Norbert Altenkamp

Norbert Maria Altenkamp (born 27 July 1972 in Marl, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a politician in Germany of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag since 24 October 2017. He sits for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and holds a direct mandate for the Main-Taunus constituency in Hesse. The Bundestag’s biography lists him as a Roman Catholic, married, with two children, and records his profession as Diplom-Volkswirt, a graduate degree in economics.

He completed his Abitur at a Höhere Handelsschule in Marl, trained as a bank clerk at Dresdner Bank, and studied economics at the University of Münster, finishing as a Diplom-Volkswirt in 2000. He then worked as an adviser to the CDU group on the district council of Recklinghausen and as a specialist for economic and structural policy in the district administrator’s office. The same biography records him as full-time mayor of Bad Soden am Taunus from 2003 to 2017, and states that he has been a CDU member since 1990.

In the 2017 German federal election he won the direct mandate in constituency 181, covering the Main-Taunus-Kreis together with Steinbach, Kronberg and Königstein, with 41.9 percent of the first votes. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported that he followed Heinz Riesenhuber, who had held the seat for the CDU for forty years. He kept the constituency in the 2021 German federal election with 33.3 percent of the first votes. In the 2025 German federal election the seat was numbered 180; the Federal Returning Officer’s final result gives Altenkamp 65,495 first votes (39.8 percent), ahead of Nancy Faeser of the SPD on 17.8 percent, with turnout at 85.8 percent of 193,390 eligible voters.

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, a secretary (Schriftführer) of the plenary, and a deputy member of the German delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The biography states that from 2021 to 2025 he was deputy chair of the human-rights committee and that he has also served on the education and research committee. The CDU/CSU group lists him as its commissioner for churches and religious communities and as spokesperson and chair of its working group on human rights and humanitarian aid; katholisch.de reported the religion appointment on 9 July 2025, with Thomas Rachel as his predecessor in that group role. The Federal Foundation Magnus Hirschfeld lists him as a deputy member of its board of trustees for the CDU/CSU Bundestag group. He is also a member of the Main-Taunus district council and chairs its main and finance committee.

Early life and education

Schooling in Marl

Norbert Maria Altenkamp was born on 27 July 1972 in Marl, in the Recklinghausen district of North Rhine-Westphalia, then part of West Germany. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own information, lists him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children. In 2005 he married Corinna Mies, who came from Bad Soden am Taunus in Hesse. Reporting his departure from the mayoralty, the Frankfurter Neue Presse named the children Jonas and Sarah and wrote that the family would go on living near Bad Soden station; in August 2021 he received the paper's reporters at the family's home in the town.

Marl lies on the northern edge of the Ruhr. The municipal chronicle gives the town 77,513 inhabitants in 1972; the Brassert colliery closed that August, and the Chemische Werke Hüls, founded in 1938, had employed 15,370 people at their 1970 peak. The 1 January 1975 reform dissolved the Amt Marl and reconstituted the town, after which the recorded population rose from 77,751 in 1975 to 92,676 in 1976.

The parliamentary biography states that he took the Abitur at the Höhere Handelsschule in Marl, without giving the year or naming a particular college. In present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, full-time courses at a Berufskolleg in business and administration last two years and can confer vocational knowledge together with the school component of the Fachhochschulreife, a qualification distinct from the Abitur. Commercial schooling in Marl grew out of a gewerbliche Fortbildungsschule that the municipality decided on 14 October 1905 to open on 1 April 1906; the Kultusminister later authorized the Kollegschule experiment there from 1 August 1973, and in 1998/99 the Hans-Böckler-Kollegschule became the Hans-Böckler-Berufskolleg. The biography does not say that Altenkamp attended that college.

After the Abitur he served an apprenticeship as a Bankkaufmann at Dresdner Bank AG. The occupation is a state-recognized dual apprenticeship; the regulation in force since 1 August 2020, replacing that of 30 December 1997, sets it at three years. Commerzbank completed its purchase of Dresdner Bank in January 2009 and became the sole shareholder. The published biographies do not record his branch or the vocational school for the classroom part of the training.

Economics studies in Münster

He then studied economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster and in 2000 graduated as a Diplom-Volkswirt, the title under which the Bundestag and the CDU/CSU group still list him.

Teaching at what is now the University of Münster began in 1773, with a provisional inauguration in 1780. Reduced to an academy in 1818, when Prussia chose Bonn as the university of its western provinces, it regained university rank on 1 July 1902 and from the 1960s became a mass university; the Schloss, formerly the seat of the Prussian Oberpräsidium, has been the main building since teaching resumed on 3 November 1945. On 1 October 2023 the legal name became Universität Münster.

A separate economics course had existed since 1922 inside the faculty of law and political science founded in 1902. On 15 October 1969 that faculty was divided; until 1985 the economics side, which still included sociology, was the Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät. Altenkamp's published biographies give no special subjects or thesis title. In August 2021 he told the Frankfurter Neue Presse that politics had not been his plan: after the Abitur, the bank apprenticeship and the economics degree he had "slipped into" it, because at the end of his studies the Christian Democratic Union unexpectedly won the municipal election in the traditionally Social Democratic Recklinghausen district and needed specialists.

Early career in Recklinghausen

Norbert Altenkamp's first work in party and public administration was in Kreis Recklinghausen, the district of North Rhine-Westphalia in which he was born, at Marl. Formed in 1816, the district has since the 1975/76 territorial reform comprised ten towns, including Marl and Recklinghausen, on the northern edge of the Ruhr. The district administration describes it, with about 610,000 inhabitants, as Germany's most populous Kreis. Bundestag biographies, drawn from the member's own statements, place two district posts after his 2000 degree as a Diplom-Volkswirt at the University of Münster and before the full-time mayoralty of Bad Soden am Taunus in Hesse, without separate years for either post.

Party membership

Altenkamp joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1990, the year he turned 18. In a 2021 interview with the Frankfurter Neue Presse he called the decision a Trotz-Reaktion to his father's resignation: his father, he said, had thought the CDU had shifted too far left, and joining was the "höchstmögliche Protest". Altenkamp said he placed the party in the centre and found ideological politics alien. The archived biography for the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) adds membership of the Junge Union since 1991. The Junge Union describes itself as part of the Union family but as programmatically, organizationally and financially independent of the CDU and the Christian Social Union. Its statute admits members from the completed 14th year and ends membership at the completed 35th year, unless the member still holds a Junge Union office.

District administration

Altenkamp told the same newspaper that he had not planned a political career and had "da so reingerutscht" after his Abitur, a bank apprenticeship and the economics degree. He called Kreis Recklinghausen traditionally "red" and said that, around the end of his studies, the CDU unexpectedly won the local election and was looking for specialists. He began as Fraktionsreferent of the CDU group on the Kreistag and then became Fachreferent for economic and structural policy (Wirtschafts- und Strukturpolitik) for the Landrat. In the Kreistag election of 12 September 1999 the CDU took 45.2 percent of valid votes (122,769) and the Social Democratic Party 40.7 percent (110,455), on a turnout of 54.3 percent. The Bundestag biographies record the same two titles, in that order, without naming the Landrat or listing particular files.

Under the Kreisordnung of North Rhine-Westphalia, factions are voluntary associations of Kreistag members, and the district grants them budget funds for the material and personnel costs of their business management; a full-time faction employee may also sit on the Kreistag. The Landrat is elected directly by the citizens of the district's towns for five years as a municipal electoral official. The office conducts current administration, prepares and carries out decisions of the Kreistag and the Kreisausschuss, represents the district, and directs the distribution of business. Altenkamp's second post was therefore a staff appointment in that administration, not an elected mandate.

He later described economic and structural policy in the Ruhr, amid the end of coal, as a question of survival, and said the period showed him that structural change need not be a catastrophe if one kept one's nerve. By late autumn 2002 he was still an adviser to the Landrat and, he told the Frankfurter Neue Presse in 2018, expected to stay in Westphalia. Four months after his 30th birthday the Bad Soden CDU asked him to stand for mayor; he won in September 2003 and took over the town hall from Kurt Bender in March 2004.

Mayor of Bad Soden am Taunus

Norbert Altenkamp was full-time mayor (hauptamtlicher Bürgermeister) of Bad Soden am Taunus, in the Main-Taunus-Kreis in Hesse. The Bundestag biography dates that office from 2003 to 2017, the span from his first election. The town’s list of mayors records the term itself from 1 March 2004, when he succeeded Kurt E. Bender of the Christian Democratic Union, to 8 October 2017. Bender’s own term had run from 1 March 1992 to 29 February 2004.

Under the Hessian municipal code the mayor is elected directly by the citizens for six years, by majority vote: the winner needs more than half the valid votes, otherwise the two leading candidates meet in a runoff. The post is full-time; only a municipality of no more than 5,000 inhabitants may, by a two-thirds majority of its council, provide in its charter for an honorary mayor.

Elections

The local CDU asked Altenkamp to stand in the late autumn of 2002, while he was an adviser to the Landrat in Recklinghausen. On 28 September 2003, of 15,801 eligible voters, 7,511 voted (turnout 47.53 percent) and 7,454 ballots were valid. Altenkamp received 4,716 votes (63.27 percent), against Hans-Joachim Dietrich of the Social Democratic Party with 1,233 (16.54 percent), the independent Michael Gräff with 875 (11.74 percent), and Waltraud Krebsbach-Heß of Alliance 90/The Greens with 630 (8.45 percent). He took office on 1 March 2004.

On 27 September 2009, of 16,270 eligible voters, 12,518 voted (76.9 percent) and 12,275 ballots were valid. Altenkamp won 7,215 votes (58.8 percent), Thomas Braun of the Free Voters (Freie Wähler) 2,877 (23.4 percent), and Harald Fischer of the Greens 2,183 (17.8 percent).

On 13 September 2015, of 17,173 eligible voters, 7,237 voted (42.1 percent) and 7,142 ballots were valid. Altenkamp received 4,606 votes (64.5 percent), Fischer 1,753 (24.5 percent), and Bernhard Köcher of the BSB 783 (11 percent). All three results cleared half the valid votes, so there was no runoff.

Administration and municipal finance

Reporting on the budgets treated Altenkamp as municipal treasurer (Kämmerer) as well as mayor. In 2017 he recalled Bender’s new-year address at the start of 2004, which had found “no light at the end of the tunnel, not even a glimmer,” and he put the position he inherited at about 50 million euros of debt and a deficit of 7 million euros. He said the announced departure, about two years later, of the largest trade-tax payer, Sanofi-Aventis, “left my nerves raw.”

In autumn 2014 the Frankfurter Rundschau reported a repayment of 14.1 million euros in trade tax, including interest, to Sanofi-Aventis, which had left in 2006. Altenkamp said that sum, an 8.2 million euro shortfall on budgeted trade tax, and tighter state consolidation rules lifted the projected 2014 deficit to what he called a frightening 11.8 million euros. He withdrew a 2015 draft that had assumed a deficit of 2.88 million euros and said the trade-tax multiplier would rise from 280 points to at least 310, the state’s equalization rate, while spending above 10,000 euros needed his approval.

An interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 29 April 2014 ran under the headline “Not every place needs a town hall,” summarizing his case for mergers rather than parish-pump politics and for a new regional fiscal equalization. Asked why he worried when Bad Soden seemed comfortable, he said the town was all right until 2017, “but who likes to live permanently off their substance?”, and that citizens should be told plainly instead of cities, counties, the Land and the federation blaming one another.

The 2017 draft reported by the Frankfurter Neue Presse instead projected a surplus of about 620,000 euros, on revenue of 51.1 million and expenditure of 49.7 million. It raised the property-tax B multiplier from 450 to 550 points and the trade-tax multiplier from 330 to 357, and cut water, sewage and waste charges. Income tax was budgeted at 20.5 million euros and trade tax at 10 million; cash credits were to fall from 16 million euros in 2014 to 6 million entering 2017, with long-term debt and cash credits together still about 50 million.

End of the mayoralty

Altenkamp did not finish the six-year term that followed the 2015 election. On 24 September 2017 he won the direct mandate in the Main-Taunus constituency, and the Frankfurter Neue Presse described a farewell round already under way, including the opening of the H+ Hotel. The town dates the end of the mayoralty as 8 October 2017; the Bundestag lists his membership from October 2017. For a salaried civil servant, the Members of the Bundestag Act suspends the rights and duties of the service relationship for the length of membership, apart from official secrecy and the ban on gifts.

In that interview he said residents would not accept spending on a central town hall, and that a planned Buddhist hospice and the Medico-Palais had not worked out as he hoped.

On 21 January 2018 Frank Blasch of the CDU won the succession with 65.8 percent, against 20.5 percent for Jan Willemsen of the SPD and 13.7 percent for Sven Hahnel of the Free Democratic Party; turnout was 38.7 percent among about 17,600 eligible voters. The town records Dr. Frank Blasch as mayor from 1 March 2018.

Bundestag elections

The constituency

Norbert Altenkamp has stood in the federal constituency Main-Taunus, in Hesse, at three elections to the Bundestag. The Federal Returning Officer numbered it 181 in 2017 and 2021 and 180 in 2025. The territory did not change with the number. For 2025 it comprises the whole Main-Taunus-Kreis and, from the Hochtaunuskreis, Königstein im Taunus, Kronberg im Taunus and Steinbach (Taunus); the rest of the Hochtaunuskreis is constituency 175. Those three Hochtaunus municipalities were already joined to the Main-Taunus-Kreis in 2017 and 2021, when the remainder of the district formed constituency 176.

Each voter has two votes, as at every Bundestag election since 1953. The first vote, on the left of the ballot, is cast for a constituency candidate. The second vote, on the right, is cast for a party's state list and decides how many seats that party receives, which makes it the decisive vote. In 2017 the constituency had 197,291 eligible voters and turnout of 81.4 percent; in 2021 the figures were 195,514 eligible voters and turnout of 80.7 percent.

The 2017 and 2021 elections

Altenkamp succeeded Heinz Riesenhuber, a former federal research minister, who did not stand in 2017. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Riesenhuber had been a directly elected Christian Democratic Union member for 40 years and had taken 52.5 percent of the constituency's first votes in 2013. Altenkamp, then mayor of Bad Soden am Taunus, was nominated only narrowly that November; the paper reported that his challenger received 45 percent of the delegates' votes, with support concentrated in the Hochtaunus parts of the seat and in Kelkheim. On the approved CDU state list for Hesse he stood in 21st place.

On 24 September 2017 the CDU ticket headed by Altenkamp received 66,490 first votes, 41.9 percent, 10.6 percentage points below the party's 2013 share. Ilja-Kristin Seewald of the Social Democratic Party was second with 34,527 votes, 21.8 percent. Bettina Stark-Watzinger of the Free Democratic Party took 10.9 percent, Gernot Laude of the Alternative for Germany 9.7 percent, and Kordula Schulz-Asche of Alliance 90/The Greens 9.1 percent. Second votes put the CDU at 34.6 percent, the SPD at 18.1 percent and the FDP at 16.7 percent. He took his seat with the 19th Bundestag; the CDU/CSU group dates his membership from 24 October 2017.

He held the seat on 26 September 2021 with a smaller share. The final count gave the CDU 51,985 first votes, 33.3 percent, down 8.6 points. The Frankfurter Neue Presse identified Altenkamp as the winner and reported Seewald second on 22.8 percent, Schulz-Asche on 16.9 percent and Stark-Watzinger on 13.0 percent, the same shares the official result gives those parties. It also reported that Seewald, 12th on the SPD list in Hesse, did not enter the Bundestag, while Schulz-Asche was third on the Green list and Stark-Watzinger led the FDP list. Second votes still placed the CDU first, at 27.0 percent, ahead of the SPD on 22.1 percent, the Greens on 17.1 percent and the FDP on 16.9 percent.

The 2025 election

The next Bundestag was elected early, on 23 February 2025. On 27 December 2024 the federal president, at the chancellor's request, dissolved the 20th Bundestag and moved the election from 28 September 2025 to that date. The contest was the first under the reformed electoral law. A candidate of a party now wins the constituency seat only with both the most first votes and Zweitstimmendeckung: in each Land, that party's constituency winners are ranked by their share of valid first votes, and only as many are seated as the party's second-vote allocation in the Land allows.

In constituency 180 the Federal Returning Officer records Altenkamp, Norbert Maria, of the CDU as elected, with 65,495 first votes, 39.8 percent, up 6.5 points. Nancy Faeser of the SPD, then federal interior minister and a first-time Bundestag candidate there, was runner-up with 29,238 votes, 17.8 percent. Other first-vote shares were 14.0 percent for the Greens, 13.1 percent for the AfD, 6.0 percent for Die Linke and 5.4 percent for the FDP. The Frankfurter Neue Presse named the candidates as Anna Lührmann for the Greens, Christian Douglas for the AfD, Thomas Völker for Die Linke and Stark-Watzinger again for the FDP, and reported that Schulz-Asche did not stand. Altenkamp was also 11th on the CDU Hesse list published by the party.

Turnout was 85.8 percent of 193,390 eligible voters, 5.1 points above 2021. Second votes put the CDU first with 57,897 votes, 35.1 percent, up 8.1 points, ahead of the SPD on 15.7 percent, the Greens on 14.5 percent and the AfD on 13.3 percent. His listing as the member elected for the constituency means the first-vote win was covered by the CDU's second-vote seats in Hesse.

Education, research and skilled immigration

Education and research committee

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025), Norbert Altenkamp was an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment (Ausschuss für Bildung, Forschung und Technikfolgenabschätzung) for the CDU/CSU. The Bundestag biography still describes him, without dates, as a member of that committee and of the human-rights committee, deputy chair there from 2021 to 2025. The same page’s current-role data list only the human-rights committee and service as a Bundestag secretary (Schriftführer), both from 25 March 2025. Abgeordnetenwatch likewise records no education or research seat in the 21st term, only the human-rights committee, where he is listed as spokesperson.

The 21st Bundestag’s Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment (Ausschuss für Forschung, Technologie, Raumfahrt und Technikfolgenabschätzung) met for its constituent sitting on 21 May 2025, elected Karl Lauterbach chair, and published a membership of 30 that does not include Altenkamp. In the previous term the education committee’s minutes of 13 March 2024 still list him as an ordinary CDU/CSU member and as the group’s rapporteur, with Jessica Rosenthal (SPD) and one member from each other group, on the government’s 2023 Recognition Act report (printed paper 20/10350).

Skilled-worker immigration

The Skilled Immigration Act (Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz) of 2019 was a government bill. The Interior Committee had the lead; the education committee was asked only for an opinion. The Interior Committee’s rapporteurs were Alexander Throm (CDU/CSU), Lars Castellucci (SPD), Gottfried Curio (AfD), Linda Teuteberg (FDP), Ulla Jelpke (Die Linke) and Filiz Polat (Alliance 90/The Greens). Altenkamp was not among them. The bill was to steer recruitment from outside the European Union after domestic and intra-European supply; the government put open posts at about 1.2 million, including care, skilled trades and MINT occupations. On 7 June 2019 the Bundestag passed the act in a wider migration package. Interior minister Horst Seehofer called that package a caesura in migration policy; the skilled-immigration measure was to drop the shortage-occupation limit and the priority check for German or other EU workers.

Altenkamp’s plenary speech was on recognition of foreign qualifications, not on the interior bill. In the 151st sitting on 11 March 2020 he welcomed the act’s entry into force on 1 March and said equivalence under the 2012 Recognition Act was what let applicants work at the level of their training. He cited almost 141,000 applications for federally regulated professions since 2012, about 29,000 in 2018 and mostly in nursing, and said full equivalence went with about 1,000 euros more gross pay a month. He also noted a service office for applications from abroad, opened in Bonn on 17 February 2020, and said procedures still needed to be faster.

On 13 March 2024, as rapporteur on the 2023 recognition report, he said roughly 365,000 applications through 2022 could be called a success, but set that against the retirement of large cohorts, including 1964. About 80 percent of procedures were in health and care, he said, and he asked about similar placement arrangements for MINT shortage jobs and about faster visas and German courses. State secretary Jens Brandenburg, for the education and research ministry, largely agreed, said immigration alone would not close the gap, and noted that the previous year’s skilled-immigration reform had lowered Blue Card salary thresholds for academic MINT workers.

Research and development incentives

On tax support for research, the CDU/CSU group named Altenkamp its responsible rapporteur beside Albert Rupprecht, then the group’s education and research spokesman. On 22 May 2019 the cabinet adopted the finance minister’s proposal; the minister was Olaf Scholz. Altenkamp called the allowance a third pillar beside project and institutional funding, aimed at small and medium-sized firms whose innovation intensity, he said, had been falling, and argued that the draft rules on contract research still would not support cooperation with research institutes. Rupprecht welcomed the dropping of the time limit.

The statute was led by the Finance Committee; the education committee was consulted. The Finance Committee’s rapporteurs were Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU), Lothar Binding (SPD) and Katja Hessel (FDP). At first reading on 27 June 2019 the allowance was 25 percent of a base capped at 2 million euros, for basic and industrial research and experimental development, regardless of profit. The committee recommended passage at that rate, in force the day after promulgation and not before 1 January 2020. The consolidated Research Allowance Act (Forschungszulagengesetz) keeps the 25 percent rate and adds ten percentage points for EU-defined small and medium-sized enterprises. The annual base is capped at 2 million euros for spending from January to June 2020, then 4 million until 27 March 2024, 10 million until the end of 2025 and 12 million thereafter; contract research counts at 60 percent of the fee before 28 March 2024 and 70 percent after.

Human rights and humanitarian aid

Committee roles

Norbert Maria Altenkamp has been an ordinary member of the Bundestag Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid since the committee of the 19th legislative period was constituted on 31 January 2018. Gyde Jensen of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was chosen to chair the 17-member body, and the CDU/CSU members included Altenkamp and Michael Brand.

On 15 December 2021 the 20th-period committee was constituted with 19 members and Renata Alt (FDP) as chair. CDU/CSU members were Knut Abraham, Altenkamp, Brand, Jonas Geissler and Sabine Weiss; the SPD had six seats, the Greens three, the FDP and AfD two each, and Die Linke one. Bundestag biographies record him as deputy chair from 2021 to 2025.

The committee of the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 21 May 2025 in a sitting led by Vice-President Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke). Mechthild Heil (CDU/CSU) was elected chair of the 14-member body. Union members were Knut Abraham, Norbert Maria Altenkamp, Jonas Geissler, Mechthild Heil and Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker; AfD members Achim Köhler, Rainer Rothfuß and Martin Sichert; SPD members Falko Droßmann, Gabriela Heinrich and Ralf Stegner; the Greens Max Lucks and Boris Mijatović; and Die Linke’s member Katrin Fey. Altenkamp sat as an ordinary member rather than deputy chair. The CDU/CSU group lists him as spokesperson and chair of its working group on human rights and humanitarian aid.

China, Xinjiang and parliamentary groups

In August 2022 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights assessed Xinjiang and concluded that serious human rights violations had been committed against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities, and that arbitrary and discriminatory detention, amid wider restrictions, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity. China, in a statement issued with the report, rejected the accusations, denied forced labour and any massive violation of rights, and described its policy as counter-terrorism.

On 5 September 2023 an informal cross-party circle, the Parlamentskreis Uiguren, was launched in the Bundestag with the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress. The WUC named Peter Heidt (FDP) as chair and, as vice-chairs, Derya Türk-Nachbaur (SPD), Boris Mijatović (Greens) and Michael Brand, represented at the event by Altenkamp, together with Ulrich Lechte and Stephan Seiter (both FDP). Agence France-Presse reported that eleven members from the SPD, CDU, FDP and Greens met in Berlin. Dolkun Isa, then WUC president, attended with a delegation of about twenty and called Germany the centre of the Uyghur exile community and the seat of the WUC.

Heidt said people in Xinjiang should be able to live in freedom. Türk-Nachbaur, citing a United Nations report, pointed to internment, coercive birth control, torture and cultural assimilation. She later called the situation, as her personal view, a “creeping genocide”, while also saying genocide is legally narrow, that facts still had to be gathered, and that the conduct was a crime against humanity. The WUC sought answers to what it called an ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity, and reported that Altenkamp described the circle as cross-party; Mijatović urged accountability for firms, including Volkswagen’s supply chains. China’s embassy dismissed Heidt’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interview, denied assimilation and any basis for a Bundestag genocide finding, and called the centres deradicalisation measures, not camps.

Humanitarian crises and protection of parliamentarians

In a Bundestag interview marking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 2024, Altenkamp, then deputy chair, said a free society should be used to defend human rights everywhere, but that coverage clustered on nearby crises, including repression in Russia and the Middle East. Among “forgotten crises” he placed what he called the inhuman situation of ten million people displaced or stranded in Africa by conflict between Ethiopia and Sudan. He said the committee’s 2024 work had centred on such crises, including Sudan, alongside the war in Ukraine, the Middle East, human-rights conventions, antisemitism, and freedom of religion and belief.

As deputy chair he led a delegation to Ethiopia and South Sudan from 21 to 25 October 2024, with Falko Droßmann and Nadja Sthamer (SPD), Boris Mijatović and Jürgen Braun (AfD). The Bundestag called South Sudan one of the ten most neglected crises, with about nine million people needing aid, and noted Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict and refugee population. At a hearing on 18 December 2024, Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières witnesses warned that neglected crises were losing funds and that aid was steered by geopolitical interest rather than need. Altenkamp called the aid cuts a “fatal signal”: on his figures, German humanitarian spending had reached nearly three billion euros a year and was then cut to 2.2 billion for 2024 and about one billion for the next year.

In Parliamentarians Protect Parliamentarians (Parlamentarier schützen Parlamentarier), a Bundestag programme begun in 2003 after appeals from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Altenkamp took patronage of Tundu Lissu from former member Gisela Manderla. The IPU said about 90 members then backed some 200 people from 43 countries; other patrons included Luise Amtsberg, for Uganda’s Bobi Wine, and Nils Schmid, for Turkey’s Gülser Yildirim. Lissu, a lawyer and CHADEMA politician, was severely wounded in a 2017 attack in Dodoma after criticising President John Magufuli, was treated in Belgium, and returned to Tanzania on 25 January 2023. After meeting Lissu in the Bundestag in November 2022, Altenkamp told Tanzania’s ambassador that the case was still being watched and asked that the investigation be reopened. He kept contact with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the German embassy, and linked the return to an opening under President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

On 4 December 2025, days before Human Rights Day, Altenkamp said defending human rights had become an enormous challenge for liberal democracies. He described transnational repression as the pursuit into exile, including into Germany, of journalists, dissidents and defenders, and said, “We must confront this threat.” Rainer Rothfuß (AfD) attacked Western sanctions, Gabriela Heinrich (SPD) spoke on sexualised violence in Sudan, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Max Lucks (Greens) criticised Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, and Katrin Fey (Die Linke) raised economic and social rights in Germany.

Religious policy and other parliamentary offices

Churches and religious communities

On 9 July 2025 KNA reported on katholisch.de that every group in the Bundestag had named a commissioner for religion and the churches, and that the CDU/CSU had been the last, appointing Norbert Altenkamp. The group’s page lists him as its commissioner for churches and religious communities (Beauftragter der Fraktion für Kirchen und Religionsgemeinschaften). He succeeded Thomas Rachel of the Christian Democratic Union, who since 28 May 2025 has been the federal government’s commissioner for freedom of religion and belief at the Federal Foreign Office. KNA described Altenkamp, then 52, as Catholic, a Bundestag member since 2017 and formerly mayor of Bad Soden am Taunus.

Former federal labour minister Hubertus Heil took the brief for the Social Democratic Party, succeeding Lars Castellucci, the government’s commissioner for human-rights policy and humanitarian aid at the Foreign Office since the same date. KNA described Heil as Protestant and a member of the presidium of the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag. Nicole Höchst leads the Alternative for Germany working group on religious policy; she had been church-policy spokesperson since 2022, and KNA described her as Catholic, from Homburg an der Saar. Lamya Kaddor remained responsible for Alliance 90/The Greens; KNA described her as a liberal Muslim, trained in religious education and Islamic studies. For Die Linke, former Thuringia minister-president Bodo Ramelow, described as Protestant and a Bundestag vice-president, took churches and religion.

On 19 September 2025 evangelisch.de published an epd interview on calls to redeem the state payments to the churches (Staatsleistungen), compensation for property taken in the early-nineteenth-century secularisation. Article 140 of the Basic Law incorporates Article 138 of the Weimar Constitution, which leaves that redemption to Land legislation on principles set by the federation. Altenkamp said he saw nothing in debates “that lead to the typical reflexes,” citing the Länder’s refusal of a full redemption, and that agreement on church buildings, whose upkeep challenged both sides, mattered more. Sandra Bubendorfer-Licht of the Free Democratic Party, Castellucci and Konstantin von Notz had that week urged new talks in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and suggested including church buildings in any negotiation. Altenkamp called that an “interesting approach” and said the future of churches that shape towns and villages was also “about identity,” urgent as congregations shrank. From fourteen years as mayor of Bad Soden he cited a conversion that reduced the worship space and added a multi-storey kindergarten: “All sides had won.”

Procedure, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and foundations

The Bundestag biography lists Altenkamp as a plenary secretary (Schriftführer). Under section 3 of the Rules of Procedure the secretaries are elected together on a group proposal. On 22 May 2025, without debate, the Bundestag elected 21 named by the CDU/CSU, 15 by the AfD, 12 by the SPD, nine by the Greens and seven by Die Linke. Two sit with the presiding President of the Bundestag as the sitting’s presidium. Section 9 charges them with supporting the president: keeping speakers’ lists, calling names, collecting and counting ballots, and other business as directed.

The biography lists him as a deputy member of the German delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Its assembly meets twice a year to debate political, economic and social questions and to draft resolutions that are not legally binding. Eight members of the German delegation attend the spring session, generally hosted by a member state; the autumn session is usually at the IPU seat in Geneva.

On 25 September 2025 the Bundestag, without debate, elected parliamentary trustees of the Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld, founded on 27 October 2011 by the federation through the Federal Ministry of Justice and named after the physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. In the Bundestag’s account, the board supports and supervises the executive board, and the purposes include remembering the National Socialist persecution of homosexual people, research on Hirschfeld and on homosexual life in Germany, and opposition to discrimination. The CDU/CSU list, printed paper 21/1770, passed unanimously: members Melanie Bernstein, Ralph Edelhäußer and Jan-Marco Luczak, and deputies Norbert Maria Altenkamp, Hülya Düber and Mechthild Heil. An AfD list naming Nicole Höchst and Beatrix von Storch was rejected by the other four groups; the SPD, Green and Left lists passed against AfD votes, as queer.de also reported that day. As of 4 May 2026 the foundation still lists Altenkamp as a CDU/CSU deputy. Stefanie Hubig, federal minister of justice and consumer protection, chairs the unpaid board, as the serving justice minister customarily does. Under sections 6 to 9 of the statutes the board takes the foundation’s essential decisions and monitors the executive board.

Party offices and local government in Hesse

District council

In Hesse, the Kreistag is the elected assembly of a Landkreis. The Hessian Landkreisordnung provides that its members are elected for five years, act in an honorary capacity, and are not bound by instructions from voters. The Kreistag decides the district's affairs unless the statute says otherwise, and it supervises the administration and the executive Kreisausschuss, in particular the use of district revenue. It may transfer decisions to the Kreisausschuss or to a committee, but not a reserved list that includes statutes, the budget bylaw and investment programme, discharge of the Kreisausschuss, and participations of greater importance; business that has been transferred can be taken back. A finance committee is mandatory. Other committees are drawn from the councillors to prepare decisions and, outside those reserved matters, may receive categories of business for a final decision, subject to a duty to report.

The Kreistag of the Main-Taunus-Kreis sits at Hofheim am Taunus and has 81 members. In the municipal election of 15 March 2026, turnout there was 55.8 percent; the CDU received 37.2 percent of the vote and 30 of the 81 seats, as it had in 2021. Norbert Altenkamp is a CDU member of that council. The district's session register lists him, from 1 April 2026, as chairman of the Haupt-, Finanz- und Beteiligungsausschuss. Under the council's rules of procedure, in force from 1 May 2026, that committee is one of four standing committees: it handles the business referred to it, equality questions are to be dealt with there, and it reports to the Kreistag, which keeps the non-delegable decisions, including the budget bylaw. The rules use the name Haupt-, Finanz- und Beteiligungsausschuss. His Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, calls him chairman of the Haupt- und Finanzausschuss, and the disclosure the Bundestag publishes spells the post "Vorsitzender des Haupt- und Finanzauschusses".

The chairmanship predates the 2026 term. Abgeordnetenwatch, which republishes the disclosure register, carries the committee chairmanship for his Bundestag mandates from 2017, with the record first entered on 6 February 2018, and carries the Kreistag membership across the same mandates. In a report dated 10 November 2021, Taunus-Nachrichten wrote that, after a council meeting in the Hofheim Stadthalle, the district had given him a bronze Ehrenplakette, the grade for sitting members of the Kreistag or Kreisausschuss with 10 to 15 years' service. In April 2021 the Frankfurter Neue Presse, citing the side-activity list then displayed on abgeordnetenwatch, reported that he also sat on the Regionalversammlung Südhessen; he described that post and the Kreistag seat as arising from his work in the district and said the Kreistag paid 50 euros a sitting. The regional assembly is not among the offices in his current Bundestag disclosure.

Positions in the CDU/CSU

Altenkamp has been a CDU member since 1990. In the 21st Bundestag the CDU deputies from Hesse form a Landesgruppe of 15, which meets at the opening of sitting weeks to coordinate work on legislation and on Hessian concerns inside the CDU/CSU faction. The group states that Michael Brand was elected chairman and that the deputy chairs are Altenkamp and Frederik Bouffier. It also states that Altenkamp sits on the faction executive, the Fraktionsvorstand, as chairman of the working group on human rights and humanitarian aid—an office covered separately—together with the Land-group chair and other Hessian members who hold faction posts. His own Land-group profile lists the Fraktionsvorstand seat and the deputy chairmanship in the same terms.

The CDU/CSU faction profile lists him, in addition, in the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kommunalpolitik and the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand, both classified by the faction as soziologische Gruppen. The municipal-policy group is chaired by Josef Oster; the Mittelstand circle, whose published membership includes Altenkamp, is chaired by Christian Freiherr von Stetten. Those listings do not give him an executive role in either group.

Outside positions and declared income

Sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act set the code of conduct (Verhaltensregeln) under which a member of the Bundestag notifies the President of the Bundestag of the last occupation before the mandate and of seats on boards of companies and public-law corporations. Notices are due within three months of taking up membership and within three months of any later change. If income from a paid activity or a relevant contract exceeds 1,000 euros in a month or 3,000 euros in a calendar year, the gross amount must be stated, counting compensation and benefits in kind but not reimbursed expenses. The Bundestag publishes an item only after processing the notice and checking that publication is required. On the biography for the 21st Bundestag, as it stood on 29 October 2026, Altenkamp's entries give his pre-mandate occupation as full-time mayor of Bad Soden am Taunus, one company advisory-board seat, and offices in public-law bodies.

Savings bank and hospitals

The Taunus Sparkasse is a public-law savings bank in Hesse, with seats in Frankfurt-Höchst, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and Hofheim am Taunus. Its sponsor is the Sparkassenzweckverband Taunus, formed by the Hochtaunuskreis and the Main-Taunus-Kreis. The bank describes the Verwaltungsrat as its highest organ, comparable to a stock corporation's supervisory board, setting business-policy guidelines and supervising the executive board, and lists Altenkamp, as a member of the Bundestag, among the members. The disclosure records that seat and gross pay of 256.00 euros a month, plus irregular gross payments totalling 320.00 euros in 2025 and 640.00 euros in 2026. In the 20th legislative period the monthly figure was also 256.00 euros gross; irregular gross totals were 160.00 euros in 2021, 960.00 in 2022, 800.00 in 2023 and 1,440.00 in 2024. The 19th-term archive also named him chairman of the bank's audit committee, a post not repeated later.

Kliniken Frankfurt-Main-Taunus GmbH is the Frankfurt company through which the city and the Main-Taunus-Kreis hold the hospitals at Bad Soden, Hofheim and Frankfurt-Höchst. The current disclosure lists Altenkamp on its advisory board and, as a further public-law office, on the Main-Taunus Kreistag in Hofheim, as chairman of the main and finance committee. Neither entry states a remuneration.

Earlier business roles

The 19th-term archive lists him as a member of the advisory board of Süwag Energie AG, Frankfurt, until April 2021, without a separate remuneration figure. The Süwag legal notice records the company at Frankfurt am Main under HRB 52467 at the Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main. The seat does not appear in the 20th-term disclosure or on the current page. That 20th-term list did include the board of the Bad Sodener Musikstiftung Dr. Jürgen Frei, which is absent from the current disclosure.