# Sonja Eichwede

# Sonja Eichwede

Sonja Katharina Eichwede (born 25 October 1987 in Bremen) is a German lawyer, judge and politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). She has been a member of the Bundestag since the 2021 federal election, when she won a direct mandate, and in the 21st Bundestag she sits for the Brandenburg state list. Since 7 May 2025 she has been a deputy chair of the SPD parliamentary group. She is a full member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel and the Joint Committee, and a deputy member of the committees on legal affairs and consumer protection, the interior, petitions, sport and voluntary service, and election scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from her own disclosures, records a 2007 Abitur at the Kippenberg-Gymnasium in Bremen after a high-school year in Watertown, South Dakota, where she received an American high-school diploma in 2005. From 2007 to 2013 she studied law at the University of Tübingen, including an Erasmus term in 2010 at the University of Oslo. Her legal clerkship, from 2013 to 2015 at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Bremen, included stations at the Bremen Regional Court and public prosecutor’s office, the German embassy in Nairobi, the Berlin firm Raue LLP, and Germany’s permanent mission to the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) in [New York](/organizations/new-york). In 2016 she held a traineeship in the human-rights directorate of the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe) in Strasbourg, and from 2017 to 2019 she lectured on police and civil-service law at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Since 2020 she has been a judge in Brandenburg’s ordinary courts in the Neuruppin judicial district; the office has been suspended since the Federal Returning Officer certified the 2021 result.

From 2016 to 2018 she was regional manager of the Brandenburg SPD for Brandenburg an der Havel and Havelland, and from 2018 to 2020 a staffer in the Bundestag office of Dagmar Ziegler. In constituency 60, Brandenburg an der Havel – Potsdam-Mittelmark I – Havelland III – Teltow-Fläming I, she took 46,642 first votes (32.1 percent) in 2021, ahead of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 20.1 percent, with turnout at 72.7 percent. In December 2021 the SPD group elected her its spokesperson on legal affairs, a post the faction’s own list recorded for the 20th Bundestag and that the *Tagesspiegel* still attributed to her in May 2025.

At the 2025 federal election she lost the direct seat to [Arne Raue](/people/arne-raue) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, who received 33.6 percent of first votes to her 25.8 percent (41,062 votes). She returned to parliament in fourth place on the SPD’s Brandenburg list, after [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz), [Maja Wallstein](/people/maja-wallstein) and [Stefan Zierke](/people/stefan-zierke). In the days before the new cabinet was settled she was discussed as a possible federal minister of justice; the SPD instead nominated [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig). The Bundestag disclosure describes her as Protestant, unmarried and the parent of one child.

## Early life and education

### Family and childhood in Bremen

Sonja Katharina Eichwede was born on 25 October 1987 in Bremen, Germany. She grew up there with two siblings in a Social Democratic household, and the Bundestag biography, which rests on her own disclosure, lists her as Protestant. Her father is the historian Wolfgang Eichwede, a professor at the University of Bremen and founding director of the Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa). He led [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) from 1982 until he retired in 2008. Through personal contacts with opposition figures, the institute assembled what the university calls one of Europe’s most extensive archives of samizdat and other underground writing from the former Eastern Bloc.

The same circle brought a childhood meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. Wolfgang Eichwede had known him since the early 1990s, after a lecture in Moscow led to an invitation to discuss it, and later described Gorbachev’s visits to Bremen as made at his invitation as well. From 3 to 5 October 1997 Gorbachev and his wife were in the city; on 4 October he opened the research centre’s new building, and Wolfgang Eichwede told the *taz* that the lecture program had been drawn up to fit Bremen’s wishes. Eichwede, born in late October, was nine. She has recalled meeting Gorbachev in Bremen at that age and being treated as a child rather than overlooked: he had, she said, “perceived and accepted me as a child” and “radiated warmth and confidence.” A photograph from the encounter became the cover of *Michail Gorbatschow – Wie er unser Leben veränderte* (2023), a book of narrative interviews edited by Bettina Schaefer. At the book’s presentation in Berlin on 30 August 2023, the first anniversary of Gorbachev’s death, Eichwede—then 35—was interviewed about the meeting.

### Schooling and the year in South Dakota

Eichwede went to school at the Kippenberg-Gymnasium in Bremen and passed the Abitur there in 2007, the German qualification for university entry. Before finishing in Germany she spent a high-school year in the United States, at Watertown High School in Watertown, South Dakota. In 2005 she received an American high-school diploma, then returned to the Kippenberg-Gymnasium; the Abitur followed two years later. Public accounts do not name the exchange organization or a host family. She has since described the year as an early choice to look past her immediate surroundings, grouping it with a later semester in Oslo and with stays abroad during her legal training.

### Law studies in Tübingen and Oslo

From 2007 to 2013 she studied law at the University of Tübingen (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg. The faculty’s main program is the classical German course in legal science, not a bachelor’s degree. A university stage with a standard length of ten semesters ends in the first state law examination (Erste juristische Prüfung); graduates then enter a practical preparatory service of about two years, the Referendariat, at a higher regional court, followed by the second state examination. Eichwede’s recorded dates match that sequence: the Tübingen course ran from 2007 to 2013, and in 2013 she began the Referendariat at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Bremen. Published biographies give no specialization, thesis title, or examination grade for the Tübingen years.

In 2010, while still enrolled in Tübingen, she held an Erasmus Programme place at the University of Oslo. She has described that stay as a single semester.

## Legal training and the bench

### Referendariat and international postings

In Germany, the statutory qualification for judicial office, the *Befähigung zum Richteramt*, is acquired by completing a university course in law with the first examination and then a two-year preparatory service, the *Vorbereitungsdienst* (commonly called the *Referendariat*), with the second state examination. That service is spent at compulsory stations—an ordinary court in civil matters, a public prosecutor’s office or a court in criminal matters, an administrative authority, and a lawyer—and at one or more elective stations where proper training is assured. A compulsory station lasts at least three months and the lawyer’s station nine months; training may also, to an appropriate extent, be taken at supranational, intergovernmental or foreign institutions or with foreign lawyers, with the detail left to state law. Appointment to a judicial service relationship requires, among other conditions, possession of that qualification.

The Bundestag biography of Sonja Eichwede, which the parliament states rests on members’ own disclosures, records a *Referendariat* from 2013 to 2015 at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (*Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht*) in Bremen. The stations she lists were the Landgericht Bremen, the public prosecutor’s office in Bremen, the German embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, the Berlin law firm Raue LLP, and Germany’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York City. Those placements match the statutory mix of a civil court, prosecution, legal practice and permitted foreign or international training; the biography does not say which station was the elective one, or how long each lasted.

In 2016, after that preparatory service, she held a traineeship at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, which she places in the organisation’s Human Rights Law and Policy section and in a unit she identifies as the Human Rights Intergovernmental Co-operation Division of Directorate General I. The biography lists the traineeship separately from the 2013–2015 *Referendariat* and does not state its length.

### Teaching and parliamentary staff work

From 2017 to 2019 Eichwede was a lecturer (*Lehrbeauftragte*) in police and civil-service law at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (*Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin*), for candidates of the higher intermediate police service (*gehobener Polizeivollzugsdienst*). The school’s Department of Police and Security Management runs that path as an internal bachelor’s programme with the Berlin police, combining police science with law and the social sciences; candidates apply to the police, not to the school. The biography does not describe her classes beyond police and civil-service law.

From 2018 to 2020, overlapping the lectureship, she was a scientific staff member (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) in the Bundestag office of Dagmar Ziegler, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from Brandenburg. Ziegler had sat in the Bundestag since 2009 and, on 26 November 2020, was elected one of its vice presidents. The biography records Eichwede’s post as employment in Ziegler’s parliamentary office and does not itemise her duties.

### Judgeship in the Neuruppin district

Since 2020 Eichwede has been a judge in the ordinary courts of Brandenburg, in the regional-court district of Neuruppin (*Landgerichtsbezirk Neuruppin*). Under the state’s Court Organisation Act, regional courts sit in Cottbus, Frankfurt (Oder), Neuruppin and Potsdam, and the Neuruppin district comprises the local-court districts of Neuruppin, Oranienburg, Perleberg, Prenzlau, Schwedt/Oder and Zehdenick. The side-activity notice published by the Bundestag names the employer as the Land Brandenburg, “Landgerichtsbezirk Neuruppin, Neuruppin,” and the occupation as “Richterin, Rückkehrrecht” (judge, with a right of return). It does not identify a particular court within that district.

Article 137 of the Basic Law allows statute to restrict the electability of judges. Section 36 of the German Judges Act provides that, once a judge accepts election to the Bundestag, the right and the duty to exercise the office end without a court decision, on the terms set elsewhere in statute, while the service relationship itself is not dissolved. The Members of the Bundestag Act extends the rules for salaried civil servants to judges: from the day the Federal Electoral Committee determines the result, or from acceptance of the mandate, the rights and duties of the public-law service relationship rest for the duration of membership, except the duty of official secrecy and the ban on accepting rewards or gifts. The office-holder may use the official title with the suffix *außer Dienst* (“a.D.”). That suffix is not retirement: the suspension lasts at most until entry into, or transfer to, retirement, and the relationship itself continues. After membership ends they rest for at most six further months; on an application within three months, the former judge is returned to the earlier relationship in an office of the same or an equivalent career and with at least the same final basic salary.

Eichwede’s biography states that her judicial office has rested since the Federal Returning Officer certified the official result of the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election). The determination is made by the Federal Electoral Committee; on 15 October 2021, chaired by Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel, it certified the final result of the election to the 20th Bundestag. The same prior activity, still entered as a judgeship in the Neuruppin district with a right of return and with no income figure attached, appears in the disclosure published for the 2025–2029 Bundestag.

## Party work in Brandenburg

### Joining the SPD and local office

Eichwede’s offices are in the Brandenburg branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The Augsburger Allgemeine, citing the state center for political education, reported that Brandenburg had had only three minister-presidents since the first election to the Landtag of Brandenburg in 1990, and that all three came from the same party; the incumbent it named was the SPD’s [Dietmar Woidke](/people/dietmar-woidke). The Berlin daily *nd* wrote, before the 2024 election, that the SPD had won every Landtag election since 1990. Woidke has chaired the state party since 2013. At the 2025 state congress he said the SPD had repeatedly finished first over 35 years by relying on continuity, and he named Manfred Stolpe and Matthias Platzeck as his predecessors. The margin has narrowed. For the [2024 Brandenburg state election](/facts/2024-brandenburg-state-election), Tagesschau reported a preliminary result of 30.9 percent for the SPD, 29.2 percent for the Alternative for Germany, 13.5 percent for the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) and 12.2 percent for the CDU, with turnout at 72.9 percent. The coalition of SPD, CDU and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) in office since 2019 no longer had a majority.

On Abgeordnetenwatch Eichwede wrote that she came from a Social Democratic household, had been politically active since her law studies, and entered the SPD in the summer of 2015. The Berliner Morgenpost gives the same year of joining and says she soon took on party work. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own information, records that she has been on the board of the SPD in Brandenburg an der Havel since 2018.

### Regional manager and campaign organization

From 2016 to 2018 she was regional business manager (*Regionalgeschäftsführerin*) of the SPD Brandenburg for Brandenburg an der Havel and the Havelland. The Bundestag biography states that her responsibility was organizing the campaign in Bundestag constituency 60, first for [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) and then for Erardo Rautenberg. On 12 February 2017 the [Federal Convention](/organizations/federal-convention) elected Steinmeier federal president, with 931 of 1,253 valid votes; he was to succeed [Joachim Gauck](/people/joachim-gauck), whose term ended on 18 March 2017. The Tagesspiegel reported that Erardo C. Rautenberg, then Brandenburg’s general public prosecutor and aged 64, stood as the SPD direct candidate for the constituency mandate Steinmeier had held. The paper described constituency 60 as covering the city of Brandenburg an der Havel, large parts of Potsdam-Mittelmark and smaller parts of Teltow-Fläming and the Havelland, and wrote that Rautenberg planned to take leave from the prosecution service two months before the election. The Morgenpost’s later account of the same job is less specific: she coordinated local party structures and supported campaigns, including Steinmeier’s.

### State party roles

On her website Eichwede states that the Brandenburg an der Havel board seat includes the executive committee of the Unterbezirk, the city’s district organization; that she was a member of the state committee (Landesausschuss) from 2018 to 2022; and that she has sat on the state executive since 2023. At the state party congress in Cottbus, the Märkische Allgemeine reported that ten *Beisitzer* seats were filled from 15 candidates and that Eichwede and the Bundestag member Stefan Zierke were confirmed in those ordinary seats, in a ballot separate from the elections for chair, deputy chairs, general secretary and treasurer. Sebastian Rüter, a transport politician in the Landtag from Potsdam-Mittelmark, and the state chair of the Jusos, Leonel Richy Andicene, were newly elected. The Landtag member Erik Stohn and Maja Wallstein were not returned because their vote totals were too low. Woidke was elected state chair for a seventh time with 84.9 percent—107 of 126 delegates in favor, 14 against and five abstentions—about six points below the 90.8 percent he received in 2023.

## Elections to the Bundestag

### The 2021 direct mandate

On 26 October 2020 an SPD constituency conference nominated Sonja Eichwede as the party's direct candidate in constituency 60 for the election to the 20th Bundestag. The Brandenburg state list was settled the following spring: a hybrid state delegate assembly, held because of the coronavirus restrictions, was followed by a postal ballot, and on 18 May 2021 the party recorded 94.2 percent approval for a list that placed Olaf Scholz first, Maja Wallstein second, Stefan Zierke third and Eichwede sixth. The constituency election committee admitted her nomination, together with 13 other constituency proposals, on 30 July 2021. The CDU candidate was Dietlind Tiemann, who had taken the seat in 2017 with 39,991 first votes (31.8 percent). Also admitted were Axel Brösicke of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Tobias Bank of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), Alexandra Pichl of Alliance 90/The Greens and Patrick Meinhardt of the Free Democratic Party.

The election was held on 26 September 2021. Of 202,955 eligible voters, 147,618 cast ballots, a turnout of 72.7 percent, 2.2 percentage points higher than in 2017; 145,379 first votes were valid. Eichwede received 46,642 first votes (32.1 percent), a gain of 7.2 percentage points, and won the direct mandate. Tiemann was second with 29,236 votes (20.1 percent); the CDU share fell 11.8 percentage points. Brösicke polled 23,931 (16.5 percent, down 0.2 points), Bank 12,672 (8.7 percent, down 6.2), Pichl 9,474 (6.5 percent) and Meinhardt 9,266 (6.4 percent). In the city of Brandenburg an der Havel itself Eichwede had 11,864 votes (31.1 percent) to Tiemann's 8,920 (23.4 percent).

On the party vote the SPD also led the constituency, with 48,423 second votes (33.3 percent), up 12.9 points. The AfD followed with 23,845 (16.4 percent), then the CDU with 22,274 (15.3 percent, down 13.1 points), the Greens with 12,211 (8.4 percent), Die Linke with 12,019 (8.3 percent) and the FDP with 11,934 (8.2 percent).

### The constituency

Constituency 60, Brandenburg an der Havel – Potsdam-Mittelmark I – Havelland III – Teltow-Fläming I, had the same legal boundaries for the 2021 and 2025 Bundestag elections. It contains the whole of the independent city of Brandenburg an der Havel. From the district of Havelland it takes the independent municipalities of Milower Land, Premnitz and Rathenow; the rest of that district is in constituencies 56 and 58. From Potsdam-Mittelmark it takes the independent municipalities of Bad Belzig, Beelitz, Groß Kreutz (Havel), Kloster Lehnin, Seddiner See, Treuenbrietzen, Werder (Havel) and Wiesenburg/Mark, plus the Ämter Beetzsee, Brück, Niemegk, Wusterwitz and Ziesar and their member municipalities; the remainder of the district is in constituency 61. From Teltow-Fläming it takes only the independent municipalities of Jüterbog and Niedergörsdorf, the rest of that district lying in constituencies 61 and 62.

On 31 December 2023 it comprised 38 municipalities and 3,266.7 square kilometres, with 254,400 inhabitants (236,500 of them German citizens; 7.0 percent foreign nationals) and a density of 77.9 people per square kilometre. At the end of 2022, 90.7 percent of the area was vegetation and water and 9.3 percent settlement and transport. Across 2022 and 2023 deaths exceeded births by 9.6 per 1,000 inhabitants, while net migration added 25.1 per 1,000.

### The 2025 election and the Brandenburg list

At the early Bundestag election on 23 February 2025 Eichwede lost the direct mandate. Arne Onni Raue of the AfD won constituency 60 with 53,611 first votes (33.6 percent), a rise of 17.2 percentage points from the AfD's 2021 share; Eichwede, again the SPD candidate, was second with 41,062 votes (25.8 percent), down 6.3 points.

The Brandenburg list was drawn up at a state delegate assembly in Potsdam on 14 December 2024, where Scholz was elected lead candidate with 109 of 120 votes and Wallstein beat Wiebke Papenbrock for second place. The state executive's order put Zierke third and Eichwede fourth. The state election committee admitted the lists on 24 January 2025; the published list gives Eichwede fourth place, with the occupation judge, birth in Bremen in 1987 and residence in Brandenburg an der Havel. That day the constituency committee also admitted her direct candidacy and those of Raue, described as mayor and living in Jüterbog; Dr. [Saskia Ludwig](/people/saskia-ludwig) (CDU), a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg; Matti Karstedt (FDP); Sylvana Specht (Greens); [Christin Willnat](/people/christin-willnat) (Die Linke); Dave-Alexander Sascha Korte ([Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters)); and Patrick Achtenberg (Volt).

Of 201,899 people eligible to vote, 161,157 did so, a turnout of 79.8 percent, up 7.1 points, and 159,351 first votes were valid. Ludwig received 30,938 (19.4 percent, down 0.7 points) and Willnat 17,349 (10.9 percent, up 2.2); Specht had 5,956 (3.7 percent), Korte 4,803 (3.0 percent), Karstedt 3,717 (2.3 percent) and Achtenberg 1,915 (1.2 percent). On second votes the AfD led with 50,225 (31.4 percent, up 15.0 points), ahead of the CDU on 29,339 (18.3 percent) and the SPD on 27,517 (17.2 percent, down 16.1 points). Die Linke had 17,229 (10.8 percent), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht 16,250 (10.2 percent) without a constituency candidate, the Greens 9,602 (6.0 percent) and the FDP 4,627 (2.9 percent).

Eichwede nevertheless returned to the Bundestag on the state list. The Federal Returning Officer records Raue as the member elected in constituency 60, and lists Eichwede among those elected from Brandenburg party lists, on SPD list place 4, after Wallstein on place 2 and Zierke on place 3; Scholz entered from constituency 61. For the 21st Bundestag the SPD parliamentary group names constituency 60 as her Wahlkreis and constituency 56, Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I, as her betreuter Wahlkreis. The group uses that term, also called a Betreuungswahlkreis, for an additional area assigned to an MP as a local point of contact, including constituencies in which no SPD candidate was elected. In constituency 56 the direct mandate went to [Götz Frömming](/people/gotz-fromming) of the AfD with 38.9 percent; the SPD candidate, Wiebke Papenbrock, was second with 22.2 percent.

## The twentieth Bundestag

### Spokesperson role and committees

Sonja Eichwede sat in the Bundestag throughout its twentieth legislative period, from 2021 to 2025. On the evening of 16 December 2021 the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany elected the spokespersons of its committee working groups. *Vorwärts* reported the next day that Eichwede, until then a judge in Brandenburg, had become the group’s spokesperson for legal affairs (*rechtspolitische Sprecherin*). The faction’s list of 17 December 2021, marked for the twentieth electoral term, names her under “Recht”; [Johannes Fechner](/people/johannes-fechner) is named for election scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure.

In the Bundestag that brief was the post of *Obfrau* for the SPD in the Committee on Legal Affairs (*Rechtsausschuss*). The member biography archived on 8 February 2025 lists her as *Obfrau* and as a full member, and records that her judge’s office had been suspended since the Federal Returning Officer certified the 2021 result on 15 October 2021. The same biography, and the 2021–2025 file at abgeordnetenwatch, list her as a full member of the Committee on Election Scrutiny, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure and as a deputy member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community (*Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat*). She was also a deputy member of the separate Election Scrutiny Committee (*Wahlprüfungsausschuss*), which prepares decisions on challenges to elections.

### Legislation and rapporteurships

The committee papers name Eichwede as the SPD rapporteur on the government’s bill for the further digitalization of the judiciary. The plenary referred printed papers 20/10943, 20/11309 and 20/11468 No. 4 to the Committee on Legal Affairs as lead committee on 10 April 2024. The committee held a public hearing on 15 May 2024 and, on 12 June 2024, recommended the bill as amended. The report, printed paper 20/11788, is signed by the chair, [Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker](/people/elisabeth-winkelmeier-becker), and by the rapporteurs Sonja Eichwede (SPD), Ansgar Heveling (CDU/CSU), [Till Steffen](/people/till-steffen) (Alliance 90/The Greens), Katrin Helling-Plahr (Free Democratic Party) and [Stephan Brandner](/people/stephan-brandner) ([Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany)).

The bill amended procedural law in criminal, civil, labour, social, administrative, finance, family, insolvency and restructuring proceedings, and parts of the law of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), so as to extend electronic filing and electronic case files. As set out in the committee report, it eased criminal complaints and other written-form requirements in criminal procedure, allowed participants in the main hearing on an appeal in revision (*Revisionshauptverhandlung*) to attend by video, widened electronic claims and communication with creditors in insolvency and restructuring, and replaced the written form for lawyers’ fee calculations. It authorised hybrid files, so that files opened on paper before 1 January 2026, and certain classified material, could remain partly on paper, with further changes dated 1 January 2026 and 1 January 2036. A coalition amendment required a revision court to tell the parties in advance at least the central issues of the hearing, and allowed a declaration that must reach the other party—including notice ending an employment contract—to be contained in an electronic court filing served through the special electronic lawyers’ mailbox, if the declaration was clearly identifiable.

In committee the SPD group tied the digital criminal complaint to online hate crime, and said advance notice was needed so that parties could judge whether to attend by video. The committee recommended the amended text with the votes of the SPD, the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the FDP, against the AfD and the BSW group, and with the Left group abstaining. The plenary adopted that recommendation on 14 June 2024 on the same lines; the Bundestag’s account notes that the act changed 26 statutes and ordinances. The bill did not require the consent of the Bundesrat, which on 5 July 2024, at its 1,046th sitting, did not call the mediation committee. The Act on the Further Digitalization of the Judiciary was issued on 12 July 2024 and promulgated on 16 July 2024 as *Bundesgesetzblatt* 2024 I No. 234; apart from the later staged dates, it entered into force on the day after promulgation. That printed report is the rapporteurship the parliamentary record attaches to her name for the term.

### Judicial selection and special bodies

On 27 January 2022 the Bundestag, without debate, filled several bodies elected for the legislative term. On the SPD proposal in printed paper 20/492, which received 220 votes, Eichwede was elected to the twelve-member committee that chooses the Federal Constitutional Court judges elected by the Bundestag (*Wahlausschuss* under section 6(2) of the Federal Constitutional Court Act), with Katja Mast, [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich), Dirk Wiese and Johannes Fechner. On printed paper 20/497, which received 222 votes for the SPD list, she was elected a Bundestag member of the Judicial Selection Committee (*Richterwahlausschuss*) under the Judicial Selection Act, with Johannes Fechner, Matthias Miersch, Dirk Wiese, [Carmen Wegge](/people/carmen-wegge) and Leni Breymaier. With the agreement of the federal government, that committee fills posts at the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Finance Court, the Federal Social Court and the Federal Labour Court. The same sitting made her a substitute member of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law (printed paper 20/504). The biography archived in February 2025 listed the Joint Committee among her full memberships.

On 7 July 2022 the Bundestag established the panel required by Article 13(6) of the Basic Law. Article 13 protects the home, but allows technical surveillance of conversations inside a dwelling in defined cases of serious crime; the government reports annually, and the panel reviews that report. A coalition motion set the panel at 13 members; a CDU/CSU amendment to reduce it to eleven failed. Eichwede was elected, on printed paper 20/2613, as one of four SPD members, with [Sebastian Fiedler](/people/sebastian-fiedler), Uli Grötsch and Carmen Wegge. The February 2025 biography and abgeordnetenwatch both record her as chair; the plenary elected the members, not the chair.

On 21 March 2024, in its 160th sitting, the Bundestag unanimously established an eleven-member panel under section 28a of the Money Laundering Act (printed paper 20/10723). It unanimously adopted the SPD slate in printed paper 20/10738—Eichwede, Carlos Kasper and Jens Zimmermann—and the proposals of the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the FDP; the AfD nomination was rejected. The February 2025 biography lists her as a full member of that panel. The posts were those of the twentieth Bundestag.

## Policy positions

### Criminal justice and protection from violence

In the Bundestag on 25 March 2026, Sonja Eichwede of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) called violence against women in Germany structural: a woman is killed nearly daily, and a dark-field study found only about 5 percent of domestic cases and 2.4 percent of digital cases reported. She wanted pornographic deepfakes and voyeuristic images made offences, with information claims against platforms, account blocks, storage of IP addresses, and electronic monitoring of high-risk abusers on the model used in Spain. [Ulle Schauws](/people/ulle-schauws) of Alliance 90/The Greens said her group would table its own bill.

The Bundestag passed that reform of the Protection against Violence Act on 8 May 2026. The governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU) and SPD, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Greens voted in favour; Die Linke abstained, arguing that it did not address the causes of male violence. Courts may order a time-limited ankle monitor that warns the protected person, require anti-violence training, and raise the maximum penalty for breaching a protection order from two years to three. On 22 September 2025 the German Association of Judges welcomed movement toward the Council of Europe's [Istanbul Convention](/facts/istanbul-convention), but said family courts lack investigators and that, without more staff and police information, protection might fail.

On 12 July 2026 she wrote that family law still had to stop forcing victims into contact with perpetrators. [Judicial independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) and the Länder's control of the courts, she added, limited any federal duty to train judges. On 30 March 2026 she told *Vorwärts* that killing a woman because she is a woman should be named as femicide in the Criminal Code and treated as murder for "base motives." *Vorwärts* noted Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig's scepticism about changing homicide law.

### Reproductive rights, self-determination and transparency

On 27 June 2024, after the SPD group voted to decriminalise abortion, Eichwede told the Evangelischer Pressedienst that section 218 of the Criminal Code should be replaced by a rule in the Pregnancy Conflict Act, rebalancing the pregnant woman's self-determination and the life of the unborn. Any lawful period should end well before fetal viability and need not exceed twelve weeks; without decriminalisation, she said, health insurance could not pay. The Free Democratic Party rejected any change.

At first reading on 5 December 2024 she defended a cross-party bill with 328 signatures, calling criminal law the last resort and the formula "unlawful, yet the offence is excluded" incoherent. She said German practice was, after Poland and Malta, the most restrictive in Europe, and that about 80 percent of the public favoured decriminalisation. CDU deputy Dorothee Bär disputed that figure and called the speech a culture war; Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker said the existing rule had been the Federal Constitutional Court's proposal; [Susanne Hierl](/people/susanne-hierl) said abolishing the three-day wait would empty mandatory counselling of its point.

On 20 May 2022, answering a constituent who feared lost women's spaces, unfair sport and broken parity rules, Eichwede wrote that the planned Self-Determination Act would govern only a change of first name and legal sex. Violence would stay punishable whatever the register said; shelters could still decide access; sports bodies, not the statute, would set the rules. She described trans women as particularly vulnerable rather than the main danger to other women.

On 10 September 2026 she answered that neither she nor the SPD group would accept any reduction in the transparency level of the [Freedom of Information Act](/facts/freedom-of-information-act). She wanted it simplified and digitised, wrote that its security exceptions had worked for twenty years, and allowed that publication duties on critical infrastructure might need review. [Human Rights Watch](/organizations/human-rights-watch) on 8 July 2026 asked the government to drop coalition-committee plans of 2 July to require a "legitimate interest," limit requests to natural persons, lift the €500 fee cap and allow routine redaction of officials' names; FragDenStaat called that the heaviest attack on state transparency in the Federal Republic's history.

### Interior security and the rule of law

On 16 May 2025 she said the courts had to be strengthened against attempts to undermine the rule of law, and she cited a coalition Pact for the [Rule of Law](/drivers/rule-of-law): more staff, digitalisation, and faster proceedings. After New Year attacks on police and rescuers, she told ARD, as Deutschlandfunk reported on 2 January 2026, that heavier sentences alone would not deter and that more judges were needed. The rescue-service association's chair replied in the Funke newspapers that penalties of up to five years already existed and were rarely used in full.

On 20 March 2024 she wrote that she saw a quickening "spiral of radicalisation" in the AfD and an unconstitutional stance in statements by its leading figures. A ban under Article 21 of the Basic Law needs evidence of a plan that could disable the free democratic basic order, not merely hostile speech. The SPD would await further results from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which classed the party as a suspected case, and would first try to beat it politically.

In a WEB.DE interview of 13 August 2026 she defended wider powers against hybrid threats: the Federal Intelligence Service should be able to act abroad against an acute danger, not merely collect data, and the domestic service should act where the police cannot take over in time. The separation of intelligence and police would remain, data on unsuspected people would not be touched, and independent and parliamentary control should deepen. Federal Data Protection Commissioner Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider had spoken of unconstitutionality; Eichwede said the interior and justice ministries judged the package constitutional.

## Leadership in the twenty-first Bundestag

### Deputy chair of the SPD parliamentary group

The SPD entered the 21st Bundestag as junior partner in a coalition of the CDU, the CSU and the SPD under Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz). On 7 May 2025 the SPD parliamentary group chose a new executive. [Matthias Miersch](/people/matthias-miersch), until then the party’s general secretary, was elected chair with 83.2 percent, succeeding [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil), who was moving into the Merz cabinet as vice-chancellor and federal finance minister.

The same sitting filled six deputy chairs. The group’s press office reported 117 votes cast and 101 in favour of Sonja Eichwede, and assigned her interior affairs, legal affairs, consumer protection, election scrutiny, immunity, petitions and sport. n-tv named the other deputies as [Siemtje Möller](/people/siemtje-moller), [Armand Zorn](/people/armand-zorn), [Wiebke Esdar](/people/wiebke-esdar), Dagmar Schmidt and [Esra Limbacher](/people/esra-limbacher). Dirk Wiese was elected first parliamentary managing director with 82.5 percent.

From 21 May 2025 the group lists her as a deputy member of its working groups on the interior; petitions; legal affairs and consumer protection; sport and voluntary service; and election scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure, and as a deputy on the Bundestag committees of the same names. The chamber’s biography records those five deputy committee seats.

### Oversight, committees and coalition talks

In the coalition negotiations that preceded the cabinet, the SPD on 12 March 2025 published its working-group lists. Eichwede was named lead of group 9, on cutting bureaucracy, modernising the state and a modern justice system, with then federal interior minister Nancy Faeser as deputy lead and Hakan Demir, Sebastian Hartmann, Burkhard Jung, Esra Limbacher and Kathrin Wahlmann as the other Social Democratic members. The *Tagesspiegel*, reporting the presidium’s decision that day, wrote that Faeser was only deputy of that group and that Dirk Wiese would lead the interior group. The list does not place Eichwede in the party’s small top-level negotiating round.

On judicial appointments, the SPD on 20 May 2025 nominated her as a full member of the committee that elects judges of the federal supreme courts (Richterwahlausschuss), with [Esther Dilcher](/people/esther-dilcher) as alternate. The group dates that seat, and her place on the separate committee which prepares the Bundestag’s elections to the Federal Constitutional Court, from 21 May 2025; the chamber’s biography lists her as a full member of the constitutional-court committee. Half of the court’s 16 judges are chosen by the Bundestag, and the plenary may elect only persons proposed by the 12-member committee set up at the start of each electoral term.

Oversight of the intelligence services was settled in June. On 24 June the coalition factions asked the Bundestag to establish, under Article 45d of the Basic Law, a Parliamentary Oversight Panel (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, PKGr) of nine members. The next day the factions nominated [Daniel Baldy](/people/daniel-baldy) and Eichwede for the SPD. On 26 June the plenary elected both, with [Heiko Hain](/people/heiko-hain), [Marc Henrichmann](/people/marc-henrichmann) and [Alexander Throm](/people/alexander-throm) for the Union and [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) for the Greens. Martin Hess and [Gerold Otten](/people/gerold-otten) of the AfD, and Heidi Reichinnek of Die Linke, missed the majority of 316 votes required among 630 members. The panel, already reduced from 13 seats to nine, therefore sat with six and, unlike ordinary committees, with no alternates. It constituted itself the same day under Bundestag vice-president [Josephine Ortleb](/people/josephine-ortleb); Henrichmann became chair and von Notz deputy.

The panel supervises the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the [Military Counterintelligence Service](/organizations/military-counterintelligence-service) (MAD) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The government must inform it of the services’ general activity and of matters of particular importance; it may demand further reports, inspect files and data, question service personnel and enter their premises. It meets in secret because of the material it receives.

A joint nomination dated 25 June 2025, printed paper 21/595, named Eichwede among the SPD’s six full members of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law. The Bundestag’s information service said the plenary would vote on the list on 26 June; the chamber’s biography and the SPD group both list her as a full member, the group dating the seat from 25 June. The Joint Committee is an emergency parliament for a state of defence, used only if insurmountable obstacles stop the Bundestag meeting in time. It has 48 members: 32 members of the Bundestag, who may not sit in the federal government and whose party balance follows the strength of the groups, and 16 members of the Bundesrat, one from each Land and not bound by instructions. The Bundestag president chairs it, and the government must brief it on planning for a state of defence. Article 53a was added with the emergency laws of 1968; the committee has never met.

Cabinet posts were settled before the group election. On 5 May 2025 the *Tagesspiegel* reported that Eichwede, then the SPD group’s legal-policy spokesperson, had been discussed as federal justice minister, and that the SPD had agreed the post would go to Stefanie Hubig. The paper called Eichwede a rising figure of the Brandenburg SPD: a judge and member of parliament from Brandenburg an der Havel, aged 37 and the mother of a son. The same day *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* identified Hubig — until then education minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, and already familiar with the federal justice ministry — as the SPD’s candidate, and described the choice as unexpected. The federal government lists Hubig as Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection. Eichwede did not enter the cabinet; the deputy chairmanship two days later was the leadership post she received.

## Personal life and public reception

### Family and residence

The Bundestag biography, compiled from Eichwede's own disclosure, describes her as Protestant, unmarried and the parent of one child. In an April 2025 profile, the Berliner Morgenpost wrote that she grew up in a family of [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) in Bremen, has two siblings, and that her father is the historian Wolfgang Eichwede. He joined the University of Bremen in 1974 as professor of politics and contemporary Eastern European history and in 1982 founded the Research Centre for East European Studies, which he directed until retiring in 2008; the university recorded the Bremen Senate Medal for Art and Science awarded to him in 2022.

The Morgenpost, and a Der Westen article updated in September 2025, identified her partner as Erik Stohn, an SPD member of the Landtag of Brandenburg, and reported that the couple are unmarried and have a son. Der Westen placed the birth in January 2023 and wrote that Stohn was still in hospital then, after a burst tire sent his car into a tree. Eichwede's own website later stated that she has two sons, which conflicts with the Bundestag disclosure of one child. Stohn's Landtag biography, which does not name a partner, lists two children and an address in Jüterbog. Abgeordnetenwatch gives Eichwede's place of residence as Brandenburg an der Havel. The Bundestag publishes her constituency office as Ritterstraße 81, 14770 Brandenburg an der Havel.

### Civic memberships

That disclosure lists supporting membership of [Amnesty International](/organizations/amnesty-international) Germany, WWF Germany, the Europa-Union, the Young European Federalists (JEF) and Junge DGAP, the youth network of the German Council on Foreign Relations, plus a deputy seat on the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Stiftung Forum Recht. The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation lists her separately as a member of its foundation council (Stiftungsrat), not of the executive board.

### Media profile

On 5 May 2025 Der Tagesspiegel called her a "Shooting-Star" of the Brandenburg SPD: a judge and Bundestag member from Brandenburg an der Havel, then 37 and the mother of a son, who had been discussed as federal minister of justice. The paper reported that the party had instead agreed on Stefanie Hubig. Four days earlier the Morgenpost had published a biographical sketch while she was still being discussed for that office.

A Tagesspiegel report of 16 July 2026, drawing on abgeordnetenwatch's balance for Brandenburg, said Eichwede had answered all 20 citizen questions put to her in the previous twelve months, while former chancellor Olaf Scholz had answered none of 28. Twelve of the state's 21 Bundestag members answered every question and received the mark "Hervorragend"; Brandenburg finished last among the Länder, with 135 of 243 questions answered (56 percent), against a national rate of 75 percent. The portal's running profile, limited to the current mandate, later showed 24 of 35 questions answered (69 percent), including items from September and October 2026 still marked unanswered.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/sonja-eichwede