# Ophelia Nick

# Ophelia Nick

Ophelia Johanna Nick (née Schily; born 24 January 1973 in Herdecke, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German veterinarian and a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). She has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2021, sitting for the North Rhine-Westphalia state list, and is the Green candidate in constituency 104, Mettmann II. On 8 December 2021 the Bundestag recorded her, with Manuela Rottmann, as a parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture; the ministry stated that the Federal President had appointed them on the proposal of Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz), to serve under minister [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir). The *agrarzeitung* later described her as having held that post from December 2021 until May 2025. On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) chancellor and the new ministers were appointed and sworn in.

After the Abitur in 1992 she worked for a year on a farm at Lake Constance, then studied veterinary medicine at the Free University of Berlin, finishing in 2000, and in 2012 took a doctorate at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The dissertation followed 145 laboratory beagles after they were rehomed, using a behaviour test at the research facility, telephone interviews with new owners and later home visits. She is the author of *Das 4-Wochen Erziehungsprogramm für Hunde* (Ulmer Verlag) and *Neue Bauern braucht das Land* (oekom Verlag).

She joined the Greens in 2010. The biography she filed with the Bundestag lists six years on the council of Wülfrath, five years as spokesperson of the Kreis Mettmann Greens, four years on the party's North Rhine-Westphalia executive, four years as spokesperson of its state working group on forest, agriculture and rural areas, and six years as spokesperson of its federal working group on agriculture and rural development. On the 2021 Green state list she was placed 13th; the official return for constituency 105, Mettmann II, gave the Greens 17,730 first votes (14.5 percent), behind [Peter Beyer](/people/peter-beyer) of the CDU (38,429 votes, 31.3 percent), who won the seat, and [Kerstin Griese](/people/kerstin-griese) of the SPD (37,635 votes, 30.7 percent). At the election of 23 February 2025 she stood again in the renumbered constituency 104, ninth on the state list, and the Greens received 14,237 first votes (11.1 percent); Beyer held the constituency with 35.9 percent, ahead of Griese (25.0 percent) and Hans Bernhard Ulrich of the AfD (17.2 percent). In the 21st Bundestag the Green group lists her as its spokesperson for agricultural policy, an ordinary member of the committees on agriculture, nutrition and homeland and on sport and volunteering, and a deputy member of the health committee.

In an interview published on 15 August 2025 she named the animal-husbandry labelling law, the federal programme for converting livestock housing and a national nutrition strategy as work carried through in the ministry, said the coalition had slowed after its first year, and said she would have wanted the labelling rules to cover cattle and food eaten outside the home.

Nick is the daughter of Angela Voith and Konrad Schily, a granddaughter of Hanns Voith of the engineering firm Voith, and a niece of former interior minister [Otto Schily](/people/otto-schily). She is married to the internist Oliver Nick and has four children; the 2021 state-list file gives her occupation as veterinarian and her residence as Wülfrath. The *agrarzeitung* reported that she was a member of the supervisory board of Voith GmbH & Co. KGaA from 2010 to 2017. A joint evaluation by Abgeordnetenwatch and *Der Spiegel*, released on 22 June 2026, put her disclosed side income from company holdings at about 2.7 million euro since the start of the legislative period, the highest figure it recorded among members of the Bundestag, and quoted her statement that she neither works for the companies nor takes part in their operating decisions and sees no link to her political work. The *Heidenheimer Zeitung*, citing her disclosure profile, reported 2.72 million euro from inherited Voith shares.

## Early life and family

### Parents and childhood

Ophelia Nick was born on 24 January 1973 in Herdecke, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Her mother was the physician Angela Voith, and her father was the neurologist and psychiatrist Konrad Schily, a co-founder of the anthroposophically oriented Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Herdecke and founder of the private University of Witten/Herdecke.

The Bundestag biography records that she passed the Abitur in 1992 and, from 1992 to 1993, worked on a farm at Lake Constance. In a 2019 interview she said that her strongest childhood memories were of time on her grandfather’s farm there, and that those stays led her to begin an agricultural apprenticeship after school; about a year later she left it when she was offered a place to study veterinary medicine. She has described the school holidays as long days of milking cows and making hay.

### The Voith and Schily families

On her mother’s side, Nick belongs to the owning family of the mechanical-engineering company Voith, whose 150th anniversary was marked in Heidenheim an der Brenz in 2017. She is a granddaughter of Hanns Voith, the last member of the family to hold operational leadership of the firm, and the shareholders of that line descend from him. He and his wife Lore had six daughters; of the shareholders, Angela Voith was described as the only one who still bore the Voith name.

The family’s farm on the lake was Hofgut Rengoldshausen, near Überlingen. In 1932 Hanns Voith bought the holding at his wife’s urging, transferred the ownership to her, and had it farmed according to biodynamic agriculture, the method associated with Rudolf Steiner and later known under the Demeter label. The house was used as a holiday place where the daughters were expected to work in the fields and the cowshed, which Hanns Voith called “active recreation.” Nick’s account of childhood stays on her grandfather’s Lake Constance farm refers to that holding, which remained in the family’s sphere after it was leased to tenants; one of his daughters, Cornelia Hahn, lived on the farm from 1972.

After disputes inside the family in the early 1990s, a statute excluded relatives from executive management, and the owners seldom appeared in public. Once a year a family day was held at which management presented its strategy.

Her father was a younger brother of Otto Schily, so Nick is Otto Schily’s niece. A *Spiegel* profile written while Konrad Schily was establishing the university noted that he was often confused with that brother, and described a childhood in Bochum in a family attached to Steiner’s anthroposophy, which Konrad himself later said he no longer shared.

### Marriage and residence

Nick is married to the internist Oliver Nick, a physician in Hilden. A 2012 profile already described the couple as having four children. Later reporting presents the household as a patchwork family: she has two children of her own, the first born while she was a student, and two children came from her husband’s previous marriage. In 2017 *Handelsblatt* referred to her as the mother of a patchwork family of four sons.

Since 2000 the family has lived in Düssel, a rural district of Wülfrath in the Mettmann district of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2013 she told a local reporter that the house stood so close to the Düssel that leaving by car meant driving through a ford. The Bundestag biography lists her as married with four children.

## Veterinary medicine, farming and writing

### Studies and doctorate

After the *Abitur* in 1992, Nick spent 1992–93 on a farm at Lake Constance and then studied veterinary medicine at the Free University of Berlin, finishing in 2000. Her own chronology calls that year an agricultural apprenticeship and dates the Berlin course 1994–2000. She told the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* in 2019 that she had started the apprenticeship in order to work with large animals and left it when a veterinary place opened.

The doctorate was awarded by the veterinary faculty of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; the oral examination was on 21 July 2012. *Vermittlung von Laborhunden in Privathand* (“Placing laboratory dogs in private hands”), prepared under Michael Erhard in the Department of Veterinary Sciences, asked how laboratory dogs changed after rehoming, which problems appeared, whether a prior behavior test predicted life in the new home, and which factors mattered.

The study tested 145 beagles of different ages and sexes in a research facility and handed them to two animal-welfare organizations; the acknowledgements name the Tierschutzverein Wermelskirchen and the Laborbeaglehilfe. Telephone interviews followed at one week (143 dogs) and twelve weeks (125). At six weeks, 74 homes were visited: 68 dogs were retested and an everyday-situation test was done with 74, while six dogs were too fearful for the second behavior test. Filmed behavior and owners’ reports were scored together.

The thesis found a statistically significant improvement between interviews. In the first week the dogs were described as fearful and easily startled; after six weeks most handled many situations more calmly, and wary reactions to strangers more often became friendly or neutral. Age, origin, and time in a shelter were associated with personality scores, and housing, family situation, and how often owners rewarded the dog with how the animals settled; age, sex, a second dog, the owner’s experience, reward type, and punishment frequency were not. Agreement across the tests was usually positive but often low, so the behavior test had only moderate predictive value. Most owners were satisfied, and the return rate was given as 4.8 percent (n = 145).

A 2017 *ALTEX* paper by Dorothea Döring, Nick, and colleagues at the Munich chair of animal welfare, ethology, animal hygiene, and husbandry published the study. Behavioral reactions did not differ significantly between the facility test and the home retest, but body language and heart rate pointed to more relaxed dogs, and interviews showed a shift toward desired behavior. At twelve weeks the main problems were not being house-trained (39 percent of 126 dogs), separation-related behavior (28 percent), and destroying objects (24 percent); nine returns were described as a 94 percent rehoming rate.

### Dog training and books

Nick has said that practice as a new veterinarian was difficult with four children in a blended family, so in the early 2000s she opened a dog school—she called it an early venture of its kind—and ran it for several years, including work with dogs that had behavior problems. Verlag Eugen Ulmer published *Das 4-Wochen Erziehungsprogramm für Hunde: Tag für Tag – Schritt für Schritt* on 1 March 2010 (ISBN 978-3-8001-5906-2), a 96-page paperback with 77 color photographs. Its author note described her as a veterinarian in Wülfrath who had run a dog school and was a doctoral student at the Munich chair. In 2025 she told the Bundestag youth site she would not run a school again and regarded that work as closed by the book; the parliament’s biography lists the title.

*Neue Bauern braucht das Land: Ein Plädoyer für gute Lebensmittel aus einer gesunden Umwelt* appeared from oekom verlag on 7 October 2019 as a 192-page softcover (ISBN 978-3-96238-122-6) and is also in that biography. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* reported two years of work drawing on farm visits from her political role, including pig housing, and set out her view that farming as then organized was illogical, that more sustainable practice need not be costlier or more complicated, and that policy, not consumers alone, would have to change course. She said she was neither vegetarian nor vegan. The publisher’s note called her lessor of a 90-year-old Demeter farm and a spokesperson of the AbL in North Rhine-Westphalia.

### Farms and the AbL

That 2019 profile also said she ran a small sheep enterprise with a friend and owned an organic farm she was then leasing out. In November 2020 the *Rheinische Post* described a family holding of about seventy ewes, used for extensive grazing in the north of the Mettmann district, plus a dog and five hens. In 2025 she again said she kept hens and sheep with a friend.

Neither account names the leased farm, and the oekom note does not identify the Demeter holding. A separate record is the Hofkäserei Talhof at Talhof 1 in Heidenheim an der Brenz: its Demeter profile, written by the farm, says it has been under biodynamic agriculture since 1929, with a bull and about 25 dairy cows whose hay milk is processed on site, and names Rüdiger Spiegel. In 2020 the *Rheinische Post* listed Nick as managing director of Interessengemeinschaft Talhof gGmbH, and the Bundestag register of interests still shows a participation in that Heidenheim nonprofit.

Wissenschaftsförderung Lebendige Landwirtschaft gGmbH describes her as founder and dates itself to 2018. Its imprint records HRB 29587 at the Amtsgericht Wuppertal, the address Döppersberg 19 in Wuppertal, and Nick as representative and editorially responsible. The team page says she suspended her work there after entering the Bundestag in 2021 and names Lisa Oberschelp as managing director, while the Bundestag disclosure still lists Lebendige Landwirtschaft gemeinnützige GmbH in Wülfrath.

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL) calls itself a farmers’ interest group for conventional and organic holdings, seeking prices it describes as fair, access to land, and husbandry suited to the animals, together with climate and nature protection. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* in September 2019 and the *Rheinische Post* in November 2020 identified Nick as chair of the North Rhine-Westphalia branch. That office is absent from the Bundestag biography, which the parliament says is based on members’ own statements.

## Party and local politics

### Wülfrath council and Kreis Mettmann

Nick joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2010. In September 2013 she still held no elected mandate. She sat in Wülfrath as a *sachkundige Bürgerin*, a non-elected resident appointed to council committees, belonged to the Green executive in Kreis Mettmann, and was a member of the party's state working group on rural areas.

The municipal election of 25 May 2014 chose councils for a one-off term of a little more than six years. The Landtag had lengthened that period so that, from 2020, councils and mayors would again be elected together and for five years. In Wülfrath the state returning officer recorded a Green vote of 868, or 9.4 percent, up from 7.7 percent in 2009, and three seats on a council of 34, of which only six members were women. Of the three Green seats, one was held by a woman. The *Rheinische Post* reported that the local party had placed Nick first on its list, with men in the places behind her. The new council was to be constituted on 24 June 2014. Her Bundestag biography, a December 2021 profile in the *Westdeutsche Zeitung*, and her own account in 2025 all describe six years on the Wülfrath council, the length of that extended term.

Speaking in October 2025 to the Bürgerverein in the Düssel district, where she is a member, she said that as a councillor she had valued the collegial atmosphere and the willingness to compromise across party lines, and that she had learned the craft of politics in Wülfrath. The Wülfrath Green association states that she chaired the council's *Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss*, its audit committee, and dates both that chair and her council membership to 2016–2020, a shorter span than the six years given in the other accounts. Under the municipal code of North Rhine-Westphalia, every council must appoint such a committee. It examines the annual accounts and the management report, drawing on the local audit office or an outside auditor, and tells the council in writing whether it approves them. Separately, the *Westdeutsche Zeitung* reported in January 2019 that Nick remained treasurer of the Wülfrath local branch after Thomas May and Andrea Windrath-Neumann were confirmed as its co-chairs.

The Bundestag biography records five years as *Kreissprecherin*, district spokesperson, of the Greens in Kreis Mettmann, a figure she repeated in 2025. The Wülfrath association says those five years followed two years on the district executive, which fits the 2013 report that she was already on that board. At the 2020 municipal election she stood for the Greens in polling district 9020, Rathaus. She received 130 votes, 21.42 percent, and finished second to the CDU candidate Müller, who took 230 votes, or 37.89 percent.

### Green Party offices

The same Bundestag biography lists four years on the Green state executive in North Rhine-Westphalia, four years as spokesperson of the *Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Wald, Landwirtschaft & Ländlicher Raum*, and six years as spokesperson of the federal working group on agriculture and rural development, the *Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Landwirtschaft & Ländliche Entwicklung*. It does not give the start and end dates of those offices.

A photograph issued by the state party, from its Landesparteitag in Siegburg on 14 and 15 June 2014, is captioned as Nick's election to the state executive. The conference was devoted to industrial policy, rural areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the board elections._(cropped).jpg) At that meeting the delegates elected Mona Neubaur co-chair with 77.2 percent of the vote and confirmed Sven Lehmann, co-chair since 2010, with 94.5 percent. The lead motion, on rural areas, called for the party to shed its image as an organisation of the big cities and included campaigns against large-scale livestock farming, more nature protection, and schools close to where people lived. In a September 2019 *Süddeutsche Zeitung* profile the state-executive post was already in the past, while Nick was described in the present tense as spokesperson of the federal agriculture working group.

On 31 May 2022, as the state Greens opened formal coalition talks with the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), the party published its teams for 13 subject groups. The main Green round consisted of Mona Neubaur, [Felix Banaszak](/people/felix-banaszak), Verena Schäffer, Josefine Paul and Raoul Roßbach. Nick was listed as an additional member of the group on the environment, agriculture, nature conservation and consumer protection, led by Norwich Rüße with [Jan-Niclas Gesenhues](/people/jan-niclas-gesenhues) as deputy. The other additional members were Gregor Kaiser, Oliver Krischer and Astrid Vogelheim.

## Elections to the Bundestag

Ophelia Nick has been a member of the Bundestag in its 20th and 21st electoral terms, both times without a constituency seat. At the 2021 and 2025 federal elections she was the direct candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens in Mettmann II, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and entered through that party's state list (*Landesliste*).

Voters cast two votes. The first (*Erststimme*) chooses a candidate in one of 299 constituencies; the second (*Zweitstimme*) chooses a party's state list. State lists are closed: the party sets the order, and a voter cannot reorder it. Second votes determine how many seats a party receives. Through the 2021 election, the candidate with the most first votes won the constituency seat. From 2025 a party candidate wins that seat only if the party's second-vote allocation in the *Land* also covers it (*Zweitstimmendeckung*); seats that then remain are filled from the state list in list order.

### 2021 federal election

The election was held on 26 September 2021. In constituency 105, Mettmann II, 160,175 people were eligible to vote and 123,769 did so, a turnout of 77.3 percent. Of 122,597 valid first votes, Peter Beyer of the Christian Democratic Union received 38,429 (31.3 percent) and was elected. Kerstin Griese of the Social Democratic Party took 37,635 (30.7 percent), 794 votes behind Beyer. Nick, recorded by the Federal Returning Officer as Dr. Ophelia Johanna Nick, a veterinarian who was also 13th on the Greens' North Rhine-Westphalia list, received 17,730 first votes (14.5 percent) and finished third, 8.4 percentage points above the Greens' 2017 first-vote share in the constituency.

The next candidates were Jessica Denné-Weiß of the Free Democratic Party, with 11,158 votes (9.1 percent); Jessica Malisch of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, with 8,894 (7.3 percent); and Birgit Onori of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), with 3,395 (2.8 percent). On the second vote in the constituency the Greens received 18,112 votes (14.7 percent), behind the SPD on 28.0 percent (34,409) and the CDU on 27.1 percent (33,254).

The state returning officer's final list result for North Rhine-Westphalia records Nick at place 13 on the Greens' *Landesliste*. The 20th Bundestag was constituted on 26 October 2021.

### 2025 federal election

The election was held on 23 February 2025. The same territory, now numbered constituency 104, had 156,872 eligible voters; 129,847 voted, a turnout of 82.8 percent, 5.5 percentage points higher than in 2021. Of 128,626 valid first votes, Beyer was elected with 46,152 (35.9 percent). Griese followed with 32,169 (25.0 percent), and Bernd Ulrich of the AfD with 22,097 (17.2 percent). Nick, admitted by the district election committee as the Greens' candidate and living in Wülfrath, received 14,237 first votes (11.1 percent), 3.4 percentage points below the Greens' 2021 first-vote share, and placed fourth. Onori, again the Left candidate, received 8,542 (6.6 percent), and Alexander Steffen of the FDP 5,007 (3.9 percent).

On the second vote the Greens received 14,517 votes (11.2 percent), down 3.5 percentage points from 2021. The CDU led with 32.0 percent (41,357), ahead of the SPD on 19.4 percent (25,094) and the AfD on 16.8 percent (21,731). The state returning officer's final list result records Nick at place 9 on the Greens' North Rhine-Westphalia list. The Bundestag's biography for the 21st term states that she was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list while standing in constituency 104, Mettmann II. The 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025.

### Constituency Mettmann II

Mettmann II consists of four municipalities in the Mettmann district: Heiligenhaus, Ratingen, Velbert and Wülfrath. The rest of the district — Erkrath, Haan, Hilden, Langenfeld, Mettmann and Monheim am Rhein — forms the neighbouring constituency Mettmann I.

For the 2021 election the seat was constituency 105; for 2025 it is constituency 104. The Federal Returning Officer attributes the renumbering to population change: one constituency was transferred from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, and the numbers of the former constituencies 72 to 255 each moved down by one. North Rhine-Westphalia's 64 constituencies are numbered 86 to 149. The official descriptions of Mettmann II list the same four municipalities for both elections, and the constituency was not among those whose boundaries were redrawn for 2025.

## Parliamentary State Secretary

### Appointment under Cem Özdemir

On 8 December 2021 [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier), on a proposal from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, appointed Ophelia Nick and Manuela Rottmann parliamentary state secretaries to Cem Özdemir at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The ministry said they would represent the minister in the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, the parliamentary groups and in specified policy fields. The same notice named Silvia Bender as the prospective permanent state secretary who would head the departments, a civil-service post separate from the parliamentary secretaries.

*agrarheute* had reported the names on 2 December, before Alliance 90/The Greens finished balloting members on the coalition agreement, and treated them as a surprise, especially Nick, who had entered the Bundestag only that October after several years as spokesperson of the party’s federal working group on agriculture and rural development.

Rottmann asked to be released at the end of 2022 to stand for mayor of Frankfurt am Main. On 9 December 2022 Özdemir said he wanted Claudia Müller, a Green member from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, to succeed her in January 2023. Nick remained.

Scholz’s term as elected chancellor ended on 25 March 2025, when the new Bundestag met; he continued as caretaker until a successor was appointed. On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Friedrich Merz chancellor, and that evening Özdemir handed the ministry to Alois Rainer, who appointed [Silvia Breher](/people/silvia-breher) and [Martina Englhardt-Kopf](/people/martina-englhardt-kopf) parliamentary state secretaries. Nick’s tenure ended with that handover.

### Animal welfare, labelling and the CAP

On 13 September 2024, alongside the G20 agriculture ministers’ meeting in Chapada dos Guimarães, Brazil, Nick met Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization. They discussed global food security, German work on agroecology and organic production, conflict-related disruptions to food trade, and further German support for vulnerable countries.

The principal animal-welfare statute of her term was the Animal Husbandry Labelling Act (*Tierhaltungskennzeichnungsgesetz*). The Bundestag passed the government bill on 16 June 2023, with the coalition in favour and the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the Left against. It was signed on 17 August 2023, published as *Bundesgesetzblatt* 2023 I No. 220, and entered into force the day after promulgation; its transitional rules treat 24 August 2023 as the date it was already in force. Mandatory labelling began with fresh pork from pigs kept in Germany during fattening, from ten weeks of age to slaughter. The five tiers are Stall, the statutory minimum; Stall+Platz; Frischluftstall; Auslauf/Weide; and Bio, usable only where the food also carries the EU organic label. Food from animals kept abroad may use the mark only voluntarily, and only with authorisation. The federal government presented the Act as one part of a package that also eased planning permission for barn conversion and earmarked one billion euros as start-up funding.

Introducing the government’s 14th animal-welfare report in December 2023, a survey of 2019–2022, Nick said animal protection had been a constitutional objective for more than twenty years and that the report showed both progress and unfinished business. She counted an “entry into the conversion of animal husbandry” among steps already taken.

Farm and welfare groups attacked the statute from opposite sides. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers’ Association, called the label only a first, overdue small step and demanded compulsory husbandry and origin labelling covering piglet production, processed meat, system catering and canteens. He said conversion funding was far from scientific recommendations, that narrow criteria might let only about a tenth of livestock farmers apply, and that emissions law still had to change. Thomas Schröder, president of the German Animal Welfare Federation, said the law did not improve any animal’s life and that Stall and Stall+Platz sealed systems the federation regarded as contrary to animal-welfare law. A YouGov poll for the federation found that about 40 per cent of respondents thought pigs in the Stall tier regularly had straw, and about a third thought the label also covered transport, slaughter and breeding.

Origin labelling moved separately. On 24 May 2023 the cabinet approved a draft extending compulsory origin information to unpackaged fresh, chilled and frozen pork, poultry, sheep and goat meat from 2024; Nick represented Özdemir at the meeting. He called the ordinance a first step, taken because the [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission) had not proposed an EU-wide rule. Udo Hemmerling of the farmers’ association said it should start at the place of birth, cover processed products and catering, and be linked to the husbandry label.

On the Common Agricultural Policy, Nick told *Agra-Europe* in May 2023 that food security was no reason to postpone climate, soil and species protection, and that subsidies should pay for public goods rather than flat area payments, which she said landlords could build into rents. She added that livestock farmers were delaying investment until the direction was clear, and that money for the conversion of husbandry was not yet secured. On pesticides she was more cautious: at a German Raiffeisen Association reception in Berlin on 7 September 2022 she said the Commission’s proposed sustainable-use regulation would not come in that severity, and that Germany’s many sensitive areas would not be copied one-for-one into EU law.

In January 2024, after the Commission cleared the state aid, Özdemir presented a federal programme for converting pig housing, with one billion euros as start-up funding for barns and part of the extra running costs. He said that exceeded what earlier governments had provided, but was only a beginning and still needed a lasting scheme of the sort proposed by the Borchert Commission. By March the ministry reported the first applications, mostly from smaller holdings in southern Germany.

### Farmers’ protests and the end of the ministry

After a judgment of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), the coalition’s 2024 budget plans included ending the agricultural-diesel refund of 21.48 cents a litre and the vehicle-tax exemption for farm and forestry vehicles. The proposals brought large protests and were disputed inside the coalition. On 4 January 2024 Scholz, Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner kept the vehicle-tax exemption, citing the bureaucracy of abolishing it, and cut the diesel relief by 40 per cent in 2024 and by a further 30 per cent in each of 2025 and 2026, so that fuel used in 2026 would draw no subsidy. Refunds for 2023 consumption stayed unchanged. Özdemir said a disproportionate burden had been averted and that some protests had gone too far. Rukwied called the revision only a first step, said both cuts still had to be withdrawn, and confirmed an action week and a large demonstration in Berlin on 15 January.

On 18 January 2024 Nick told the *Westdeutsche Zeitung* that the original decision had been “simply wrong” and that farmers had been “right to protest”, because it would have hit them very hard and, for some, threatened their existence. She pointed to the green number plates and the three-year taper as the correction, said savings had to be predictable, and rejected violence and talk of overthrow while calling peaceful demonstrations a sign of a living democracy. Low incomes, farm closures and the pressure to “grow or go”, she said, were older than the coalition, and cutting bureaucracy should not mean cutting environmental or climate protection.

She remained in office through the caretaker period. On 6 May 2025, as the Merz government took over the ministry, she described herself as the outgoing state secretary, congratulated Merz, and said she did not support his politics or most of the coalition agreement but would take up the opposition role.

## Bundestag work since 2025

Nick returned to the 21st Bundestag after the federal election of 23 February 2025, elected on the state list of Alliance 90/The Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia and again a candidate in constituency 104, Mettmann II. Her constituency office is at Johannes-Flintrop-Straße 6 in Mettmann. On 6 May 2025 President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed Alois Rainer of the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) federal minister for agriculture, food and *Heimat*, succeeding Cem Özdemir. Rainer swore in Silvia Breher and Martina Englhardt-Kopf as parliamentary state secretaries, replacing the ministerial team under which Nick had held that office. The Bundestag lists her in the new parliament as a full member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat and of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering, as *Obfrau* of the sport committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Health.

### Agriculture committee and spokesperson role

The agriculture committee, 30 full members, was constituted on 21 May 2025. Under Bundestag vice-president [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz), [Hermann Färber](/people/hermann-farber) of the Christian Democratic Union was again elected chair. The Greens' members were [Karl Bär](/people/karl-bar), [Zoe Mayer](/people/zoe-mayer), Nick and [Niklas Wagener](/people/niklas-wagener); Bär is also deputy chair. The Green parliamentary group lists Nick as its spokesperson for agricultural policy. She said on 22 August 2025 that the group had given her the task; the *taz* identified her by that title on 11 September.

In opposition she criticised the early end of the federal programme for restructuring livestock farming, introduced in 2024 under Özdemir and at first limited to pigs. On 11 September 2025 the *taz* reported that Rainer's ministry would take the last applications for subsidies toward new or converted housing, such as barns with outdoor access, only until the end of April 2026, and that aid for the extra running costs of higher-welfare husbandry would end in 2028. Funding for more animal-friendly pig housing was to move into the joint federal-state task for agricultural structure and coastal protection (GAK). Rainer called programmes that failed to deliver a "placebo". *top agrar* reported 271 applications for investment aid and 413 for running-cost support, against budgets he put at €200 million in 2025 and €278 million in 2026. Nick told the *taz* that a shift into the GAK was not a programme of its own, that state co-financing was often not secure, and that Rainer promised planning certainty while delivering the opposite. She told *top agrar* the transfer was financially and structurally unsound, would add bureaucracy and played with livelihoods already under pressure; calling the scheme a placebo was, she said, a further slap in the face.

In a 2 December 2025 *top agrar* interview she called the early exit a huge mistake: applications existed even where money had not been paid out, and GAK money was not reserved for livestock. She found Rainer personally likeable and said the restored agricultural-diesel rebate helped farms in the short run, but called it no answer to the future; a gradual exit from fossil diesel would have been better. On labelling she said the Greens' line was fewer animals, kept better and sold at better prices. She backed a revision of the Animal Husbandry Labelling Act if it came in time, preferred a first step with fresh pork, and said trusted mandatory labels could close the gap between stated willingness to pay and the checkout. In October 2026 *agrarheute* reported a third postponement, from the previous government's date of 1 August 2025 to 1 October 2027, after the European Commission objected on free-movement grounds.

On the Common Agricultural Policy after 2027 she said the first and second pillars should remain, with EU minimum standards, a dedicated farm budget, rural-development money, a stronger green architecture and simpler administration, and that nature conservation had to pay for farmers. In July 2026 she told *agrarzeitung* that Germany's role in European farm policy was far too weak. When the Bundestag on 15 October 2026 exempted fully certified organic farms from several "good agricultural and environmental condition" rules (GLÖZ 1 and 3 to 7), *agrarheute* quoted her welcoming that about 36,700 organic farms would have to show environmental performance only once, while warning that simplification was in places being confused with dropping standards such as grassland protection and crop rotation. She said she expected Rainer to press for a post-2027 CAP tied to EU-wide environmental, climate and animal-welfare standards and to payment for extra services.

### Sport, volunteering and health

The Committee on Sport and Volunteering was constituted the same day, with 14 full members. [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) of the Social Democratic Party was elected chair; a deputy had not yet been chosen. The Greens' full members were Nick and [Tina Winklmann](/people/tina-winklmann). Nick is the group's *Obfrau*, a coordinating role distinct from the chair. Abgeordnetenwatch describes the committee's field as funding for grassroots and elite sport, major events, association law, doping, sports facilities, broadcasting rights, tax treatment of large events and disability sport, together with volunteering and the conditions for civic engagement.

On 4 December 2025 she spoke on a joint CDU/CSU, SPD and Green motion (Drucksache 21/3029) backing a German bid for the Summer Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. Citing children at a club outside Berlin, she said the Games were more than medals and that school sports clubs and everyday activity had to be strengthened, because movement was a basis of life. A bid could, she argued, drive accessible, energy-efficient sports facilities, emission-free public transport, climate protection and fair work, with diversity, inclusion and democracy at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) and with responsibility in light of 1936 and 1972. The plenary referred the motion to committee and, with Green votes, rejected an AfD motion for a 2038 Winter Olympics bid on the sport committee's recommendation.

Her health assignment in this term is the deputy seat on the health committee. Neither the Bundestag nor the Green group lists a separate health spokespersonship beside the agriculture brief and the sport-committee *Obfrau* function. Her plenary argument that everyday movement is a basis of life is the documented link, in this term, between that sport remit and health.

## Shareholdings and outside income

### Voith and family companies

Under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), a member of the Bundestag must notify the President of the last occupation, paid side activities, posts in companies, public bodies, associations and foundations, company holdings, and agreements about future work or benefits. Since 19 October 2021 those duties have been in the Act’s eleventh section. Income above 1,000 euro a month, or 3,000 euro a year, is published to the cent with the member’s biography. The mandate is meant to remain central, while outside work is generally allowed. Holdings in companies are reportable from 5 percent.

Nick’s return lists her occupation before parliament as managing director of Sahara Vermögensverwaltung GmbH in Karlsruhe. It also records reportable stakes, through that company and through JMV SE & Co. KG of Heidenheim an der Brenz, in Voith GmbH & Co. KGaA and Voith Management GmbH. JMV is shown as holding JMV Management und Verwaltungs SE as well. She is a granddaughter of Hanns Voith. At the company’s 150th anniversary in Heidenheim in July 2017, *Handelsblatt* reported, she spoke for about 40 family shareholders, all his descendants, and said, “Wir sind keine Shareholder, wir sind Bewahrer” (“We are not shareholders, we are custodians”). A family statute bars relatives from executive management, and on the shareholders’ committee the four family members, including her, were in the minority.

In 2012, appointing her to its own supervisory board, University Hospital Ulm described her as managing director of the family company J.M. Voith GbR and as a member of Voith GmbH’s shareholders’ committee and supervisory board. Voith’s 2018 annual report states that the sitting supervisory board’s mandates ended on 6 December 2017, when the board was cut from 20 members to 12, and that she was among the shareholder representatives who left that day and were not re-elected. In November 2024 she wrote that she had given up all offices tied to business activity in 2021. *Die Tageszeitung* reported in April 2023 that she had been a managing director and board member of the holding companies until she became a parliamentary state secretary, and then resigned those posts.

Other holdings on the return, with no distribution amounts, are HaVo AG in Karlsruhe; Andreashof JEREDIN GmbH of Überlingen, with reportable stakes in Rengoldshauser Hof GmbH and Yammi GmbH; Cultura GmbH and Interessengemeinschaft Talhof gemeinnützige GmbH, both of Heidenheim an der Brenz; and Lebendige Landwirtschaft gemeinnützige GmbH in Wülfrath. Posts with no income figure are the foundation council of Stiftung Columban in Urnäsch, the political advisory board of Wirtschaftsvereinigung der Grünen e.V. in Berlin, and the board of trustees of [World Vision](/organizations/world-vision-international) Deutschland e.V. in Friedrichsdorf.

### Disclosed distributions

As published on 29 October 2026, the Bundestag listed four profit distributions: from HaVo AG, 420,590.00 euro for 2025 and 367,595.66 euro for 2026; from JMV SE & Co. KG, 1,386,995.48 euro for 2026; and from Sahara Vermögensverwaltung GmbH, 916,134.59 euro for 2026. No amounts were shown for the agricultural and non-profit holdings.

On 22 June 2026 Die Zeit reported an evaluation by Abgeordnetenwatch and [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) of disclosures since the 2025–2029 term began. Of 630 members, 232 had reported side income or benefits in kind, together more than 10.6 million euro. Nick’s was the highest, about 2.7 million euro from company stakes, as an heir and Voith shareholder. Second was Alexander Engelhard of the Christian Social Union, with 1.5 million euro. Abgeordnetenwatch wrote that the sum did not come from a job but from three companies, two of them holding Voith shares in a group that makes paper machines and hydropower turbines. She told the project she neither worked for the Voith Group nor took part in its operating decisions, and saw no connection with her political work.

A count dated 5 June 2023, covering sums reported since the 2021 election, placed her third, at 1,740,164 euro, behind Sebastian Brehm and Engelhard. Most of it was profit from two companies with Voith stakes. Her office said that, to avoid conflicts of interest, she was not operationally active for the group and did not share in its operating decisions.

### Conflict-of-interest debate

The June 2026 research treated the filings as evidence of possible conflicts and of late or incomplete disclosures, and noted that a register built from members’ own statements is hard to check from outside.

On 18 November 2024 a question on Abgeordnetenwatch cited more than 2.8 million euro, mainly distributions from stakes including the Voith Group, and asked whether that conflicted with her mandate and with the stress Alliance 90/The Greens place on social justice and transparency. She answered on 20 November 2024 that the income had nothing to do with her daily work, that every business office had been given up in 2021, and that publishing the figures under the new rules was how conflicts were brought into the open.

On 20 January 2025 another questioner argued that the lack of an operating role did not secure independence, because a financial stake still created an interest in the firm’s success, and wrote that Voith was not “green” because Voith Hydro had destroyed the Amazon rainforest and a large region. Voith Hydro was among the suppliers for the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu; in 2015 it shipped a 320-tonne turbine runner, built in Manaus, for the plant. Nick replied on 12 February 2025 that her decisions on agriculture, livestock farming and nutrition had nothing to do with the companies she held, and that she did not comment on the company’s affairs. In July and August 2026, asked where the income came from and whether she had paid inheritance tax voluntarily, she again said there was no link between the side income and her political work.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/ophelia-nick