# Sahra Mirow

# Sahra Mirow

Sahra Mirow (born 10 January 1984 in Lübeck) is a German politician of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke). She has sat in the Bundestag since the chamber constituted the 21st electoral term on 25 March 2025, having been returned on place 1 of the Baden-Württemberg state list after standing in constituency 274, Heidelberg. Since 2018 she has been a state spokesperson (Landessprecherin) of Die Linke in Baden-Württemberg, and from 2014 until 2025 she was a city councillor and leader of the party's group on the Heidelberg council.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own statements, records that she is unmarried, studied East Asian studies and archaeology, and worked as a research assistant (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin). The same disclosure lists her last job before the mandate as research assistant to the member of parliament Gökay Akbulut in Berlin. By early 2025 the regional broadcaster SWR described her as having moved from Lübeck to Heidelberg to study and as having been in the party for about fifteen years.

On 21 December 2024 a party congress in Leinfelden-Echterdingen elected her to the head of the state list with 83 percent of the vote; she said she wanted to be a voice for a right to housing and for a rent cap. In the federal election of 23 February 2025, Die Linke took 13,225 first votes (7.1 percent) and 18,830 second votes (10.1 percent) in the Heidelberg constituency, which remained without a directly elected member because the plurality winner lacked sufficient second-vote coverage. Statewide the party received 429,484 second votes (6.8 percent) and six list seats; the state returning officer's list of those elected named Mirow first, then Luigi Pantisano, Gökay Akbulut, Vinzenz Glaser, Anne Zerr and Marcel Bauer.

In parliament she is an ordinary member and her faction's spokesperson (Obfrau) on the committee for housing, urban development, construction and municipalities, a deputy member of the committee for the environment, climate protection, nature conservation and nuclear safety, an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, chair of the German–Nordic parliamentary group and deputy chair of the German–Japanese parliamentary group. During the 2025 campaign she told SWR that Die Linke wanted a large public investment programme in schools, hospitals and a climate-friendly conversion of the economy, financed by raising the top rate of income tax from 42 to 53 percent, a 75 percent rate on the very rich and a revived wealth tax, and that the constitutional debt brake should be abolished.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Sahra Mirow was born on 10 January 1984 in Lübeck, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The Integrated Authority File records the same year and birthplace and lists Heidelberg as her place of activity. The Bundestag biography, which is based on the member's own information, also states that she is unmarried.

She writes that she was born and grew up in Lübeck and moved south to study only after the Abitur. No published account names the school or the year of the examination.

Interviews given before the 2021 state election in Baden-Württemberg are the main public source for how she has described that upbringing. In a portrait by Susanne Veil in *Kontext:Wochenzeitung* of 3 March 2021, Mirow said she came from "not particularly affluent circumstances" (*nicht so betuchte Verhältnisse*): her parents had worked a great deal and earned little. She said the economic distance from children of wealthier families became apparent to her at Gymnasium, and that the contrast weighed on her sense of justice. A profile in the *Schwäbische Zeitung* on 13 February 2021 reported a related account. She described social inequality while growing up in what she called a precarious part of the city, where hardly any of her primary-school classmates went on to Gymnasium, and she said she was the first academic in her family.

### University studies

The *Schwäbische Zeitung* wrote that her studies had brought her to Baden-Württemberg about fifteen years before that February 2021 interview, and that she remained in Heidelberg after finishing them. Her Bundestag biography states that she studied East Asian studies (*Ostasienwissenschaften*) and archaeology. Veil's portrait says she moved to Heidelberg in order to study those subjects, and the *Schwäbische Zeitung* reports the same course there, at Heidelberg University, ending in a completed qualification (*Abschluss*). On abgeordnetenwatch.de her professional qualification is given as sinologist (*Sinologin*). In the note published there in her own words, she wrote that she had come "from the far north" (*aus dem hohen Norden*) to Heidelberg in order to study. These accounts name the subjects. They do not record a degree title, a year of graduation, or a thesis.

Veil also places the beginning of Mirow's party-political course in the Heidelberg student years. Mirow said she had taken part in strikes and demonstrations there, including against the [Iraq War](/facts/iraq-war) and against Hartz IV, and that those conflicts clarified her orientation. In that account, Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) had lost their profile on peace policy and the Social Democratic Party its social profile, so she opted for what she called the unambiguous choice: a party she regarded as consistent, and as unwilling to discard half its programme in order to enter government.

## Professional career

Before her own mandate, Sahra Mirow’s documented employment was as a wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin for members of the Bundestag from Die Linke. Members hire such staff to support their parliamentary work; the administration pays the salaries directly to the employees rather than handing the money to the member. Candidate notices used that job title from the Heidelberg notice of 27 January 2016 through the notice of 29 January 2025. Those notices, and the biographies that repeat the title, give no contract date, salary, or description of her duties. The Bundestag states that its biographical entries rest on the members’ own information.

### Constituency staff in Mannheim

The Heidelberg constituency returning officer’s notice of 27 January 2016, admitting candidates for that year’s Landtag election, listed Mirow, then living in Heidelberg, as a wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin. In December 2016, applying for a promising place on Die Linke’s Baden-Württemberg list for the 2017 Bundestag election, she named the employer in the state party’s *Landesinfo*: “Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin bei Michael Schlecht, MdB.”

Michael Schlecht sat for Die Linke from 2009 to 2017. A Volkswirt who had been chief economist at the ver.di federal executive, he was the party’s direct candidate in the Mannheim constituency and entered the Bundestag on the state list. The same December 2016 *Landesinfo* identified him as the parliamentary group’s wirtschaftspolitischer Sprecher. Her application does not say whether the post was in a Mannheim constituency office, in Berlin, or split between the two. On Abgeordnetenwatch she later put the episode in one sentence: she had come from northern Germany to study in Heidelberg and had worked as a wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in a Wahlkreisbüro.

Schlecht’s mandate ended in 2017. On 3 March 2021 *KONTEXT:Wochenzeitung* reported that Mirow, a Heidelberg city councillor since 2014, worked full-time—“hauptberuflich”—in the Mannheim office of Bundestag member [Gökay Akbulut](/people/gokay-akbulut), also of Die Linke. Akbulut, a social scientist, has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017, with her candidacy in Wahlkreis 275, Mannheim. The profile did not describe the work beyond locating it in that office.

### Work in Berlin

The occupation the Bundestag is required to publish for the period before Mirow’s membership is “Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin bei Gökay Akbulut, MdB, Berlin.” Her membership is recorded from 25 March 2025. Abgeordnetenwatch repeats the same item, marked as the activity before she joined the Bundestag and naming Akbulut as the employer.

Berlin, in that disclosure, is the place attached to the last pre-mandate post. It stands next to, rather than in place of, the 2021 report that the full-time job was in Akbulut’s Mannheim office; no source describes a transfer between the two cities or gives an end date. When the Heidelberg constituency committee admitted her Bundestag candidacy on 24 January 2025, the public notice of 29 January still gave the profession as “wiss. Mitarbeiterin.”

## Municipal politics in Heidelberg

### Council terms and faction leadership

Sahra Mirow entered the Heidelberg Gemeinderat at the municipal election of 25 May 2014, the first at which Die Linke stood alone after sharing a list with the voter group Bunte Linke in 2009. The council grew from 40 to 48 seats. Die Linke received 95,817 votes, 4.1 percent, and two seats; Mirow, list place 1, had 7,292 votes and Bernd Zieger, list place 2, 5,828. Bunte Linke, running separately, received 88,073 votes, 3.7 percent, and two seats. Turnout was 50.7 percent. Those elected took office on 1 June 2014; the council information system dates the sitting from 25 July 2014 to 22 July 2019.

*The new Heidelberg city council in the town hall on 23 July 2024, with a banner reading “Für Heidelberg. Für unsere Stadt.”*

For 2014–2019 the register lists Mirow as chair of a Fraktionsgemeinschaft abbreviated DL/PPD, a joint group with the [Pirate Party](/organizations/pirate-party-germany), not of a standalone Die Linke faction. A business office titled Fraktionsgemeinschaft DIE LINKE/PIRATEN is recorded from 1 July 2017, and her chairmanship of the joint group ends on 23 July 2019. In August 2018 the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* reported that “Die Linke/Piraten” had in July moved that Heidelberg voluntarily take in refugees, alongside a Green proposal. Hildegard Stolz and Arnulf Weiler-Lorentz of Bunte Linke are carried for that term as Einzelmitglieder, outside her group. She was an ordinary member of the Ausschuss für Soziales und Chancengleichheit and of the Jugendhilfeausschuss.

On 26 May 2019, with turnout at 64.7 percent, Die Linke received 181,249 votes, 5.85 percent, and three of 48 seats: Mirow with 15,610 votes, Zieger with 10,640 and Zara Kızıltaş with 9,510. Bunte Linke received 122,253 votes, 3.94 percent, and two seats, for Weiler-Lorentz and Stolz. For the period 23 July 2019 to 22 July 2024 the information system lists Mirow as Fraktionsvorsitzende of Die Linke; Stolz and Weiler-Lorentz again appear as Einzelmitglieder. Her ordinary places on the social-affairs and youth-welfare committees are recorded as ending on 23 July 2019, and from the new term she is listed as a deputy member of both. At mid-term, in December 2021, the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* named Mirow, Zieger and Kızıltaş as the three Linke councillors and headed its questions to the group with the lack of social housing and a stated aim of stopping privatizations.

The election of 9 June 2024 was confirmed by the Gemeindewahlausschuss on 18 June. Turnout was 66.4 percent, 71,256 voters of 107,904 eligible. Of 3,135,313 valid votes, Die Linke received 160,535 and two seats—Mirow with 13,823 votes and Kızıltaş with 10,220—while Bunte Linke received 66,997 votes and one seat, for Stolz. Zieger was not re-elected. On the afternoon of 23 July 2024 Oberbürgermeister Eckart Würzner farewelled 20 departing councillors, Zieger and Weiler-Lorentz among them, and that evening constituted the new 48-member council. It contained 14 parties and voter groups, two more than before, and three joint factions. One was the Fraktionsgemeinschaft Die Linke/Bunte Linke, with three seats: Kızıltaş and Mirow for Die Linke and Stolz for Bunte Linke. The information system lists Mirow as chair of that joint faction, and still as a deputy member of the social-affairs and youth-welfare committees, until 9 April 2025.

### Housing company and regional bodies

The Bundestag record of outside offices, filed by members under the rules of conduct, lists Mirow on the supervisory board of the Gesellschaft für Grund- und Hausbesitz mbH (GGH), Heidelberg’s municipal housing company, until 9 April 2025, and in the assembly of the Nachbarschaftsverband Heidelberg-Mannheim until the same day. It also dates her council mandate to 9 April 2025. The biography’s line that she was a councillor and faction chair from 2014 to 2025 is identified there as her own account.

The council information system does not list her on the GGH board for 2014–2019 or 2019–2024. It does so for the term beginning in July 2024, ending on 9 April 2025. Zieger is listed as a GGH board member in both the 2019–2024 and 2024–2029 views. The Nachbarschaftsverband seat is not in that register; the Bundestag disclosure is the public record that it ended, with the GGH seat and the council mandate, on 9 April 2025.

### Resignation in 2025

Mirow left the Gemeinderat after the February 2025 Bundestag election, having entered parliament on Die Linke’s state list in Baden-Württemberg. On 9 April 2025 the council decided that Bernd Zieger would take her seat. Würzner farewelled her in the Großer Rathaussaal and welcomed Zieger, a member from 2014 to 2024, who was to sit on the Stadtentwicklungs- und Bauausschuss, the Konversionsausschuss, the Sportausschuss and the Ausschuss für Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft. The joint faction kept three seats, then held by Kızıltaş, Zieger and Stolz. The register records Zieger as its chair from 9 April 2025 until 28 February 2026, and Hildegard Stolz as chair after that.

## Leadership of Die Linke in Baden-Württemberg

### Youth wing and state executive

Sahra Mirow’s offices in the Baden-Württemberg organisation of Die Linke ran from the youth wing into the state executive before she became one of its public speakers. For the 2013 Bundestag election she told the candidate-comparison site Wen Wählen that she sat on the Heidelberg district board and on the state board, and that she was Landessprecherin of Linksjugend ['solid] in Baden-Württemberg. The equivalent 2017 entry no longer mentioned the youth organisation. It listed her as a member of the Heidelberg Kreisvorstand and of the geschäftsführender Landesvorstand, the smaller executive committee of the state party.

She was already on that executive when the state congress met in Stuttgart on 25 and 26 June 2016. Delegates re-elected her to the six-member body. The sitting speakers, Heidi Scharf and Dirk Spöri, were confirmed with 68 and 75 percent. Elwis Capece entered the executive for the first time, Kathleen Kamprath became treasurer, and Bernhard Strasdeit was returned as Landesgeschäftsführer with 66 percent. The congress was the association’s first after the Landtag election of 13 March 2016, when Die Linke took 2.9 percent, after 2.8 percent in 2011, and again stayed out of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. In that period the Landesverband had no parliamentary group in Stuttgart. Its organised strength lay in district branches and municipal councils, and the speakers were its main statewide voice.

### Tenure as Landessprecherin

On 24 November 2018 the state congress in Stuttgart elected Mirow, then a Heidelberg city councillor, and the incumbent Dirk Spöri as speakers of the five-member Landesvorstand. Heidi Scharf, long the Landessprecherin, did not stand. The congress itself chose the speakers from that executive for the first time; until then the board had named its own spokespeople. Delegates also discussed guidelines for municipal policy. The party had again missed the Landtag in 2016, while keeping seats in several local councils in the southwest.

The *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* of 10 December 2018 described the 34-year-old Mirow as having shared the state leadership with the 40-year-old Spöri since the end of November. Its headline reported her view that a minimum wage of 12 euros was feasible.

The next election of speakers was held at the state congress in Leinfelden-Echterdingen on 16 October 2021. Delegates confirmed Mirow, then 37, for two further years with 87 percent, and elected Capece, 56 and already a member of the executive, as the other Landessprecher with 78 percent. Landesgeschäftsführerin Claudia Haydt said the congress had also gone through the Bundestag result in the state, 3.3 percent, almost half the 2017 share. The party still had no Landtag seats. The federal returning officer recorded 196,874 second votes for Die Linke in Baden-Württemberg in 2021, 3.3 percent and 3.0 points below the previous election.

Mirow and Capece were returned at later congresses. A dpa report on the October 2025 meeting in Leinfelden-Echterdingen recalled that Mirow had received 88.3 percent two years earlier. In 2025 she, then 41, received 63 percent, with no opponent, while the trade unionist Capece, 60, received just under 82 percent. The report described criticism inside the party of her new combination of the state spokespersonship with a Bundestag mandate. Mirow said Die Linke handled such dual roles more sensitively, but that the result was nevertheless stable.

The Landesverband remained outside the Landtag, where it had taken 3.6 percent in March 2021. In 2025, according to a press release reported by *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)*, membership passed 10,000 for the first time and the association was then the fourth-largest party in the southwest by that count. Capece said well over 6,000 people had joined since the start of the year and tied the growth to door-to-door work by the Kreisverbände. Die Linke had still never won seats in the Baden-Württemberg Landtag.

## Election campaigns through 2021

### Bundestag candidacies in 2013 and 2017

Sahra Mirow stood for Die Linke in Bundestag constituency 274 Heidelberg at the federal elections of 22 September 2013 and 24 September 2017. The district covers the city and neighbouring Rhein-Neckar municipalities, including Weinheim; the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* described her 2017 candidacy as being for Heidelberg-Weinheim. She won neither direct mandate.

In 2013, 215,943 people were eligible to vote and turnout was 77.9 percent. Mirow received 6,892 first votes, 4.1 percent of the valid first votes and 1.5 percentage points below Die Linke's 2009 share in the constituency. The party's second-vote share there was 5.7 percent (9,413 votes). Karl Lamers of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) took the seat with 68,061 votes (40.9 percent). Inside the city of Heidelberg, Mirow's first-vote total was 3,461, or 4.7 percent.

On 24 September 2017, 217,934 people were eligible and turnout was 82.2 percent. Mirow's first votes rose to 10,751, or 6.1 percent, 1.9 points above 2013. Die Linke's second votes in the constituency were 14,812 (8.3 percent). Lamers was re-elected with 58,019 votes (32.7 percent). In the city she received 5,673 first votes (7.1 percent).

In the 2017 campaign the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* published an interview by Annette Steininger and Frederick Mersi under the headline that companies "have a responsibility." The paper presented the Heidelberg city councillor on the minimum wage, social housing and the move away by [Reckitt Benckiser](/organizations/reckitt). Referring to violent disturbances, Mirow said that setting cars on fire or destroying property as protest was "Bullshit," and she called demands to distance herself from "autonomous" riots "reine Wahlkampfrhetorik" — pure election-campaign rhetoric.

### Landtag candidacies in 2016 and 2021

Mirow was Die Linke's candidate in Landtag constituency 34, the city of Heidelberg, on 13 March 2016. Of 68,530 valid votes she received 4,189 (6.1 percent). Turnout was 70.4 percent among 98,081 eligible voters. The direct mandate went to Theresia Bauer of Alliance 90/The Greens, with 28,076 votes (41.0 percent). Statewide in Baden-Württemberg, Die Linke polled 156,240 votes, 2.9 percent of 5,361,250 valid votes. State returning officer Christiane Friedrich published that final result on 1 April 2016, after the state electoral committee had checked all 70 constituencies; the party won no seats in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg.

On 25 October 2020 the state committee, meeting in Karlsruhe, proposed Mirow — then a state spokesperson, and already the Heidelberg candidate — as *Spitzenkandidatin* for the March 2021 election. The state congress on 5 December 2020, in the Filderhalle in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, made the nomination. Coronavirus rules made the meeting hybrid: of about 160 delegates, just under half were in the hall and the rest joined online, and a congress planned for the weekend ended that day. A party spokesperson told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that Mirow received 130 delegate votes. She said she wanted to lead the party into the Landtag on 14 March 2021 and that it was time for a social and ecological force that would finally exert pressure in the state. She put its potential well above five percent, set against Bundestag results of six to seven percent in Baden-Württemberg; the dispatch also noted polls around the five-percent mark. Delegates were still to adopt the election programme.

The [2021 Baden-Württemberg state election](/facts/2021-baden-wurttemberg-state-election) was held on 14 March. In constituency 34, Mirow received 5,582 votes, 8.4 percent of 66,268 valid votes and 2.3 points more than in 2016. Of 98,968 eligible voters, 66,562 voted (67.3 percent). Bauer again won the seat, with 27,607 votes (41.7 percent).

The final state result, fixed by the electoral committee on 1 April 2021 and announced by state returning officer Cornelia Nesch, was 173,317 votes for Die Linke, 3.6 percent of 4,859,651 valid votes, at a turnout of 63.8 percent. That was 0.7 points above 2016 and still short of five percent, so the party again won no seats. The *Stuttgarter Zeitung* reported that Die Linke had never entered this Landtag and would stay out for another five years. With projections at 3.5 percent, it quoted [Bernd Riexinger](/people/bernd-riexinger) — the Stuttgart member of the Bundestag who had just stepped down as federal co-chair — as calling the gain on 2016 a move "in the right direction," and its caption described lead candidate Mirow as having counted on more. The election-night gathering was at the Kulturzentrum Laboratorium in Stuttgart-Ost, used because the party had no Landtag office.

## 2025 Bundestag election

### Nomination and campaign

On 21 December 2024 a state party congress of Die Linke in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, in the district of Esslingen, chose the Baden-Württemberg list for the Bundestag election. Sahra Mirow, the party's state spokesperson and a Heidelberg city councillor, was elected to first place. SWR reported the share as 83 percent. In her remarks she said she wanted to be a voice for the right to housing and would demand a nationwide rent cap, on the argument that rent should not be a luxury.

Second place went to the Stuttgart city councillor [Luigi Pantisano](/people/luigi-pantisano), reported at 75 percent, and third to the Bundestag member for Mannheim, Gökay Akbulut, reported at 89 percent. The list had 20 candidates. Bernd Riexinger, long-time state and federal party chair, did not stand, saying it was time to hand over to the next generation; he was due to turn 70 the following year.

Mirow was also the constituency candidate in Wahlkreis 274 (Heidelberg). That district comprises the urban district of Heidelberg and, from the Rhein-Neckar district, Dossenheim, Edingen-Neckarhausen, Eppelheim, Heddesheim, Hemsbach, Hirschberg an der Bergstraße, Ilvesheim, Ladenburg, Laudenbach, Schriesheim and Weinheim. The election of the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025.

### Results and the state list

In the final count for Wahlkreis 274, 186,493 of 218,284 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 85.4 percent, 4.0 points higher than in 2021. Die Linke's first-vote total, cast for Mirow, was 13,225, or 7.1 percent, up 3.2 points, which placed the party fifth. The Christian Democratic Union led with 54,060 votes (29.2 percent), ahead of Alliance 90/The Greens on 51,423 (27.7 percent), the Social Democratic Party on 29,464 (15.9 percent) and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany on 22,182 (12.0 percent). SWR named the candidates in that order as Alexander Föhr (CDU), [Franziska Brantner](/people/franziska-brantner) (Greens), Tim Tugendhat (SPD), [Malte Kaufmann](/people/malte-kaufmann) (AfD) and Mirow; its election-night figures, including 7.13 percent for Mirow, matched the later official ranking before rounding to one decimal place.

The Federal Returning Officer recorded that the constituency stayed vacant for want of sufficient second-vote coverage (*Zweitstimmendeckung*). The state returning officer likewise left Heidelberg blank: a first-vote plurality does not yield a seat when the party's second votes in the state do not cover it. Heidelberg was one of six Baden-Württemberg constituencies marked that way, all CDU pluralities. Föhr therefore received no seat. He told SWR that the outcome followed from the electoral-law reform. Brantner took her seat from the Green state list rather than the constituency.

On the second ballot in the constituency, Die Linke received 18,830 votes, 10.1 percent, up 5.3 points from 2021. The CDU led with 26.3 percent, followed by the Greens on 21.9 percent, the SPD on 17.0 percent and the AfD on 12.1 percent. Mirow told SWR that the result rewarded a campaign focused on high rents and grocery prices.

Across Baden-Württemberg, Die Linke took 429,484 second votes, 6.8 percent of the valid second votes and 3.5 points more than in 2021. Of 7,653,811 people eligible in the state, 6,382,446 voted, a turnout of 83.4 percent, against 77.8 percent in 2021. State returning officer Cornelia Nesch said on 12 March 2025 that the final state second-vote shares were unchanged from election night.

The same determination allotted Die Linke six seats, all from the state list. The candidates provisionally elected, in list order, were Sahra Mirow (place 1), Luigi Pantisano (2), Gökay Akbulut (3), Vinzenz Hans Glaser (4), Anne Theresa Zerr (5) and Marcel Karl Bernhard Bauer (6). Nesch stated that they would count as finally elected once the Federal Electoral Committee had determined the nationwide result. On 14 March 2025 that committee, chaired by Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand, unanimously confirmed the result of the 23 February election; the distribution of the 630 seats did not differ from the provisional result announced on 24 February. The Bundestag's page for Mirow records her as elected on the Baden-Württemberg state list, and as the candidate in Wahlkreis 274 rather than the holder of a constituency seat. The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025.

## Work in the 21st Bundestag

### Committees

Mirow has been a member of the Bundestag since the 21st electoral term, which constituted itself on 25 March 2025. Her official biography lists her as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities, and as a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The housing committee has 30 full members. At its constitutive meeting on 21 May 2025, [Caren Lay](/people/caren-lay) of Die Linke was elected chair; the group's other full member is [Katalin Gennburg](/people/katalin-gennburg). It deals with housing supply, urban development, building policy, municipal finance and local self-government. The environment committee, with 38 members, covers climate policy, extreme weather, biodiversity, resource use and the disposal of nuclear waste.

On 16 September 2025, in the 23rd sitting, she spoke on the budget of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building and said that amendments Die Linke had tabled in the non-public committee meeting had all been voted down. On 7 November 2025, on the Greens' motion "Vor Ort gut leben – Städte und Gemeinden stärken" (Drucksachen 21/1310 and 21/2604), she said the text did not go far enough and that her group would abstain. The House adopted the committee recommendation to reject it, with the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the SPD in favour, the Greens against and Die Linke abstaining. On 13 November 2025 she spoke on the AfD motion "EU-Abhängigkeit durchbrechen – Gestaltungsfreiheit von Städten und Gemeinden bewahren" (Drucksache 21/2713), which was referred to the housing committee as the lead committee.

Motions on which she was the first-named signatory, and reports she wrote as rapporteur, have stayed on municipal finance and housing. "Gutes Leben für alle – Handlungsfähigkeit der Kommunen wiederherstellen" (Drucksache 21/4471, 3 March 2026) was first read on 6 March 2026. In the report of 27 May 2026 (Drucksache 21/6153) Mirow, as rapporteur, recorded a recommendation of rejection by the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the SPD against Die Linke, with the Greens abstaining. "Bundesmittel solidarisch und gerecht verteilen – Strukturschwache Kommunen stärken" (Drucksache 21/6652, 23 June 2026) proposed replacing the Königsteiner Schlüssel with a municipal-needs index for federal funds; after a first reading on 25 June 2026, the report of 8 July 2026 (Drucksache 21/6997) recorded the same vote, again with Mirow as rapporteur. "Wohngeld retten – Kürzungspläne stoppen" (Drucksache 21/6363, 9 June 2026) was first read on 12 June 2026. The report of 9 September 2026 (Drucksache 21/7942) recommended rejection by the CDU/CSU and the SPD against the Greens and Die Linke, with the AfD abstaining.

She was also first-named on "Wohnungslose Frauen besser schützen" (Drucksache 21/4872, 23 March 2026) and opened the debate on it on 26 March 2026, and on "Recht auf Wohnen im Grundgesetz verankern" (Drucksache 21/6525, 15 June 2026), which asked for a right to housing in the Basic Law. Written questions in her name covered housing for apprentices (Drucksache 21/4970, 25 March 2026), protection from violence for homeless women (Drucksache 21/6373, 10 June 2026) and municipal climate adaptation (Drucksache 21/8199, 24 September 2026).

### Interparliamentary groups and faction roles

The biography also lists her as an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, chair of the German-Nordic Parliamentary Group and deputy chair of the German-Japanese Parliamentary Group. Parliamentary groups are cross-party associations, without statutes of their own, for a continuing dialogue with parliaments in partner countries; the group for Japan is among those founded in the third electoral term, 1957–1961. As chair of the German-Nordic group she led a delegation to Denmark, Greenland and Iceland from 27 May to 4 June 2026.

In Copenhagen the delegation met Kristina Háfoss, secretary-general of the [Nordic Council](/organizations/nordic-council); the other members named were [Bernd Rützel](/people/bernd-rutzel) (SPD), [Wolfgang Wiehle](/people/wolfgang-wiehle) (AfD), Dr [Alaa Alhamwi](/people/alaa-alhamwi) (Alliance 90/The Greens), [Susanne Hierl](/people/susanne-hierl) (CDU/CSU) and [Stefan Seidler](/people/stefan-seidler) (South Schleswig Voters' Association, non-attached). The Bundestag's account said the delegation sought solidarity over Greenland and a comparison of housing provision and climate policy. The Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly has 100 members, 50 from the Bundestag and 50 from the [French National Assembly](/organizations/french-national-assembly), and is to meet at least twice a year, alternating between the two countries.

The Die Linke group in the Bundestag lists her as spokesperson for municipal policy and for social housing. Her Bundestag office is at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin; her constituency office is at Theodor-Körner-Straße 7, 69115 Heidelberg.

## Political positions

### Housing and municipalities

Mirow has put housing at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of her campaigns for Die Linke in Baden-Württemberg. In January 2025 she told the *Staatsanzeiger* it was “the great social question of our time”: 15 of Germany’s 30 most expensive cities, she said, were in the state, and that a nationwide *Mietendeckel* was needed because “the free market does not regulate this problem at all.” Public money, she said, mostly reached private investors who priced in profit, so housing as a commodity shut people out. In April 2024 she said in Stuttgart that the *Volksantrag* “Runter mit den Mieten,” gathering signatures since 6 April, asked the Landtag for lower rents, more social housing, action against homelessness and vacancy, and a state housing company. She called the government’s answers “completely inadequate”: “the market regulates nothing.” A spokesperson for the housing ministry said the plans went “definitely in the wrong direction,” and that rent caps or threats of expropriation, as in Berlin, took flats off the market. Nearly 40,000 certified signatures were required. In Esslingen am Neckar she told the *Stuttgarter Zeitung* that flats under 1,000 euros were scarce, that “rents have to come down again,” and that building had to be public.

She was the first-named sponsor, in the 21st Bundestag, of “Recht auf Wohnen im Grundgesetz verankern” (Drucksache 21/6525, 16 June 2026). It treats a home as a human right and part of public services, and asks for an Article 14a of the Basic Law: an enforceable right to one’s own dignified, permanent, non-discriminatorily accessible and affordable dwelling; a general bar on eviction without a reasonable replacement home; and ratification of the [European Social Charter](/facts/european-social-charter)’s articles on poverty and housing. “Wohngeld retten – Kürzungspläne stoppen” (Drucksache 21/6363, 9 June 2026), also led by her name, calls housing benefit essential while social homes are short and opposes reported cuts of up to one billion euros. No tenant household, it says, should spend more than 25 percent of net income on gross warm rent. Complex forms miss many who qualify; payment often takes months; yearly renewals bind “considerable staffing capacity” in municipal offices. It asks for digital simplification, automatic continuation where nothing has changed, and a legally secure national rent cap so *Wohngeld* does not subsidise landlords.

### Tax, labour and public investment

On 1 February 2025, in SWR’s “Zur Sache! Intensiv,” Mirow called for a large public investment programme in schools, hospitals and a climate-friendly transformation, paid for by taxing high incomes and wealth. She proposed lifting the top income-tax rate from 42 to 53 percent, a 75 percent *Reichensteuer* on the very rich, and a wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires worth, on her reckoning, “more than 300 billion euros … spread over 20 years.” The Schuldenbremse was an “investment brake” to be abolished. The bad conscience, she said, belonged to those who kept it: school toilets nobody would use, hospitals in disrepair, and every third bridge needing work. Leaving that “dilapidated infrastructure” was the real failure. The economy had to serve people. Rising rents and energy prices made the position of low and middle incomes “very dramatic,” so Die Linke also wanted a higher minimum wage, higher pensions and a national rent cap.

Longer hours, demanded by the CDU, the FDP and business associations, were “devastating.” She argued for a four-day week at full pay, above all in care, where many already could not work full time or reach retirement in the job, so as to escape “permanent stress” and absence through overwork. On 10 December 2018 the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* reported that the new state co-chair thought 12 euros an hour feasible, warned against low-wage competition, and called Hartz IV “one of the most important issues.” In Esslingen she added a one-off levy on the richest 0.7 percent, to fund a sustainable shift and good jobs.

### Party direction after the Wagenknecht split

Mirow treated the exit of [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) and the founding of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht as a clarification. She told SWR she was relieved: it was “completely clear what Die Linke stands for,” and positions were “no longer attacked from within.” The party stood with all who work, “regardless of which country they come from or what gender they have,” which SWR read as a line against the BSW on migration. To the *Staatsanzeiger*, the split had strengthened the profile and the BSW “does not play a large role” for her. Die Linke was “the party of human rights” and would not “carry out social problems on the backs of people who are fleeing.”

On 10 February 2025 the *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* reported a Heidelberg discussion with [Janine Wissler](/people/janine-wissler) on the programme and how to pay for it. Wissler called the refugee debate a “sham debate,” and a caption quoted her saying it was “high time to occupy the name Sahra positively in the Bundestag again,” promoting Mirow against Wagenknecht. The opening said the mood was good. On election night, 23 February 2025, Mirow linked a projection near nine percent to stressing “the real social problems,” high rents and inflation, rather than migration, and said Die Linke would be a “strong social opposition.” In Esslingen she had called it “complete nonsense” that less migration would lower rents or raise pensions.

## Memberships and outside offices

### Civic and political memberships

The Bundestag biography of Sahra Mirow states that its biographical details rest on members’ own accounts. That self-report lists membership of ver.di, the [Rosa Luxemburg Foundation](/organizations/rosa-luxemburg-foundation), Mehr Demokratie e.V. and the VVN-BdA (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten). The profile of the Bundestag faction of Die Linke is a separate list. Beside those four it names [Amnesty International](/organizations/amnesty-international), LobbyControl (printed there as “Lobby Control”), Rote Hilfe and the Stadtteilverein Ziegelhausen-Peterstal, a neighbourhood association in the Heidelberg district of Ziegelhausen. Those four additional affiliations are not in the Bundestag biography’s membership line.

Rote Hilfe e.V. is classified in the domestic-intelligence reporting as left-wing extremist. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in its 2024 facts-and-trends summary, describes it as the largest and one of the most important groups in German left-wing extremism, with about 14,400 members and 50 local groups. The office says its main activity is political, social, legal and financial help for left-wing extremist offenders during proceedings and imprisonment, intended to reduce the deterrent effect of prosecution, together with agitation it presents as delegitimising the state, including claims of “class justice.” The 2024 Verfassungsschutzbericht for Baden-Württemberg places Rote Hilfe, with the German Communist Party and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, among the most important left-wing extremist organisations in the state, with about 1,450 members there and six local groups, including Heidelberg/Mannheim. It says the association pays lawyers’ and court costs and, in the office’s assessment, legitimises left-wing extremist criminal and violent offences by calling prosecution “politische Verfolgung.”

The VVN-BdA is not classified in the same way. In an answer transmitted on 7 August 2023, the federal government said the Federal Office gives its public assessments in the annual report, and that the VVN-BdA was last mentioned in the federal report in 2005. The Baden-Württemberg interior ministry told the state parliament in March 2022 that the association is not left-wing extremist as a whole but “linksextremistisch beeinflusst”: extremists take part and influence it considerably, while non-extremists are also represented, and only the parts that act in an extremist way fall under the observation mandate. It was named in the state report from the late 1970s through 2011; from 2012 the report has generally omitted organisations described only as extremist-influenced. The 2024 state report does not mention it. The ministry described the annual report as public information on efforts regarded as hostile to the free democratic basic order, not a criminal judgment. Membership of either association is not itself a criminal offence. A ban under section 3 of the Associations Act is a separate decision; the Federal Office’s account of prohibited organisations concerns groups the interior ministry has banned, after which forming a successor organisation can be prosecuted.

### Disclosed offices

Notices under the rules of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz, sections 45 and following) are due within three months of taking the seat, and changes during the term within three months. They are published on the member’s page after a check that a duty to publish applies. Members must notify the occupation before the mandate and seats on a board or similar body of a company or of a public-law corporation, including posts held before entry to the Bundestag; what must be published appears on the Bundestag website.

Mirow’s published entries record three offices, each as ending on 9 April 2025, with no income figures attached: the supervisory board of the Gesellschaft für Grund- und Hausbesitz mbH (GGH) in Heidelberg, the municipal housing company; the assembly (Verbandsversammlung) of the Nachbarschaftsverband Heidelberg-Mannheim; and the Heidelberg city council. The same block records the pre-mandate occupation as research assistant to the Bundestag member Gökay Akbulut.

## Public reception

### Regional and national coverage

Sahra Mirow has been covered mainly in the Rhein-Neckar area and in Baden-Württemberg, not as a [national front](/organizations/national-front)-bencher. On 24 November 2018 a Stuttgart congress elected her and Dirk Spöri as spokespersons of the Die Linke executive. An unedited dpa report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that Heidi Scharf had not stood again, that delegates chose the speakers themselves for the first time, and that the party had missed the Landtag again in 2016. The Badische Zeitung called it a younger leadership and noted that Sahra Wagenknecht was absent yet still shaped the meeting. In December the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung headlined that a 12-euro minimum wage was feasible and quoted her warning against low-wage competition.

The 2021 campaign was framed as another attempt to enter parliament. The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung reported her nomination as lead candidate on 6 December 2020 with that aim. The day before the vote, Die Tageszeitung placed her under the headline "Kampf der Liliput-Linken": polls near four percent, a pandemic campaign, and the standing of Green minister-president [Winfried Kretschmann](/people/winfried-kretschmann). She was quoted as "firmly determined" to enter, and as calling the Greens "not consistent" on climate protection. The Stuttgarter Zeitung headlined its portrait as a third attempt to reach the Landtag.

For the February 2025 Bundestag election, Südwestrundfunk and the Stuttgarter Zeitung stressed rents and redistribution. SWR reported that on 21 December 2024 she headed the state list with 83 percent and called herself "a voice for the right to housing." In "Zur Sache! intensiv" on 1 February she argued for higher taxes on large incomes and wealth and said that, after Wagenknecht left, positions were "no longer attacked from the inside." At an Esslingen reception covered on 27 January she told about 70 guests that flats under 1,000 euros were scarce. The Staatsanzeiger quoted her call for a rent cap and her remark that the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht "affects me little."

On election night a dpa text in the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted her line that voters had rewarded "the real social problems," high rents and rising prices, rather than linking them to migration; projections gave 6.6 percent in the state, double the 2021 share. Die Zeit and n-tv later carried only a dpa note on her October 2025 re-election, at 63 percent after criticism of combining the state leadership with a Bundestag seat. Searches of [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung returned no articles about her. At the SWR Wahlarena on 12 February, opponents argued migration, not a named bill: Jessica Tatti (BSW) wanted violent offenders deported, and [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) of the state CDU asked for a "breathing space" for the authorities. Mirow answered that "every social problem is being linked to refugees," and called remarks by Markus Frohnmaier of the Alternative for Germany "pure drivel."

### Name and party image

The shared first name was stated at a Heidelberg event on 10 February 2025. The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung reported Janine Wissler, who in August 2024 had said she would not stand again as federal co-chair, with Mirow on the programme and its financing; Wissler called the refugee debate a "sham debate." The photo caption quoted her promoting Mirow — "It is high time to occupy the name Sahra positively in the Bundestag again" — and presented the line as a dig at the "ex-Linke Wagenknecht." Mirow, in the Staatsanzeiger, did not take up the comparison and said the BSW affected her little.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/sahra-mirow