# Melanie Bernstein

# Melanie Bernstein

Melanie Bernstein (born 28 September 1976 in Buchholz in der Nordheide, Lower Saxony) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag from Schleswig-Holstein. In the 21st Bundestag she holds the direct mandate for constituency 8, Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte. She is an ordinary member of the Budget Committee, the Audit Committee and the Committee on Culture and Media and a deputy member of the Defence Committee. The Bundestag’s register of outside activities also lists her, from 2025, as a member of the administrative board and the executive committee (Präsidium) of the Filmförderungsanstalt, the federal film-funding body.

She passed the Abitur in 1995 and studied applied cultural studies at the University of Lüneburg, now Leuphana University of Lüneburg, from 1995 to 2001. The Bundestag lists her profession as Kulturwissenschaftlerin. She joined the CDU in 2003 and was state managing director of the Schleswig-Holstein Young Union in 2004 and 2005. From 2005 to 2017 she was a CDU district business manager and a research assistant to members of the Bundestag and the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag. Between 2022 and May 2025 she was managing director of INMEDIUM GmbH, a communications agency with offices in Hamburg and Neumünster.

At the 2017 federal election she entered the Bundestag as the CDU direct candidate for Plön – Neumünster. In that constituency the CDU received 40.7 percent of the first votes (53,109), ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 28.9 percent. The 19th Bundestag was constituted on 24 October 2017. In that term she was the CDU/CSU group’s spokesperson (Obfrau) on the Committee on Culture and Media and a member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. In 2021 the same constituency returned an SPD plurality: 31.4 percent of first votes to the CDU’s 27.9 percent, a drop of 12.8 points for the CDU. After Gero Storjohann, the CDU member for Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte, died on 29 January 2023, the *Hamburger Abendblatt* reported that Bernstein was the next successor on the Schleswig-Holstein CDU state list. NDR later described her return to the 20th Bundestag in 2023 as that of a list successor.

In the 2025 federal election she won Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte with 67,880 first votes (32.3 percent), ahead of Bengt Axel Bergt of the SPD (51,437 votes, 24.5 percent); the CDU’s second-vote share in the constituency was 29.1 percent. The Bundestag biography records that she is Protestant, widowed and the mother of two children, and NDR reported that she lives in Bornhöved in the district of Segeberg. Her husband, the CDU Landtag member Axel Bernstein, died in August 2017 on the family’s property in Wahlstedt; after an autopsy the Kiel public prosecutor’s office said the death was an accident and that the investigation had found no indication of third-party responsibility.

## Early life and education

Melanie Bernstein was born on 28 September 1976 in Buchholz in der Nordheide, in the Harburg (district) of Lower Saxony. The municipality today describes itself as a town south of Hamburg and, with about 42,000 inhabitants, as the largest town in the district, within an hour’s journey of Bremen and of Lüneburg. Buchholz is the northern limit of the Lüneburg Heath nature park, which runs south to Soltau, west to Schneverdingen and east to Lüneburg and takes in parts of the districts of Lüneburg, Harburg and Heidekreis. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members’ own information, also lists her as Protestant. She has written that she grew up in a small village in the Nordheide; that account does not name the village, and the parliamentary biography does not either.

She took the Abitur in 1995. A leaflet issued in her name for the 2017 federal election by the Christian Democratic Union in Schleswig-Holstein places that examination in Hamburg and does not name a school. The parliamentary entry gives only the year.

From 1995 she studied applied cultural studies (*Angewandte Kulturwissenschaften*) at the University of Lüneburg, a course the Bundestag biography records as lasting until 2001. She dates the Magister Artium to 2000; the 2017 leaflet confirms the degree but not the year. The Hochschule Lüneburg had added economics, social sciences and cultural studies in the 1980s, and in 1989 the parliament of Lower Saxony raised it to a university. The present Leuphana University of Lüneburg describes cultural studies in Lüneburg as an interdisciplinary framework, more than forty years old, for the critical study of contemporary societies. The Leuphana name dates from 2007, after the 2005 merger with the Fachhochschule Nordostniedersachsen and a recasting, under a mandate from the Landtag, as a model university for the Bologna Process, with separate structures for bachelor, master’s and continuing study. [Norddeutscher Rundfunk](/organizations/norddeutscher-rundfunk), in a 2025 profile, likewise records that the politician it calls a native of Lower Saxony studied applied cultural studies in Lüneburg after the Abitur.

The parliamentary biography lists work in medium-sized companies from 2000 to 2004, overlapping the end of the degree. She has described the first of that employment as a start-up of the Technical University of Harburg—the Hamburg University of Technology—and a position in an internationally active trading firm; the 2017 leaflet specifies marketing and project management.

She writes that she was active in the Junge Union, the youth organisation of the CDU and the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria), alongside school and university, before any full-time party post. The Junge Union describes itself as programmatically, organisationally and financially independent of the two parties, and its statute states that membership, possible from the completed fourteenth year, does not presuppose CDU or CSU membership. The Bundestag biography dates her CDU membership from 2003. In 2004 she became full-time *Landesgeschäftsführerin* (state managing director) of the Junge Union of Schleswig-Holstein, holding the post until 2005. NDR gives the same sequence for her move into paid youth-organisation work: CDU membership in 2003, then the Schleswig-Holstein state office from 2004 to 2005.

## Professional career

The Bundestag lists Melanie Bernstein’s occupation as *Kulturwissenschaftlerin*. Its biography records a degree course in applied cultural studies at the University of Lüneburg, now Leuphana University of Lüneburg, from 1995 to 2001; on her own site she dates the Magister Artium to 2000.

For 2000 to 2004 the Bundestag biography states only that she worked in medium-sized companies, and the register of prior employment does not name those firms. She has described the first of that work as a start-up of the Technische Universität Harburg, now the Hamburg University of Technology, and a job in an internationally active trading company.

In 2004 she moved from Lower Saxony to Schleswig-Holstein as state managing director of the Junge Union, a post the Bundestag biography places in her employment chronology for 2004 to 2005. The *Lübecker Nachrichten* reported that she afterwards worked for the state association of the Christian Democratic Union and was manager of the CDU district associations in Rendsburg-Eckernförde and Neumünster. A local report in October 2014 gave the dates of the district-manager role: she held it from 2005 until the birth of twins in January 2010, in what the report called a cooperation with the CDU in Rendsburg-Eckernförde, and returned on 1 October 2014 as district manager in Neumünster, succeeding Vitalij Baisel. District chairman Wolf Rüdiger Fehrs said that, alongside the district office, she would run the Neumünster constituency office of Bundestag member Philipp Murmann. The Bundestag biography compresses 2005 to 2017 into district management for the CDU and work as a research assistant (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) to members of the Bundestag and of the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein.

The same 2017 newspaper profile, written while she was a candidate, called her a long-standing constituency office manager and named the members whose offices she had led: Otto Bernhardt, Helmut Lamp and [Johann Wadephul](/people/johann-wadephul). The mandatory disclosure of employment before membership lists her as an employee of Murmann; the published entry spells his first name “Phillipp”. Neither that profile nor the Bundestag filing gives separate start and end dates for the Bernhardt, Lamp and Wadephul offices.

That disclosure also lists a civil-law partnership, Melanie + Dr. Axel Bernstein GbR, in Wahlstedt, active in advertising, graphic design and public relations. Axel Bernstein, her husband, sat in the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag from 2005 until his death on 24 August 2017. The Landtag’s obituary described him as a historian and a consultant in business and political communications. Before his mandate, the CDU state association had employed him as a press officer and as office manager to the state chairman. The Wahlstedt partnership appears in her Bundestag filing and is not named in that Landtag notice.

After her membership in the 19th Bundestag, which the biography dates to 2017–2021, she went back into agency work. INMEDIUM GmbH, entered at the Amtsgericht Kiel as HRB 1694 NM, announced that from 1 May she would become its second managing director, responsible for projects and organisation, beside founder Sebastian Fricke, with whom the firm said she had already worked for a long time, especially in a political setting. A copy of the announcement archived in July 2022 presents INMEDIUM as an agency in Neumünster and Hamburg, with offices at Goebenstraße 10, Neumünster, and Steinhöft 9, Hamburg. The Bundestag biography dates the managing-director post from 2022 to May 2025.

After she returned to parliament, the paid work alongside the mandate was published as monthly gross income of 3,000 euros as managing director of INMEDIUM in Neumünster until 31 May 2025, and 1,500 euros as project manager from 1 June 2025. The company’s imprint names only Sebastian Fricke as the person representing the firm.

## Party career

Bernstein joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 2003. From 2004 to 2005 she was Landesgeschäftsführerin, the state managing director, of the Junge Union in Schleswig-Holstein. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own disclosures, then summarises the years 2005 to 2017 as service as a CDU Kreisgeschäftsführerin, or district manager, together with work as a scientific assistant to members of the Bundestag and the state parliament.

Local reporting divides that district employment. From 2005 until the birth of her twins in January 2010 she managed a joint office of the CDU Neumünster and the CDU in Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde. On 1 October 2014 she returned as Kreisgeschäftsführerin of the CDU Neumünster, succeeding Vitalij Baisel, and at the same time took charge of the Neumünster constituency office of the Bundestag member Philipp Murmann. The Bundestag biography carries the district-manager title through 2017, the year she entered parliament.

Her elected party offices have been concentrated in the CDU of Kreis Segeberg. At a district conference in Bad Segeberg on 1 December 2018 she was newly chosen as a deputy chair, with 93 votes, while Gero Storjohann was re-elected Kreisvorsitzender. When Ole Plambeck succeeded Storjohann on 2 October 2021, Bernstein, then of Wahlstedt, remained one of five deputy chairs, with Melanie Haak, Ursula Michalak, Katja Rathje-Hoffmann and Sönke Siebke. The state CDU reported that she was confirmed in the post on 17 October 2025, again beside those four deputies, as Plambeck was re-elected chair. The district board list continues to name her a deputy chair, with a contact address in Bornhöved.

She has sat on the state executive as a Beisitzerin, an ordinary member elected by the Landesparteitag. At the congress in the Holstenhallen in Neumünster in November 2018 she took the sixth of eleven Beisitzer places, and Ole-Christopher Plambeck the third, restoring a Segeberg seat after two years without one. The same congress elected her a Segeberg delegate to CDU federal party conferences. On 14 August 2021 she was re-elected with 177 of 210 votes, the second-highest Beisitzer total, and was again chosen as a federal-conference delegate; [Daniel Günther](/people/daniel-gunther) remained state chair. She and Plambeck were returned to the state executive at the 75th Landesparteitag on 5 October 2023. At the 77th Landesparteitag in Neumünster on 22 November 2025, which re-elected Günther, she was again one of the eleven Beisitzer, listed for Segeberg with Ole-Christopher Plambeck.

In the CDU/CSU Bundestag group she became deputy chair of the Schleswig-Holstein Landesgruppe, the state's CDU members in the federal parliament. On 20 May 2025 the eight CDU deputies from the state reorganised that group after Johann Wadephul joined the cabinet of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) as foreign minister: Mark Helfrich was elected chair unanimously, and Bernstein deputy chair. The Landesgruppe's written report to the November 2025 state congress still listed her as deputy chair and Helfrich as chair.

In the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT), the CDU association for small and medium-sized business, she has chaired the Segeberg branch. At its annual meeting on 22 November 2023, conducted by Ole Plambeck, she was elected Kreisvorsitzende unanimously, succeeding the Landtag member Patrick Pender; Sönke Siebke joined the board as a Beisitzer. A members' meeting at the CDU district office in Bad Segeberg on 29 August 2026 confirmed her as chair, again unanimously, and elected Pender deputy chair and Siebke a Beisitzer.

## 2017 election and nineteenth Bundestag

The direct mandate for Bundestag constituency 6, Plön – Neumünster, in Schleswig-Holstein was held in the 18th electoral term by Philipp Murmann of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who had been directly elected for that seat. In July 2016 Murmann said that, after two terms in the Bundestag, he would not stand again. The regional news site shz.de reported that Bernstein, then business manager (*Kreisgeschäftsführerin*) of the CDU in Neumünster, prevailed before 467 CDU members gathered in Schwentinental. The meeting, on the evening of Friday, 14 October 2016, in the Uttoxeterhalle and chaired by Gero Storjohann, was a contested ballot. She received 229 votes to 191 for Werner Kalinka, chair of the CDU in Kreis Plön; Babette Schwede-Oldehus and Dirk-Justus Hentschel, both from Neumünster, took 23 and 15 votes and dropped out. Bernstein then beat Kalinka in the runoff, 266 votes to 196.

The campaign was broken off by the death of her husband, Axel Bernstein, a CDU member of the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein, on 24 August 2017 in Wahlstedt. He was 43. The Kiel public prosecutor’s office opened an inquiry to exclude third-party responsibility. After the autopsy it said on 30 August that the death was to be treated as an accident, that nothing pointed to anyone else being at fault, and that it would give no more precise cause. On 8 September Bernstein issued a statement that she would keep her candidacy and continue the contest for the direct mandate in constituency 6, which she described as Plön–Neumünster and northern Segeberg. She wrote that Axel Bernstein had explicitly supported her standing.

The federal election was held on 24 September 2017. Constituency 6 consisted of the independent city of Neumünster, the whole of Kreis Plön, and, from Kreis Segeberg, Amt Boostedt-Rickling (the municipalities of Boostedt, Daldorf, Groß Kummerfeld, Heidmühlen, Latendorf and Rickling). Of 174,937 eligible voters, 131,713 voted, a turnout of 75.3 percent, 2.6 points higher than in 2013; 130,489 first votes were valid. Bernstein won the seat with 53,109 first votes (40.7 percent). Dr. Birgit Malecha-Nissen of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second with 37,728 votes (28.9 percent), 15,381 votes behind. The other candidates were Susanne Elbert of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), 11,736 votes (9.0 percent); Bernd Wiegmann of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD), 10,223 (7.8 percent); Martin Josef Wolf of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), 9,379 (7.2 percent); Lorenz Gösta Beutin of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), 7,009 (5.4 percent); and Holger Steffen of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters), 1,305 (1.0 percent).

Against 2013, when the successful CDU candidate had taken 54,833 first votes (43.7 percent), Bernstein’s total was 1,724 votes and 3.0 points lower, while the SPD’s first-vote share fell 8.6 points. On the party lists the constituency gave the CDU 43,778 second votes (33.5 percent, down 5.2 points), still ahead of the SPD on 31,013 (23.8 percent, down 9.0). The FDP, with 16,481 votes (12.6 percent), and the Greens, with 16,350 (12.5 percent), were almost level, ahead of the AfD on 11,161 (8.6 percent) and Die Linke on 8,503 (6.5 percent). Bernstein’s first-vote share ran 7.2 points above the CDU list in the same constituency. Nationally the CDU’s second-vote share fell 7.4 points to 26.8 percent, or 12,447,656 votes; added to the CSU’s 2,869,688 votes (6.2 percent), the two Union parties had 15,317,344 second votes, 32.9 percent of the 46,515,492 valid ballots. The SPD fell to 20.5 percent, the AfD entered the Bundestag on 12.6 percent and the FDP returned on 10.7 percent. Nationwide turnout was 76.2 percent. In Plön – Neumünster the CDU list stayed above the party’s national share, and the steeper fall in the SPD vote widened the gap over the runner-up even though the CDU itself lost first votes.

Bernstein took her seat when the 19th Bundestag met for its constituent sitting on 24 October 2017 at 11:00 in the plenary chamber of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Outgoing president [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert) had fixed that date on 4 October. The sitting was opened by the president by age, Hermann Otto Solms, and the Bundestag recorded that members formally become the representatives of the electorate only with that sitting. The same account noted that further bodies, including the committees, could be formed only once coalition negotiations had ended.

For the 19th electoral term, which her Bundestag biography dates 2017 to 2021, that biography lists her as *Obfrau* of the CDU/CSU group in the Committee on Culture and Media and as a member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The Bundestag notes that biographical entries rest on members’ own information. The culture committee’s archived pages place her at its sittings in the Paul Löbe House; at the committee’s constitution the chair was Katrin Budde (SPD) and the deputy chair Johannes Selle (CDU/CSU), so the *Obfrau* role was that of group spokesperson rather than committee chair. A contributor note on the Deutscher Kulturrat site likewise described her as the CDU/CSU *Obfrau* on the culture committee. On 22 February 2018 the Bundestag, without debate, unanimously elected her as one of its *Schriftführerinnen*, the secretaries who assist the president or a vice-president in running plenary sittings. She had been put forward the day before on the CDU/CSU list in printed paper 19/823.

## 2021 election and return in 2023

Bernstein sought re-election on 26 September 2021 as the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in constituency 6, Plön – Neumünster. The constituency comprises the independent city of Neumünster, the whole district of Plön, and, from the district of Segeberg, the collective municipality of Boostedt-Rickling. In the official final result, Kristian Klinck of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) won the direct mandate with 41,497 first votes (31.4 percent). Bernstein, the sitting member, finished second with 36,870 votes (27.9 percent), 4,627 votes behind, and the CDU’s share of first votes in the constituency fell by 12.8 percentage points from 2017. Turnout was 76.5 percent: 133,721 of 174,908 eligible voters took part. On the second, party-list vote in the same constituency the SPD led with 29.2 percent, ahead of the CDU on 22.9 percent.

She was also sixth on the CDU state list for Schleswig-Holstein. The party’s Land representative assembly adopted that list on 12 June 2021, with Johann Wadephul, Astrid Damerow, Ingo Gädechens, Petra Nicolaisen and Gero Storjohann in the five places above her. Statewide the CDU took 22.0 percent of second votes, 12.0 points less than in 2017, and 26.5 percent of first votes. It received six of the Land’s 28 seats in the Bundestag, down from ten seats, all of them constituency seats, four years earlier. Only Damerow and Mark Helfrich held CDU direct mandates. The four list seats went to Wadephul, Gädechens, Nicolaisen and Storjohann, so sixth place was not reached and Bernstein was not returned when the 20th Bundestag met. From 2022 she was managing director of INMEDIUM GmbH, a communications agency with offices in Hamburg and Neumünster.

Storjohann had been a Bundestag member since 2002 for Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte, after eight years in the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag. In 2021 that constituency also passed to the SPD: Bengt Bergt won it with 63,369 first votes (32.0 percent), and Storjohann stayed in parliament only by way of the state list. He died on 29 January 2023, aged 64. His Berlin office said he had been in intensive care since 1 April 2022; Bundestag President [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas) later described his death as following a long period of intensive-care treatment. Under section 48 of the Federal Elections Act, the seat of a member elected from a state list is filled, if that member dies, by the next eligible candidate of the same party on the list. The Land returning officer decides who the successor is, notifies that person and requires a written statement within one week on whether the succession is accepted. Under section 45, membership is acquired when a timely and valid acceptance reaches the returning officer, and not before the previous member has left.

Bernstein was the next candidate on the CDU list who had not already been elected. On 6 February 2023 she told the Land returning officer that she accepted the mandate, and the Bundestag records that she acquired membership that day in succession to Storjohann. The seat she took was his state-list seat, not the direct mandate in Plön – Neumünster, which Klinck had won. In the statement announcing her acceptance she wrote that she had expressly agreed to the possibility of succeeding when she took the list place, and that she would have preferred to return under happier circumstances. She described Storjohann as having been her district chairman for many years, and said her thoughts were with his wife and sons. On 8 February, before the agenda of the sitting, Bas commemorated him and asked the House to rise; members stood for a minute of silence.

*Members of the Bundestag stand for a minute of silence for Gero Storjohann on 8 February 2023.*

In the 20th Bundestag she sat for the CDU/CSU as a full member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Petitions Committee, and as a deputy member of the Budget Committee, the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement and the Transport Committee. The family committee continued work she had already done as a directly elected member from 2017 to 2021. She held the list seat, and these committee places, through the remainder of the electoral term.

## 2025 federal election

The election of the 21st Bundestag was brought forward to 23 February 2025. Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) lost a vote of confidence on 16 December 2024 after the coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) broke up, and on 27 December Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) announced that he was dissolving the 20th Bundestag and setting the election for 23 February 2025. Melanie Bernstein did not defend Plön–Neumünster, the constituency she had won in 2017 as a direct candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and held until 2021. She had returned to parliament in February 2023 on the CDU list in Schleswig-Holstein, and she lives in Bornhöved, in the district of Segeberg. On 12 July 2024 the CDU associations of Segeberg and Stormarn nominated her, the only candidate, for constituency 8, Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte: of 135 members voting, 131 were in favour and four against. They presented the candidacy as the succession to Gero Storjohann, who had held the seat for the CDU from 2017 until the 2021 election.

In 2021 the direct mandate passed to Bengt Axel Bergt of the SPD, with 63,369 first votes (32.0 percent) against 55,265 (27.9 percent) for Storjohann. Turnout was 80.1 percent, 199,618 voters out of 249,202 eligible. The federal returning officer compares the 2025 figures with 2021 in the same numbered constituency; the electorate, 249,219, was almost unchanged.

Constituency 8 takes in most of Segeberg and Stormarn. From Segeberg it includes Bad Segeberg, Ellerau, Henstedt-Ulzburg, Kaltenkirchen, Norderstedt and Wahlstedt, and the Ämter Auenland Südholstein, Bornhöved, Itzstedt (except Tangstedt), Kisdorf, Leezen and Trave-Land. From Stormarn it includes Ammersbek, Bad Oldesloe, Bargteheide, the Ämter Bad Oldesloe-Land and Bargteheide-Land, and the municipality of Tangstedt; the remaining parts of both districts lie in neighbouring constituencies.

On 23 February, 211,551 of 249,219 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 84.9 percent, up 4.8 points. The state returning officer put the share of postal voters at 27.6 percent. Of 210,047 valid first votes, Bernstein received 67,880 (32.3 percent), 4.4 points above the CDU’s 2021 share — a plurality, not an absolute majority. Bergt, seeking re-election, received 51,437 (24.5 percent), down 7.5 points, 16,443 votes behind. [Sven Wendorf](/people/sven-wendorf) of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was third with 36,071 (17.2 percent, up 10.1 points), the largest first-vote movement. Julia Dorandt (Greens) polled 24,800 (11.8 percent, down 1.9), Herrmann von Prüssing of Die Linke 12,636 (6.0 percent, up 2.9) and Nora Grundmann (FDP) 9,417 (4.5 percent, down 5.9). Thomas Thedens (Free Voters) and Sebastian Warncke (Volt) each took 1.6 percent, and Patrick Schnoor ([Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland)) 0.6 percent.

On the second, party-list vote the CDU also finished first, with 61,180 votes (29.1 percent, up 6.7 points), ahead of the SPD on 40,174 (19.1 percent, down 9.5) and the AfD on 36,208 (17.2 percent, up 9.9). The Greens received 28,808 (13.7 percent, down 3.1), Die Linke 14,888 (7.1 percent, up 3.8) and the FDP 10,974 (5.2 percent, down 8.7), out of 210,509 valid second votes. The Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) (BSW), with no constituency candidate, took 7,772 second votes (3.7 percent), and the South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW) 4,409 (2.1 percent, up 0.5). Bernstein’s personal share ran ahead of the CDU list, and Bergt’s ahead of the SPD list; the AfD’s two shares were both 17.2 percent, while the Greens polled more strongly on the list than through their candidate.

The Bundestag records Bernstein as the directly elected member for constituency 008, Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte. The 21st Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 25 March 2025 at 11:00 in the plenary chamber of the Reichstag building in Berlin, the thirtieth day after the election and the latest date Article 39 of the Basic Law allows. That article ends the preceding electoral term when the new Bundestag convenes.

## Committees and external offices

In the 21st Bundestag, Melanie Bernstein (CDU/CSU) is an ordinary member of the Budget Committee, the Audit Committee and the Committee on Culture and Media, a deputy member of the Defence Committee, and a member of the gremium under § 5 of the law on Bundeswehr financing and the special fund. The page was last modified on 13 October 2026. Its statutory disclosure records seats at the Filmförderungsanstalt and on several foundations, with start dates and one end date.

### Budget and audit

The Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) handles the annual federal budget. Without Bundestag consent the government draws nothing from the treasury; the committee’s 42 members set spending and also monitor execution and euro-area stabilisation aid. It constituted itself on 21 May 2025 under Bundestag President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner). The AfD’s nominee for chair, [Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing](/people/ulrike-schielke-ziesing), was not elected, and [Klaus-Peter Willsch](/people/klaus-peter-willsch) (CDU/CSU) presided in the interim. The CDU/CSU held 14 of the 42 seats, the AfD ten, the SPD eight, the Greens six and [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) four. Bernstein was among the CDU/CSU ordinary members and remains so on the membership list.

The Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss) is a subcommittee of the Budget Committee with the structure of a standing committee. Its members also sit, as ordinary or deputy members, on the Budget Committee, and every ordinary budget member is a deputy auditor. It follows authorised spending, examines federal financial management and prepares discharge of the government from the remarks of the Bundesrechnungshof. Its list names 18 ordinary members, Bernstein among them. [Kerstin Radomski](/people/kerstin-radomski) (CDU/CSU) chairs it, and [Peter Aumer](/people/peter-aumer) is the group’s Obmann.

### Culture, media and film

The Committee on Culture and Media has 18 members and is the Bundestag’s forum for federal cultural and media policy, including film support. When it constituted itself on 21 May 2025, Bernstein was listed as an ordinary CDU/CSU member; that group sends six members, the AfD and SPD four each, and the Greens and The Left two each. Sven Lehmann (Alliance 90/The Greens), himself only a deputy, was elected chair. She remains an ordinary member of the committee. The biographical note, which the Bundestag says rests on the member’s own information, adds that in 2017–2021 she was the CDU/CSU Obfrau on this committee and a member of the family-affairs committee.

The Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) in Berlin is Germany’s national film-funding body, financed by a levy on cinemas, the video industry and television. Its Verwaltungsrat has 36 members and 36 deputies, decides fundamental questions and adopts the budget; Kirsten Niehuus chairs it and Christian Bräuer is deputy chair. The disclosure lists Bernstein as a member from 18 September 2025. The FFA table places her among the Bundestag’s nominees, with [Martin Rabanus](/people/martin-rabanus) and a vacancy, and lists Nancy Faeser, [Anja Weisgerber](/people/anja-weisgerber) and a further vacancy as deputies. The ten-member Präsidium supervises the executive board. The Bundestag designates one of its seats: from 16 October 2025, when Niehuus was elected president, that seat is Bernstein’s, with Weisgerber as deputy.

### Defence and other parliamentary bodies

The Defence Committee has 38 ordinary members and as many deputies. It generally meets in closed session and controls the Federal [Ministry of Defence](/organizations/ministry-of-defence) and the administration under it, including the defence budget and procurement for the Bundeswehr. [Thomas Röwekamp](/people/thomas-rowekamp) (CDU/CSU) chairs it and [Bettina Lugk](/people/bettina-lugk) (SPD) is deputy chair; it constituted itself on 21 May 2025. Bernstein is a deputy member.

On 26 June 2025 the Bundestag elected her, with 496 of 588 votes cast, as one of nine Budget Committee members of the gremium under § 5 Absatz 4 of the Gesetz zur Finanzierung der Bundeswehr und zur Errichtung eines „Sondervermögens Bundeswehr“. The Federal Ministry of Defence briefs that body on the special fund.

The Kunstbeirat, chaired by the Bundestag president, advises on the parliament’s art collection, commissions and exhibitions, with ordinary members drawn from every parliamentary group, including Michael Frieser and [Philipp Amthor](/people/philipp-amthor) for the CDU/CSU. A photograph on that page captions Bernstein, with [Ottilie Klein](/people/ottilie-klein), as a deputy member. The biography’s committee list does not name the body.

### Foundations and public institutions

The Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung in Hamburg commemorates [Helmut Schmidt](/people/helmut-schmidt) and works on international politics, markets and democracy; an executive board runs daily business, while a board of trustees is chaired by Peer Steinbrück, with Matthias Naß as deputy chair. Bernstein is among the deputies the foundation names, and the disclosure records that deputy Kuratorium seat from 26 January 2026.

The [Otto-von-Bismarck](/people/otto-von-bismarck)-Stiftung, one of seven federal politician-memorial foundations, followed a statute adopted on 23 October 1997. It researches Otto von Bismarck and keeps a library, archive and museums at Friedrichsruh and Schönhausen. Johannes Kahrs chairs the Kuratorium, and the foundation names Bernstein as deputy chair. The disclosure dates membership from 5 March 2026 and the deputy chair from 8 June 2026.

The Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin was established on 27 October 2011 by the Federal Republic through the Ministry of Justice. Named for Magnus Hirschfeld, it states its aims as remembrance, education and research, and opposition to discrimination against queer people. It lists Bernstein as a CDU/CSU Kuratorium member, with Norbert Maria Altenkamp as deputy; the disclosure dates the seat from 9 September 2025.

The Stiftungsrat of the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt in Neustrelitz is that foundation’s supervisory body, with 22 members, ten from civil society, and chaired by Ronald Rauhe, minister of state for sport and volunteering. Bernstein appears on the list as a Budget Committee member; the disclosure dates the seat from 1 November 2025.

The disclosure also records a Kuratorium seat at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön until 10 July 2025. [Max Planck Society](/organizations/max-planck-society) institute boards are appointed by the president as a link to the public and meet yearly; Bernstein is not on the Plön institute’s current list.

## Political positions

### Culture and media

On 31 January 2019 Bernstein spoke in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU on a motion with the SPD on rural culture. She said more than half the population lived outside big cities, and that clubs, small cinemas, libraries and theatres were a matter of equal living conditions, not a trip to Hamburg, Berlin or Munich. Die Linke wanted a citizens’ culture fund and culture in the Basic Law. Alliance 90/The Greens said the coalition treated culture money as disguised economic promotion and relied on self-exploiting volunteers.

On 22 April 2021 she opposed [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) motions for a cultural-identity plan and a language-and-culture academy. She rejected the motions’ “guilt and shame culture” and called them publicity from a Björn Höcke speech on a “cultural meltdown.” She quoted Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble: to speak of the people and mean only part of them “lays hands on our order.”

On 15 January 2026 she answered Green and Left motions on film. Producers and cinemas were struggling against streaming, she said, and a rural cinema—she named Bad Segeberg’s—was often the last cultural place left. She preferred a voluntary platform investment in German works, replaced by law if it failed: “market confidence instead of over-regulation.” Sven Lehmann (Greens) called the crisis structural and accused Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer of dropping a statutory investment duty for deals that gave the industry no certainty.

### Family policy and violence against women

On 16 November 2023, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Bernstein said the violence was everyday reality at home as well as abroad. She cited a figure of one in three women in Germany affected, and almost 40,000 extended helpline consultations in 2022, about 60 percent domestic, and argued that domestic violence was also violence against children. She told Family Minister Lisa Paus that advice centres and clinics had to stay funded even in a tighter budget, and that the coalition agreement had delivered too little. NDR later reported her call for prevention, tougher penalties and reliable shelter funding.

In January 2025 the Bundestag unanimously passed a CDU/CSU bill, joined by the SPD and the Greens, on leave after miscarriage: two weeks from the 13th week of pregnancy, six from the 17th and eight from the 20th, against a previous threshold of the 24th week or 500 grams. It took effect on 1 June 2025 without a Bundesrat vote, and only if the woman did not say she was ready to work. Bernstein called it “a milestone for better protection of the many women affected and their families.”

The Self-Determination Act, passed on 12 April 2024 by 374 votes to 251, took effect on 1 November 2024. It replaced the 1980 Transsexuals Act, which required two psychological reports and a court order; the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) had already voided parts of that act. Adults change the entry and first name by a registry declaration, lodged three months ahead, with a one-year wait before another change and no duty to take counselling. Under 14 only parents may file, not against the child’s will; from 14 parental consent or a family-court order is required. Medical treatment is untouched, house rules still govern facilities, and disclosing a former name or entry can draw a fine of up to €10,000.

The Union’s stated objection was that, without counselling, abuse was a risk above all for children; Mareike Lotte Wulf said the duty to protect minors was being neglected. Bernstein agreed the old act needed reform, but called the new one “a security risk and a danger for children and young people.” In her words sex was “not a ‘social construct’ but reality.” She said proof of advice was not required, that worries about shelters, toilets, saunas, women’s sport and quotas were brushed aside, and that a new identity would not be reported to the security authorities. Tessa Ganserer called the act a historic gain for fundamental rights. [Amnesty International](/organizations/amnesty-international) called it overdue but incomplete. The AfD called it “ideological nonsense”; Sahra Wagenknecht said sex had become a “question of state of mind,” her phrase, not the statute’s.

On 31 January 2025 the Bundestag passed the Violence Assistance Act. Deutschlandfunk reported a legal entitlement for women affected by violence to protection and counselling, and a first federal contribution of €2.6 billion to shelters and advice centres—the spending Bernstein had told Paus must not be cut.

### Budget, defence and regional infrastructure

NDR reported that she pressed for the A20, part of the Autobahn network, and for better rail between Hamburg and Kiel and Hamburg and Lübeck. The road has ended east of Bad Segeberg since 2009. In 2013 the Federal Administrative Court stopped the next section after suits over bats in the Kalkberg caves.

In September 2025 Mayor Toni Köppen called more than 30,000 vehicles a day through the town unbearable, and business groups blamed uncertain federal money. On 9 October Bernstein welcomed an extra €3 billion for roads and said the Segeberg section would be built. In November BUND dropped its suit after Schleswig-Holstein put €14 million into a bat foundation. SPD deputy Ulf Kämpfer said the “massive delay” remained and that the state had bought off the right to sue; the FDP said the litigation had been rewarded. The Weede–Wittenborn bypass, about ten kilometres and about €550 million, started on 28 May 2026; Autobahn GmbH listed Bernstein with ministers Patrick Schnieder and [Claus Ruhe Madsen](/people/claus-ruhe-madsen). About 33,000 vehicles a day used the B206, projected to fall to about 14,000. Only 39 of 112 planned kilometres in the state were open.

On 24 March 2025, asked how armaments at 3 percent of GDP could be paid for without further cuts to education, social benefits and health, she cited the Union–SPD deal placing defence spending above 1 percent of GDP outside the debt brake, widened with the Greens to cyber and civil protection. The Bundestag amended the Basic Law on 18 March 2025. She wrote that security and social spending were not an “either-or.”

## Personal life

The Bundestag biography, based on Bernstein's own information, lists her religious affiliation as Protestant (*evangelisch*), her marital status as widowed, and two children. On her website she describes herself as the mother of sixteen-year-old twins and writes that she likes to spend free time with her family and horse-riding. NDR reported in February 2025 that she lives in Bornhöved, in the district of Segeberg. Her husband had lived since his youth in Wahlstedt, also in Segeberg, and the personal statement she issued after his death carried a Wahlstedt dateline. The address the Bundestag lists in Bad Segeberg is her constituency office, not a stated place of residence.

She was married to Axel Bernstein, a historian and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) born in Neumünster. He entered the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein in 2005, received a doctorate in 2009, served as parliamentary managing director of the CDU group from 2009 to 2012 and as state managing director of the CDU in Schleswig-Holstein from 2015 until the end of 2016, and was the group's spokesman on police policy at his death. On 24 August 2017 he died at the age of 43 on his property in Wahlstedt. The public prosecutor's office in Kiel opened a death investigation. After an autopsy it announced on 30 August 2017 that an accident (*Unglücksfall*) was to be assumed, that the inquiries had produced no indication of third-party involvement, and that it would not give further details on the cause of death. A Landtag notice on 31 August, citing the prosecutor's office, reported that he had fallen on the property. The dpa dispatch of 30 August attributed talk of a fall to media reports and quoted the prosecutor as giving no further detail. The Landtag stated that he was survived by his wife, Melanie Bernstein, and two children. dpa described the children as young and reported that Anette Röttger, then CDU district chair in Lübeck, would succeed him in the Landtag.

On 8 September 2017 Bernstein published a statement in which she called the death a tragic accident. She described Axel Bernstein as her husband, the father of their two children and a member of the Landtag for almost twelve years, and said that she would continue her candidacy for the Bundestag.

She has volunteered for many years at the Kleines Theater am Markt in Wahlstedt, which is run by the association Kulturring Wahlstedt und Umgebung e.V. Writing for the German Cultural Council in May 2020, she said that she chaired the theatre's programme advisory board and described the loss of performances after Schleswig-Holstein ordered cultural venues to close during the coronavirus pandemic. The Bundestag biography lists her as a member of the Kulturring. The association's booklet for the 2024/25 season, which reopened in January 2025 after renovation, names her as chair of the advisory board alongside the association's chairs, Wilfried Jendis and Manfred Gilenski; the imprint for 2026/27 still lists her on that board.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/melanie-bernstein