# Michael Hose

# Michael Hose

Michael Hose (born 28 September 1984 in Weimar) is a German teacher, former headteacher and politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) from Thuringia. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025, in its 21st electoral term, having entered through the Thuringian state list after standing in constituency 192, Erfurt – Weimar – Weimarer Land II. He has sat on the city council of Erfurt since 2014 and has chaired the council's CDU group since 2019. On 21 September 2026 the CDU federal executive unanimously elected him deputy secretary-general, in succession to Christina Stumpp, to connect the party leadership with its membership, with an emphasis on eastern Germany, municipal politics and younger members; the office also seats him on the party presidium, where he supports secretary-general Franziska Hoppermann.

Hose was the city pupil spokesperson in Weimar in 2001 and 2002 and passed his Abitur in 2003 at the Hoffmann-von-Fallersleben-Gymnasium in Weimar-West. The CDU states that he then did civilian service in a retirement and nursing home. From 2004 to 2011 he studied to teach history and social studies (*Sozialkunde*) at Gymnasium level at the University of Jena, finishing with the first state examination, and from 2004 to 2010 he held a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). He completed his teaching traineeship (*Referendariat*) from 2011 to 2013 at the Gleichense grammar school in Ohrdruf, with the second state examination.

He worked as a policy officer for the Thuringian CDU in 2013–2014 and as a pedagogical officer of the Protestant School Foundation in Central Germany in 2014–2016. From 2016 to 2024 he taught in Neuhaus am Rennweg and Königsee, and from 2020 to 2024 he was a subject leader training social-studies teachers at the Erfurt *Studienseminar*. In 2024–2025 he was headteacher of Gemeinschaftsschule 10 in Erfurt. He is a Protestant, has one daughter, and lives with his family in Erfurt.

In the 2025 German federal election, [Bodo Ramelow](/people/bodo-ramelow) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) won constituency 192 with 64,390 first votes (36.8 percent), ahead of Alexander Claus of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany with 46,612 (26.7 percent). Hose was the CDU candidate in the district; the CDU's first-vote total there was 28,587 (16.3 percent), and he took his mandate on the state list rather than as a directly elected member. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Culture and Media, and a deputy member of the Budget Committee and the Petitions Committee. He was chair of the Children's Commission (*Kinderkommission*) by World Children's Day on 20 September 2025; the CDU records that this rotating chair lasted until May 2026. On 21 September 2026 he also became chair of the parliamentary enquiry commission on the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), succeeding Franziska Hoppermann.

## Early life and education

### Weimar upbringing and school

Michael Hose was born on 28 September 1984 in Weimar, in Thuringia. The Bundestag biography records that date and place and notes that members' biographical entries are based on their own statements. The profile published by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) states that he was born and grew up in Weimar, took his school-leaving examination there and then did civilian service in a retirement and nursing home in the city. In December 2024 the *Thüringer Allgemeine*, reporting his nomination as a Bundestag direct candidate, described him as a native of Weimar (*gebürtiger Weimarer*) and as a Gymnasium teacher of social studies and history.

In 2001 and 2002 he was *Stadtschülersprecher* of Weimar, the city's pupil spokesperson. He has written that his political engagement began in that office, where he concluded that much could be achieved by looking for allies and persisting, and that he came to the CDU through its youth organisation, the Young Union (*Junge Union*).

In 2003 he passed the Abitur at the Hoffmann-von-Fallersleben-Gymnasium in the district of Weimar-West. He identifies the civilian-service placement that followed as the retirement and nursing home of the Marie Seebach Foundation (*Marie-Seebach-Stiftung*) and has called it an important experience. The foundation, at Tiefurter Allee 8 in Weimar, states that the actress Marie Seebach established it in 1895 as a home for retired stage artists—describing it as the only such home in Germany—and that it now also admits other older people with an interest in culture. Zivildienst was the civilian counterpart of compulsory military service; both were suspended in peacetime with effect from 1 July 2011, several years after Hose had left school.

### University and teacher training

From 2004 to 2011 Hose studied for a Gymnasium teaching degree in history and social studies (*Sozialkunde*) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He finished the university phase with the first state examination (*Erstes Staatsexamen*). For most of that period, from 2004 to 2010, he held a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. The foundation describes its role as supporting young people who study and do research successfully and whose ability and character make a particular contribution to the public good likely. Under the conditions it currently publishes, scholarship holders receive a monthly study-cost allowance of 300 euro and, depending on family means, a maintenance grant of up to 855 euro a month, alongside a non-material programme; Hose's parliamentary biography does not record the sum he was paid.

From 2011 to 2013 he completed the *Referendariat*, the school-based second phase of teacher education in Germany, at the Gymnasium „Gleichense“ in Ohrdruf, and passed the second state examination. The school gives its address as Trinitatisstraße 2 in that town. Thuringia's education ministry describes the preparatory service for a Gymnasium teaching qualification as normally lasting 24 months and ending with the second state examination, the period Hose's biography assigns to Gleichense.

## Teaching career

### Classroom teaching and teacher training

The biography published by the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) places Michael Hose’s working life, after his second state examination, first in a short party-staff post and then in schools. From 2013 to 2014 he was a policy officer (*Grundsatzreferent*) of the CDU in Thuringia; from 2014 to 2016 he was a pedagogical officer of the Protestant school foundation Evangelische Schulstiftung in Mitteldeutschland. The Bundestag states that members’ biographical entries rest on their own information.

From 2016 to 2024 that biography lists him as a teacher in Neuhaus am Rennweg and Königsee, without naming the Neuhaus school. One post is identified in the press. On 13 June 2020 the *Thüringer Landeszeitung* described Hose, then also chair of the CDU group on Erfurt city council, as a teacher at the Dr.-Max-Näder-Gymnasium in Königsee, in the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt. The paper reported that Thuringia’s data-protection commissioner had taken an interest in him because he had used “creative paths” (*kreative Wege*) in distance teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 2020 to 2024, alongside that classroom work, he was a subject trainer (*Fachleiter*, described in the biography as a *Lehrerausbilder*) for social studies at the *Studienseminar* in Erfurt, the seminar in which trainee teachers complete their practical preparation. His profile on abgeordnetenwatch.de records his professional qualification as a *Gymnasium* teacher of history and social studies. The *Thüringer Allgemeine* used the same description of his subjects in December 2024.

### Headship in Erfurt

On 6 May 2024 the *Thüringer Allgemeine* reported a new leadership at Gemeinschaftsschule 10 in Erfurt, a school with sites on Mittelhäuser Straße and at Berliner Platz. The photograph published with the article shows Mandy Kulschewski and Michael Hose in front of the school’s sign, and its caption says that the two were leading the school. The introduction quoted the new headteacher: “There is nothing finer than working with challenging pupils and plenty of resources” (*„Es gibt nichts Schöneres, als mit herausfordernden Schülern und vielen Ressourcen zu arbeiten“*).

On his abgeordnetenwatch profile, Hose wrote that he was heading Gemeinschaftsschule 10 in the north of Erfurt, and the profile lists his occupation as *Schulleiter*. He was still presented as a serving head later in 2024. In a report published on 17 December, the *Thüringer Allgemeine* called the 40-year-old, a native of Weimar who had lived in Erfurt for 15 years, a *Gymnasium* teacher of social studies and history who led a *Gemeinschaftsschule* there; the CDU district associations had nominated him the previous evening as their Bundestag candidate. A separate article on 20 December, about pupils designing a logo for Gemeinschaftsschule 10, identified Mandy Kulschewski as deputy head.

The Bundestag biography dates the headship of Gemeinschaftsschule 10 from 2024 to 2025. Hose took his seat on 25 March 2025. In the register of members’ interests, his employment before the mandate is entered as headteacher at the Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur in Erfurt, with a right of return (*Rückkehrrecht*).

## Erfurt city politics

### City council and the CDU group

Michael Hose has been a member of the city council of Erfurt, capital of Thuringia, since 2014, and since June 2019 chair of the group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), succeeding Michael Panse. The *Thüringer Allgemeine* then called him the group's education specialist.

In the 2024 election the CDU won 24.8 percent of the votes and 12 of 50 seats, ahead of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 10 seats (20.4 percent), the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with eight (16.2), Die Linke with eight (14.8), Mehrwertstadt with five (10.1) and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) with four (7.5). The Free Democratic Party, a [Pirate Party](/organizations/pirate-party)–ÖDP list and the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) took one seat each. Turnout was 59.2 percent. Hose and lord mayor Andreas Horn were elected on the CDU list; no list had a majority.

By September 2026 the groups were reported as CDU 12, SPD and Pirates 10, AfD 10, Die Linke nine, Mehrwertstadt five and Greens four. The CDU and AfD together had 22 members, so votes on full-time departmental heads had to cross group lines. Hose kept the chair after entering the Bundestag in 2025. Disclosures list city pay, for the seat and the chairmanship, of €644.70 gross a month until 31 July 2025 and €649.80 from 1 August 2025, plus irregular payments of €750 in 2025 and €360 in 2026.

### Municipal companies

The disclosures also list three city companies: the supervisory board of Erfurter Verkehrsbetriebe AG; deputy chair of the supervisory board of KoWo, the Kommunale Wohnungsgesellschaft mbH Erfurt; and the supervisory board of SWE Stadtwerke Erfurt GmbH. KoWo says it is wholly owned by the city and the capital's largest landlord, with about 12,500 dwellings and 350 commercial units. Published gross pay is €2,200 in 2025 and €3,700 in 2026 for the KoWo post, and €4,100 in 2025 and €2,135.62 in 2026 for SWE. No separate sum is listed for the transport-company seat.

### The 2026 social-affairs nomination

On 16 September 2026 the council elected a head of building, transport and the environment. Horn nominated the SPD's Philippe Wolff against incumbent Matthias Bärwolff of Die Linke, the candidate of an alliance of the SPD and Pirates, Die Linke, the Greens and Mehrwertstadt. In a secret ballot Bärwolff led the first round by 21 votes to 19, with 10 invalid; Wolff won the second by 29 to 21. That total was more than the CDU and AfD could cast together, so votes from elsewhere were required, but secrecy left their source unknown.

*The Erfurt city council in session on 16 September 2026, during the vote on the building department.*

Wolff accepted. The same evening Melissa Butt, Daniel Mroß, Jörg Neigefindt and Denny Möller left the SPD and Pirates group and said they would form their own SPD group: possible AfD votes, they argued, made acceptance incompatible with their antifascist principles. The Greens and Mehrwertstadt asked him to refuse. The sitting ended and the social-affairs election was postponed. Bärwolff's term ran until February 2027.

The post had been vacant since Anke Hofmann-Domke of Die Linke died on the evening of 14 November 2025, two days after her 63rd birthday. Deputy mayor since 2019 for social affairs, education, youth and health, she had been re-elected early in 2025 but was too ill to attend the chamber. Horn called her death an unspeakably painful loss and said she had been respected across party lines.

Horn's nominee was Katja Maurer, co-chair of Thuringian Die Linke, a Landtag member and a councillor since 2024. The alliance had preferred the SPD's Claudia Michelfeit, who withdrew after the building vote. Before the September sitting Hose, then also the CDU's designate for acting deputy secretary-general, urged other groups in a video from the chamber to elect Maurer for suitability rather than party tactics. He wanted a majority "aus der demokratischen Mitte" ("from the democratic centre") and said: "Wir wollen nicht, dass die AfD am Ende entscheidet, wer hier beigeordnet wird" ("We do not want the AfD ultimately to decide who is appointed here"). The CDU group cited professional competence, experience and constructive cooperation.

*Bild* reported that Die Linke's own group was backing an SPD candidate, not Maurer, and set the appeal against CDU policy. A party paper quotes the Hamburg congress of 8 December 2018, at which the CDU rejected coalitions and similar cooperation both with the Left Party and with the AfD.

On 28 October 2026 Maurer, the only candidate, received 22 yes votes out of 46 cast, two short of the majority required. The SPD, the Greens and Mehrwertstadt had said they would not support her. She refused a second ballot rather than risk AfD votes. The *Thüringer Allgemeine* reported that she kept an announcement it headlined "Diese Grenze werde ich nicht überschreiten" ("I will not cross that line"). Left group chair Karola Stange said Horn had miscalculated by not consulting the other groups. Asked whether she would stand again, Maurer said she had not had a moment to consider it. The next meeting was to decide on readvertising or another nomination; the department stayed without a permanent head.

## 2025 federal election

### Candidacy and the state list

Hose was the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) direct candidate in constituency 192, Erfurt – Weimar – Weimarer Land II, at the federal election of 23 February 2025. The seat covers the independent cities of Erfurt and Weimar and, from the district of Weimarer Land, the municipality of Grammetal. On 16 December 2024 the three CDU district associations nominated him, a head teacher and leader of the CDU group on Erfurt city council, to succeed Antje Tillmann, who after more than twenty years in the Bundestag did not stand again. The same constituency was contested by former minister-president Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke, the federal government’s eastern Germany commissioner [Carsten Schneider](/people/carsten-schneider) of the Social Democratic Party, Bundestag vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt of Alliance 90/The Greens, and former minister-president [Thomas Kemmerich](/people/thomas-kemmerich) of the Free Democratic Party.

The Thuringian CDU adopted a state list of 16 names at a delegates’ meeting in Erfurt on 8 January 2025. [Christian Hirte](/people/christian-hirte), the only sitting Bundestag member on the slate, was elected to first place with 74 of 86 votes. [Diana Herbstreuth](/people/diana-herbstreuth) took second place in a runoff against Erik Thürmer, by 46 votes to 35. In the returning officer’s list of those elected, [David Gregosz](/people/david-gregosz) is recorded in third place and Hose in fourth.

From 2025 the second vote, cast for a closed state list whose order the party has fixed, decides how many seats that party receives, and a party’s constituency winner is seated only if the seat is covered by the party’s second-vote allocation in the Land. Covered constituency winners are taken first, ranked by their share of the first vote; seats still left go down the list. The CDU won none of Thuringia’s eight constituencies. Its 246,065 second votes, 18.6 percent of the valid state total, produced four seats, filled by list places one to four: Hirte, Herbstreuth, Gregosz and Hose.

### Constituency result

Of 214,387 eligible voters in constituency 192, 175,940 cast ballots, a turnout of 82.1 percent and 5.6 percentage points above 2021. There were 174,867 valid first votes. Ramelow was elected with 64,390 votes, 36.8 percent. Alexander Claus of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was the runner-up with 46,612 votes, 26.7 percent.

Hose finished third, with the CDU’s 28,587 first votes, 16.3 percent. Schneider received 13,900 (7.9 percent), Gernot Süßmuth of the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 10,299 (5.9 percent), Göring-Eckardt 5,458 (3.1 percent) and Kemmerich 3,350 (1.9 percent). Schneider had held the constituency in 2021 with 24.4 percent. Constituency 192 was the only one of the state’s eight not won by the AfD; the other seven direct mandates went to AfD candidates, and Ramelow’s was the sole direct mandate for Die Linke.

Second votes in the district did not follow the personal ranking. The AfD led with 46,999 (26.9 percent), ahead of Die Linke on 38,667 (22.1 percent) and the CDU on 30,714 (17.6 percent). The SPD took 18,407 (10.5 percent), the BSW 15,686 (9.0 percent) and the Greens 15,313 (8.8 percent). Because Hose had not won the constituency, the seat he took did not rest on that third-place finish: the state returning officer’s final notice of 14 March 2025 named him as one of the four CDU candidates elected from the state list, while Ramelow was recorded as elected by first votes in constituency 192. Claus was not among the 18 candidates from Thuringia declared elected. Schneider entered on first place of the SPD list, and Göring-Eckardt on first place of the Green list, despite single-digit first-vote shares in the district.

## Bundestag membership

Michael Hose took his seat in the 21st German Bundestag when it was constituted on 25 March 2025. In the 2025 federal election he was returned in fourth place on the state list of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Thuringia and sits with the CDU/CSU. He was the CDU candidate in constituency 192, Erfurt – Weimar – Weimarer Land II. The direct mandate went to Die Linke; the CDU received 28,587 first votes, 16.3 percent of 174,867 valid first votes. On 24 February 2025 the Thuringian state returning officer’s provisional return named Bodo Ramelow as the directly elected member and Hose as one of four CDU members elected from the list. His Bundestag office is Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, with constituency offices at Domplatz 4, 99084 Erfurt, and Erfurter Straße 12, 99423 Weimar.

### Committees

The biography updated on 29 October 2026 lists him as a full member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Culture and Media, and as a deputy member of the Budget Committee and the Petitions Committee. He is chair, and a full member, of the study commission on the coronavirus pandemic (Enquete-Kommission „Corona“), and a full member of the Children’s Commission, the education committee’s subcommittee on children’s interests. The commission was constituted on 10 July 2025, with Hose taking the first turn in the rotating chair; on 9 October 2026 he described himself in the plenary as its former chair.

### Speeches on education

In the plenary of the Reichstag building his speeches have concentrated on schools. The first, on 26 June 2025 in the 14th sitting, came in the second and third reading of bills extending deadlines in the federal investment programme for all-day schooling (Drucksachen 21/216, 21/514 and 21/630).

He described a concrete yard with one swing and a narrow sandpit, and said more all-day provision would help with homework, German and daily routines, especially for single parents, shift workers and families in difficulty. Spending had stalled, he said, through bureaucracy, too few planners and too little local money. The law gave municipalities four more years for about 3 billion euros, and the federation, having ordered the expansion, had to pay. The vice-president noted that it was his first speech.

On 26 March 2026, in the 68th sitting, he spoke on an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) motion to record and prevent violence and other serious assaults in schools (Drucksache 21/4940). From leading a school in a disadvantaged area, he said physical attacks, psychological violence, bullying, including online, and knives were rising in every type of school. One offender group showed up more often in the statistics, he said, but the issue could not be reduced to origin or migration, a point he repeated to [Götz Frömming](/people/gotz-fromming). He urged school social work, support for teachers and quick consequences, and backed a Christian Social Union proposal to impose duties before conduct became criminal.

On 21 May 2026, in the 80th sitting, he replied to an AfD motion for a national education summit (Drucksache 21/6029). He said the party’s Saxony-Anhalt programme would end inclusive schooling for disabled children and abolish compulsory schooling — a reading AfD members contested — and that it therefore had explaining to do before demanding a summit. Against that he set a federal–state roadmap agreed by education minister Karin Prien, on data-based quality, learning conditions, leadership, language, materials, teacher education and research, so that every pupil would meet minimum standards in German and mathematics. He put Startchancen at about 20 billion euros over ten years and also cited the Digital Pact 2.0 and a planned strategy on young people’s mental health.

On 26 June 2026, in the 87th sitting, he opposed an AfD motion to restore a compulsory state examination for teachers (Drucksache 21/6655), arguing that teacher education was a matter for the Länder alone. He called a Saxony-Anhalt proposal to replace compulsory schooling with a duty of education (*Bildungspflicht*) a threat to the weakest pupils. [Beatrix von Storch](/people/beatrix-von-storch) said this was not the end of a duty to educate and was common in Europe; Martin Reichardt called it a narrow, controlled exception. Hose cited December 2023 proposals from the Standing Scientific Commission of the education ministers’ conference for a second qualified route into teaching, not the abolition of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and said that as a teacher trainer he had found state examinations and master’s degrees legally equivalent.

On 9 October 2026, in the 100th sitting, during the first reading of the bill on starting chances and quality in day care (Drucksache 21/8239), he answered an AfD attack on the Children’s Commission rather than the bill’s tests. As its former chair he rejected that charge, cited work on social media, mental health, care leavers and foster children, and asked why the AfD had often sent no representative while he held the chair.

## Children's Commission

### Chairmanship, 2025–2026

The Commission for the Protection of the Interests of Children (Kinderkommission) is a subcommittee of the Bundestag Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Created by the Council of Elders in 1988, it has been a subcommittee since the 12th electoral term and was re-established for the 21st term on 25 June 2025 under section 55 of the Bundestag's rules of procedure. One full member from each group sits for children. It cannot make law, and decisions need a double two-thirds majority, both in the commission and relative to the parent committee. The chair rotates by group size, tables a work programme, and reports to the committee at each handover.

The 21st-term commission was constituted on 10 July 2025 in the Paul Löbe House. Committee chair [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) of the Social Democratic Party called it "above all a voice for children in the German Bundestag". Federal Minister Karin Prien asked the members to act as advocates for children and young people. Michael Hose of the Christian Democratic Union/CSU took the first turn in the rotation and said he wanted cross-party work "from the children's point of view", including protection online and an examination of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. On 16 October 2025 it fixed his term as 8 September 2025 to 10 May 2026, then [Angela Rudzka](/people/angela-rudzka) of Alternative for Germany, Truels Reichardt (SPD), Nyke Slawik of Alliance 90/The Greens and [Mareike Hermeier](/people/mareike-hermeier) of Die Linke, with [Emmi Zeulner](/people/emmi-zeulner) as Hose's substitute.

For UNICEF World Children's Day on 20 September 2025 he told the Bundestag web desk that "actually every day should be a children's day". Drawing on his time as a head teacher in Thuringia, he argued for limiting access to social media. Experts, he said, cited 16 or 14 as thresholds, since children under 14 generally could not yet decide reflectively about such use, a limit he likened to rules on alcohol and cigarettes. He also named commercial "sharenting", care leavers and children who support relatives.

### Hearings and the activity report

Most expert discussions were public. On 8 October 2025 representatives of YouTube, Westdeutscher Rundfunk and [Super RTL](/organizations/super-rtl) described age-appropriate services and parental controls. On 15 October, pupils' and youth representatives instead preferred media education to bans and age limits.

Hearings on 5 and 12 November 2025 took up sharenting and child influencers. An opinion commissioned by the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk and Campact described parents who both consent to images of their children and profit from them. Hose said, "Children are not clicks. We have to protect them better." On 25 February 2026 the commission adopted Kommissionsdrucksache 21/05, signed by him. It changed no law. It asked the federal government, consistently with parents' rights, to examine age limits on identifiable images on commercial (not private) accounts, bans on intimate or distressing depictions, deletion rights, trust accounts for earnings and enforcement, and to report from July 2026.

Later sittings covered care leavers (3 December 2025) and foster children (17 December), when Hose said federal law should centre the child's welfare and foster parents; young carers (14 January 2026), put by the federal government at just under 480,000 people under 18; mental health, where clinicians described long waits and preferred prevention and a balanced social-media policy to blanket bans; children's-opportunities coordinator [Mareike Wulf](/people/mareike-wulf); German children's film (15 April 2026); and, on 6 May, whether an eastern German background still shaped children more than 35 years after German reunification, with commissioner [Elisabeth Kaiser](/people/elisabeth-kaiser).

On 11 November 2025 it joined Prien and abuse commissioner Kerstin Claus for a photo action with about 100 members of parliament. On 29 January 2026 it marked Red Hand Day; Hose said children's rights "do not end in war", and handprints went to the UN special representative's office on 11 March. On 20 April, with the pandemic inquiry commission, it heard about 150 people aged 12 to 25. Bundestag President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) said parliament was listening. Hose called their presence a start and said young people's views had to be included earlier and more systematically; a closed sitting on 22 April heard that children had felt unseen in the pandemic.

The activity report for 8 September 2025 to 10 May 2026, Kommissionsdrucksache 21/07, was adopted unanimously and without amendment on 20 May 2026, already under Rudzka's chair, for submission to the parent committee and publication.

## COVID-19 enquiry commission

### Establishment and membership

On 10 July 2025 the Bundestag established the enquiry commission “Review of the Corona Pandemic and Lessons for Future Pandemic Events” (*Enquete-Kommission „Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse“*). The motion, tabled on 24 June 2025 by the CDU/CSU and SPD as Drucksache 21/562, was adopted in the amended text of Drucksache 21/805. The CDU/CSU, the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke voted in favour. Votes against, and most abstentions, came from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which had wanted a committee of inquiry; Stephan Brandner called the enquiry a “Kommissiönchen”.

The resolution orders a scientifically grounded review of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, dated there to 2019–2023, that includes citizens’ experience and judges decisions only by what was known at the time. The commission is to describe causes, course, consequences and state measures; test whether those measures were appropriate, effective and proportionate, including for children, young people and other vulnerable groups; name responsibilities and failures; compare Germany with other countries; and recommend improvements in preparedness, crisis management, data, scientific advice, communication and resilience. The report is due by 30 June 2027. Interim reports are allowed, and members and experts may add dissenting opinions.

It has 14 members of parliament and 14 outside experts: five seats for the CDU/CSU, three each for the AfD and the SPD, two for the Greens and one for Die Linke, with a substitute for each member of parliament. Experts are nominated by agreement of the groups, with Länder, municipalities and the relevant disciplines balanced; failing agreement, the same key applies. The commission may hold public hearings of experts, interest representatives and people affected, commission research, and use public citizen formats, including an age-appropriate survey of children and young people.

The constituent meeting was on 8 September 2025, under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner. In a secret ballot Franziska Hoppermann (CDU) took all 25 votes and became chair. The AfD nominee for deputy chair, Claudia Weiss, received seven votes, with 17 against and one abstention, and the post stayed vacant. Michael Hose was an ordinary CDU/CSU member from the outset, with Hoppermann, Axel Müller, [Lars Rohwer](/people/lars-rohwer) and [Mechthilde Wittmann](/people/mechthilde-wittmann), the group’s *Obfrau*. The commission agreed to meet about monthly. Its first public hearing, on 22 September 2025, heard representatives of the *Land* parliaments.

### Chairmanship from September 2026

Hoppermann left after becoming CDU general secretary at the end of July 2026. On 8 September her office told *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* that the party post could not be combined with the chair, and that the CDU/CSU had nominated Hose, the member from Erfurt and already on the commission, to succeed her. The members still had to elect him after the summer recess.

On 21 September 2026 they elected him chair. He opened that day’s public sitting on [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion), social inequality and vulnerable groups, thanked the members, and credited Hoppermann with care and competence. In a joint statement carried by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, he said the pandemic had left deep marks and that the commission should build bridges and strengthen social cohesion.

Hearings continued under the new chair, with sittings planned through mid-April 2027, including a public session on 2 November 2026 on scientific advice, crisis communication and the media. The report remained due on 30 June 2027. *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* noted that unanimity had long looked unlikely, because the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke diverged sharply from the AfD.

## CDU party offices

### Thuringian and local party work

Hose’s documented paid work for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in Thuringia, before 2026, was a staff post. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament says is based on members’ own information, lists him as *Grundsatzreferent* of the Thuringian CDU from 2013 to 2014, between his second state teaching examination and a later job at a Protestant school foundation.

What the federal leadership later cited was local and unpaid. He has sat on the Erfurt city council since 2014 and has chaired its CDU group since 2019, a municipal mandate rather than a federal party office. [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) invoked that background in saying Hose knew “the concerns of people on the ground.”

The Thuringian state presidium lists “Michael Hose MdB” as co-opted, with the function “Stellvertretender Generalsekretär der CDU Deutschlands.” The party’s board page says delegates at the 41st state congress on 22 August 2026 elected the presidium then displayed, and marks his line co-opted, as it does for holders of outside offices. The federal post for which he is listed began on 21 September 2026.

### Deputy secretary-general

The CDU statute has the federal congress elect the deputy secretary-general, on the chair’s proposal, in every second calendar year. The deputy supports the secretary-general and deputises if the secretary-general cannot act. If the chair or another presidium member leaves during the term, the *Bundesausschuss* — not the federal executive, the *Bundesvorstand* — may make an interim appointment that lasts until the next congress.

[Christina Stumpp](/people/christina-stumpp) of Baden-Württemberg had been deputy since 2022 and was confirmed for two further years at the Stuttgart congress in February 2026. In July, after [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann) became health minister, Merz appointed Franziska Hoppermann of Hamburg secretary-general. Reports said Stumpp had opposed that choice; Hoppermann said she expected the two to work well together.

On the evening of 11 September the CDU said Merz and Stumpp had agreed she would leave on 21 September, the day after state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and that he would propose Hose to the party bodies as acting (*kommissarisch*) successor. Earlier that week she had denied leaving — “Ich bin weiterhin stv. Generalsekretärin der CDU Deutschlands” — after *Table.Briefings* and the podcast *Machtwechsel* reported that Merz had pressed her to resign. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported that she had first refused, and that the agriculture-policy spokesperson’s job in the Union group had been offered on condition she give up the party post. SWR, citing party sources, said she wanted compensation for going, and quoted a federal-executive member warning her not to force the conflict. Merz thanked her for integrative work and said the “party of German unity” should show west and east more strongly in its personnel; he called Hose and Hoppermann complementary.

The executive then voted. In an account published on 24 September, the CDU said the *Bundesvorstand* had elected Hose unanimously on 21 September and did not call the post acting. He would link the leadership to the membership, with the stress on the eastern states, municipal politics and younger members, support Hoppermann, and join the presidium by the appointment. “Ich freue mich, unserer Partei zu dienen und die Generalsekretärin Franziska Hoppermann zu unterstützen,” he said. Merz said Hose’s biography would enrich the presidium. Welt, citing the Erfurt district association, and regionalHeute, citing a CDU statement that Monday, reported the same appointment, as Stumpp’s successor, without “acting.”

Sources differ on whether the post was only provisional. Before the vote, the party statement carried by dpa and SWR described a *kommissarisch* successor to be put to the party bodies. After 21 September the CDU, and those Monday reports, spoke of an election by the federal executive and dropped “acting.” The statute gives the congress the election and the *Bundesausschuss* any mid-term presidium replacement, valid only until the next congress; Stumpp’s February mandate had not expired.

The Bundestag’s outside-income register lists “Stellv. Generalsekretär (ab 21.09.2026)”: €5,244.20 gross for 21 September–31 October 2026, and €5,814.80 gross monthly from 1 November 2026.

On 16 September, before he took office, *Bild* reported that Hose — still described there as the designated acting deputy — had, in a video from the Erfurt council chamber, urged other groups to elect Katja Maurer, co-chair of the Thuringian Die Linke, as a deputy mayor for social affairs, with CDU mayor Andreas Horn. He called for a majority “aus der demokratischen Mitte” so that the Alternative for Germany would not decide the post. *Bild* wrote that many CDU members would see this as a taboo break, citing the party’s incompatibility resolution with the Left since 2018, and noted that the Left group itself had proposed a Social Democrat rather than Maurer; the CDU group cited her professional competence and willingness to cooperate.

## Political positions

### Education, language and families

In July 2025, after Federal Minister of Education Karin Prien of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called an upper limit on primary-school children with a migration background “conceivable”, Michael Hose revived a proposal from 2023. As CDU group leader on Erfurt city council, he said no more than one third of a class should have a mother tongue other than German, and that the group would return the demand to that autumn’s school-network planning because the share was already too high in some classes. He cited European studies which, he said, linked a high share of pupils with a migration background to significantly fewer enrolments of native pupils.

The Child Protection Association in Thuringia called the debate disturbing and contrary to inclusion, and argued for individual support, more staff and language help for every child regardless of origin or mother tongue. Die Linke on the Erfurt council agreed. Katja Maurer, the party’s state chair, said the proposal was not pedagogy and that Hose, then chair of the Bundestag’s Children’s Commission, was sorting children by origin, religion or name.

On 26 June 2025, in his first Bundestag speech on extending deadlines in the federal all-day investment programme, he said more all-day schooling meant more chances of advancement. From his time as a head teacher he called longer days extra help with homework, German and everyday life for children, including those of single parents and shift workers, not a lack of trust in families. He backed four further years for municipalities to spend about €3 billion, citing bureaucracy and scarce local money, and said that whoever ordered the expansion had to pay.

In a Bundestag interview for UNICEF World Children’s Day on 20 September 2025, he named unequal opportunity, tied in his view to parents’ social and geographic background, and online child protection as priorities. Parental allowance and more all-day care, he said, helped combine family and work, but more money did not of itself mean more children. He linked part of the fall in births to fear of the future and said politics should restore confidence in democracy, with public care aimed especially at children whose parents could do less.

On social media he said children were left alone with unsuitable material and with algorithms that could push them politically or commercially. He called for access limits. Specialists, he said, named 16 or 14, and the technology was unsettled; the point was a signal that unrestricted use was harmful, with parents included. He compared the rationale to rules on alcohol, cigarettes and road safety, cited research that children under 14 generally cannot decide reflectively, and favoured protection over a ban, paired with media education and children’s programmes such as *Logo*. As a head teacher he said younger pupils had mostly opposed bans, while those aged 16 and over had often preferred a later start.

### East Germany, transparency and cooperation

In the same interview he said eastern Germany already had a qualitatively good all-day system, while the west had catching up to do. In the east, short of the west’s living standard, families should be relieved through taxes and social-insurance contributions.

A statement published by the CDU in September 2026 quoted him on government information: transparency of state action mattered for trust in democracy, access to official information should in principle remain, and limits were still needed for personal data, business secrets and security-relevant information.

In September 2026 *Bild* reported that he and Erfurt’s mayor, Andreas Horn, proposed Katja Maurer of Die Linke as a full-time city executive for social affairs, as an offer based on competence rather than party tactics. Hose said the aim was a majority “from the democratic centre”, and that “we do not want the AfD in the end to decide who is elected as a *Beigeordnete* here,” referring to the Alternative for Germany. *Bild* reported that this counted Die Linke within that centre, and noted a CDU incompatibility resolution, in force since 2018, ruling out cooperation with the party at federal level.

## Personal life and civic roles

### Family, church and associations

The Bundestag biography, based on members' own information, records that Michael Hose was born in Weimar, is Protestant and has one daughter. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) states that he lives with his family in Erfurt.

That biography also lists church and association offices: the council of the Protestant parish Martini-Luther in Erfurt, the district synod (*Kreissynode*) of the *Kirchenkreis* Erfurt, the *Elferrat* of the Alach carnival club Karneval Club Alach e.V., and the *Förderverein* of the Humboldt-Gymnasium in Weimar. On his own website he calls the parish body a *Gemeindekirchenrat* and writes that he took on that council, the district synod and the *Elferrat* in order to strengthen community. No remuneration is published for these memberships.

### Disclosed outside income

Under the code of conduct in sections 45 onwards of the Members of the Bundestag Act (*Abgeordnetengesetz*), members must notify the President, within three months of taking the seat or of any later change, of paid work beside the mandate and of functions in companies, public-law bodies, associations and foundations. Publishable details then appear on the biography. Income above 1,000 euro in a month, or otherwise above 3,000 euro in a calendar year, is published to the cent. The Bundestag notes that many notified functions are voluntary.

The paid activity listed beside the mandate is deputy secretary-general of the CDU from 21 September 2026, at a gross 5,244.20 euro for 21 September to 31 October 2026 and 5,814.80 euro a month from 1 November 2026. Abgeordnetenwatch, which republishes the filings, lists both sums as monthly gross figures.

For the City of Erfurt, where he is a councillor and chair of the CDU council group, the published gross allowance is 644.70 euro a month until 31 July 2025 and 649.80 euro a month from 1 August 2025, plus irregular payments of 750 euro in 2025 and 360 euro in 2026. Pay for supervisory seats on Erfurt municipal companies is entered separately, under company functions, in the same disclosure.

Four trusteeships in 2026 carry no published sum. From 19 March he has been on the *Kuratorium* of Initiative Zukunftsbildung gGmbH in Heilbronn, filed among company functions, and on that of the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn. From 10 June he has sat on the *Kuratorium* of Stiftung Kinder forschen in Berlin, and from 8 July on that of the German Historical Museum (*Deutsches Historisches Museum*).

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/michael-hose