Saskia Ludwig

Saskia Ludwig (born 23 May 1968 in Potsdam) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a business graduate (Diplom-Kauffrau). She has sat in the Bundestag since March 2025 on the Brandenburg state list, after an earlier term from 3 December 2019 to October 2021, and was a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg from October 2004 until 14 March 2025.

From 1984 to 1987 she trained as a retail salesperson and completed the Abitur at the Handelsorganisation in Potsdam, then studied business administration at the Handelshochschule Leipzig from 1987 to 1989. Between 1990 and 1995 she continued that course at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin, graduating as a Diplom-Kauffrau. In 2008 she received a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) for a dissertation, dated 2007 at the economics and social-science faculty of the University of Potsdam, on outsourcing public tasks to state enterprises in Brandenburg and other selected Länder. Since the mid-1990s she has been a co-owner of the family firm Funck & Co. GmbH, a Potsdam company in underground and pipeline construction; Landtag disclosures list a 50 percent holding and work as a self-employed authorised signatory.

Ludwig joined the CDU in 1997 and was a member of the Potsdam-Mittelmark district council from 1998 until February 2010. In the Landtag she was parliamentary business manager of the CDU group, and a member of the presidium, from October 2004 to March 2007; she chaired the group from January to October 2009 and again from April 2010 to September 2012. From June 2010 to September 2012 she was also state chairwoman of the CDU in Brandenburg. On 11 September 2012 she resigned both leadership posts after 14 of the group’s 19 deputies withdrew their confidence, following an article in the weekly Junge Freiheit in which she attacked the red-red state government and parts of the Brandenburg press.

She entered the 19th Bundestag on 3 December 2019 in succession to Michael Stübgen, as a full member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union and of the Petitions Committee, with a list mandate tied to constituency 61 (Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II). At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she was the CDU candidate in constituency 60, Brandenburg an der Havel – Potsdam-Mittelmark I – Havelland III – Teltow-Fläming I. The direct seat went to Arne Raue of the Alternative for Germany with 33.6 percent of the first votes; the CDU received 30,938 first votes (19.4 percent) in the constituency, and Ludwig returned to parliament on the state list. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, a deputy member of the Health Committee, and deputy chair of the German-Irish Parliamentary Group. Her Landtag mandate ended on 14 March 2025, and Corrado Gursch succeeded her.

Ludwig’s arguments for opening the CDU toward the AfD have repeatedly drawn public distance from her own party. In August 2025 the CDU/CSU Bundestag group said she had attended a festival of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary, where photographs showed her in conversation with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, without the group’s knowledge or a mandate, and it restated the party’s incompatibility resolution with the AfD. The previous month, after she had been among the sharpest CDU critics of the Social Democrats’ nominee for the Federal Constitutional Court, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, the University of Potsdam confirmed an initial suspicion concerning her own dissertation: the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that reviewer Jochen Zenthöfer had found at least 86 unmarked text borrowings on the first 113 pages.

Early life and education

Saskia Ludwig was born on 23 May 1968 in Potsdam, then part of the German Democratic Republic. The Bundestag and the Landtag of Brandenburg publish biographical notes compiled from members' own statements; both record her birth there and her later qualification as a Diplom-Kauffrau. Her schooling and first university course were also in the GDR, and the doctoral thesis she later published carries the name Saskia Funck.

Access to the Abitur in the GDR was limited. After the ten-year polytechnic secondary school, only about a tenth of a year group was admitted to the two-year Erweiterte Oberschule (EOS), the direct route to university, and the Federal Agency for Civic Education notes that admission required political conformity as well as grades, including on the part of parents. A three-year Berufsausbildung mit Abitur, combining the Abitur with a skilled-worker certificate, was a separate path for roughly five percent of a cohort; the same account says political screening weighed less heavily there than for the EOS, and that the programme was one route by which children from nonconformist families still reached a university-entrance qualification. Ludwig has written that an EOS place was refused her in 1984 because her parents were not members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and, on the transparency site Abgeordnetenwatch, that she had wanted to study veterinary medicine. Those statements are not repeated in the parliamentary biographies. What those biographies do record is that from 1984 to 1987 she completed a vocational course with the Abitur as a Fachverkäuferin (retail salesperson) at the Handelsorganisation (HO) in Potsdam, the state retail organisation established in the Soviet occupation zone in 1948.

From 1987 to 1989 she studied business administration at the Handelshochschule Leipzig. On her own website she describes that course as "Sozialistische Betriebswirtschaft". She has also stated that in early October 1989 she left the GDR through Hungary for Munich. The Bundestag and Landtag curricula vitae do not name that route; they place the Leipzig course in 1987–1989 and the next enrolment in Munich in 1990. The date she gives falls in the weeks after 11 September 1989, when Hungary opened its western border to East Germans who had been waiting to leave; about 14,000 crossed in the first two days. In the Abgeordnetenwatch text, which the site labels as written by Ludwig herself, she adds that she then worked in the household-goods department of the Kaufhof store at Stachus in Munich.

At the beginning of 1990 she enrolled in business administration at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She took the intermediate examination (Vordiplom) there in 1992 and, after moving to the Free University of Berlin for the second half of the degree, qualified as a Diplom-Kauffrau in 1995.

The Landtag biography dates the doctoral dissertation to 2005–2008. Der Spiegel reported that she submitted it in 2007, still under the name Funck, to the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam. In 2008 she received the degree Dr. rer. pol. for Die Aufgabenauslagerung in Landesbetriebe im Bundesland Brandenburg und anderen ausgewählten Bundesländern. The published text examines how public tasks in Brandenburg were shifted into state enterprises (Landesbetriebe) after German reunification, compares that practice with Hamburg, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate, and asks how far the new legal form matched a stated aim of handing work to outside providers. The German National Library catalogues it as a 2008 Potsdam dissertation, issued the same year by Universitätsverlag Potsdam (ISBN 978-3-940793-40-9; XVI, 435 pages).

The Landtag and CDU Brandenburg biographies place her entry into the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1997, after the Munich and Berlin degrees and alongside work in the family firm, and before her later mandates in the Landtag and the Bundestag.

Business career

Saskia Ludwig, listed as a Diplom-Kauffrau, is a co-owner of Funck & Co. GmbH Tief- und Rohrleitungsbau, at In der Heide 1 in Golm, a locality of Potsdam. The company is entered at the Amtsgericht Potsdam under HRB 1296. A register-information service dates its formation or first registration to 13 March 1991. The registered object covers building and civil-engineering works, water and wastewater installations, lake desilting and other hydraulic measures.

Register publications record an earlier style, R. Funck GmbH Tief- und Rohrleitungsbau Handel mit Reinigungsmitteln, Reinigungszubehör und Baustoffen, with its seat in Golm and share capital of 60,000 Deutsche Mark. In August 2009 Funck & Co. GmbH Hoch-, Tiefbau und Vertrieb (HRB 12834) was merged into it; the survivor took the present name, and Christoph Klimetschek was entered as Geschäftsführer, with no later change of managing director in the publication list.

The curriculum vitae she gave the Landtag of Brandenburg says she has been a co-owner of R. Funck GmbH since 1995 and of Funck & Co. GmbH since 1997. Her website dates co-ownership of Funck & Co. GmbH in Potsdam-Golm from 1995, while the Brandenburg CDU biography states that she was Geschäftsführerin of R. Funck GmbH from 1996 to 1999 and a co-owner of Funck & Co. GmbH from 1997. The archived biography for her 2019–2021 Bundestag term calls her Geschäftsführer of R. Funck GmbH from 1996 to 1999, associates 2004–2009 and the title Geschäftsführer with Funck & Co. GmbH, and lists kaufmännische Leitung there without a separate date.

North Data’s rendering of the register shows that Prokura was granted to Saskia Ludwig on 4 August 2022 and ended on 28 March 2025. As a Landtag member she declared, under the parliament’s conduct rules, work as a self-employed Prokuristin at the Potsdam firm, with regular annual income of 4,800 euros as of 2023, and a 50 percent holding whose income she marked “not stated”; the Landtag notes that these entries are the member’s own declarations. Her 2019–2021 Bundestag disclosures named her as Gesellschafterin of Funck & Co. GmbH in Potsdam, both as a paid activity beside the mandate and as a capital participation, without a percentage or an amount. On the Bundestag page for the 21st electoral term, dated 30 October 2026, the only published item is her previous Landtag membership; the page says notifications appear after processing and a check of whether publication is required.

North Data’s reproduction of the balance sheet to 31 December 2024, filed on 6 February 2026, shows total assets of 2,631,315 euros; turnover is not in the free extract. The Rohrleitungsbauverband lists the firm as a member, certified DVGW GW 301 W3 (az, ge, pe, pvc) and RAL GZ 961 AK 2. An archived directory profile, marked as possibly outdated, described about 20 employees and three trainees and identified Rugard Funck as the former owner, by then a Prokurist, and Saskia Funck as his daughter and a shareholder. A 2014 Golm chronicle by the local chronicler Siegfried Seidel, with a contribution from Ludwig, names her as the granddaughter of the actor Werner Funck, whose family property was on In der Heide. A 2014 Tagesspiegel profile called her a 46-year-old entrepreneur from Golm.

Local politics

Ludwig joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in 1997. The Brandenburg CDU's profile of her lists membership of the executive of the district association in Potsdam-Mittelmark from that year, the deputy district chair from 1998 to 2001, and the district chair from 2002. Her biography for the 19th Bundestag, based on members' own information, also dates the district chair from 2002. On 4 July 2009 in Saarmund, delegates re-elected her, then still Saskia Funck, by 75 votes to one, more than 98 percent; Kerstin Hoppe, Claus-Peter Martensen and Rudolf Werner became deputies. In a letter to members before a district congress called for 30 September 2022 at the Schützenhaus in Werder (Havel), she wrote that she would give up the chair after more than 20 years. The district association's executive page names Christian Große, first deputy mayor of Werder (Havel), as Kreisvorsitzender.

The Landtag biography records membership of the Kreistag of Potsdam-Mittelmark from 1998 until February 2010. The Bundestag self-biography and the state CDU profile both end that membership in 2009 rather than in February 2010. The party profile dates her chairmanship of the CDU group on the Kreistag to 2001–2006 and also describes her as the group's deputy chair. In July 2006 she gave up the group chair, saying she wanted to concentrate on the district party before coming elections and that cooperation among the CDU, SPD, FDP and FBB had settled; she kept the council seat. The group elected Rudolf Werner of Treuenbrietzen as chair, with Martensen and Christian Große as deputies. From October 2004 the Kreistag seat overlapped her membership of the Landtag of Brandenburg.

At the district election of 26 October 2003, the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten reported the CDU as the largest group, with 28.8 percent and 16 seats, against 12 seats in 1998, while the SPD fell from 38 percent and 22 seats to 22.7 percent and 13. It first credited Funck with 4,244 votes in constituency 3, including Werder and Schwielowsee, the third-highest personal total. After the Kreiswahlausschuss confirmed the result, the list of those who won one of 56 seats gave her 3,584 votes. For 28 September 2008 she headed the CDU list in constituency 3 (Werder, Schwielowsee and Seddiner See).

She sat on the Ortsbeirat of Kemnitz, in Werder (Havel), until January 2010, when she resigned the seat for family reasons: she still lived in Kemnitz but had taken a second residence with her husband in Potsdam. Dirk Junkel succeeded her.

The Landtag biography lists membership of the Ortsbeirat of Golm, a locality of Potsdam, from 2014. On 14 June 2018 the council elected her Ortsvorsteherin unanimously, on a nomination from Sylvia Frenzel of the Bürgerbündnis. She had been deputy, and acting Ortsvorsteherin since November 2017, after Marcus Krause (SPD) resigned ahead of a recall motion. At the locality election of 26 May 2019 she received 773 votes, the highest personal total; the CDU list took 1,290 votes (27.0 percent) and two of nine seats, and turnout was 66.1 percent. Her disclosure for the 19th Bundestag still recorded a seat on the Golm Ortsbeirat. On 9 June 2024 she was elected again, with 1,001 votes, the most of any CDU candidate. The CDU list led with 1,661 votes (28.3 percent); turnout was 73.7 percent of 2,766 eligible voters, and the council has eight members. Golm's membership page lists her as a member of the Ortsbeirat and Angela Böttge, an independent, as Ortsvorsteherin.

Landtag of Brandenburg

Saskia Ludwig sat in the Landtag of Brandenburg for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from October 2004 until the end of 14 March 2025. She held constituency 19, Potsdam-Mittelmark III/Potsdam III, as a directly elected member in 2004, 2009 and 2014, and returned on the state list in 2019 and 2024. Her membership ended at the close of 14 March 2025, the month she returned to the Bundestag; the Landtag names Corrado Gursch, the first CDU substitute (list place 13), as her successor.

Elections and mandates

At the election of 19 September 2004 she stood as Saskia Funck and won with 7,228 first votes (28.1 percent), 70 ahead of Susanne Melior of the Social Democratic Party (SPD, 27.8 percent); Andreas Bernig of the Party of Democratic Socialism took 25.5 percent. Turnout was 61.5 percent, and the CDU’s second-vote share in the constituency was 22.7 percent.

On 27 September 2009, on the ballot as Dr. Saskia Funck, she was re-elected with 9,648 first votes (29.7 percent), 434 ahead of the SPD (28.4 percent) and 1,929 ahead of Die Linke (23.8 percent). Turnout was 71.6 percent; the CDU took 22.5 percent of second votes. The constituency kept its name, but later results are for the district as drawn at each election.

On 14 September 2014 Dr. Saskia Ludwig won a third direct mandate with 9,663 first votes (31.7 percent), against 29.4 percent for Mike Schubert (SPD), 16.6 percent for Die Linke and 9.1 percent for the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Turnout was 57.1 percent, and the CDU’s second-vote share was 26.5 percent.

On 1 September 2019 she lost the seat to Uwe Adler (SPD, 25.3 percent). Ludwig took 19.8 percent, ahead of Alliance 90/The Greens (16.8 percent) and the AfD (15.2 percent). Turnout was 70.2 percent and the CDU’s second-vote share 17.0 percent; the state returning officer seated her from CDU list place 8.

On 22 September 2024 she finished third, with 7,594 first votes (17.7 percent), behind Adler (39.8 percent) and Marlon Deter of the AfD (20.5 percent). Turnout was 80.2 percent and the CDU’s constituency second-vote share 14.4 percent. Statewide the CDU won 12 seats, all from the list, and Ludwig entered from list place 6.

Committee and spokesperson roles

The CDU Brandenburg biography lists her as the faction’s finance spokesperson from 2004 to 2009, as spokesperson for finance and sport in 2009–10, and as media-policy spokesperson from 2014 to 2019. On 10 December 2014 the Landtag’s main committee elected her deputy chair, with Klaus Ness (SPD) as chair. The same biography places her on the European affairs committee from 2012 to 2015.

After the 2019 election she was a full member of the committee for economic affairs, labour and energy, and a deputy on the committees for infrastructure and state planning and for budgetary control. From 2019 the state association also names her as spokesperson for the economy, energy and industrial policy.

Faction and state leadership

From October 2004 to March 2007 she was the CDU faction’s parliamentary business manager and a member of the Landtag presidium. On 27 January 2009 the faction elected her chair in place of Thomas Lunacek, who had resigned citing a lack of trust in the party after failing to secure a promising list place. Of 19 deputies present, 14 voted for her, three against and two abstained; state chair Johanna Wanka had proposed her as the only candidate. She was again a presidium member from February to October 2009.

The Landtag records her as deputy faction chair from October 2009 to April 2010, then as chair again from April 2010 to September 2012, with another term on the presidium from May 2010 to September 2012. On 26 June 2010 a state party congress in Potsdam elected her CDU state chair, the only candidate, with 141 of 179 votes (78.8 percent; 36 against and two abstentions). She succeeded Johanna Wanka, who had moved to Lower Saxony as minister of science, and she was already chair of the Landtag faction.

Resignation in 2012

Both posts ended on 11 September 2012. Late in August, returning from maternity leave after the birth of her second child, Ludwig published an article in the weekly Junge Freiheit, which Der Spiegel described as an extremely right-wing paper. In it she attacked the SPD–Left state government and parts of the Brandenburg press, accusing outlets of manipulative reporting directed from the SPD-led state chancellery. The SPD asked that she substantiate the claims in the main committee; she invoked freedom of opinion and called the attempt to limit it, in the minister-president’s presence, unprecedented in reunified Germany.

On 10 September the five-member faction executive withdrew confidence and demanded her resignation. The next day 14 of the 19 CDU deputies did the same. Parliamentary business manager Ingo Senftleben announced that she had resigned as state and faction chair; Spiegel reported an emotional meeting, wider dissatisfaction with her work, and no public comment from Ludwig herself. She had led the faction and the state party since 2010.

On 18 September the faction elected Dieter Dombrowski, until then deputy chair and general secretary and her substitute during maternity leave, as sole candidate: 11 votes in favour and eight against. He said the CDU would not join a coalition in which it had nothing to say. Neues Deutschland reported that the SPD under minister-president Matthias Platzeck had ruled out an alliance with a CDU led by Ludwig. On 17 November a Potsdam party congress elected Michael Schierack state chair with 71 percent. Ludwig remained a Landtag member.

Membership of the Bundestag

Nineteenth Bundestag

Ludwig entered the Bundestag on 3 December 2019, during its 19th electoral term, as successor to Michael Stübgen of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Stübgen had been sworn in on 20 November 2019 as Brandenburg's Minister of the Interior and for Local Affairs and as deputy minister-president. He gave up his Bundestag seat, which the parliament records as having ended at the close of 2 December 2019, and named Ludwig as his successor; Der Tagesspiegel reported that he returned the mandate to Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble.

The archived biography lists her as a member of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, elected through the Brandenburg state list rather than by a direct mandate, and associates the seat with constituency 61, Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II. In that term she was an ordinary member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union and of the Petitions Committee.

She did not give up her seat in the Landtag of Brandenburg, which she had held since 2004. Der Tagesspiegel reported that she intended, for the time being, to remain a Landtag member in parallel; Kathrin Dannenberg, chair of the Die Linke group in the Landtag, criticized the dual mandate. The state returning officer's gazette of 9 August 2021 still described her as a member of both the Bundestag and the Landtag. Her Bundestag membership lasted to the end of the 19th electoral term.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 she stood again for the CDU in constituency 61 and was seventh on the Brandenburg state list. In that constituency the Social Democratic Party (SPD) won the direct seat with 64,271 first votes (34.0 percent). Alliance 90/The Greens received 18.8 percent and the CDU 26,050 votes (13.8 percent), 10.3 points fewer than in 2017; Der Tagesspiegel identified Ludwig as the CDU candidate and placed her third, behind Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock. Statewide the CDU took 15.3 percent of the second votes and four seats, all list mandates and all from places 1 to 4; places 5 and below, including place 7, were listed only as successors. She was not a member of the 20th Bundestag.

Twenty-first Bundestag

For the federal election of 23 February 2025 the CDU placed Ludwig third on its Brandenburg list, after Uwe Feiler and Knut Abraham and before Sebastian Steineke and Ulrike Mauersberger, the order printed on the official specimen ballot. The same ballot named her as the CDU's constituency candidate in Wahlkreis 60, Brandenburg an der Havel – Potsdam-Mittelmark I – Havelland III – Teltow-Fläming I, and described her as a business graduate and member of the Landtag, living in Potsdam. The Bundestag biography likewise records a list seat for Brandenburg and a candidacy in constituency 060.

She did not win the constituency. In the official final result, Arne Raue of Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected with 33.6 percent of the first votes. The SPD received 41,062 first votes (25.77 percent) and the CDU 30,938 (19.42 percent), so the CDU candidate finished third; turnout in the constituency was 79.82 percent.

Ludwig nevertheless took a seat in the 21st Bundestag through the state list. The state returning officer's table of members elected from Brandenburg lists the CDU's four list members as Feiler (place 1), Abraham (place 2), Ludwig (place 3) and Steineke (place 4), and records Raue, not a CDU candidate, as the winner in constituency 60. The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025, the date from which the parliament's biography dates her membership. In the 21st term she is an ordinary member of the Committee for Economic Affairs and Energy, a deputy member of the Committee on Health, and deputy chair of the German–Irish Parliamentary Group, the Bundestag body for relations with Ireland.

Her Landtag seat ended before that sitting. On 19 March 2025 the Landtag president told the chamber that Ludwig, by then referred to as a member of the Bundestag, had resigned her Landtag mandate with effect from the end of 14 March 2025, and that the state returning officer had reported Corrado Gursch as a member of the Landtag from 15 March 2025, sitting with the CDU group.

Political positions

In the 21st Bundestag, Ludwig has been a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and a deputy member of the Committee on Health since 25 March 2025. On Abgeordnetenwatch she lists economic and industrial policy "on the basis of the social market economy," energy policy that is "non-ideological, fact-based and open to technology," and a review of the coronavirus years among her priorities. She co-founded the Berliner Kreis, an informal conservative and market-liberal network in the Christian Democratic Union and the CSU. In a February 2012 Junge Freiheit essay she called it "basisliberal": freedom and personal responsibility against an "all-competent, paternalistic state."

Economy, energy and climate

Ludwig has tied that line to the Mittelstand. In a December 2025 interview with the Berliner Zeitung, reported by Die Welt, she said labour minister Bärbel Bas had "declared war on the Mittelstand in Germany" and was fighting it "together with the left and left-wing extremists." She said she had written to Chancellor Friedrich Merz that she would no longer vote for any government motion that brought additional debt, and she called the EU combustion-engine phase-out a "competition-hostile EU law."

On energy she has long opposed a rapid build-out of wind power and solar generation. In a May 2011 Tagesspiegel commentary, "Wind turbines are not the answer," she argued, as Brandenburg CDU leader after the post-Fukushima nuclear exit, that further turbines destroyed the landscape, would stay uneconomic and did not solve supply. In March 2012 the CDU group in the Landtag of Brandenburg that she led dropped the state's wind targets through 2020 and favoured new lignite plants even without carbon capture, including new mines and the loss of further Lusatian villages. She said wind and solar had hit "capacity limits" and that Brandenburg was "paying the price for Bavaria getting green electricity."

In January 2023 she replied on Twitter to a proposal, attributed to Potsdam climate researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, that people buy extra carbon-dioxide allowances above a personal budget. She wrote, in part, "Faschismus im grünem Antlitz! Damit wird sichtbar, was diese Ökofaschisten tatsächlich wollen" ("Fascism in a green guise"). After criticism in the coalition and the CDU group, she deleted the post, saying the wording "could be misinterpreted," while still calling the idea the wrong path. CDU general secretary Gordon Hoffmann told the Märkische Oderzeitung that this was "not the position of the CDU Brandenburg" and that the wording was inappropriate. Green state chair Julia Schmidt called it a "historically forgetful lapse."

Migration and cooperation with the AfD

Ludwig has repeatedly questioned a strict firewall (Brandmauer) against the Alternative for Germany. On 30 April 2015, in a Landtag roll-call, she was among the CDU members who voted for an AfD motion, Drucksache 6/1193 ("Schutzparagraph 112"), asking Brandenburg to join a Bundesrat initiative for tougher penalties for attacks on police and rescue workers. The motion failed.

In March 2017 she gave Junge Freiheit a joint interview with AfD deputy chairman Alexander Gauland, a former CDU colleague from the Berliner Kreis. She called the AfD "a catchment of conservatives, chancers and radicals" that she expected would split, and said it was not an option for her. Asked about her opposition to Angela Merkel's course, including the Energiewende and refugee policy, she said a party was not a place where one person decides and the rest stay silent. Deputy chair Gordon Hoffmann said she was wrong to equate Union conservatives with "the AfD clique around Alexander Gauland."

Before the February 2025 federal election she told TV Berlin that a firewall was "profoundly undemocratic" and helped only the AfD and the "left camp." "If more than 50 percent vote centre-right, then there must also be a centre-right government for the citizens," she said. On X she later called a reading of the interview as a demand for a coalition "quite a remarkable free interpretation." Hoffmann told rbb24 that the party's line was "crystal clear" and that, as Merz had said, there would be no coalition with the AfD.

In October 2025 she again called the firewall "profoundly undemocratic" and said the AfD should receive parliamentary vice-presidencies and committee chairs, while adding that it "of course cannot be an alliance partner" for difficult decisions so long as people in it wanted to destroy or split the CDU. If the Union–SPD coalition failed, she said, "of course we need a Plan B." In 2026 she told Der Spiegel, as reported by Die Welt, that a coalition with the AfD was not feasible, but that a CDU minority government in Saxony-Anhalt could use AfD votes for "good, reasonable motions." If half or more voted centre-right, she said, policy had to be centre-right; the firewall, she added, helped both the AfD and the Left.

Pandemic policy

In the Landtag's coronavirus inquiry Ludwig questioned former education minister Britta Ernst about a leaflet sent to children and adolescents. It said later side effects "hardly exist" and that an unvaccinated person had a greater risk of infection. When Ernst's answers on which ministry was medically responsible conflicted, Ludwig said witnesses were obliged to tell the truth; the chair then briefly excluded the public.

Back in the Bundestag she argued for a federal committee of inquiry rather than the Enquete commission the coalition set up. Cicero published an interview on 25 June 2025 under the headline that such a committee was "without alternative," reporting that she was still pressing for one after that decision. In October 2025 she said fines should be repaid and errors admitted, that opinions had been "censored," and that families dealing with harm they attributed to vaccination had been left alone "by those who at the time sold the coronavirus vaccination as absolutely necessary." Only the AfD, she said, gained from the missing review.

Controversies

Junge Freiheit and the Institut für Staatspolitik

In late August 2012, back from maternity leave, Ludwig, then chair of the Brandenburg Christian Democratic Union and of its Landtag group, published a guest article in Junge Freiheit about party colleague Jörg Schönbohm. She accused parts of the Brandenburg press and the Social Democratic Party of Germany of steered and partly deliberate false reporting; Der Spiegel reported her claim that coverage was directed from the SPD state chancellery. Asked by the SPD to substantiate that in the Landtag's main committee, she refused and said the attempt, "auch noch in Anwesenheit des Ministerpräsidenten", to limit freedom of opinion was unprecedented in reunified Germany.

On 10 September the five-member group executive withdrew its confidence and demanded her resignation. After a crisis meeting the next day she resigned both chairs; secretary-general Dieter Dombrowski announced the decision and was proposed as group leader. In December Junge Freiheit reported a written greeting from her for the opening of a Berlin office of the Institut für Staatspolitik, quoting "großen Respekt" for its work despite "zahlreichen Anfeindungen" and a call to defend a space there "im Ringen um Wahrheit und Freiheit". The Märkische Oderzeitung reported criticism from the SPD and Die Linke, who treated the greeting as a pattern and urged the new CDU leadership to draw a line.

Climate rhetoric

In January 2023 Ludwig replied on Twitter to a forwarded remark by the Potsdam climate researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber about people buying extra carbon dioxide above a set amount. She wrote: "Faschismus im grünem Antlitz! Damit wird sichtbar, was diese Ökofaschisten tatsächlich wollen." Julia Schmidt, state chair of Alliance 90/The Greens, called the proposal polarising but Ludwig's wording a "geschichtsvergessene Entgleisung" and an attempt to fish on the outer right without regard for fascism's victims. CDU general secretary Gordon Hoffmann told the Märkische Oderzeitung that this was not the Brandenburg CDU's position and that the wording was inappropriate. Ludwig deleted the post, writing that the wording "missinterpretiert werden konnte" and blocked a factual discussion, while still calling a private CO2 budget the wrong path.

Hungary meeting and Alice Weidel

In early August 2025 Ludwig attended a festival of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which Tagesschau described as a right-wing think tank close to the government of Viktor Orbán. Photographs showed her talking with Alice Weidel, co-chair of the Alternative for Germany. A spokesman confirmed her attendance; Tagesschau said it was her second MCC event and that on 1 August she joined a panel, "Eine neue Regierung in unsicheren weltpolitischen Gewässern".

The CDU/CSU Bundestag group said she had taken part "nicht im Auftrag der Fraktion und ohne Wissen der Fraktionsführung", and that the incompatibility resolution still bound every CDU member and excluded any cooperation with the AfD. Hoffmann said he saw no majority at a federal congress to change it. Ludwig told Nius, as quoted by Tagesschau, that free exchange of views was central to democracy and that she had spoken with various visitors "ohne Angst vor Repressionen haben zu müssen". Weidel's spokesman called the talk casual and short. The Green Youth demanded her removal from the group; a Brandenburg CDU youth official said she had forfeited her claim to represent it. Tagesschau noted that in January 2025 she had argued on television against a "firewall" and for a "Mitte-Rechts-Koalition", while party chairman Friedrich Merz had repeatedly ruled cooperation out.

Election campaign and conspiracy-adjacent platforms

For the 2024 Brandenburg election Ludwig planned a mid-September event in Beelitz on pandemic effects on children, titled "Digitale und gesundheitliche Selbstbestimmung". Der Tagesspiegel reported that she invited a suspected adherent of the Anastasia movement and, after protest, withdrew the invitation. She said in a statement reported by nd-aktuell that Ricardo Leppe had been recommended as an "unkonventioneller bildungspolitischer Referent" and that she had not known of his Anastasia ties: "Nach Hinweisen darauf habe ich die Entscheidung getroffen, dass er an der Veranstaltung nicht teilnehmen wird." That report cited the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung and the Else-Frenkel-Brunswik-Institut describing his association "Wissen schafft Freiheit" as part of right-esoteric and conspiracy-ideological networks, and noted that psychologist Harald Walach stayed on the list. Ludwig then postponed the event until after the election. Die Zeit reported that in 2023 she had appeared on the Austrian channel AUF1, which it described as a mouthpiece of the Querdenken movement.

Opposition to Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf

In 2025 the SPD nominated Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, professor of public law at the University of Potsdam, to the Federal Constitutional Court. Parts of the CDU/CSU group objected to her statements on abortion and on a pandemic vaccination mandate, and to questions about her thesis. Before the vote, Stefan Weber cited what he called 23 suspected cases of collusion and source plagiarism between her 1997 University of Hamburg dissertation and the later habilitation of her husband, Hubertus Gersdorf. Jochen Zenthöfer saw overlaps but warned against making "das vermutliche Opfer zur Täterin", since her dissertation predated his habilitation; Hamburg then saw no reason under its rules to investigate.

In July 2025 the Bundestag postponed the election of three judges after the Union, SPD and Greens requested a delay; only the AfD voted against. Ludwig wrote on X that Brosius-Gersdorf should suspend her Potsdam chair until the allegations were fully cleared, and called her unelectable. About 300 legal scholars, including former constitutional judges, protested in an open letter against an "unsachlich" debate and a poorly prepared procedure, and said treating her positions as radical reflected unfamiliarity with the scholarly discussion.

In August 2025 Brosius-Gersdorf withdrew. She wrote that parts of the CDU/CSU group had signalled, publicly and privately, that her election was categorically excluded, that she wanted to spare the other nominees an unravelling of the package, and that a sharper coalition fight could affect democracy in ways that were "nicht absehbar". Potsdam's law faculty said it understood the step amid political tension and remarks it called in part inappropriate, excessive and defamatory. Hamburg later found the charge of scientific misconduct unjustified. The row overlapped with Ludwig's own 2007 Potsdam dissertation: after Zenthöfer reported at least 86 unmarked borrowings on the first 113 pages, the university confirmed an initial suspicion and said she could respond.

Doctoral dissertation and plagiarism inquiry

Saskia Funck, later Saskia Ludwig, submitted a dissertation at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Potsdam for the degree of doctor of economic sciences (Dr. rer. pol.). The title page places it at the chair of public finance of Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Petersen, whom the union catalog records as academic supervisor. Die Aufgabenauslagerung in Landesbetriebe im Bundesland Brandenburg und anderen ausgewählten Bundesländern was submitted in December 2007 under the name Funck; reporting on the later inquiry said the faculty accepted it that month. The degree is recorded for 2008, when Universitätsverlag Potsdam published the text (ISBN 978-3-940793-40-9). Library records give the published version as XVI, 435 pages. Its abstract compares the shift of state tasks into Landesbetriebe in Brandenburg, after German reunification, with practice in Hamburg, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate.

On 20 July 2025 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Jochen Zenthöfer, a journalist and plagiarism researcher who also writes for the paper, had examined part of the dissertation. After reading about a third of what he called a 368-page thesis, he counted at least 86 unmarked takeovers on the first 113 pages, many of them what he called Bauernopfer citations: a source is named later in a footnote, often for only a sentence or a word, while longer wording is not marked as borrowed. He told the FAZ that he is a Christian Democratic Union member and had no outside mandate; the Märkische Allgemeine later reported that his suspicion notice of 17 July 2025 ran to 47 pages. Stefan Weber wrote after a quick analysis that the work had not been cited lege artis. RBB, citing the FAZ, said Weber and VroniPlag Wiki had also found unmarked passages; the Märkische Allgemeine later put VroniPlag Wiki’s suspected spots at 73. None of this was a university finding.

The reports followed Ludwig’s criticism of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a professor of public law at Potsdam and the Social Democratic Party’s nominee for the Federal Constitutional Court. Ludwig, by then a CDU member of the Bundestag, wrote on X that Brosius-Gersdorf should suspend her chair until plagiarism allegations against her were fully resolved, and called on university president Oliver Günther to act. A short expert opinion cleared Brosius-Gersdorf of scientific misconduct. Asked about her own thesis, Ludwig posted the FAZ inquiry and a link to the dissertation, writing that everyone could form their own view; a spokesperson otherwise referred questions to the university.

On 29 July 2025 Günther said a sufficient initial suspicion (hinreichender Anfangsverdacht) had been affirmed, that the responsible bodies would examine the thesis, and that Ludwig would be invited to comment. He said the review would recheck passages and publication dates, take in outside material, and could take several months. Under the university’s 2022 statute, such a notice starts as a faculty preliminary review (Vorprüfung): the person concerned may respond, and the dean with the responsible member of the presidential board then either closes the case or refers it to a formal investigation by the commission on scientific misconduct. The commission weighs the evidence freely; if it regards misconduct as proven, the president may order consequences, including withdrawal of a degree. RBB reported that the faculty had opened the preliminary review. The initial suspicion was not a finding that plagiarism had been proved.

In a May 2026 interview Ludwig called the still-open review politically driven, referring to Günther—described by the Märkische Allgemeine as an SPD member—as “Genosse Günther,” speaking of Klassenkampf, and saying that supporters of Brosius-Gersdorf had treated withdrawal of the 2008 doctorate as already decided. On 29 May 2026 the Märkische Allgemeine reported that, about ten months on, the university still had no result and no end date. A spokesperson said, “Es handelt sich in keiner Weise um ein politisch motiviertes Verfahren,” that the rules were being followed, and that the presumption of innocence applied. The paper also reported that Ludwig had asked the Potsdam administrative court for the file and that no ruling had yet been issued. As of those reports, no decision to revoke the degree had been announced.

Personal life and other public roles

Biographies published by the Bundestag and the Landtag of Brandenburg, both compiled from her own statements, record that Ludwig is married and has two children. The Landtag entry gives 14476 Potsdam. On her website she states that she has been married since 2009 and that the children are a son and a daughter; the parliamentary biographies do not name her spouse.

Her birth name is Funck. A 2014 chronicle of the Potsdam locality Golm, compiled by the local historian Siegfried Seidel from Funck family papers, includes a contribution signed “Dr. Saskia Ludwig, geb. Funck” and describes her as the granddaughter of the actor, film director and producer Werner Funck. Filmportal.de gives Funck’s dates as 4 February 1881 to 6 October 1951 and places his death in Potsdam; the chronicle says he lived in Golm from 1930 until 1951.

From 2000 she sat on the Television Council (Fernsehrat) of ZDF. The council represents the general public in relation to the broadcaster, supervises its programmes and online services, and advises the intendant on programming. The biography for her 19th Bundestag term, which the parliament notes rests on members’ own information, ends that membership in June 2012; the Brandenburg CDU profile dates it to 2013.

The same archived biography lists her as a Fregattenkapitän of the reserve. In December 2016 Tagesspiegel reported that she was a reserve officer of the German Navy, last assigned to the Einsatzführungskommando in Geltow, and that she had appeared in service uniform at a celebration of the CDU Senioren-Union in Potsdam-Mittelmark and in an interview with a local news portal while acting as a politician. A spokesman for the Bundeswehr Federal Office of Personnel Management told the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten that an internal review had found no breach of the uniform rules in the Soldatengesetz and that no disciplinary proceedings would be opened.

In 2026 the Berliner Zeitung, which lists her as a freelance author, published a series of columns by her under the label “Im Visier”. Bylined pieces carrying that label include articles of 6 June, 6 July, 1 August and 4 October 2026. The CDU Brandenburg profile also lists her as chair of “Club 99”, the friends’ circle of Werderaner FC, and as a member of the Schützengilde zu Werder (Havel) 1704.