Michael Brand

Michael Karl Brand (born 19 November 1973 in Fulda) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag for the Fulda constituency in Hesse since 2005; the seat is currently constituency 173. In the 2025 federal election he received 75,039 first votes, 43.3 percent, ahead of Pierre Lamely of the Alternative for Germany on 22.9 percent, with turnout in the district at 84.7 percent.

He took his Abitur in 1994 at the Winfriedschule in Fulda and then did military service. From 1995 he studied political science, law and history at the University of Bonn, spent 1997–1998 in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and graduated Magister Artium in 2001. From 1995 to 2000 he worked at the European Balkan Institute in Bonn and, from 1996 to 2000, as a journalist in Germany and abroad. He was press spokesman of the Junge Union in Berlin in 2000–2001 and, from 2001 to 2005, press spokesman of the CDU group in the Hessian Landtag and of the CDU in Hesse. He has been a CDU member since 1993.

From 2013 to 2017 Brand chaired the Bundestag Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, and from 2017 to 2025 he was the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s spokesman on human rights and humanitarian aid. In May 2016 China refused him entry before a committee delegation whose route was to include Tibet; his office confirmed the ban, and he said the Chinese ambassador had pressed him to remove articles about Tibet from his website. On 2 June 2016 the Bundestag adopted, almost unanimously, a resolution describing the Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians as genocide. Brand, then committee chair, said the resolution was about stating a historical truth rather than embarrassing Turkey; Ankara recalled its ambassador from Berlin after the vote.

A ministry statement dated 7 May 2025 said that Karin Prien had taken over the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and that Brand was parliamentary state secretary alongside Mareike Wulf, succeeding Ekin Deligöz and Sven Lehmann. On 18 June 2025 the cabinet, on Prien’s proposal, also named him Federal Government Commissioner against Antiziganism and for the Life of Sinti and Roma in Germany for the 21st legislative period. He has chaired the CDU’s Hesse group in the Bundestag since 2018 and is deputy chairman of the German–South-Eastern Europe parliamentary group. The Bundestag’s biography, drawn from his own disclosure, lists him as Protestant, married and the father of three children.

Early life and education

Schooling in Fulda

Michael Brand was born on 19 November 1973 in Fulda, in the state of Hesse. He grew up in Engelhelms, a district of the neighbouring municipality of Künzell. In February 2017 he went back to the Florenbergschule in Pilgerzell, which he called his old primary school, for a discussion of children's rights with third- and fourth-year classes arranged through UNICEF Germany. The report of the visit called him an Engelhelmser and recorded that he remembered a "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" board painted on a library table, which he said had been his favourite place as a pupil.

He took the Abitur in 1994 at the Winfriedschule Fulda, a Gymnasium maintained by the district of Fulda. At a centenary ceremony on 15 July 2022, marking a foundation the school dated to 1922 and held after a service in Fulda Cathedral, Brand told pupils and guests that little outside his family had shaped him as much as his years there. He recalled a sentence from his German teacher, Rudolf Summa, whom the ceremony also remembered as a former head of the school: in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall opened, Summa told the class that they were living through a great moment of German and European history that would still be remembered in 200 years. From 1994 to 1995 Brand performed military service (Wehrdienst).

Studies in Bonn and Sarajevo

In 1995 he began studying political science, law and history at the University of Bonn. He completed the course in 2001 with the degree of Magister Artium. Published parliamentary and ministerial curricula vitae do not give the title or grade of the thesis. Between 1997 and 1998 the same biographies record a year of study abroad in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ministry's curriculum vitae states that during that stay he served, among other things, as an election observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

In an interview published by the Sarajevo daily Oslobođenje on 12 August 2024, Brand said that he had been tied to Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1990s, that he had been the first foreign student in Sarajevo after the Bosnian War, then in his early twenties, and that while studying there he helped to collect testimony from survivors of war crimes and massacres. The newspaper's introduction placed that stay in 1996, when he was 23, at the University of Sarajevo, and wrote that he had voluntarily interviewed survivors for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. His own account of the year likewise describes witness interviews with victims, and documentation of war crimes, for a human-rights organisation in Sarajevo, together with election observation for the OSCE. Those statements are not corroborated by a named organisation or by an OSCE observer list in the official German biographies, which date the study period to 1997–1998 rather than 1996.

The Catholic academic association Unitas lists Brand among living members it describes as currently among its best known. The association's notice does not say when he joined or name a particular member society, and the Bundestag and ministry biographies do not mention a student corporation.

Journalism and early party work

Reporting and the Balkans

From 1995 to 2000, while a student in Bonn, Michael Brand worked at the European Balkan Institute in the city. His Bundestag biography of 2006 records the attachment as Mitarbeit, the term used there for a staff or collaborative role. In parallel, from 1996 to 2000, he worked as a journalist in Germany and abroad, work he has described as freelance. The Bundestag biographies record the activity but do not name publications.

During a stay in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1997–1998, he also served as an election observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He has stated that, for a human-rights organization in Sarajevo, he interviewed witnesses and documented crimes from the Bosnian War. The institute post and the journalistic work both ran through 2000.

Junge Union and the Hessian press office

Brand joined the Junge Union in the district of Fulda in 1988 and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) there in 1993. In the youth organization he chaired the local association in Künzell from 1991 to 1994, sat on the Fulda district executive from 1991 to 1996, and was deputy district chairman from 1992 to 1996. The ministry biography records the 1988 and 1993 entry dates but not these local offices, which appear in the longer 2006 text.

From 2000 to 2001 he was press spokesperson of the Junge Union Deutschlands in Berlin. The 2006 biography also lists him, for 2001, as chief of service (Chef vom Dienst) of the organization’s magazine Entscheidung. The Junge Union has published Entscheidung since 1953 and has described it as the organization’s mouthpiece and as one of the oldest association magazines in Germany still appearing without interruption.

From 2001 to 2005 he was press spokesperson of the CDU group in the Landtag of Hesse and press spokesperson of the CDU in Hesse, based in Wiesbaden. The ministry biography names the Landtag-group post for those years; the Bundestag biographies add the separate title of spokesperson for the state party. In the Bundestag’s published note of his occupation before he entered parliament, the Landtag post is listed with a right of return. The 2006 biography further lists him, over those same years, as chief of service and editor-in-chief of the Hessen Kurier. The CDU in Hesse describes the HessenKurier as its membership magazine, printed up to four times a year in a run of more than 50,000 copies. Later short biographies on the Bundestag website and at the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth keep the spokesperson posts and do not repeat the magazine titles.

Bundestag elections in Fulda

The 2005 contest and Martin Hohmann

The Bundestag constituency named Fulda covers all of Landkreis Fulda and part of the Vogelsbergkreis in eastern Hesse. Its number was 176 in 2005, 175 in 2009, 174 from 2013 through 2021, and 173 in 2025. In 2005 and 2009 it also included Birstein, Schlüchtern, Sinntal and Steinau an der Straße in the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, plus a south-eastern group of Vogelsberg municipalities, among them Lauterbach, Schlitz, Herbstein and Ulrichstein. From 2013 those Main-Kinzig municipalities left the seat and Grebenau and Schwalmtal were added; the 2021 and 2025 definitions kept that list.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has called the area a conservative stronghold of the Christian Democratic Union. The deputy Michael Brand replaced was Martin Hohmann, who had entered the Bundestag as successor to Alfred Dregger and had sat for about seven years as a CDU member. On 3 October 2003, speaking to his local branch in Neuhof, Hohmann objected to Germans being labelled a Tätervolk for Nazi crimes and asked whether Jews could be called a Tätervolk because of participation in the Russian October Revolution. He concluded that neither Germans nor Jews were such a people, and that the godless were. The remarks were widely treated as antisemitic. Angela Merkel, then CDU leader, at first backed a reprimand and his removal from the interior committee.

On 14 November 2003 the CDU/CSU Bundestag group expelled him by secret ballot, 195 in favour, 28 against and 16 abstentions—the first expulsion in the group’s history. A two-thirds majority of 166 votes was required. Merkel said the vote had been personally difficult for colleagues but that the political consequences had to be drawn. The Hessian CDU state party court later expelled him from the party. When that decision was reported on 20 July 2004, the state general secretary said Hohmann had still not clearly distanced himself, and cited the court’s finding that his linkage of Judaism and Bolshevism used a stereotype exploited by the National Socialists. The Fulda public prosecutor’s office decided in February 2004 not to investigate him for incitement to hatred; a complaint against that decision was rejected in May.

Hohmann stayed in the Bundestag without a group and stood in 2005 as an independent in constituency 176. The Federal Returning Officer’s candidate list named him as a sitting member, the CDU candidate as Michael Brand and the Social Democratic Party candidate as Claudia Blum. Brand won the direct mandate with 72,048 first votes, 39.1 percent. Blum took 54,765 votes, 29.7 percent, and Hohmann 39,545, 21.5 percent. Turnout was 79.1 percent of 238,580 eligible voters. On figures the Bundestag published after recalculating 2002 onto the 2005 boundaries, the CDU had taken 54.0 percent of first votes in 2002; the Federal Returning Officer recorded a fall of 14.8 points in 2005. The CDU list vote, 43.5 percent, was above Brand’s personal share.

Results from 2009 to 2025

In 2009, with the constituency numbered 175 and unchanged in area, Brand was again directly elected. The CDU took 49.8 percent of first votes, the SPD 23.9 percent, the Free Democratic Party 10.1 percent, Alliance 90/The Greens 7.3 percent and Die Linke 6.9 percent. Turnout was 73.8 percent of 239,786 eligible voters.

After the 2013 redistribution the seat was number 174. Brand’s first-vote share was 58.3 percent, 87,263 votes. The SPD was second with 25.0 percent, 37,352 votes. Turnout was 73.4 percent of 209,960 eligible voters, and the CDU also led the list vote with 51.1 percent.

In 2017, still in constituency 174, Brand’s share fell to 45.2 percent, 71,946 votes. The SPD candidate, identified in local reporting as Birgit Kömpel, took 20.2 percent, 32,150 votes. Hohmann had joined the Alternative for Germany and said in 2016 that he would stand for the Bundestag again if the party asked; constituency coverage identified him as the AfD candidate, and the AfD received 17.6 percent of first votes, 27,990. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that Brand again faced an opponent on his right drawing voters away, as twelve years earlier. Turnout was 77.1 percent of 209,966 eligible voters.

In 2021 Brand held the seat with 38.1 percent, 61,573 votes, his lowest first-vote share there since 2005. Kömpel was again second, with 21.8 percent, 35,168 votes. Hohmann stood again for the AfD and was third; its 24,508 first votes were 15.2 percent. Neither he nor Kömpel entered the Bundestag. The FDP and the Greens each took 8.6 percent of first votes. Turnout was 78.4 percent of 208,542 eligible voters. The CDU list vote was 31.1 percent, below Brand’s personal share and ahead of the SPD on 22.5 percent.

At the election of 23 February 2025 the seat was numbered 173, with the same municipalities as in 2021. Brand won with 75,039 first votes, 43.3 percent, 5.2 points above the 2021 comparison published on the new numbering. Pierre Lamely of the AfD was runner-up with 39,790 votes, 22.9 percent. The SPD fell to 13.6 percent. Turnout was 84.7 percent of 206,544 eligible voters. On the list vote the CDU led with 37.6 percent and the AfD followed with 23.6 percent.

Environment, defence and home affairs

Environment and waste policy

In the 16th and 17th terms of the Bundestag, Michael Brand, the Christian Democratic Union member for Fulda, was an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. A biography current in June 2007 already named him rapporteur for waste, disposal and packaging, and the same brief was still on his biography in November 2011. In that term he was also a substitute member of the first committee of inquiry, identified on the biography as the Gorleben inquiry, into the decision to concentrate exploration of a nuclear-waste repository on the Gorleben salt dome.

He was one of the rapporteurs for the government bill reorganizing circular-economy and waste law. At second and third reading on 28 October 2011 he described the draft as a difficult compromise between municipal services of general interest and private collectors, said it carried the European five-step waste hierarchy into German law, and pointed to a nationwide biowaste bin and a later recyclables statute that would replace the packaging ordinance. He also said charitable collections, including those by sports clubs and church groups, should not be choked by new bureaucracy. The Bundestag adopted the committee text with the votes of the CDU/CSU and the Free Democratic Party against the Social Democratic Party, Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens. The Bundesrat called the mediation committee on 25 November 2011. The mediators replaced the Bundestag’s equivalence test for commercial household-waste collections with a requirement that the collector be substantially more capable than the public service. On 9 February 2012 the Bundestag approved that recommendation with the votes of the CDU/CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens against Die Linke; the mediation committee’s rapporteur was Peter Altmaier, not Brand.

In 2012 the environment committee again named Brand as a rapporteur, this time on recommendations to reject an SPD motion requiring retailers to take back used energy-saving lamps without charge and a Green motion on better collection and recycling of electronic scrap. The committee recommended rejection with the votes of the CDU/CSU and the FDP against the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens. From the 18th term, which began in 2013, the environment committee no longer appears among his recorded seats; his chairmanship of the human-rights committee, which started in that term, is treated separately.

Defence and civilian crisis prevention

Brand’s defence assignment widened over the same years. In June 2007 he was only a substitute on the Defence Committee. By November 2011 he was an ordinary member, and he also sat as an ordinary member of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on civilian crisis prevention and networked security and as a substitute in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He remained a full member of the Defence Committee through the 18th term: a membership list archived in September 2015 placed him among the CDU/CSU’s ordinary members, and parliamentary-monitoring records give him the same status for 2013–2017, alongside a substitute seat on the Budget Committee.

In the 19th term (2017–2021) he dropped to substitute status on the Defence Committee. The archived biography also lists him as a substitute on that committee’s first inquiry, set up under Article 45a of the Basic Law into consulting contracts (“Beraterverträge”), and as a substitute on the Joint Committee. Neither the Defence Committee nor the crisis-prevention subcommittee appears on his 20th-term biography.

Internal affairs

Domestic security became a standing assignment in the 19th term, when he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland. In March 2018 the Fuldaer Zeitung reported that he had been named that committee’s rapporteur for the Federal Police; the paper reproduced a statement from his Bundestag office in which he tied the brief to staffing, equipment and the Federal Police site at Hünfeld. In the 20th term (2021–2025) the interior seat became a substitute membership, held alongside substitute seats on the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Joint Committee and the first inquiry committee on Afghanistan. A February 2022 local report said the CDU/CSU group had again designated him its spokesperson and rapporteur for the Federal Police for that term.

Those seats ended with the 20th term. On 6 May 2025, after the election of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Bundestag recorded Brand, with Mareike Wulf, as a parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth under Karin Prien. His 21st-term biography, which dates that office from May 2025, lists no Bundestag committee. Parliamentary state secretaries remain members of the Bundestag and may represent their minister in committee sittings. Monitoring data for the 2025–2029 mandate likewise show no committee membership.

Human rights and humanitarian aid

Committee chair and group spokesperson

When the standing committees of the 18th Bundestag were constituted on 15 January 2014, Michael Brand of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in the joint CDU/Christian Social Union group, was named chair of the 16-member Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. Under the committee programme “Parlamentarier schützen Parlamentarier” (“parliamentarians protect parliamentarians”), members sponsor persecuted activists. Brand sponsored the Vietnamese labour activist Do Thi Minh Hanh, jailed after helping organise a strike; colleague Frank Heinrich visited her in April 2014, and she was released early that June. Brand asked other chairs to recruit sponsors and said a satisfied human-rights advocate had failed. He tied that view to interviewing victims in war-damaged Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Society for Threatened Peoples.

After Erika Steinbach left the CDU and the group in mid-January 2017, the group on 17 January elected Brand its spokesperson on human rights and humanitarian aid and chair of the matching working group. Matthias Zimmer then succeeded him as committee chair. At the start of the 19th term the Fuldaer Zeitung reported his re-election as spokesperson, with 98.2 percent of the group vote. Der Spiegel still described him in that role in August 2024. In the 3 June 2016 debate on the United Nations World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, he criticised the absence of “the first rank” of other European governments; the debate noted that humanitarian needs had quadrupled from 2005 to 2016 and that 2015 had left an €8.7 billion funding gap.

The Armenian genocide resolution

On 2 June 2016 the Bundestag adopted, with one vote against and one abstention, a joint motion of the CDU/CSU, the Social Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The Greens: “Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916” (Drucksache 18/8613). The printed motion was tabled by the groups’ leaderships, not by named individual members.

The text says that from 24 April 1915 the Young Turk regime began the planned expulsion and annihilation of more than a million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and that Aramaic-Assyrian and Chaldean Christians were also deported and killed. It calls the Holocaust, for which Germany bears guilt, unique. It regrets the “inglorious role” of the German Empire, the Ottomans’ main military ally, which despite reports from German diplomats and missionaries did not try to stop the crimes, and states that the Reich shares the guilt (Mitschuld). It asks the government to examine the killings and the Reich’s role in public, to encourage Turkey toward reconciliation with Armenia, and to support the 2009 Zurich Protocols.

Brand did not sign the motion, but he had pressed for the word genocide. In April 2015 he told Politico that Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was expected to “recognize and name a genocide,” and that “especially because of the Holocaust a genocide must not be by-passed or withheld due to cowardice.” A written explanation on 2 June, drawing on his speech of 24 April 2016 at the German Historical Museum, says he and others had insisted that Völkermord enter the text “without rhetorical twists,” and rejects the claim that the 1948 UN Genocide Convention barred the term.

Turkey rejected the label. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim recalled Ambassador Hüseyin Avni Karslioglu, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had warned Chancellor Angela Merkel of damage to ties between the two NATO states. President Norbert Lammert condemned threats against members, “particularly those with Turkish roots”; Merkel, Sigmar Gabriel and Steinmeier were absent from the vote. He told reporters he doubted Turkey, under pressure from the Islamic State and the PKK, would break with Germany: the point was “historical truth,” not embarrassment. The resolution created no legal duty for the government. Members of Turkish origin later received hate mail and death threats.

Other country and humanitarian files

In September 2016 he told the Rheinische Post that the “inferno in Aleppo” was “zum Heulen,” urged a civilian zone north of the city kept clear of the Islamic State, and called for a no-fly zone over Syria. After pro-government forces retook most of the city, he told ARD that the EU should sanction Russia more sharply, that ignoring such zones had strengthened Bashar al-Assad, and that Aleppo symbolised a break with human rights. He invoked Rwanda, Srebrenica and Sarajevo and asked for observers.

In August 2024 Egyptian officers held him at Hurghada airport, on arrival and departure, during a family holiday: he was separated from his family and his passport was taken, he told German papers. He blamed criticism of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and advocacy for Egypt’s Copts, and said he believed he was on an intelligence blacklist. The Foreign Office called the treatment “not acceptable.”

After Bosnia’s October 2018 elections he told Deutsche Welle that Milorad Dodik was a “political arsonist” who would represent a state he fought, and that Dayton had left an ethnic, discriminatory constitution which the EU and Germany should have the courage to change.

On 19 October 2018 he opened the CDU/CSU case in a debate on freedom of religion. He said the “C” in the party name obliged it to all people, not only Christians; quoted Bamberg Archbishop Ludwig Schick that work for Christians was “exemplary, but not exclusive”; and rejected casting persecution as a culture war between Christianity and Islam.

China, Tibet and the Uyghurs

Tibet and the 2016 visa refusal

As chair of the Bundestag Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, Michael Brand of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was to lead a late-May 2016 delegation to China, with stops in Beijing, Ürümqi and Lhasa in Tibet; flights and an interpreter were already booked. He told Deutsche Welle that a trip about a year earlier had already been dropped after the Chinese side said it would not go ahead if he appeared at Tibet Initiative Deutschland in Frankfurt; he spoke at its May 2015 members' assembly anyway.

Before the 2016 dates, Brand said, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin and embassy staff repeatedly insisted that he delete Tibet articles from his website. He refused what he called attempted blackmail and a demand for self-censorship. Beijing then, on his account, said the committee could travel but not its chair.

On 11 May 2016 the committee unanimously condemned the ban and what it called repeated attempts by the ambassador and representatives of the National People's Congress to shape the chair's diary, appearances and Tibet publications. Only the Bundestag, it said, decides who travels; it held to the journey with Brand as leader and asked China to allow that visit quickly. Brand called the episode extraordinary and said the government should tell the ambassador so, weeks before consultations for which Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected in Beijing on 13 June.

The next day Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said China valued exchanges with the Bundestag and had done "a lot of work preparing for the visit." The refusal was not because of human-rights remarks: "he is not the only one that has something to say about China's human rights," and many such people still visited. "He cannot come, because he blatantly breached the commitment of the German government to the 'one China' policy and stuck his heels in advocating 'Tibet independence' which is so wrong. I can say for sure that China will not welcome such a man." Lu called the committee's statement "very unwise." Lu did not cite Tibet Initiative events; those are in Brand's account of embassy pressure, not in the ministry's stated grounds. Brand said he would urge colleagues not to let the Bundestag cancel, and not to accept a visit by the other members without him. The committee adopted that line, so it did not agree to travel without its chair.

On 10 February 2022 a reconstituted cross-party Parliamentary Group on Tibet elected Brand chair, with Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens), Peter Heidt (FDP) and Nadja Sthamer (SPD) as co-chairs. He said the group would set "clear political initiatives" and stop "silently ignoring" repression under Xi Jinping, and that Tibetan cultural and religious identity was a test of whether China met international standards on freedom of religion.

Uyghurs and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China

On 5 June 2020 legislators from eight countries and the European Parliament launched the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, saying states that raised human rights had too often done so alone. In the launch video Brand said, "It is a challenge which touches all of us." Chen Wen, a minister at the Chinese embassy in London, called the alliance "a misinterpretation of China's foreign policy and a misreading of the current world situation." Later that month dpa described him as a member of the alliance; he told Der Tagesspiegel that China was "in the process of becoming a real threat," citing treaty breaches, industrial espionage and illegal subsidies. A February 2024 IPAC campaign identified him as German co-chair.

On 5 September 2023 members from the SPD, Greens, FDP and CDU/CSU launched a cross-party parliamentary circle on the Uyghurs with the World Uyghur Congress. Peter Heidt (FDP) became chair; vice-chairs named at the launch were Derya Türk-Nachbaur (SPD), Boris Mijatović (Greens) and Brand, represented that day by Norbert Altenkamp. Heidt said he wanted a Bundestag vote the following year on recognising a genocide, and that China must close the camps in Xinjiang.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said Heidt was slandering China by alleging "assimilation" and by urging a Bundestag finding of "genocide" in Xinjiang; China had 56 nationalities whose customs and languages were protected, and Uyghurs had grown from 2.2 million to about 12 million in 60 years. What he called camps were, it said, vocational centres, already closed after deradicalisation "achieved positive results." The embassy rejected "concentration camp" as trivialising the Nazi murder of Jews, and said China would discuss human rights "on an equal footing" but "decisively rejects slanders that distort the truth."

In February 2024 IPAC members urged BASF to leave Xinjiang after reporting they described as evidence of abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. As German co-chair, Brand called it "a truly appalling story for BASF and also for Germany" that a firm "historically burdened during the Nazi era is now again indirectly involved in a system that takes thousands of innocent people from their homes and puts them in mass camps, with forced internment and with forced labour."

End-of-life policy

The 2015 assisted-suicide statute and the 2020 judgment

On 6 November 2015 the Bundestag held a free vote on four cross-party bills on assisted suicide. The bill adopted was introduced by Michael Brand of the Christian Democratic Union, Kerstin Griese of the Social Democratic Party, Kathrin Vogler of Die Linke and Harald Terpe of Alliance 90/The Greens (printed paper 18/5373). It created section 217 of the Criminal Code, Geschäftsmäßige Förderung der Selbsttötung (business-like promotion of suicide). At second reading it received 309 votes. A bill by Peter Hintze, Carola Reimann, Karl Lauterbach and others (18/5374), for a physician-accompanied ending of life, received 128; one by Renate Künast, Petra Sitte and Kai Gehring (18/5375), punishing only assistance for gain, received 52; and one by Patrick Sensburg, Thomas Dörflinger and others (18/5376), criminalising participation in suicide more broadly, received 37. Seventy members rejected every bill and three abstained. Only the Brand–Griese text went to third reading, where it passed by 360 votes to 233, with nine abstentions, on 602 votes cast.

Section 217 punished, by up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine, anyone who, intending to promote another person’s suicide, granted, procured or mediated an opportunity for it on a repeat-oriented basis, whether or not for payment. Relatives and other close persons stayed exempt as accessories if they did not themselves act that way. The sponsors said one-off help, mere discussion, palliative pain relief and withdrawal of treatment were outside the offence. The Act of 3 December 2015 (BGBl. I p. 2177) took effect on 10 December 2015.

Elke Baezner, president of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben, said she was “very disappointed”: people seeking a self-determined death would increasingly have only Switzerland, and “brutal suicides” might rise where palliative care was not enough. The Bundestag research service doubted whether “business-like” showed clearly enough when doctors, especially in palliative medicine, would be liable. Brand said leading lawyers thought that view mistaken; Griese said liability required an intention to offer assistance regularly, not repetition alone.

On 26 February 2020 the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, in 2 BvR 2347/15 and joined cases, declared section 217 void. It held that the general right of personality, Article 2(1) with Article 1(1) of the Basic Law, includes a right to a self-determined death, including seeking and using help from others, and is not limited to illness. Protecting autonomy and life was a legitimate aim, but the ban was disproportionate because it largely removed real access to assistance. Parliament may still regulate organised help, though not by tests such as incurable disease, and no one may be forced to assist. Brand said the judgment would have “a very dangerous, in part deadly effect” on people under pressure over suicide, since business-like offers caused more suicides “beyond the very small number of those who do this in full self-determination”.

Brand signed neither later draft: the narrower bill of Lars Castellucci, Ansgar Heveling and others (printed paper 20/904), nor the more open bill of Katrin Helling-Plahr of the Free Democratic Party and others (20/2332). On 6 July 2023 the Bundestag rejected the Castellucci text by 304 votes to 363, with 23 abstentions, and the liberal text linked to Helling-Plahr and Künast by 287 to 375, with 20 abstentions. No replacement statute was passed.

Hospice and palliative care

The day before, on 5 November 2015, the Bundestag passed the government’s Act to Improve Hospice and Palliative Care, backed by the CDU/CSU, the SPD and the Greens. It was Hermann Gröhe’s government bill, not a Brand–Griese initiative. It raised funds’ minimum daily rate for inpatient hospices from about €198 to about €261 in 2016 and their share of eligible costs from 90 to 95 percent, and raised the outpatient subsidy, now covering goods as well as staff, from 11 to 13 percent of the reference amount. Insured people also gained advice on palliative care, hospice care and advance directives.

In January 2016 the Hospiz-Förderverein Fulda unanimously elected Brand chair, to succeed Wolfgang Dippel. It supports the Malteser outpatient service “Da-Sein”, a children’s hospice service, bereavement work and the inpatient Hospiz St. Elisabeth in Fulda. He has given its line as “Sterben an der Hand, nicht durch die Hand eines Menschen” (“dying at a person’s hand, not by a person’s hand”). With Maria Litmeyer and Martin Hoogen he later issued a Wegweiser to medical, nursing and advice services in Fulda and eastern Hesse. In 2026 the association received the Fuldaer Rose, a local civic-courage prize; Brand, still chair, called for strengthening “das Menschliche” rather than “die Professionalisierung des Suizids”.

Government office since 2025

Parliamentary state secretary

When the government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office, Michael Brand of the Christian Democratic Union became parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend). On 7 May 2025 Karin Prien took the ministry over from Lisa Paus. The ministry named Mareike Wulf and Brand as its parliamentary state secretaries, succeeding Ekin Deligöz and Sven Lehmann. The announcement did not give either a separate portfolio. Brand, a member of the Bundestag for Fulda, received from Prien a certificate signed by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and by Merz and took the oath of office. Prien described the remodelled department as combining education, from early childhood to lifelong learning, with family, older people, women and youth.

Commissioner against antiziganism

On 18 June 2025 the federal cabinet, on Prien’s proposal, appointed Brand Federal Government Commissioner against Antiziganism and for the Life of Sinti and Roma in Germany for the 21st electoral period, in addition to his work as parliamentary state secretary. On 8 July Prien handed him the certificate of appointment.

The office had been created in 2022 and was first held by the non-party lawyer Mehmet Daimagüler, who had said the previous autumn that he would not seek another term. The taz reported that he left in spring 2025 for personal reasons and that the post was then vacant. Because the CDU/CSU and the SPD had agreed to halve the number of federal commissioners, the taz and others reported in late May that this post would in effect be abolished, alarming Sinti and Roma associations; the coalition then kept the office by assigning it to Brand alongside his other duties.

Brand said he would press for causes to be named and for discrimination to be opposed by state and society, and that he would seek dialogue with Sinti and Roma in light of their persecution under National Socialism. The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma welcomed the choice, citing his work with the Society for Threatened Peoples. Chairman Romani Rose said the Independent Commission on Antiziganism’s report to the Bundestag in December 2023 had shown Nazi racial ideology continuing in the bureaucracy as a second persecution. On 5 December 2025 Brand chaired the second regular meeting of the standing federal–state commission against antiziganism in Berlin, with Baden-Württemberg as co-chair; the subject was prevention in schools. The commission is led jointly by the federal commissioner and a yearly rotating Land co-chair, with Bavaria due to take that role on 1 January 2026.

Appointment debate and later statements

Before the decision, Kelly Laubinger, managing director of the Sinti Union Schleswig-Holstein, told the taz she doubted a CDU member would criticise a Union-led government. She said she was puzzled that Brand followed the singer Heino on Instagram, but no Sinti or Roma self-organisation, and noted that Heino still sings songs whose titles use the derogatory “Z-word.” She also cited a 2017 article for the Fulda weekly Fulda Aktuell in which, as the taz summarised it, he defended carnival costumes of Native Americans and criticised what he called a “Gesinnungspolizei.”

On 4 December 2025 Der Spiegel reported that Brand had called recent remarks about Sinti and Roma, especially from the CDU, “dull stereotypes and blanket defamations,” and had warned the political centre against slipping “into the language of the extremists.” Spiegel cited CDU Bundestag member Paul Ziemiak, who accused Sinti and Roma of welfare abuse through sham contracts and mini-jobs, and Berlin CDU deputy Timur Husein, who had used the Z-word online. Brand said that naming problems was legitimate, but that “verbally throwing entire population groups into the bin,” instead of holding lawbreakers to account, was “cheap and absolutely inappropriate.”

On 9 June 2026 the Reporting and Information Office on Antiziganism (Melde- und Informationsstelle Antiziganismus, MIA) recorded 2,076 antiziganist incidents for 2025, 24 percent more than the 1,678 of 2024. The count came from its federal office and six regional centres. MIA said reporting had increased, a large dark figure remained, and children or young people were affected in every third incident aimed at a person. Brand said the government took every case seriously, pointed to federal–state work on education, justice and the police and to a coming commission on post-1945 injustice, and said negative reports should not hide positive examples of coexistence.

On 6 July 2026 the cabinet set up an Independent Commission on the Injustice against Sinti and Roma in the Federal Republic and in the GDR after 1945, with Brand to choose its members. It is to document that injustice, hear those affected and their descendants, and make recommendations, implementing a 2023 Bundestag resolution on the commission appointed in 2019 by then interior minister Horst Seehofer. Its secretariat at the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future is paid from the commissioner’s funds.

Party offices and civic life

Hesse party group and the district council

On 24 September 2018 the CDU members from Hesse in the Bundestag elected Brand chairman of their Landesgruppe in the CDU/CSU parliamentary party. He replaced Michael Meister, whose own chronology dates the chair from October 2009 to September 2018, and he defeated the incumbent. Helge Braun and Matthias Zimmer were elected deputy chairs. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported that the ballot among the then 17 Hessian members was narrow, that no count was published, and that the Landesgruppe had begun renewing its leadership during a legislative period rather than only once every four years. The Bundestag biography lists him as chairman since 2018.

After the Bundestag election of 23 February 2025, the 15 Hessian CDU members confirmed him unanimously by secret ballot in Langen; reporting called it his third term and said Minister-President Boris Rhein had proposed him. The Landesgruppe's account of the 21st electoral period names Norbert Altenkamp and Frederik Bouffier as deputies and states that the group has 15 members although 20 CDU candidates won Hessian constituencies outright. Osthessen News reported on 6 May 2026 that the members had again confirmed him unanimously, by secret ballot, the previous Tuesday, and quoted him as saying the chair is chosen for one year at the start of a term and then again for the rest. On 19 September 2026 the CDU in Hesse reported another unanimous confirmation, with the same deputies, and said Bouffier would become a parliamentary managing director of the CDU/CSU group. The Bundestag also lists Brand as deputy chair of the German–South-Eastern Europe parliamentary group.

He has been an honorary member of the Kreistag of Fulda (district) since 2006. At the district election of 14 March 2021 he received 57,095 personal votes, the most of any candidate, from sixth place on the CDU list; the CDU took 44.10 percent and 36 of 81 seats, and turnout was 56.22 percent. In the 2026 Kreistag election the CDU again won 36 of 81 seats, with 44.5 percent, on a turnout of 60.5 percent. Brand, fourth on the list, led the personal vote by more than 4,000 over list leader Thomas Hering and headed the CDU members returned.

Voluntary roles and private life

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, lists as unpaid his membership of the Malteser Hilfsdienst and of the Kolping Society, the chair of the Hospiz-Förderverein „LebensWert“ Fulda, and places on the foundation council of the Point Alpha Stiftung, the board of trustees of Aktion Deutschland Hilft, and the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. It also names, as honorary, the Fulda carnival society, the Society for Threatened Peoples, the Florenberg support association, the friends of Fulda University of Applied Sciences, and the advisory board of the Kinder-Akademie Fulda. The statutory disclosure repeats the hospice-association chair, the Point Alpha council in Geisa, and the Aktion Deutschland Hilft trusteeship, and adds unpaid seats on the advisory boards of Kinder-Akademie Fulda gGmbH and of the biosphere reserve in the Rhön, on the board of trustees of the Stiftung „daHeim im Leben“ in Fulda, and, from 23 June 2025, the chair of the board of trustees of the federal foundation „Mutter und Kind − Schutz des ungeborenen Lebens“. The Point Alpha Stiftung lists him on its Stiftungsrat as a parliamentary state secretary and member of the Bundestag. For the 21st electoral period the agency's Kuratorium, 22 Bundestag members overseeing its effectiveness and political balance, includes him on the CDU/CSU side, with Christina Stumpp as chair.

The biography states that he was born on 19 November 1973 in Fulda, is Protestant, is married, and has three children.