# Ralf Stegner

# Ralf Stegner

Ralf Alexander Stegner (born 2 October 1959 in Bad Dürkheim) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag. Born in Rhineland-Palatinate, he joined the SPD in 1982 and lives in Bordesholm in Schleswig-Holstein. The Bundestag’s biography, based on his own disclosure, lists him as a political scientist, Protestant, married, and the father of three children.

Stegner passed the Abitur in 1978 and from 1980 to 1989 studied political science, history, German and public administration at the University of Freiburg, the University of Oregon in Eugene and [Harvard University](/organizations/harvard-university). He took state examinations in political science and history in 1986 and in German in 1987, and received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard in 1989. In 1992 he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Hamburg.

From 1990 he worked in the social-affairs ministry in Kiel, first as press spokesman and then as head of a staff unit, and he was a state secretary for labour, social affairs and health from 1996 to 1998 and for education, science, research and culture from 1998 to 2003. He was finance minister of Schleswig-Holstein from 2003 to 2005 and interior minister from 2005 to 2008. He sat in the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein from 2005 to 2021 and chaired the SPD group there from 2008 to 2021. In September 2007, as interior minister in the grand coalition under Minister-President Peter Harry Carstensen of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), he announced that he would leave the cabinet the following January, which *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* described as meeting Carstensen’s condition for holding the coalition together. He chaired the Schleswig-Holstein SPD from 2007 to 2019 and was a deputy federal chair of the SPD from 2014 to 2019. In August 2018 the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* interviewed him in that deputy-chair role on whether the SPD could again be what the headline called a left-wing people’s party.

Stegner first entered the Bundestag in 2021, winning the direct mandate in constituency 7, Pinneberg, with 31.2 percent of the first votes. At the 2025 federal election he received 25.0 percent of the first votes and placed behind [Daniel Kölbl](/people/daniel-kolbl) of the CDU; he returned as a member elected from the Schleswig-Holstein state list. In the 21st Bundestag he sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, and he chairs the Subcommittee on Arms Control, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He is a deputy member of the committees on European Union affairs and on the interior, and a deputy member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Ralf Stegner was born on 2 October 1959 in Bad Dürkheim, in the Palatinate of Rhineland-Palatinate, the third of five children of a village innkeeper. His parents kept the inn Goldener Pflug in nearby Maxdorf for fifteen years without a weekly closing day. He has said that the household was not politically active, and not Social Democratic, and that arguments with a more conservative grandfather about history and politics sharpened the interest that later led him to study the subject.

When he left primary school, Rhineland-Palatinate still did not provide free textbooks. In 1969 he therefore could not continue at a Gymnasium in his home state and instead commuted by train across the Rhine to Mannheim, in Baden-Württemberg, a journey later put at about twenty minutes each way and at seven years; he attended the Tulla-Gymnasium there. After the family gave up the inn, his father took over management of a restaurant and the household moved to Emmendingen; a 2008 profile places that restaurant in nearby Freiburg im Breisgau. Stegner took the Abitur in 1978 at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Emmendingen. He has dated a wish to take part in politics to his time as a class or school representative during the chancellorship of [Willy Brandt](/people/willy-brandt). Between the Abitur and university he completed basic military service under conscription.

### University studies

From 1980 to 1987 he studied political science, history and German at the University of Freiburg, including the 1984/85 academic year at the University of Oregon in Eugene. A scholarship from the [Friedrich Ebert Foundation](/organizations/friedrich-ebert-foundation) supported him from 1983 to 1987. He passed the state examination in political science and history in 1986 and in German in 1987. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1982, while at Freiburg, and later said that he had founded the university group of the Young Socialists there.

From 1987 to 1989 he continued as a McCloy Scholar of the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The programme, begun in 1983 and administered by the Studienstiftung, funds a two-year master's course at the Kennedy School for students headed toward public and international organisations; it is named for the former U.S. high commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy. Stegner received the Master of Public Administration in 1989. A 2008 profile reported that he won the Harvard award in competition with applicants educated in diplomatic families, and that some fellow graduates were sceptical of his decision to enter public service rather than management consulting.

### Doctorate

In 1992 the University of Hamburg awarded him a Dr. phil. The dissertation, accepted in the faculty of philosophy and social sciences, is titled *Theatralische Politik made in USA: das Präsidentenamt im Spannungsfeld von moderner Fernsehdemokratie und kommerzialisierter PR-Show* (Theatrical Politics Made in the USA: The Presidency between Modern Television Democracy and a Commercialized Public-Relations Show). LIT Verlag published it the same year in Münster, as volume 2 of the series *Politik & Kultur*, in 457 pages. He finished the doctorate after he had already, in 1990, begun work as a press officer in the labour and social-affairs ministry of Schleswig-Holstein.

## State administration and the finance ministry

### Press office and state secretary

Stegner joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1982. In the summer of 1990, then aged 30, he was hired for the press and public-relations staff of the Schleswig-Holstein ministry of labour and social affairs in Kiel, after an informal walk with Social Minister Günther Jansen at a motorway rest stop in the south of the state. His Bundestag biography lists him as press spokesman of the social ministry from 1990 to 1994 and as head of that ministry's staff unit from 1994 to 1996. Jansen later left office in the "drawer affair," in which, *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* reported, he had kept 40,000 marks in cash for Reiner Pfeiffer, a figure in the Barschel scandal.

In 1996, under Minister-President Heide Simonis, in office since 1993 and confirmed again on 22 May 1996, he became state secretary for labour, social affairs and health, moving in 1998 to education, science, research and culture until 2003. He did not enter the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein until 2005.

### Finance minister, 2003–2005

On 1 March 2003 Simonis appointed him finance minister in a reshuffle of her coalition with Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), replacing Claus Möller in the finance portfolio. Möller had combined finance with energy. Energy was transferred to the economics ministry, and he was to remain temporarily as a minister without portfolio for the merger of the state's Landesbank with its Hamburg counterpart. From 2003, as finance minister, Stegner sat on the supervisory board of HSH Nordbank, formed that year by the merger.

The budget was already under severe strain. In a night sitting in December 2003 the Landtag, with the votes of the SPD, the Greens and the South Schleswig Voters' Association, adopted a 2003 supplementary budget that raised net new borrowing by 629 million euros to 1.2 billion, and a double budget for 2004 and 2005 planning just under 1.3 billion euros of new debt against net expenditure of less than 16 billion for the two years. *taz* put liabilities at almost 20 billion euros and called Schleswig-Holstein the *Flächenland* with the highest debt per resident; annual interest already exceeded 900 million euros, while investment was forecast to fall nearly 300 million short of the interest bill by 2007. Stegner said the government was cutting hard and taking unpopular decisions. The state court of audit disagreed. On 24 April 2004 its vice-president, Klaus Qualen, described a debt trap: more than 6,500 euros of debt per capita, a projected 21 billion euros by the end of 2005 against an annual budget of just under 8 billion, and a coverage gap of almost 400 million euros in the 2004/05 plan. He said net staff cuts were only about 200 posts, that personnel took nearly 40 percent of spending, and that doubling new borrowing in two years was hard to justify as a response to macroeconomic imbalance. Finance state secretary Uwe Döring called the borrowing necessary, citing flat tax revenue and unemployment, and the audit proposals too vague.

The May 2004 tax estimate widened the hole. Stegner reported expected annual shortfalls of 445 to 490 million euros from 2005 through 2007, against a budget of not even 8 billion euros, while 2004 itself showed 19.1 million euros more revenue than planned. He refused a supplementary budget and a spending freeze, called the double budget the right signal, and defined the line as consolidation plus investment in jobs, the economy, infrastructure, education and research. He rejected sharper cuts as a risk to recovery and argued that only labour-market and tax reform could break the cycle of unemployment, lost revenue and social transfers.

The state election of 20 February 2005 ended the red-green majority. On 17 March Simonis failed in four ballots to be re-elected; Landtag president Martin Kayenburg said she would continue only as caretaker, and Stegner was discussed in the SPD as a possible successor. The interregnum ended on 27 April 2005, when the Landtag elected Peter Harry Carstensen of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany minister-president of a CDU–SPD coalition with 54 votes. That afternoon the new cabinet was sworn in: Rainer Wiegard took finance, and Stegner became interior minister.

## Interior minister in the grand coalition

### Appointment and portfolio

The election to the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein on 20 February 2005 left neither camp a majority. Heide Simonis of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) failed in four ballots on 17 March 2005 to be re-elected minister-president, and the SPD agreed a grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). On 27 April 2005 the Landtag in Kiel elected Peter Harry Carstensen (CDU), with 54 of 69 votes, minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein and swore him in the same day. That afternoon Landtag president Martin Kayenburg swore in the cabinet. Stegner, finance minister under Simonis, became interior minister. The deputy minister-president was not Stegner but Ute Erdsiek-Rave, minister for education and women. The SPD held four portfolios and the CDU three besides the minister-presidency.

The ministry covered the state police, public order and the Verfassungsschutz. On 22 February 2007 the Landtag, with the votes of CDU and SPD, widened preventive police powers, including telephone interception, measures touching internet use, and checks on drivers. Stegner said the reform matched technical change and new threats, would not make the state an “Orwellian surveillance state,” and followed rulings of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court). Thilo Weichert, the state’s data-protection commissioner, had called the limits on the right to data protection disproportionate. [Wolfgang Kubicki](/people/wolfgang-kubicki) of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) described the law as “surveillance of everyone” and said he would examine a constitutional complaint; Karl-Martin Hentschel of Alliance 90/The Greens said the powers lacked a factual basis.

On 25 April 2007 Stegner and Verfassungsschutz chief Horst Eger presented the 2006 report: 510 right-wing extremist offences, 173 more than in 2005, and about 1,350 people in that scene, while left-wing offences fell to 118. Stegner said the [National Democratic Party](/organizations/national-democratic-party) of Germany (NPD) was growing more brazen and joining protests against school and district reforms, and that the state had no fixed Islamist structures. From March 2007 he was also state SPD chair, and he sat as an SPD deputy in the Landtag.

### Conflict with Carstensen and resignation

For a year the CDU group had treated Stegner’s departures from coalition lines as provocation. The break was over school-transport costs. On 13 September 2007, at the second reading of an FDP bill to amend the school law (Drucksache 16/1338), CDU floor leader [Johann Wadephul](/people/johann-wadephul) said the partners had agreed that parents should pay one third, as part of offsetting a €120 million cut in municipal financial equalisation, and had disagreed only on whether districts or the Landtag would impose it. Speaking as a deputy, not as minister, Stegner said he would vote against the bill although he shared its aim, because the partner would not have passed the school law in January without “this provision,” and that as state chair he would still campaign to change the deal. The roll-call rejected the bill by 50 votes to 10; Stegner voted no.

Wadephul replied that the one-third share had been linked to tuition fees, which the SPD had refused, not to the school law, and cited former SPD state chair Claus Möller. The day before, he had compared Stegner’s arguments with those of [Gregor Gysi](/people/gregor-gysi) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke). Kubicki called that comparison inapt, and the SPD demanded Wadephul’s resignation. On 14 September Stegner regretted that one unscripted sentence, delivered after he felt accused of lying, could be read as making the transport rule the price of the school law. He said that was not so, but that the January vote had required the transport agreement because the SPD rejected tuition fees, and that the joint government had no alternative.

A press report cited by Der Spiegel said Carstensen that Saturday told the SPD to withdraw its chair from the cabinet and would continue only without him; the party first refused. Dismissal, the Tagesspiegel reported, would have ended the coalition and likely brought an early election. On 17 September in Rendsburg, Carstensen, Wadephul and finance minister Rainer Wiegard met Stegner, faction chair Lothar Hay and Erdsiek-Rave. Stegner announced he would leave on 15 January 2008, saying he did not want to conduct his intended 2010 lead candidacy from office, so he could campaign “as his temperament requires.” Kurt Beck, the federal SPD chair, said the step was to keep the coalition, which Carstensen then said would continue.

On 15 January 2008 Stegner resigned just before the SPD group met, and Carstensen thanked him in cabinet that morning. The group elected him chair by 20 of 29 votes, with six against, two abstentions and one invalid ballot. Hay, faction chair since 1998, became interior minister. Carstensen called him a reliable partner and said Stegner’s departure would have “decidedly positive effects” on the coalition. Stegner said he meant to be the SPD’s lead candidate in 2010.

## Landtag career and election campaigns

### Faction chair and opposition leader

Stegner was a member of the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein from 2005 to 2021. At the election of 20 February 2005 he entered on the state list of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), not by winning a constituency. The SPD took 38.7 percent of the second votes and 29 of 69 seats, just behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on 40.2 percent and 30; turnout was 66.5 percent.

On 15 January 2008 the SPD group in Kiel elected him chair in place of Lothar Hay, who became interior minister in an agreed exchange after the crisis with the CDU. No one stood against him, but the secret ballot split: 20 votes in favour, six against, two abstentions and one invalid paper. He called the result honest and said he still had colleagues to persuade. He held the chair until 2021. After the CDU–SPD government ended in 2009, that office made him the leading figure of the largest opposition group against Minister-President Peter Harry Carstensen, a position he held again from 2017.

### The 2009 election and the 2012 membership vote

An SPD congress in Lübeck on 31 July 2009 named him lead candidate, by 92 of 103 delegate votes, to face Carstensen on 27 September, the day of the federal election. The SPD fell to 25.4 percent and 25 seats. Turnout was 73.6 percent. The CDU led with 31.5 percent and 34 seats; the Free Democratic Party (FDP) won 14.9 percent and 14, Alliance 90/The Greens 12.4 percent and 12, Die Linke 6.0 percent and six, and the South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW) 4.3 percent and four, in a Landtag of 95. In constituency 12, Rendsburg-Süd, near Rendsburg, he lost the direct seat to Hauke Göttsch of the CDU, 27.6 percent (10,918 votes) to 41.7 percent (16,494).

On 27 October 2009 the Landtag reelected Carstensen, 50 votes to 45, to lead a CDU–FDP cabinet. The yes tally exceeded the coalition’s 48 seats. Stegner said an SPD vote for Carstensen could be ruled out, and the Greens, the Left and the SSW also denied supplying the extra support. The seat count, including CDU overhangs not fully offset by compensatory seats, was challenged in the state constitutional court.

For the early 2012 election the SPD counted a binding membership ballot on 26 February 2011. Of 19,171 members, 13,281 voted. Torsten Albig, then mayor of Kiel, won on the first round with 7,394 votes, 57.22 percent of the valid ballots. Stegner, still state and group chair, received 4,154 (32.15 percent). Brigitte Fronzek, mayor of Elmshorn, took 9.09 percent and Mathias Stein 1.28 percent. The state executive proposed Albig for first place on the list; all four candidates had agreed to accept the result.

### Coast coalition years and the 2017 defeat

Stegner chaired the SPD group from outside Albig’s cabinet, then led the opposition again after 2017 and was still the party’s main speaker in the Landtag in the spring of 2021.

On 6 May 2012 the SPD rose to 30.4 percent and 22 seats, narrowly behind the CDU on 30.8 percent and 22. The Greens won 13.2 percent and 10 seats and the SSW 4.6 percent and three; the FDP and the [Pirate Party](/organizations/pirate-party) each took 8.2 percent and six. Turnout was 60.2 percent. In a Landtag of 69, SPD, Greens and SSW therefore had 35 seats, a majority of one. In the redrawn constituency of Rendsburg-Ost, Göttsch again beat Stegner, 40.0 percent (20,446 votes) to 31.9 percent (16,269). On 8 May the group reelected him chair, with 18 votes in favour, two against and two abstentions.

The Landtag elected Albig minister-president on 12 June 2012 with 37 votes. The SPD ministers were Andreas Breitner (interior), Reinhard Meyer (economy and labour), Kristin Alheit (social affairs) and the non-party Waltraud Wende (education). Robert Habeck and Monika Heinold took the Green portfolios, and Anke Spoorendonk justice for the SSW. Stegner was not appointed. He led the SPD group, the largest part of the *Küstenkoalition*, from outside the government for the whole term.

On 7 May 2017, with Albig still minister-president, the SPD fell to 27.3 percent and 21 seats. The CDU took 32.0 percent and 25, the Greens 12.9 percent and 10, the FDP 11.5 percent and nine, [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany 5.9 percent and five—its first seats in Kiel—and the SSW 3.3 percent and three. Turnout was 64.2 percent in a Landtag of 73, and the coast coalition lost its majority. In Rendsburg-Ost, Göttsch defeated Stegner once more, 44.0 percent (21,785 votes) to 31.8 percent (15,741); Stegner returned on the state list.

On 9 May the group reelected him; he said the secret ballot had been unanimous. Albig resigned on 16 May, and an SPD–FDP–Green alternative fell through. Stegner said the SPD, now the largest opposition group, would oppose constructively but with the necessary hardness, and not only against the CDU, and he ruled himself out as the next lead candidate. On 28 June [Daniel Günther](/people/daniel-gunther) of the CDU was elected minister-president with 42 of 73 votes, two fewer than the 44 seats of CDU, Greens and FDP. Habeck and Heinold stayed in office; the SSW left government.

Stegner gave up the group chair on 1 July 2021, after more than 13 years. Serpil Midyatli, state chair since 2019, succeeded him. He kept his seat through the August and September sittings, then moved to the Bundestag; on 27 October 2021 the Landtag swore in Katrin Fedrowitz as the SPD member who replaced him.

## Leadership in the SPD

### State chair in Schleswig-Holstein

Before the state leadership, Stegner was deputy district chair of the SPD in Rendsburg-Eckernförde from 1998 to 2002, after earlier local work in Pinneberg and that district. A congress in Neumünster elected him chair of the Schleswig-Holstein SPD on 24 March 2007 with 89.66 percent. He succeeded Claus Möller while interior minister in the state’s grand coalition.

He was returned unopposed at Elmshorn on 21 March 2009, with 92 of 101 votes (91.1 percent). The only challenge came on 9 April 2011 in Husum: after a chaotic count forced a repeat ballot, he beat Uwe Döring, a former state justice minister, by 135 votes to 77. At a later Neumünster congress he took 81.9 percent, above the 78.2 percent of 2013. Ahead of the Landtag election on 7 May 2017, a congress in Lübeck gave him 192 of 211 votes (91.4 percent), with 12 against, his strongest result in the office.

On 3 September 2018 he told a short-notice press conference in Kiel that he would not stand at the end of March 2019. Criticism had followed that spring’s local-election losses. He backed Serpil Midyatli, deputy chair of the Landtag group, and said he would keep the group leadership. Midyatli, the only candidate and the first woman in the post, was elected on 30 March 2019 in Norderstedt with 191 of 212 votes (90.09 percent). Stegner had held the chair for twelve years.

### Deputy federal chair

At the federal congress in Karlsruhe in November 2005 he entered the Parteivorstand in a second ballot, with 315 votes. The Hamburg congress of October 2007 returned him in a second ballot with 357 votes. On 5 November 2007 the executive elected him one of ten additional members of the presidium, enlarged that day from 13 to 16; the chair, deputy chairs, general secretary and treasurer belonged to it by statute. His later Bundestag biography dates that presidium seat from 2007 to 2019.

An extraordinary congress in Berlin on 26 January 2014, held before the European election, raised the number of deputy chairs from five to six and elected him with 78.3 percent. He had wanted the general secretaryship. Because chair Sigmar Gabriel and the Bundestag group leader were both men, that post went to Yasmin Fahimi, on 88.5 percent. Reports placed him on the party’s left. He called for majorities to the left of the CDU and the CSU, for contacts with Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke, and for talks with the FDP if it changed course.

On 11 December 2015 delegates re-elected him with 77.3 percent (461 yes votes out of 596 valid ballots), the lowest share among the six deputies. On 7 December 2017, the day [Martin Schulz](/people/martin-schulz) was confirmed as chair with 81.9 percent, Stegner received 61.6 percent (365 of 593 valid votes); only [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz), at 59.2 percent, was lower. He was still a deputy in August 2019, when the party was already seeking a successor to Andrea Nahles, who had resigned as chair.

### The 2019 co-leadership bid

The ballot used six woman-and-man tickets. Stegner ran with Gesine Schwan, chair of the SPD basic-values commission; they notified the interim leadership in mid-August 2019. Tagesschau described him as clearly on the party’s left, and Schwan — a co-founder of the Seeheimer Kreis who still met that group — as someone who called herself a leftist. Both wanted to shift the SPD left and treated cooperation with the Greens and Die Linke as a longer-term prospect. The *taz* called him a moderate figure on that wing: skeptical at first of the November 2017 turn back to a grand coalition, he then defended governing again with [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)’s Union.

Of 425,630 members, 53.28 percent voted in the first round. None of the six tickets won a majority of 213,693 valid votes. [Klara Geywitz](/people/klara-geywitz) and Scholz, then finance minister, led with 48,473 votes (22.68 percent). [Saskia Esken](/people/saskia-esken) and Norbert Walter-Borjans, a former North Rhine-Westphalian finance minister, were second on 44,967 (21.04 percent); *Die Welt* placed them on the left. Christina Kampmann and [Michael Roth](/people/michael-roth) took 16.28 percent, [Nina Scheer](/people/nina-scheer) and Karl Lauterbach 14.63 percent, and Petra Köpping and [Boris Pistorius](/people/boris-pistorius), then interior minister of Lower Saxony, 14.61 percent. Schwan and Stegner were last, with 20,583 votes (9.63 percent).

From 19 to 29 November, turnout was 54.09 percent. Esken and Walter-Borjans received 114,995 votes (53.06 percent) and Geywitz and Scholz 98,246 (45.33 percent). Geywitz had argued for staying in government. On 6 December the congress elected Esken with 75.9 percent and Walter-Borjans with 89.2 percent.

Stegner did not stand again as deputy. On 7 December he sought an ordinary executive seat, received 165 votes against a first-round threshold of 290, and withdrew; Berlin’s governing mayor Michael Müller did the same after 168. He left the federal executive, and the deputy chair he had held since 2014, and remained leader of the Landtag group.

## Member of the Bundestag

### Elections in Pinneberg

In December 2020 the SPD district association in Pinneberg nominated Stegner as its candidate for Bundestag constituency 7. At a constituency conference in Schenefeld he defeated Mats Hansen, a town councillor from Elmshorn, by 64 votes to 28.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 Stegner won the direct mandate. The Federal Returning Officer recorded 59,298 first votes for the SPD, 31.2 percent, ahead of the CDU on 26.2 percent (49,710 votes); turnout in the constituency was 80.3 percent. The Bundestag’s record for the 20th electoral term lists him as directly elected for constituency 007, Pinneberg, in Schleswig-Holstein.

For the early election of 23 February 2025 the state SPD, meeting in Neumünster on 7 December 2024, placed him third on the Schleswig-Holstein list, behind [Tim Klüssendorf](/people/tim-klussendorf) and Nina Scheer. In Pinneberg his first-vote share fell to 25.0 percent (49,714 votes, 6.2 points below 2021). Daniel Kölbl of the CDU won the constituency with 31.8 percent (63,232 votes); turnout was 84.6 percent. Stegner nevertheless entered the 21st Bundestag through list place 3. He described the evening as a clear defeat for his party in the constituency and nationally.

### Committees and the Afghanistan inquiry

In the 20th Bundestag Stegner was a full member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs) and of its subcommittee on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, where he was the SPD group’s spokesperson (Obmann). He was a deputy member of the Committee on European Union Affairs and of the Committee on the Interior and Community. On 24 March 2022 the Bundestag elected him to the Parliamentary Control Panel, which supervises the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the [Military Counterintelligence Service](/organizations/military-counterintelligence-service) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution; he received 448 votes in favour, 142 against and 32 abstentions. He remained on the panel for the rest of that term.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, a deputy member of the EU affairs and interior committees, and chair of the subcommittee on arms and proliferation control, non-proliferation and international disarmament. In June 2025 the SPD group did not nominate him again for the control panel. Group chair [Matthias Miersch](/people/matthias-miersch) said the group preferred to send legal and interior politicians, and named [Sonja Eichwede](/people/sonja-eichwede) and [Daniel Baldy](/people/daniel-baldy). Stegner, who had been criticised over a peace-policy manifesto and a meeting with Russian representatives, said that with only two SPD seats it made sense to cover interior and defence policy, and that the change also avoided timetable clashes with the human-rights committee.

On 8 July 2022 the Bundestag set up the 1st committee of inquiry of the 20th term, on a motion of the governing groups and the CDU/CSU. The AfD voted against and Die Linke abstained. The mandate covered the Bundeswehr withdrawal from Afghanistan and the evacuation of German staff, locally employed Afghans and other affected people, from the Doha agreement between the United States and the Taliban on 29 February 2020 until 30 September 2021. The committee constituted itself the same day under [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas). On the proposal of the largest group, and at the Greens’ request, Stegner was elected chair by secret ballot with 11 votes in favour and one abstention. It then had 12 full members, apportioned by group strength: three each from the SPD and the CDU/CSU, two each from the Greens and the FDP, and one each from the AfD and Die Linke.

Public evidence ended on 5 December 2024 in the Paul Löbe House, with former chancellor Angela Merkel as the last witness. She called the evacuation from Kabul a “furchtbares Scheitern” while maintaining that German participation in the military mission had been justified. Olaf Scholz, finance minister and vice-chancellor in 2021, had given evidence on 14 November 2024. The collapse of the governing coalition shortened the electoral term, and the Bundestag’s account of Merkel’s hearing said the report was to be delivered before the February 2025 election.

On 18 February 2025 the committee published a preliminary final report of more than 1,400 pages, Bundestag printed paper 20/14700, and handed it to Vice President [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz). Özoğuz said that, despite the shortened legislative period, the committee had completed its work. Die Linke had left the committee after losing parliamentary-group status following the split that produced the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht). In the report, the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP drew similar conclusions: Germany had no influence on the US negotiations with the Taliban, interdepartmental crisis coordination and situation assessment had been inadequate, and the procedure for locally employed staff had failed in important respects, while the military withdrawal itself had gone smoothly. The AfD dissented, rejected the mission as a whole, and accused Stegner of having obstructed its questioning of witnesses.

### Parliamentary Left and later party roles

Within the SPD Bundestag group Stegner belongs to the Parliamentary Left (Parlamentarische Linke) and sits on its steering circle (Leitungskreis).

On 13 May 2025, at the annual general meeting in Cologne, members of the Erhard-Eppler-Kreis elected him chair, succeeding Ernst-Ulrich von Weizsäcker. The circle, which also uses the name “Frieden 2.0”, is a social-democratic working group on peace policy that Erhard Eppler founded in 2019. Its letterhead lists Stegner and former minister of state Gernot Erler as chairs.

## Foreign policy and arms exports

### Israel and the Middle East

In September 2014, as deputy chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Stegner told *Welt am Sonntag* that Germany should not arm areas of tension or dictators. “What about Saudi Arabia? What about Qatar? I also ask: What about Israel?” Weapons in the Middle East, he said, did not solve the problem. The remarks appeared as a German-built submarine left the shipyard for Israel. The Defence Ministry condemned the remarks. Deidre Berger of the [American Jewish Committee](/organizations/american-jewish-committee)’s Berlin office called it “particularly strange,” before the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations, that he would “put the German-Israeli relationship to the test in such a basic way.” A commentary in the *Jüdische Allgemeine*, headlined “Gefährliche Dampfplauderei,” accused him of setting Israel beside dictatorships such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and reported that he then wrote on Facebook that he stood by Angela Merkel’s sentence: Israel’s security was part of German reason of state.

After the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 he paired that commitment with criticism of the war in the Gaza Strip. In January 2024 he told *taz* that he and 19 other SPD members of the Bundestag, with Canadian and U.S. lawmakers, had asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz, [Joe Biden](/people/env-person-joe-biden) and [Justin Trudeau](/people/justin-trudeau) for an immediate ceasefire, hostage releases, humanitarian aid and a two-state solution. Germany, he said, “must always stand on the side of humanity,” with “a clear commitment against antisemitism and terrorism.” “The security of Israel can never be up for discussion,” yet Berlin could not accept a government that “permanently violates humanitarian principles.” He exempted defensive arms for Israel, but not tanks or tank ammunition.

In May 2024, after the Biden administration threatened to limit weapons for a large offensive in Rafah, he told *Der Spiegel* that the American line was right for Germany: arms against Hamas, but none for operations “without regard for the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian civilian population” or “in favour of radical settlers in the West Bank,” and “considerably more” diplomacy. In April 2026 he told n-tv that Germany was responsible for Israel’s right to exist and had to oppose antisemitism and terror against Israel, but that nothing improved “if I let Palestinian children starve,” “if I bomb civilian areas,” or “if I permit a settlement policy that violates international law” and accept “international law à la carte.” Law “applies to everyone and everywhere,” he said; selectivity destroyed credibility, “the lesson of the Nazi era.”

### Russia, Ukraine and unofficial dialogue

On 3 October 2024 Stegner spoke in Berlin at a “Nie wieder Krieg” demonstration against arms deliveries, whose speakers included Sahra Wagenknecht.

He called the war in Ukraine a war of aggression by Russia that brought death and destruction, said Ukraine had a right to self-defence, and defended German air defence because it saved lives. Whistles and boos answered him. He had told RBB Inforadio that he would not leave “peace” to those who meant Ukrainian capitulation and support for [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin). Afterwards he told the *Rheinische Post* that the lines “nevertheless had to be said.” The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* noted that he had been in Ukraine at the end of August.

When Berlin agreed in January 2023 to send Leopard 2 tanks and former ambassador [Andriy Melnyk](/people/andriy-melnyk) asked for jets, Stegner wrote: “Where is all this leading? What comes after the battle tanks?” On n-tv he asked whether warships or troops came next. The next day he told *Spiegel* that more offensive weapons might widen the war rather than end it. “We may be talking about a long war,” he said. “That means death, expulsion, rape, destruction.” Ukraine had to be helped, but “we do not have identical interests.”

On the Taurus KEPD 350 he told *Markus Lanz* in February 2024 that Scholz’s refusal was “right and important,” so Germany would not become a party to the war, and called the row a “fetishistic debate,” preferring air defence and ammunition. To *taz* he said Putin could not be forced to the table by force, Ukraine could not win a long war, and diplomacy, including through China, should not be dismissed as appeasement.

In April 2025 he met Kremlin-linked Russians at the Four Seasons in Baku, Azerbaijan, among them former prime minister and Gazprom chairman Viktor Zubkov and Valery Fadeyev, the EU-sanctioned chair of Putin’s human-rights council. *Kontraste* and *Die Zeit* called it the third such gathering since April 2024, concerned with the future of the Petersburg Dialogue, the forum [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder) and Putin had founded in 2001 and which the German side had dissolved after the invasion. Ronald Pofalla and Matthias Platzeck also attended. The Foreign Office said the government had neither ordered nor planned the meetings; Stegner said he had travelled privately and paid his own way. Sabine Fischer of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik said the contact undercut sanctions and signalled a wish to normalize ties. Green co-leader [Franziska Brantner](/people/franziska-brantner) called it “shadow diplomacy” (“Schattendiplomatie”) next to the Ukraine support stressed by Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz), and noted Stegner’s seat on the intelligence-oversight body. [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) called the episode “utterly impossible”; [Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann](/people/marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann) said he should not be renominated; Michael Roth called it “the wrong meeting at the wrong time in the wrong place.” A participants’ statement, reported via the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*, said contacts should continue, that nobody had a negotiating mandate, and that responsible politicians — Scholz included, the paper reported — had known.

In June 2025 he was an initial signatory of an SPD peace-circles paper calling for defence paired with arms control and talks with Russia. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius called it a “denial of reality.” Stegner told ZDF that Russia “cannot be defeated militarily,” that air defence for Ukraine was not excluded, and that calling him a “friend of Putin” was nonsense.

## Public controversies

### HSH Nordbank supervision and board fees

As finance minister and then interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Stegner sat on the supervisory board of the state-backed HSH Nordbank from 2003 until he left the cabinet on 15 January 2008, and until 2005 also on its risk and investment committee. The seat went with the ministerial office. After losses forced rescue support from Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, that role became a campaign issue in 2009.

In July 2009 NDR, citing a confidential KPMG report, said the risk committee had been told of a “Schnellankaufverfahren” that shortened complex credit decisions to a few days, with a veto only above €100 million on some deals. Investments handled that way were linked to losses in the billions. NDR noted Stegner had sat on the committee until 2005; he cancelled an interview and pointed to the parliamentary inquiries. In August *Focus*, as reported by *Die Welt*, described minutes of 17 December 2003 in which Stegner and Hamburg economics senator Gunnar Uldall (CDU) were present when the board approved a Cayman Islands branch at a stated cost of €60,000. The magazine said vehicles there later carried part of the business that fed the crisis, outside ordinary German supervision. On 7 March 2005, it added, the risk committee was shown a model that “for reasons of efficiency” dropped explicit credit resolutions. Stegner declined to comment; the SPD called the attacks “unglaubwürdig” and “ziemlich verlogen.”

His defence was that ministers could not run the bank. On Deutschlandfunk on 25 February 2009 he said, “Das operative Geschäft machen Vorstände,” and “Das kann Politik im Detail überhaupt gar nicht.” At the Landtag inquiry in Kiel he recalled no meeting that described the bank as in trouble, cited an unqualified audit opinion for 2007, and said neither he nor successor Lothar Hay had pushed riskier business. CDU member Tobias Koch called that “eine unglaubwürdige Flucht aus der Verantwortung.”

Fees produced a second dispute. For 2007, while interior minister, he was paid €14,375, but only in 2008, after he had become faction chair. Ministers could keep at most €5,550, and prosecutors said the cap still applied after they left office. Stegner had counted the year the money arrived, citing answers from the interior and finance ministries. In February 2010, after the letters reached the press, he called that a “Rechtsirrtum,” said “Ich wollte keinen Tag einen Euro zu viel haben,” and paid €8,825 to the state. He also said he would not keep about €1,700 for 2008, legally allowed but disputed because he had left the board in January, and he spoke of “schmutzige Tricks” over the leak. Wolfgang Kubicki of the FDP called him “der Nonnenmacher der SPD.” Kiel prosecutors opened a fraud case in March 2010. On 2 April senior prosecutor Manfred Schulze-Ziffer dropped it: Stegner had neither deliberately failed to remit the excess nor intended unlawful enrichment.

### Rhetoric, the AfD and coalition disputes

*Der Spiegel* treated the style as part of the CDU–SPD fight. In July 2009 it called the nickname “Roter Rambo” fixed among opponents and noted that deputy state CDU chair Torsten Geerdts had called him a “Kotzbrocken.” Stegner said he might soften his television manner but not the line—“Mit mir gibt es die SPD in Schleswig-Holstein nur selbstbewusst”—and needled Minister-President Peter Harry Carstensen’s fitness for office.

Remarks on the Alternative for Germany drew a further row. In October 2015 he told *Die Welt* that Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke was “von Neonazis nicht mehr zu unterscheiden,” that the party was nearing the far-right NPD, and that such figures were “ein Fall für Verfassungsschutz und Staatsanwaltschaft.” He said he saw many overlaps with Pegida, which he called the “Pegidioten.” In March 2016 he promised a “beinharten Kampf,” while saying voters were “mitnichten alle rechts” and should not be insulted. In the 2016 book *AfD: Bekämpfen oder ignorieren* he wrote that anyone who reaches “in den Misthaufen,” for example by coalitions with the right, “riecht auch danach,” and he rejected a “Schlaftabletten-Wahlkampf für Große Koalitionen.”

On 8 May 2016 he posted that one must attack “Positionen und Personal der Rechtspopulisten” because they were “gestrig, intolerant, rechtsaußen und gefährlich.” AfD officials in Bavaria and Ostprignitz-Ruppin filed criminal complaints, reading “Personal” as incitement amid attacks on members. An SPD spokesman told *Focus* the party would answer only after checking the facts. In December, after the killing of student Maria L. in Freiburg, police-union chair Rainer Wendt told *Bild* such victims would not exist had Germany prepared for dangers he tied to mass immigration. Stegner called that “politisch widerlich und dümmer als die Polizei erlaubt,” and said a general suspicion of other refugees was “eines Rechtsstaates unwürdig.”

## Publications and private life

### Dissertation and later writing

Stegner's doctorate at the University of Hamburg, a 1992 Dr. phil. in the Bundestag biography, was published that year by LIT Verlag in Münster and Hamburg as *Theatralische Politik made in USA: Das Präsidentenamt im Spannungsfeld von moderner Fernsehdemokratie und kommerzialisierter PR-Show*. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek catalogues the 457-page book as volume 2 of *Politik & Kultur* (ISBN 3-89473-375-6) and as the Hamburg dissertation. Its subject headings are the United States presidency, election campaigns and the mass media, and the subtitle places the office between television-age democracy and commercialized public relations.

Shorter pieces followed. In 2012 *Recht und Politik* carried his "pro" note, headed "Ein Verbot setzt ein deutliches Zeichen!", beside Horst Meier's reply, on another attempt to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany. The national bibliography lists him among the authors of *AfD – Bekämpfen oder ignorieren? Intelligente Argumente von 14 Demokraten* (Kellner Verlag, Bremen, 2016), edited by Christian Nawrocki and Armin Fuhrer. In *Wie viel Glaube braucht das Land?* (Herder, 2017), edited by Beate Bäumer and Frank Zabel after Schleswig-Holstein's Landtag missed by one vote a constitutional reference to God, his chapter is "Parlamentsentscheidungen im Spannungsfeld von Gewissen und Macht".

Guest commentary has tracked disputes in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. On 28 September 2018 in *Vorwärts*, then a deputy federal chair, he called an unconditional basic income at best a misleading utopia and at worst a Trojan horse for neoliberal cuts, because equal payments ignore need. On 9 November 2019 in *Der Spiegel* he and Gesine Schwan wrote that Olaf Scholz and [Kevin Kühnert](/people/kevin-kuhnert) would have to cooperate whoever won the runoff, and that the party should drop old rituals of gaining and keeping power.

On 11 June 2025 *Der Spiegel* reported a "Manifest" by prominent [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats), among them Stegner and former group chair [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich), opposing the leadership's and the federal government's foreign and security line. The paper, which the magazine said it had seen, called for talks with Moscow, opposed new US intermediate-range missiles in Germany, labeled higher NATO spending "irrational", and warned that rearmament rhetoric would worsen relations with Russia. Stegner and Gernot Erler then co-edited *Gemeinsame Sicherheit heute! Manifest für den Frieden* (Westend, Neu-Isenburg; the publisher gives 28 September 2026 as the publication date). The national bibliography records 202 pages and ISBN 978-3-98791-382-2. In the Frankfurter Rundschau on 23 September 2026 he said the book extended those theses, urged more diplomacy toward Russia, and did not rule out Gerhard Schröder as a channel to Vladimir Putin. The Berliner Zeitung published his essay "Wider den Zeitgeist der Kriegstüchtigkeit" on 28 August 2025, on the world after Russia's war against Ukraine; the 2025 disclosure lists €1,428 gross from the publisher BV Berliner Tageszeitungen GmbH.

### Family and affiliations

The Bundestag biography, from his own disclosure, lists him as Protestant, married and the father of three children. *Die Welt* wrote in March 2005 that his wife Sibylle, a teacher and the mother of the three children, then led the SPD branch in Bordesholm. The *Hamburger Abendblatt* in May 2010 called him a husband and the father of three sons from Bordesholm, and NDR in February 2025 reported that he lives there, in Rendsburg-Eckernförde.

The biography records membership since 1980 of the education union GEW, the public-services union ÖTV and ver.di, and of the SPD since 1982. He has been on the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's scholarship selection committee since 1995 and on its *Kuratorium* since 2016; the foundation's trustee list includes him, and both posts are disclosed as unpaid. From 13 May 2025 the disclosure names him unpaid chair of the Erhard-Eppler-Kreis, and from 1 January 2026 unpaid deputy chair of the Gesellschaft für Politik und Bildung Schleswig-Holstein.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/ralf-stegner