates a Bernzen Sonntag side activity to 29 May 2017, then placed in Hanover, and the Beismann activity and both participations to 23 February 2023, again without a figure. Biographies archived for the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) and the 19th (2017–2021) likewise named the Bernzen Sonntag partnership as paid work beside the mandate, in Hanover and later Hamburg, with no published sum.

Apart from the firms, the disclosure records pay as general secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Germany: 9,000 euros gross a month from November 2024 until 6 May 2025, the office itself ending on 26 June 2025. Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, outside activities and later changes must be notified within three months, and income above 1,000 euros a month or, if not, 3,000 euros a calendar year must be declared as a gross amount or, for turnover, as profit before tax. Professional secrecy can replace a client's name. On his own website he states that he currently receives neither client fees nor a profit share from the law partnership, and that he keeps the practice because the length of the mandate is uncertain.

## Local politics in the Hanover region

### Laatzen city council

Miersch joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1990. He has traced that step to a dispute in Laatzen, where he volunteered with the local YMCA (CVJM) and the Protestant Thomas parish: the town council was preparing to cut subsidies for summer youth trips, he organized a demonstration, and party membership and a council candidacy followed. The Bundestag biography, based on his own account, dates the YMCA and parish work to 1983–1993.

He sat on the Laatzen council from 1991 to 2018 and chaired its SPD group from 1995 to 2005, the year he entered the Bundestag. Colleagues from that period later described him as approachable but exacting on detail. In 2002, still faction chair, he stood for the Landtag of Lower Saxony; the SPD's heavy defeat under Sigmar Gabriel ended the attempt.

*The entrance of the Laatzen town hall, with a Rathaus sign and the municipal coat of arms over the doorway.*

The town later singled out that youth work. At its 2019 New Year reception, mayor Jürgen Köhne gave him the municipal gold pin of honour for 27 years on the council, and Jan Arning, managing director of the Lower Saxony association of cities, praised his commitment to young people and youth services. The mandate had ended in 2018. Miersch has said social justice—something he called part of the SPD's "genes"—was what kept him there.

### Regional SPD leadership

From 2000 to 2005 he was deputy chair of the SPD subdistrict Hannover-Land, and from 2005 to 2009 deputy chair of the party organization in the Hanover Region, the local-government area around Hanover. At a subdistrict congress on 17 March 2007 in the Zechensaal in Barsinghausen, Heinrich Aller, a former finance minister of Lower Saxony, was confirmed as chair of what the party called Germany's largest SPD subdistrict, with 81.4 percent of the delegates. Of the four deputies, Miersch recorded the strongest result, above 97 percent.

On 4 July 2008 the new state executive elected a presidium of the Lower Saxony SPD for the first time. With state chair Garrelt Duin, treasurer Dieter Möhrmann and the four deputy state chairs, it unanimously added Miersch and the Landtag members [Frauke Heiligenstadt](/people/frauke-heiligenstadt) and Detlef Tanke. His Bundestag biography dates that seat from June 2008 to April 2018.

He succeeded Aller as subdistrict chair in 2009 and held the post until 2019. On 18 April 2015 in Burgdorf, delegates re-elected him with 200 of 210 votes (94.3 percent). Their lead motion called for a region that stayed economically strong, socially just and "sustainably beautiful." Miersch said the subdistrict should also set federal accents—solidarity, peace at home and abroad, and opposition to xenophobia—and, with general secretary Yasmin Fahimi present, that convention decisions on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership had to be kept. Before the 2016 local elections he criticized the regional [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) and cited what he called a reduction of youth unemployment in the region to zero.

A congress in Barsinghausen on 26 March 2017 returned him again. He said freedom, justice and solidarity had to be defended "from Pegida to Trump," and that right-wing populism would have no chance in the region. He claimed the Jugend-Netzkarte—regional public transport for young people at 15 euros a month, taken from a Jusos campaign—as the subdistrict's own project. Delegates asked savings banks and cooperative banks to keep local branches. Miersch promised a "fair" federal campaign to elect [Martin Schulz](/people/martin-schulz) chancellor; minister-president [Stephan Weil](/people/stephan-weil) described a changed mood in the party.

He did not stand again. On 27 April 2019 in Neustadt am Rübenberge, Landtag member Claudia Schüßler of Barsinghausen won the chair with 94.09 percent, the first woman in the post after his ten years. That congress backed extending the youth transit card to apprentices, giving municipalities more say over 30 km/h zones, and measures against child poverty, including more nursery places and free school materials. In June 2019 he became chair of the wider SPD district of Hanover; he had sat on the federal party executive since 2013.

## Bundestag career

Matthias Miersch has been a member of the Bundestag since the 2005 federal election, holding the direct mandate for Hannover-Land II in Lower Saxony at every contest through 2025. Before the Social Democratic Party of Germany group elected him its chair on 7 May 2025, his parliamentary work ran from a sustainability spokesperson’s brief to two terms as a deputy group chair for environment, energy and agriculture.

### Hannover-Land II elections

The constituency lies in the Hanover Region, outside the city of Hanover itself. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer assigned it twelve municipalities: the towns of Barsinghausen, Gehrden, Hemmingen, Laatzen, Lehrte, Pattensen, Ronnenberg, Seelze, Sehnde and Springe, plus Uetze and Wennigsen (Deister). The same list appears on the Bundestag’s pages for the 2005 and 2009 contests. It was constituency 47 in 2005, 48 in 2009, and 47 again from 2013.

*Official map of constituency 47, Hannover-Land II, for the 2017 Bundestag election, with the district shaded among its neighbours.*

In 2005, with 238,612 people eligible and turnout at 82.1 percent, the SPD took 51.5 percent of valid first votes and the Christian Democratic Union 36.1 percent. The Federal Returning Officer’s constituency volume for 2009 records 99,465 SPD first votes out of 193,226 valid ballots for that 2005 result, against 69,840 (36.1 percent) for the CDU. The Bundestag listed Miersch as directly elected and Maria Flachsbarth (CDU) as elected from the Lower Saxony state list. In 2009, in constituency 48, his share fell to 40.4 percent (73,215 of 181,056 valid first votes) as turnout dropped to 76.6 percent; the CDU took 36.2 percent (65,573 votes), and Flachsbarth again entered through the list.

The 2013 race, back in constituency 47, was closer. Of 180,896 valid first votes, Miersch received 78,433 (43.4 percent) and Flachsbarth 75,761 (41.9 percent), a margin of 2,672 votes, with turnout at 76.1 percent. On second votes the CDU led, 38.4 percent to the SPD’s 35.9 percent. The CDU’s Lower Saxony list, adopted on 6 May 2017, again named Flachsbarth for constituency 47. Miersch kept the seat with 69,104 first votes (37.0 percent) against the CDU’s 65,815 (35.2 percent); [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany was third on 17,570 votes (9.4 percent). Second votes again put the CDU ahead, 31.5 percent to 29.5 percent.

In 2021 Miersch’s first-vote share rose to 40.7 percent (73,088 votes), 27,367 votes and 15.2 percentage points ahead of the CDU on 25.5 percent (45,721). Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) took 12.4 percent of first votes. Tilman Kuban, recorded by the Bundestag as the CDU’s constituency candidate, entered on the Lower Saxony list. At the 2025 election, turnout rose to 84.5 percent among 234,055 eligible voters. Miersch won with 62,406 first votes (31.8 percent), down 8.9 points from 2021. The Federal Returning Officer named Kuban as runner-up, with 59,010 votes (30.0 percent). The AfD rose to 17.2 percent of first votes. On second votes the CDU led with 27.4 percent, ahead of the SPD on 24.1 percent and the AfD on 17.5 percent.

### Committees and parliamentary posts

From 2005 to 2009 Miersch was the SPD group’s spokesperson for sustainable development, and from 2009 to 2017 its environment-policy spokesperson. In the 17th Bundestag the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety recorded him as the SPD Obmann, alongside the whips of the other groups. In the 18th Bundestag the committee, renamed to cover the environment, nature conservation, building and nuclear safety, again named him SPD Obmann.

On 4 December 2017 the group elected him one of nine deputy chairs, with 103 votes; the announcement assigned him environment and agriculture. His Bundestag biography gives the 2017–2021 remit as environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety, energy, food and agriculture, and tourism. On 9 December 2021 he was re-elected with 157 of 180 votes cast, for environment, climate protection, energy, agriculture and consumer protection, and held that brief until October 2024.

In the 20th Bundestag he was an ordinary member of the Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss) and of the Mediation Committee (Vermittlungsausschuss), a deputy member of the committee that elects judges of the Federal Constitutional Court, and a deputy member of the Committee on Climate Action and Energy. From the constituent sitting of the 21st Bundestag on 25 March 2025 he remained an ordinary member of the Joint Committee and a deputy member of that judicial selection committee, while the Mediation Committee seat was a deputy membership. On 7 May 2025 the group elected him chair in succession to Lars Klingbeil, with 99 of 119 valid votes.

## Environmental, energy and climate policy

### Energy transition and nuclear policy

From 2009 to 2017 Miersch was environment-policy spokesperson of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) group in the Bundestag, and from 2017 to 2024 a deputy group chair covering the environment, nuclear safety, energy and agriculture, with consumer protection added from 2021. After the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the Bundestag in 2011 agreed a staged shutdown of nuclear power within the Energiewende with the votes of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU), the Free Democratic Party, the SPD and the Greens; the last three reactors were to close by the end of 2022.

In December 2019 CDU member Joachim Pfeiffer again suggested longer lives and a climate-motivated return to nuclear power. Environment minister [Svenja Schulze](/people/svenja-schulze) said Fukushima had shown that the plants should close for good. Miersch said that presenting nuclear power as sustainable concealed the risks and the fact that "we leave 30,000 generations highly dangerous waste from which they had no benefit," and demanded a Union commitment to an "irreversible nuclear phase-out."

As environment spokesperson he was an ordinary Bundestag member of the Commission on the Storage of High-Level Radioactive Waste, set up under section 3 of the Site Selection Act. The 33-member body, chaired by Ursula Heinen-Esser and Michael Müller, presented its final report in early July 2016. Issued on 19 July 2016 as printed paper 18/9100, *Verantwortung für die Zukunft* recommended a comparative procedure for a repository with the "best possible safety," and lists Miersch among the Bundestag's ordinary members.

Renewable build-out became a dispute in the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition formed in 2025 under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. In September 2025 economics minister Katherina Reiche (CDU) held to 80 percent renewable electricity by 2030 but cited demand of 600 to 700 terawatt-hours against plans sized for 750, and proposed cutting subsidies, ending fixed feed-in tariffs for new solar plants and trimming offshore wind. Industry welcomed the cost focus; Green politician [Michael Kellner](/people/michael-kellner) feared a slowdown. In April 2026 her ministry circulated a rule under which new wind and solar plants in overloaded grid areas would no longer be paid when curtailed. Miersch, by then SPD group chair, told the *Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung* that this "can become a killer of renewable expansion and has to go," and that the SPD would not accept "rolling back" the Energiewende. Green co-leader [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge) called the plans an attack on the transition.

### Climate legislation

The Federal Climate Change Act of 12 December 2019 was the core of the climate package passed that year by Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)'s CDU/CSU–SPD government, not a bill Miersch drafted alone. It was the first statute to make national climate targets binding, with annual emission quantities for energy, industry, transport, buildings and other sectors and a duty on the responsible ministry to produce an immediate programme if its sector missed the figure. Its purpose is to meet national and European obligations on the basis of the [Paris Agreement](/facts/paris-agreement). As enacted it required at least a 55 percent cut by 2030 against 1990 and recorded greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050 as the long-term goal.

On 24 March 2021, published on 29 April, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held the provisions incompatible with fundamental rights insofar as they lacked rules for cuts from 2031, while not finding the path to 2030 itself unlawful. Citing Article 20a of the Basic Law, it said one generation must not use up much of the remaining carbon budget under a mild burden and leave later generations radical restrictions. Parliament had until the end of 2022 to set the later path. Individual complaints succeeded in part.

The Merkel cabinet answered before the 2021 election: it tabled an amended act on 12 May, the Bundestag passed it on 24 June, the Bundesrat on 25 June, and it took effect on 31 August. The 2030 target rose to at least 65 percent, with at least 88 percent by 2040, net neutrality by 2045 and negative emissions after 2050.

A further amendment of the SPD–Green–FDP government, passed by the Bundestag in late April 2024 and the Bundesrat in mid-May, was signed by President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) on 15 July 2024. The headline targets stayed. Annual sector misses no longer trigger an automatic programme by the responsible ministry. If projections show in two successive years that aggregate emissions for 2021–2030 will exceed the summed annual totals, the government must act, and ministries whose sectors contribute to the overrun propose measures within three months. The signature spared FDP transport minister [Volker Wissing](/people/volker-wissing), whose sector had repeatedly missed its figures, from tabling a programme that day. The coalition said savings should be taken where the potential was largest.

On the morning of the vote Miersch called the reform, on Deutschlandfunk, a "manageable law" that added flexibility without allowing one extra gram of CO2. Economist Claudia Kemfert said the 2030 goals would be missed without a correction mechanism. Deutsche Umwelthilfe, Germanwatch, Greenpeace, BUND and the Solarenergie-Förderverein announced constitutional complaints; Greenpeace and BUND said an overall balance would slow laggards such as transport and hide sector pressure. Deutsche Umwelthilfe asked Steinmeier not to sign. Industry's Holger Lösch objected that the targets stayed "very ambitious" without a path to meet them.

### Buildings, heating and agriculture

Buildings overshot their annual climate quantity in 2022, with transport, and again, narrowly, in 2023. The heating-law amendment of the Building Energy Act was prepared under Robert Habeck of Alliance 90/The Greens and passed by the SPD–Green–FDP majority on 8 September 2023, 399 to 275, after the constitutional court had blocked a summer vote on a complaint about late tabling. New systems were, where possible, to use at least 65 percent renewable energy from 2024, at first only in new buildings; existing boilers could stay, and older stock waited on municipal heat planning, with subsidies of up to 70 percent. Habeck called this socially balanced; CSU parliamentary leader [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) said it would impoverish people.

Before the vote Miersch told *taz* that climate support collapsed once it entered the home. For the SPD group he set three conditions: subsidies people could trust; a technology mix wider than heat pumps, including geothermal energy, district heating and wood; and hardship rules that might need extending if installers ran short. He blamed early confusion partly on the economics ministry and said the group meant to pass an amended bill before the summer break — a timetable the July injunction then broke.

In April 2026 the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition agreed to drop the 65 percent rule, so new gas and oil heating could be installed again, with a rising share of climate-friendlier fuels from January 2029 and a green-gas quota for existing systems from 2028. Because tenants do not choose the boiler, grid charges and fuel costs of a new fossil system are to be shared with the landlord. Miersch said the SPD had halved the risks from the CO2 price, grid fees and biogas, and that a landlord who "creates fossil facts" must carry the economic result. Reiche called that tenant deal the last piece needed for the law. The Tenants' Association welcomed the split but wanted a heating-cost cap; Haus & Grund called shifting state-driven costs onto owners a political admission of failure.

The same deputy-chair brief covered food and agriculture from 2017 and consumer protection from 2021; he did not head those ministries. From 2010 to 2019 he sat on the board of trustees of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt. The Bundestag biography also lists membership of NABU.

## Role in the SPD

### Parliamentary Left

The Parlamentarische Linke (Parliamentary Left) is a caucus of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) members of the Bundestag. Formed in 1980 from the Leverkusener Kreis, it names later SPD chairman Björn Engholm among its founders. In June 2015 it had about 90 members and was called the largest current in the SPD Bundestag group. On 30 June it elected Matthias Miersch speaker with 100 percent of the votes cast, after Carsten Sieling left to become mayor of Bremen. The Bundestag biography lists him as speaker from 2015 to 2024.

The post became a team. On 15 February 2022, with 95 members and still the largest current, the caucus chose Miersch, [Wiebke Esdar](/people/wiebke-esdar) and Sönke Rix as equal speakers and [Elisabeth Kaiser](/people/elisabeth-kaiser) as treasurer. On 20 February 2024 several challenges were withdrawn the same day at a meeting *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* put at about 90 members. Miersch and Esdar stayed; Rix did not stand again and [Tim Klüssendorf](/people/tim-klussendorf) replaced him, with Kaiser still treasurer. *Spiegel* reported discontent with Miersch's line as deputy group chair, and a caucus that had shrunk while the more conservative Seeheimer Kreis advertised its strength.

After the 2017 election he opposed another grand coalition with the Union. He proposed a "fourth way": a minority government without a fixed framework, with other groups' support agreed subject by subject, and he rejected a new election. In January 2018 he said the caucus had moved: about 90 percent of more than 60 members present voted to open talks with the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, while the Forum Demokratische Linke 21 and the Young Socialists kept campaigning against a grand coalition. He has also identified himself with the SPD minority on the constitutional debt brake. In October 2024 he told *taz* that he had been one of the few Social Democratic deputies to vote against writing the present rule into the Basic Law, and that he still wanted a tax on large wealth and a reform of the brake.

### Party executive and district chair

Miersch joined the federal executive (Parteivorstand) in 2013, elected at Leipzig as an ordinary member on the first ballot with 371 votes. Berlin congresses returned him on the first ballot with 404 votes on 7 December 2019, 437 on 11 December 2021 and 466 on 9 December 2023. Co-chairs, including Lars Klingbeil and, through that term, Saskia Esken, sat by office. When Kevin Kühnert left the general secretaryship in October 2024, *taz* noted that an acting successor had to be someone already elected to the executive; Miersch qualified and Seeheimer speaker Dirk Wiese did not. He was not re-elected on 28 June 2025 and was not among the office-holders who remained, so the seat held since 2013 ended then.

He was chair of the SPD sub-district for the Hanover region from 2009 to 2019, then of the SPD Bezirk Hannover, the largest of the four districts in Lower Saxony. A congress in Lüneburg on 22 June 2019 elected him with 95.48 percent, 211 of 221 votes cast and one invalid, succeeding Stefan Schostok, chair from 2009. He treated the balanced-budget "black zero" as a question of who pays for public goods, and said social justice and climate protection were not a zero-sum choice. Hameln re-elected him on 20 September 2023 with 194 yes votes, 93.72 percent of 207 ballots. On 27 September 2025 a congress in Hanover chose [Svenja Stadler](/people/svenja-stadler) (188 yes votes, 87.85 percent) and [Grant Hendrik Tonne](/people/grant-hendrik-tonne) (163 yes votes, 79.13 percent) for the chair; the following board list names them co-chairs.

Klingbeil is also from the Lower Saxony SPD, from another district and the Seeheimer wing. An NDR commentary of 8 October 2024 described him as having placed the Parliamentary Left's speaker beside him as general secretary, and treated the wing difference as secondary to keeping the SPD in government. *Spiegel* later called Miersch a close associate of Klingbeil.

## General secretary and the 2025 election

### Appointment after Kühnert

On 7 October 2024 Kevin Kühnert resigned with immediate effect as general secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and said he would not stand again for the Bundestag in 2025. The 35-year-old, in the post since 2021, wrote to members that he was not well enough for the office or a campaign and needed that energy to recover; he had told co-chairs Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil several days earlier.

The same day Esken and Klingbeil proposed Matthias Miersch, a deputy chair of the SPD Bundestag group since 2016, one of the speakers of its Parliamentary Left, and the directly elected member for Hannover-Land II since 2005. The party’s top bodies approved the proposal that evening. *Der Spiegel* reported that the presidium did so unanimously, and the party paper *Vorwärts* reported that the executive nominated him. He was not elected by a congress in November 2024: the appointment was acting (*kommissarisch*) until a later congress. Tagesschau reported that the chairs wanted someone who could start at once, deal on equal terms with Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, and carry industrial and climate policy. Miersch stayed in the acting role through the snap campaign.

### Campaign and result

The coalition of the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party broke on 6 November 2024, when Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) moved to dismiss Finance Minister Christian Lindner after the parties failed to agree on the 2025 budget and economic policy. Scholz lost a vote of confidence on 16 December, by 207 votes to 394 with 116 abstentions, and asked Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to dissolve the Bundestag. Steinmeier did so on 27 December and set the election for 23 February 2025, the date on which the SPD and Union floor leaders had agreed.

Miersch ran the party headquarters into that shortened winter campaign. An extraordinary congress in Berlin on 11 January 2025 confirmed Scholz as chancellor candidate by show of hands, with five votes against, after the executive nominated him in late November amid an argument over whether Defence Minister [Boris Pistorius](/people/boris-pistorius) should replace him. Scholz called the election a directional choice against Merz, over wages, housing and pensions for “ganz normale Leute.” A *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* portrait described Miersch as the chancellor’s chief campaigner, asked to reverse polls that put the SPD fourth, outwardly cheerful and tied to Scholz’s prospects. In a *Zeit* interview on 18 January he said a dynamic would develop and that “am Ende werden wir vorne liegen.”

The Federal Electoral Committee fixed the result on 14 March 2025, and Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand announced it the same day. The SPD received 8,149,124 second votes, 16.4 percent, down 9.3 points from 25.7 percent in 2021, and 120 of 630 seats, 44 of them constituency seats, against 206 seats in 2021. The CDU and the Christian Social Union led on a combined 28.5 percent and 208 seats; the Alternative for Germany was second on 20.8 percent and 152 seats. Turnout was 82.5 percent, the highest since reunification. Tagesschau called 16.4 percent historic: the previous Bundestag low, 20.5 percent in 2017, had been clearly higher, and no party that had previously finished first had lost as many points.

On election night Scholz called it a “bitteres Wahlergebnis,” took responsibility, and ruled out leading Union talks or joining a CDU-led government. Miersch told ARD it was “eine historische Niederlage” and “ein ganz, ganz bitterer Abend.” Klingbeil said the result required organisational, programmatic and personnel change. Tagesschau described a thinly attended party at the [Willy-Brandt](/people/willy-brandt)-Haus and members calling the result catastrophic. Its account said door-to-door work and relief promises had not offset complaints about rents, prices and energy costs, and that the coalition’s disputes and Scholz’s low standing had defined the campaign. It also noted calls from local branches for a membership ballot on the candidate, ended only when Pistorius publicly backed Scholz.

Miersch stayed acting general secretary until May 2025, when he became chair of the SPD parliamentary group. On 12 May the presidium unanimously proposed Tim Klüssendorf, the 33-year-old speaker of the Parliamentary Left and directly elected member for Lübeck, who took over the general-secretary post at once, again on an acting basis, pending the June congress. The ordinary federal congress in Berlin elected him on 27 June 2025 with 90.8 percent of the delegate votes. He told delegates there was nothing to prettify and that the scale of the defeat was dramatic, and added that [social democracy](/organizations/social-democracy) was still standing because it could get up again. The same congress elected [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas), with 95 percent, and Klingbeil, with 64.9 percent, as the new co-chairs, with Bas succeeding Esken.

## Chairmanship of the SPD parliamentary group

### Election and succession

On 7 May 2025 the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) group in the Bundestag elected Matthias Miersch its chairman, the day after Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) became chancellor of a CDU–Christian Social Union (CSU)–SPD cabinet. In a secret ballot he received 99 of 119 valid votes, 83.2 percent, with 18 against and two abstentions. He succeeded Lars Klingbeil, who became vice-chancellor and federal finance minister. Miersch, associated with the Parliamentary Left, already had backing from the party's other currents; the share was slightly below Klingbeil's 85.6 percent after the February election and well below the 94.7 to 97.7 percent recorded for [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich) from 2019 to 2025.

The same sitting elected Dirk Wiese, an interior specialist and speaker of the more conservative Seeheimer Kreis, as first parliamentary managing director, with 99 of 120 valid votes (82.5 percent), 17 against and four abstentions. He replaced Katja Mast, who became a parliamentary state secretary in the labour ministry. Miersch said he would give up the general-secretaryship by the late-June federal congress, while essential work at party headquarters continued until a successor was in place. The presidium unanimously nominated Tim Klüssendorf, acting general secretary from 12 May; the Berlin congress on 27 June 2025 recorded 540 votes for him out of 595 (90.8 percent), 38 against and 17 abstentions. Miersch said he wanted the coalition agreement's social-democratic imprint turned into workable, fair legislation.

### Coalition politics since 2025

The majority was narrow. The 23 February 2025 election produced a Bundestag of 630 members—164 CDU, 44 CSU and 120 SPD—or 328 coalition seats against a chancellor majority of 316. On 6 May Merz received 310 votes in a first ballot and was elected only in a second the same day, with 325 of 618 votes cast. Tagesschau reported that the group chairs would have to settle points the treaty had left open, and that Miersch's Union counterpart was Jens Spahn, already viewed critically in the SPD group after suggesting the Alternative for Germany (AfD) be treated like other opposition parties on organisational questions in parliament.

Military service was an early dispute. In October 2025 the Union group stopped a cabinet bill on a new *Wehrdienst* over growth targets for the Bundeswehr and over how people would be chosen if too few volunteered. On 13 November, after talks among Spahn, Miersch and Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, the coalition kept voluntary service as the rule, with a questionnaire for every 18-year-old (mandatory for men) and a phased compulsory assessment of men born on or after 1 January 2008. The Bundestag could later legislate needs-based conscription if security or staffing required it; a lottery would be only a last resort if a cohort exceeded demand, with no automatic activation, and volunteers were to receive about 2,600 euro gross a month. Miersch called the talks difficult but brought to "a good end" and said voluntariness had priority; Pistorius said nobody in the SPD group had spoken against the deal, which was to pass in early December 2025 and take effect in 2026.

On the AfD, Miersch treated distance from the party as a coalition condition. On 19 October 2025 he told Reuters that the firewall was "not an end in itself" but "a central lesson of the Nazi dictatorship", praised Merz for ruling out cooperation as CDU chair, and said he was irritated that parts of the Union were discussing work with the only Bundestag party that had to fear a ban. He called the AfD, classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as confirmed right-wing extremist, an attack on democracy, and said a party ban must remain a serious option but never be imposed lightly; Merz stayed sceptical of a ban procedure.

Budget rules divided the partners again in April 2026. Miersch told the *Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung* that if the Iran war continued, preventing an economic collapse might require a budgetary emergency and the exception in the constitutional debt brake, including new borrowing. CDU general secretary [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann) called that "political laziness", and CSU Bundestag leader Alexander Hoffmann said there was no emergency, only a duty to consolidate; Miersch answered that ruling the option out ignored the disruption a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could cause.

### Criticism and public profile

Published criticism of his pragmatism on climate focused on heating. On 24 February 2026 Spahn, Miersch and Hoffmann presented outlines to replace the previous government's Buildings Energy Act: oil and gas systems could still be installed in homes, and the requirement that new heating run on at least 65 percent renewable energy was to go. Miersch said the deal had, in his view, "a bit" squared the circle, because "everyone is for climate protection, but when it becomes concrete, it is really difficult." On 1 March, Ulrike Winkelmann wrote in *taz* that this was a "political declaration of insolvency" by the SPD and an unforgivable abandonment of climate policy in buildings, after Spahn had again called the boiler room a private matter.

The Bundestag register lists Miersch as a lawyer with Bernzen Sonntag in Hamburg, recorded as in liquidation, and with Beismann Dr. Miersch Rechtsanwälte GbR in Hanover, and as SPD general secretary until 26 June 2025 at 9,000 euro gross a month until 6 May 2025. On a page he calls "gläserner Abgeordneter" ("glass member of parliament") he publishes the statutory allowance—11,833.47 euro a month from 1 July 2025, taxable—and states that he takes no current legal fees or profit share, keeping the partnership so a self-employed practice remains if the mandate ends, and that he accepts no cash donations. The official biography, from members' own disclosures, records him as Protestant, born in Hanover on 19 December 1968. A Tagesschau portrait the day he took the chair said little was publicly known of his private life beyond a registered life partnership.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/matthias-miersch