Nathanael Liminski

Nathanael Liminski (born 19 September 1985 in Bonn) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since 29 June 2022 he has been Minister for Federal and European Affairs, International Affairs and Media of North Rhine-Westphalia and head of the state chancellery. Minister-President Hendrik Wüst appointed him and he was sworn in that day at the Düsseldorf Ständehaus and in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The appointment followed the Landtag's re-election of Wüst on 28 June 2022 to lead the state's first coalition of the CDU and Alliance 90/The Greens. Liminski has represented the state in the Bundesrat since 30 June 2022, and he has been a member of the Landtag since November 2025. He is married and has four children.

The state biography records an Abitur in 2005 and, from 2006 to 2010, studies in medieval and modern history, political science and public law at the University of Bonn. He was a planning officer in the Hessian state chancellery from 2010 to 2011, served on the leadership staff of the Federal Ministry of Defence from 2011 to 2014, and in 2014 worked on the leadership staff of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Rheinische Post reported that, before returning to North Rhine-Westphalia, he had been a speechwriter for Hessian minister-president Roland Koch and had worked in other roles for the federal ministers Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Thomas de Maizière. From 2014 to 2017 he was managing director of the CDU group in the Landtag. Laschet, the paper wrote, had brought him in to organize the state party's programmatic and personnel rebuilding.

On 30 June 2017, as Laschet's new government took shape, the Rheinische Post described the then 31-year-old Liminski as a figure of the conservative wing of the state CDU and as the incoming head of the state chancellery. The Bundesrat's biography lists him as state secretary and head of the chancellery from 2017 until 2022, when the ministerial office was added to that role. The same 2017 profile said he had grown up with nine siblings in a Catholic home and had kept out of the foreground while carrying Laschet's authority inside the party.

As the minister responsible for media, he has treated the financing and structure of public broadcasting as a political question rather than a matter closed to criticism. In an April 2023 Süddeutsche Zeitung interview on the household licence fee and the culture of dealing with mistakes at ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, he was quoted saying that criticism is not lèse-majesté and that reform had to reach "the great kingdoms behind the newsrooms." A transparency declaration current as of 29 April 2025 lists him as a member of the ZDF Television Council and as the state's representative in the shareholders' meetings of Film- und Medienstiftung NRW GmbH and the Grimme-Institut.

His Catholicism became an explicit campaign subject during Laschet's 2021 run for the chancellorship. A Social Democratic Party film presented that August showed a matryoshka doll of CDU figures and, at Liminski's likeness, said that a vote for Laschet was a vote for "ultra-Catholic confidants for whom sex before marriage is taboo." Tagesschau reported that the line alluded to remarks the then student had made in 2007 on the ARD programme Maischberger, including a statement against artificial contraception that he had called a personal decision, and that CDU general secretary Paul Ziemiak and the German Bishops' Conference objected to the use of religious belief in the campaign. In November 2021 Liminski told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that he was neither a member of Opus Dei nor close to it. The same account identified his father, the journalist Jürgen Liminski, who had died that June, as a member of Opus Dei, and noted that Nathanael Liminski had in his twenties belonged to Generation Benedikt, a network of young conservative Catholics.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Nathanael Liminski was born on 19 September 1985 in Bonn. He was the eighth of ten children. He grew up in Hangelar, a district of Sankt Augustin, in a large house at the Hangelarer Niederberg. His mother was Martine Liminski, née Le Noxaic. Deutschlandfunk described her as a pedagogue when the couple published on family life. His father, the journalist Jürgen Liminski, was born on 1 April 1950 in Memmingen and died in Bonn on 11 June 2021.

Jürgen Liminski studied journalism and information science at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, and history and political science at the University of Freiburg and the University of Strasbourg; he qualified as a Diplomjournalist and Diplompolitologe. He was foreign editor of Die Welt and of the weekly Rheinischer Merkur, and later an editor and presenter at Deutschlandfunk. On 18 November 2002 Deutschlandfunk presented the couple as authors of Abenteuer Familie. Erfolgreich erziehen: Liebe und was sonst noch nötig ist, an account of raising their ten children. The Rheinische Post, drawing on that book, described a weekly family council at a dining table built for the household, at which tasks were divided among the children. In the same account Nathanael, then called "Momo" at home, helped his father as a kind of private secretary. When Jürgen Liminski died, he left Martine, ten children aged between 30 and 49, and 21 grandchildren. Nathanael also played in goal for the local club VfR Hangelar.

Schooling and university studies

From the family home in Hangelar he travelled for nearly an hour on the Bonn Stadtbahn to the Collegium Josephinum, a Catholic boys' school in Bonn-Auerberg. He passed the Abitur in 2005. A June 2024 profile in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, written when he returned to the school about twenty years after leaving, identified the Josephinum as the place where he had taken that examination. The Rheinische Post reported an Abitur average of 1.1. Following the parents' book, the paper also reported that teachers twice offered to let him skip a year and that he refused, saying he wanted time for activities outside class. Thomas Wilbert, who taught his advanced history course, later described him as already socially engaged, articulate and fond of argument as a pupil. Liminski recalled driving to the upper school in a black Renault Clio marked with white rally stripes: an 8 on the driver's door, for his place among the siblings, and a 9 on the passenger side because he often took a younger brother. He said police stopped the car regularly because of how it looked, even when he was not speeding.

From 2006 to 2010 he studied medieval and modern history, political science and public law, including constitutional law (Staatsrecht), at the University of Bonn. In November 2007 Der Spiegel described the 21-year-old as a student of history, politics and public law. The biography published by the Christian Democratic Union group in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia states that the course included an Erasmus Programme stay at Paris-Sorbonne University (Université de Paris IV) and ended with a Magister Artium. The Rheinische Post separately reported that he studied history in Bonn and in Paris. The shorter curriculum vitae on the state government's website lists the Bonn subjects and the years 2006–2010, but not the Paris term or the degree title.

Catholic youth activism

Generation Benedikt

After the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, Liminski and other young Catholics formed Generation Benedikt. Welt am Sonntag dated the start to September 2005 and described twelve students who wanted to speak for what they called “normal” young believers rather than found a new spiritual movement. Liminski said coverage of the World Youth Day had not been representative: “ausrangierte Generalvikare” and the “Kirche von unten” had been on television, ordinary young people had not. In a November 2007 Der Spiegel profile he said the media had missed the “authentische Begeisterung” and had caricatured youths “die mit Pille und Kondom in der Tasche dem Papst zujubeln.” Members were to keep their spiritual lives in parishes and movements; the network’s public role was to explain Catholic positions. Cologne’s Cardinal Joachim Meisner and Benedict XVI encouraged it.

Its first book, Generation Benedikt. Lebensfragen junger Menschen – Antworten im Geiste des Papstes, appeared in February 2007, with Liminski as editor. Twelve “Lebensfragen” were paired with answers “im Geiste des Papstes.” Spiegel reported that only the foreword was Benedict’s own text and that Liminski said the pope had approved the contributions before publication; Welt wrote that, after reading the manuscript, the pope let it be known the book was “in seinem Sinne.” Liminski wrote the question on sex before marriage. Two other founders wrote the answer, which called marriage a “geschützten Rahmen” and said sex before a decision for a shared life took from a partner “das Geschenk der erst- und einmaligen körperlichen Hingabe.”

After Benedict’s 2013 resignation and the election of Pope Francis, the group became Initiative Pontifex and later Mediennetzwerk Pontifex, a name meant to express a bond with the pope as “Brückenbauer.” It later criticized the Synodal Way and Maria 2.0. In March 2021 taz quoted the site, then still presented as Initiative Pontifex, calling marriage for all a “Verlustspiel,” abortion “ein Unrecht,” and information about abortion on doctors’ websites “Werbung für die vorgeburtliche Tötung von Kindern.” On 19 April 2024, the nineteenth anniversary of Joseph Ratzinger’s election, chairman Benno Schwaderlapp ended the work, citing a “wachsende innerkirchliche Spaltung” and saying, “Für eine fruchtbare Auseinandersetzung, die das Ziel der Weitergabe und Vertiefung des Glaubens hat, bleibt immer weniger Luft.” Vatican News described the 2005 founding as “unter Federführung” of Liminski; katholisch.de named Sophia Kuby among the early members.

Public statements on sexuality and family

In the Spiegel profile of 5 November 2007, Liminski, then 21, said he rejected sex before marriage and had so far followed the book. On abortion: “Finde ich ethisch nicht vertretbar, aber ich kann es noch verstehen, wenn es um Gesundheitsgefahren für die Mutter oder um eine Schwangerschaft nach einer Vergewaltigung geht. Aber die allermeisten Abbrüche haben mit persönlicher Lebensplanung zu tun, darüber muss man reden.” On same-sex marriage: “Ich kenne viele Homosexuelle, und einige tun mir leid. Der Staat muss schon aus reiner Selbsterhaltung die natürliche Form der Ehe und Familie fördern.”

On 4 December 2007 he was a guest on Sandra Maischberger’s ARD show “Keuschheit statt Porno – brauchen wir eine neue Sexualmoral?”, with Oswalt Kolle and the rapper Lady Ray among the panel. Welt reported that he rejected sex before marriage for personal reasons, “nicht aus Rücksicht auf den Papst,” and called sex “ein Sich-Schenken an den anderen.” taz, reconstructing the broadcast, quoted him that “Kein Sex vor der Ehe” served the “vollen Entfaltung von Sexualität,” that tenderness meant “Du, nur du, und du für immer,” and that homosexuality was not “eine vollendete Form von Sexualität” because it lacked the “Dimension der Fortpflanzung.” To a provocation from Lady Bitch Ray he replied, “Ich kann kaum an mich halten … ich scharre schon mit den Hufen.”

Those remarks returned in the 2021 federal campaign, when Liminski headed the state chancellery in North Rhine-Westphalia under CDU candidate Armin Laschet, including in a Social Democratic spot. As reproduced by katholisch.de, he told Die Zeit on 8 April 2021, “Natürlich werden in homosexuellen wie in heterosexuellen Beziehungen Werte gelebt, die auch konservative Werte sind,” and the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 22 April, “Für die soziale Stabilität einer Gesellschaft ist wichtig, dass Menschen in einer Partnerschaft verbindlich und verlässlich füreinander Verantwortung übernehmen – das gilt selbstverständlich unabhängig von ihrem Geschlecht.” At a seminar of the Lesben und Schwulen in der Union he said he had “in den letzten 15 Jahren dazugelernt” and “manches so nicht mehr sagen würde.” In December 2021 Spiegel reported his claim that it had quoted him “falsch und verkürzt.” A 2022 Welt column wrote that he had since tied “einige tun mir leid” to Catholic priests, while critics, including WDR journalist Georg Restle, had called the 2007 remarks homophobic.

Early political career

Junge Union and local party offices

The CDU group in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia states that Liminski has been a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany since 2001. In a speech later reported by the General-Anzeiger, he described that engagement as having begun in Bonn, in the Schüler Union, the Junge Union and the RCDS. A Spiegel profile from 2007, written while he was a student, recorded that he sat on the North Rhine-Westphalia board of the Junge Union, and that in the summer of 2005 he had worked as a research assistant to the CDU member of the Bundestag Christa Reichard, mainly on family and defence policy. Die Zeit, sketching the same early path, included an internship in the United States Congress for the Republican representative Mark Souder, whom the paper described as an evangelical and an opponent of abortion. Cabinet biographies published by the state and the Bundesrat do not list the Bundestag post or the Washington internship.

The same CDU biography dates his editorship of Entscheidung, the Junge Union’s membership magazine, and a co-opted seat on its federal board to 2011–2017. For the January/February 2013 issue he was quoted as editor-in-chief beside federal chairman Philipp Mißfelder. When he moved from Berlin to Düsseldorf in 2014, the Rheinische Post reported that he intended to keep the editorship. A later taz portrait still treated that role as a source of his contacts inside the party.

Staff posts in Hesse and the federal government

State biographies place the years after his degree as a Referent in the planning department of the state chancellery of Hesse in 2010–2011, a Referent in the leadership staff of the Federal Ministry of Defence from 2011 to 2014, and a Referent in the leadership staff of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2014. The CDU group’s note adds the defence ministry’s planning staff alongside the leadership staff.

The Rheinische Post described the Hesse job as speechwriting for Minister-President Roland Koch, then a move to the defence ministry under Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg of the Christian Social Union. On that account Guttenberg resigned over his plagiarized doctoral thesis about a month after Liminski arrived, and Thomas de Maizière brought him from the planning staff into the minister’s office and, on moving to the interior ministry, took him along shortly afterwards. Die Zeit gave the same sequence and wrote that Liminski had just been made a civil servant, and had transferred with de Maizière’s planning staff from defence to the interior, when he was recruited for North Rhine-Westphalia. A personnel item in politik&kommunikation also named speechwriting for Koch’s successor, Volker Bouffier, and for Ursula von der Leyen; neither name appears in the state biographies or in the Rheinische Post’s 2014 account.

Manager of the CDU Landtag group

Liminski became Geschäftsführer of the CDU Landtag group on 1 August 2014, at the age of 28. State chairman Armin Laschet, then leader of the opposition, brought him in with the 2017 election already in view. He was to take part in rebuilding the party’s programme and personnel, and he told the Rheinische Post that good opposition work would be “the best calling card for 2017.” Die Zeit later described the Landtag CDU in 2014, two years after its heavy defeat with Norbert Röttgen as lead candidate, as internally hostile and politically exhausted, and wrote that Liminski left the Berlin civil-service track after Laschet showed him “his Aachen” on joint walks.

He remained Geschäftsführer until 2017. The state biography dates the next post, head of the state chancellery, from June of that year. A 2021 taz article, citing parliamentary circles, said he had organized Laschet’s often unstructured way of working and shaped a campaign that attacked the absence of police during the sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015, chronic motorway congestion, and the inclusion of pupils with disabilities in mainstream schools pursued by the Green school minister Sylvia Löhrmann. The paper presented the CDU’s return to office in 2017, against wider expectations, as the result of that campaign. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger later reported that not everyone in the CDU welcomed the 2014 appointment, and that colleagues nicknamed him “Schliminski,” an allusion to a 2007 television appearance on sexual morality.

Head of the State Chancellery

Appointment after the 2017 election

On 27 June 2017 the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia elected Armin Laschet of the Christian Democratic Union minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia; he received 100 of 180 valid votes in the 199-member chamber. The CDU and the Free Democratic Party together held exactly those 100 seats, and their coalition agreement had been signed the previous Monday. On 30 June Laschet presented Nathanael Liminski with the certificate appointing him state secretary and head of the State Chancellery (Chef der Staatskanzlei), along with the other new state secretaries. Born on 19 September 1985, he was 31.

The Landeshaus on the Rhine in Düsseldorf, seat of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Chancellery.

The State Chancellery, in the Landeshaus on the Rhine in Düsseldorf, is the minister-president's department: it prepares his decisions, enforces his power to set policy guidelines, and coordinates the ministries. Deutschlandfunk called the 31-year-old Laschet's new right hand and quoted the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung's "Laschets Schattenmann"; in the plenary he sat behind Laschet and passed files forward. The Rheinische Post later called him Germany's youngest head of a state chancellery, a "Maschinist der Macht" who organized the government's business and, visibly, the minister-president.

Coordination of the Laschet governments

Liminski had managed the CDU Landtag group under Laschet since 2014. Tobias Blasius of the Funke Mediengruppe told Deutschlandfunk that he had become Laschet's organizational backbone, and that report said the coalition agreement's master file had lain with Liminski. Liminski rejected the liberal-versus-conservative contrast drawn between them: "Er ist der Chef, er entscheidet." taz later quoted CDU Bundestag member Sylvia Pantel that the one-seat majority had worked largely smoothly above all because of him. Blasius had warned that the government's coordinating office could not keep every file on one desk.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany the interior ministry's statutory crisis staff was not called. In November 2020 Interior Minister Herbert Reul told the Landtag's interior committee that the health ministry led the response and that political coordination ran through a Krisenkoordinationsrat of state secretaries, led from the State Chancellery because talks with the federation and the other states ran through the minister-presidents and chancellery heads. A question from Alliance 90/The Greens dated that "Krisenkoordinationsrat Corona" to 13 March 2020. The government replied that the setup mirrored federal practice and that the departments did not regard the pandemic as a disaster under state disaster-protection law.

In January 2021 the council's staffing drew criticism. The chancellery confirmed that Stefan Kentrup, public-affairs head for Sanofi's vaccine business in Germany, had been hired until June. Sanofi said the chancellery had requested him for his knowledge of vaccination centres. SPD parliamentary leader Thomas Kutschaty, LobbyControl and Transparency International called the arrangement a conflict of interest that a confidentiality deal could not cure. Liminski told the main committee that Kentrup took no decisions and no outside contacts, that North Rhine-Westphalia bought no COVID-19 vaccines — procurement was for the European Union — and that Kentrup had applied to an advertised post, one of three candidates, rather than been seconded.

The 2021 federal campaign and the handover to Wüst

A taz profile after Laschet's election as federal CDU chairman in January 2021 treated Liminski as an architect, in Düsseldorf's telling, of that vote and of 2017, and as the aide expected to steer him toward the chancellorship — with "Mastermind" among the labels used of him, and the federal chancellery ministry the post some on the Rhine expected if he won. He was the CDU/CSU candidate at the 2021 German federal election on 26 September. In the federal returning officer's final second-vote result, including the partial rerun in Berlin in February 2024, the CDU took 19.0 percent and the CSU 5.2 percent, behind the Social Democratic Party on 25.7 percent. The Rheinische Post reported that an SPD spot had made Liminski nationally known by attacking his Catholic faith, and that the SPD withdrew it.

Laschet then accepted a Bundestag seat, which the state constitution does not allow a member of the state government to hold. On 27 October 2021 the Landtag elected transport minister Hendrik Wüst minister-president with 103 votes, three more than the coalition's 100 seats, and swore him in at once. The Rheinische Post, citing government circles, had reported that Liminski would remain so the months until the May 2022 state election kept a continuous head of the chancellery. The state's biography dates that appointment from June 2017 to June 2022, through the Laschet cabinet and the first Wüst cabinet.

In late November 2021 Liminski told the Bonner General-Anzeiger that boosters and more testing could no longer stop a fourth wave on their own. He did not rule out stricter rules for unvaccinated people, including a lockdown confined to them, arguing that society could not indefinitely accept broad restrictions because some people refused vaccination.

Federal, European and international affairs

Minister in the second Wüst cabinet

On 29 June 2022 Minister-President Hendrik Wüst appointed Nathanael Liminski Minister for Federal and European Affairs, International Affairs and Media (Minister für Bundes- und Europaangelegenheiten, Internationales sowie Medien) and head of the state chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia. Wüst handed him the appointment at the Ständehaus in Düsseldorf; he took the oath the same day in the Landtag and took up the office on 1 July.

The 15 May 2022 state election had left the CDU first with 35.7 percent, and the Landtag re-elected Wüst on 28 June with 106 of 181 valid votes. The second Wüst cabinet replaced the CDU–FDP coalition with a CDU–Green government of twelve ministers, eight from the CDU and four from the Greens. Liminski, head of the chancellery at state-secretary rank since 2017, kept that post and succeeded Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner in the federal, European, international and media portfolio. Presenting the cabinet, Wüst called him "schlicht der Beste für diese Aufgabe" in the chancellery. Mark Speich remained the Land's plenipotentiary to the federation; Bernd Schulte became the chancellery's administrative head.

The Bundesrat and federal-state relations

The Bundesrat lists Liminski as a member for North Rhine-Westphalia from 30 June 2022. The same biography dates the ministerial office from 29 July 2022. That July date conflicts with the state government, the ministry and the Landtag, which place the appointment and the oath on 29 June 2022.

The member page lists him as second deputy chair of the Bundesrat's European Chamber (Europakammer), as a member of the Committee for Questions of the European Union and of the Committee for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, and as a member of the Franco-German and German-Polish friendship groups. The same page lists plenary speeches from December 2024 to May 2026. Berlin representation stayed with Speich, so the ministerial seat did not replace the plenipotentiary.

European policy and international partnerships

On 28 February 2023 Wüst and Liminski signed, by video, a declaration of intent with Serhiy Lysak and Volodymyr Orlov, governor and deputy governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with ambassador Oleksii Makeiev present.

The state government described North Rhine-Westphalia as the first German Land to turn support for Ukraine into a formal regional partnership with an oblast: humanitarian aid, then reconstruction linked to European Union accession, then cooperation on digitalisation and renewable energy. Cologne and Duisburg already had city partnerships in the oblast. In June 2025 the government sent Liminski on what it called the first visit to the partner region by a member of the state government, and put assistance since the start of the war at more than ten million euros.

Membership of the Landtag

In 2022 Liminski was the CDU candidate in constituency 15, Cologne III — Ehrenfeld, the Nippes districts of Bilderstöckchen and Nippes, and parts of Braunsfeld and Müngersdorf in Lindenthal — and stood 12th on the CDU state list. He did not win the seat. The official count gives the CDU 9,019 first votes, 13.8 percent, behind Arndt Klocke of the Greens, elected with 27,221 votes (41.6 percent), and the SPD with 16,973 (25.9 percent).

He entered the Landtag on 1 November 2025 by succession from that list. The CDU group records him as the successor to Ralf Nolten. On 6 November Landtag president André Kuper administered the oath to Liminski and five other new members, who replaced deputies leaving as of 1 November to become Landräte or mayors. The Landtag noted that the mandate was his first. He remained minister and head of the state chancellery.

Media policy

Public broadcasting and the licence fee

On 31 August 2017 Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner gave up the media portfolio of North Rhine-Westphalia to avoid any appearance of bias. Minister President Armin Laschet took charge and assigned the work on broadcasting treaties to the head of the State Chancellery, then state secretary Nathanael Liminski. On 29 June 2022 Minister President Hendrik Wüst appointed him minister for federal and European affairs, international relations and media, still as head of the chancellery; he took office on 1 July, citing local journalism and the media location as priorities.

In April 2023, as ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio prepared funding bids from 2025, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published an interview headlined “Kritik ist keine Majestätsbeleidigung”. He told Deutschlandfunk that the contribution, then €18.36 a month, should stay “as stable as possible”, with the two television systems kept. Savings lay in administration, production and programmes, including ARD items not made nine times, and would reach the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), the largest ARD institution, ahead of a strict KEF review.

In February 2024 the KEF recommended €18.94 from 1 January 2025. The Länder did not implement it, and ARD and ZDF complained to the Federal Constitutional Court. Liminski told Welt am Sonntag that the suit was “a wrong decision at the wrong time”: reserves and the case law left, he said, no financial or legal emergency, and filing the day before the Broadcasting Commission discussed a new procedure was “a lonely decision” showing distrust of elected politics. Saxony-Anhalt’s minister president, Reiner Haseloff (CDU), called the timing disrespectful of the parliaments, while Rhineland-Palatinate, which chairs the commission, kept to the timetable.

On 12 December 2024 the minister-presidents agreed to hold the contribution steady for two years and to recast financing from 2027. Liminski said the complaint had “unnecessarily poured oil on the fire” and had lost its basis. Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt would forward a financing treaty only if the complaint were withdrawn. On 28 January 2025 the state cabinet approved the structural reform and a draft under which a KEF figure would apply if a rise stayed within 5 per cent and a defined number of Länder did not object. The structural reform (the Seventh Media Amendment State Treaty) took effect on 1 December 2025 after all 16 parliaments ratified it. Alexander Schweitzer said it required more cooperation, including with private media. That notice did not record the separate financing procedure as in force.

The ZDF Television Council and WDR

In early October 2017 the state sent Liminski to the ZDF Television Council, which also elects the director-general, replacing state secretary Anja Surmann. The transparency declaration of 29 April 2025 still listed the seat. The 22nd Broadcasting Amendment Act of 24 March 2026, in force on 1 April, wrote the interstate reform into the WDR Act, including the joint ARD programme, focus services produced with ZDF, and a duty to the common good “including future generations”. Wüst and Liminski signed the promulgation.

Local radio, film and the media economy

Local radio is split between programme associations and operating companies. In March 2023 Liminski and Tobias Schmid, director of the state media authority, told the Landtag culture and media committee that a structure review should keep the system viable while preserving the breadth of local journalism. A Goldmedia report published in December 2024 found costs and the shift of advertising online were undermining local information, and treated mergers of stronger and weaker stations as one route to a more stable market by 2027. On 15 March 2025 journalists demonstrated in Gelsenkirchen; Volkmar Kah of the German Journalists’ Association in the state said local radio was being driven “into the wall”. On 10 May the union asked the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia to secure statewide local reporting; chair Andrea Hansen said mergers would make it regional. The 2026 act redescribed a local editor-in-chief as a “person” rather than an employee and required the operating company’s consent to make or end the contract.

The April 2025 declaration listed him as the Land’s representative at Film- und Medienstiftung NRW GmbH and on the Grimme-Institut’s shareholders’ meeting. The foundation’s own site names Wüst, not the media minister, for the Land. For 2026–2028 state secretary Bernd Schulte held the Land’s Grimme seat.

Platforms, copyright and a digital levy

In August 2025 he said he would, if he could, cut value-added tax on the periodical press from 7 per cent to zero, a step absent from the federal coalition agreement, and that a digital levy he had helped put into that agreement should bring billions, not millions. The Digital Services Act still had to show “teeth”, and media rules must not become a bargaining chip in tariff talks with the United States.

With federal culture minister Wolfram Weimer he argued in October 2025 that AI search overviews emptied the press ancillary copyright by replacing sources with a summary. He wanted an earmarked levy on very large platforms for producers of journalism and creative work. Weimer spoke of key points that November and legislation in 2026; neither presented a levy as law. None was in force by May 2026, when Liminski accused Berlin and Brussels of a “timid” wish not to annoy Donald Trump. Funke publisher Julia Becker said the levy had been announced without result, and that public broadcasters, including a fuller WDR local digital service, should return to their core remit; WDR director-general Katrin Vernau instead put private and public media on the same side against the platforms.

On 1 October 2026 he said platforms with more opinion power than classic media should be regulated on that ground, under a draft digital media state treaty he said all Länder would join, and that three technology firms drew off half of advertising budgets. The Broadcasting Commission had published that second part on 16 September 2026 for comment until 13 November: cross-media concentration rules, findability for journalism, duties for AI-based services and regard for local providers. It was not a signed treaty.

Political profile and criticism

Position inside the CDU

Reporting has placed Nathanael Liminski on the conservative side of the Christian Democratic Union. In January 2021 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called him indispensable to Armin Laschet: as head of the state chancellery in North Rhine-Westphalia, it wrote, he had arranged Laschet's rise to minister-president and then to CDU chairman. The portrait said Laschet's ticket with Jens Spahn was also his work, and that the two had been friends since the Junge Union. He stayed after Laschet left the premiership. On 29 June 2022 Hendrik Wüst kept him as chancellery chief and made him minister for federal and European affairs, international affairs and media, calling him "schlicht der Beste für diesen Job" after five years of quiet coordination. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger later called him a "konservativer Chefdenker"; in November 2025 Bild described him as value-conservative and strongly marked by Catholicism.

In late August 2022 the Stadt-Anzeiger reported that all five district chairs in CDU Mittelrhein, about 40,000 members, had unanimously nominated him to succeed Axel Voss, chairman since 2011, ahead of a delegate assembly on 24 September in Siegburg. He had that May missed a direct Landtag seat in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. By 23 November the paper referred to him as Mittelrhein chairman. On 5 December 2024 a Bonn district congress elected him Kreisvorsitzender with 102 of 106 valid votes (96.2 percent), succeeding Christoph Jansen. He called it a "politische Heimkehr" to the city where he had started in the Schüler Union, Junge Union and RCDS.

Religion, Opus Dei and campaign attacks

In November 2021, while seeking the CDU nomination in Lohmar, Liminski rejected a link to Opus Dei. He told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: "Ich bin weder Mitglied dieser Gruppierung noch pflege ich irgendeine Nähe." Faith, he said, was a source of "ernsthaften Respekt gegenüber anderen Menschen und ihren Meinungen", but "Die Bibel gibt aber keine Anleitung für konkrete politische Entscheidungen." Domradio reported that his father, the journalist Jürgen Liminski, who died in June 2021, was an Opus Dei member, and that Nathanael had in his twenties belonged to Generation Benedikt, young conservative Catholics publicizing Benedict XVI's views.

That record was used in the 2021 federal campaign. On 4 August, at an SPD presentation in a western Berlin cinema, general secretary Lars Klingbeil showed a film of matryoshka dolls of Union politicians. A voice said a vote for Laschet and the CDU meant a policy that made the rich richer (Friedrich Merz), candidates pushing the party right (Hans-Georg Maaßen), and "erzkatholische Laschet-Vertraute, für die Sex vor der Ehe ein Tabu ist" — Liminski, then Düsseldorf chancellery chief. Der Spiegel tied the line to 2007 Maischberger remarks he made as a student and called a personal decision. The SPD never posted the film. n-tv reported it was shown once, at the close of that presentation, and afterwards only as a recording.

CDU general secretary Paul Ziemiak demanded that Olaf Scholz say whether he would misuse Catholic affiliation, and that the film be withdrawn; Laschet told RTL West he was surprised by Scholz's methods. Spokesman Matthias Kopp said the German Bishops' Conference found the use of a religious conviction "unangemessen". Hermann Gröhe called it "antikatholische Stimmungsmache"; Günter Krings said personal and religious convictions had not been attacked this way since the war, and former Green politician Volker Beck called the disparagement of faith unacceptable. On 10 August Scholz told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that the campaign director had reported the spot would not be used, and that nobody was warning against a Christian for his faith. The SPD told n-tv that a film it was not distributing could not be withdrawn.

Reception

During the 2022 coalition talks, speculation that he might become schools minister revived the 2007 material. The taz called him an ultra-Catholic hardliner and recalled his remark that homosexuality was not a "vollendete Form von Sexualität" for lack of the "Dimension der Fortpflanzung". Alfonso Pantisano of the Lesben- und Schwulenverband Deutschland called him the "homophobe Nathanael Liminski" and said he must not oversee nearly 2.5 million pupils; Philipp Möller of the Zentralrat der Konfessionsfreien warned of "radikal christlichen Vorstellungen". The taz reported that LGBTQ protests were a prospect for the Greens. Wüst named Dorothee Feller school minister instead.

In a November 2025 interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Liminski said conservatives were neither traditionalists nor reactionaries but wanted to shape things "nach vorn … mit Maß und Mitte." Donald Trump's MAGA ideology, he said, "lebt von dauernder Konfrontation und Feindseligkeit" and contradicted a Christian message tested by love of enemies; the Union should copy it "weder im Inhalt noch im Stil." The Bible, he added, was no political handbook.

On 17 October 2026, at the Junge Union's Deutschlandtag in Bonn, after Chancellor Friedrich Merz had warned against a Berlin government with Die Linke, Liminski recommended "politische Säuberungen" in that party. "Judenhasser und Clan-Freunde" should be excluded from democratic parties, he said, and a party that could not do so was "ein Fall für den Verfassungsschutz." He added that, given what he called the party's "Ursprüngen im Stalinismus", a "politische Säuberung" was the one thing it ought to manage, and called "moralisch erhabene Spinner" the "nützlichen Idioten knallharter Extremisten." Welt noted the allusion to the purges under Stalin.

Personal life

Marriage and family

The government of North Rhine-Westphalia records that Nathanael Liminski, born on 19 September 1985 in Bonn, is married and the father of four children, and it does not name his wife. A March 2021 profile in Die Tageszeitung, drawing on his friend Paul Ziemiak, named his wife as Hanna, a business psychologist (Wirtschaftspsychologin), and referred to four children; the regional site 24RHEIN used the same description in July 2022.

The Rheinische Post reported in September 2018 that he had married a business psychologist five years after an appearance, made when he was 22, on Sandra Maischberger's talk show, and that the couple then had three children, the first son having been born about three years after that appearance. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger later dated the broadcast to 2007. Liminski told that paper the boy had been born two years before the wedding, that he had taken parental leave, and that he had himself announced the later marriage on social media. Published profiles moved from three children in September 2018 to four by March 2021.

In the 2018 portrait, Ziemiak, then chairman of the Junge Union, was godfather to the youngest of the three children. By 2024 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger quoted him, by then general secretary of the state Christian Democratic Union, as a close friend of the family and wrote that the two men were godparents to each other's children. Citing Liminski's office, the same article said he rises before six to pack the children's lunches, and that a son plays football, as Liminski had as a goalkeeper for VfR Hangelar.

Residence and other affiliations

In December 2024 the Bonn General-Anzeiger reported that Liminski, born in Bonn and raised in Sankt Augustin-Hangelar, lives with his wife and four children in the Düsseldorf district of Benrath. In 2018 the Rheinische Post had placed the household in an apartment in an older building there, which Ziemiak, a frequent visitor, called homely rather than sterile. The 2024 Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger described the family as rooted in Düsseldorf.

The Rheinische Post reported in March 2026 that Liminski's mother is French and that he holds a French passport as well as a German one, and it described him as half-French.