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Hopeful:
Music manager
Joe Chialo
, as a CDU direct candidate in Berlin-Spandau, has a rather uncertain path to parliament
Photo: ANDREAS GORA / POOL / EPA
The next Bundestag will probably be significantly larger. Instead of the 598 planned and finally 709 MPs, political scientists estimate that 800, 900 or even 1000 people's representatives could soon be sitting in Berlin with overhang and compensatory mandates. And yet: The number of entrepreneurs is likely to decrease compared to the 2017 federal election. At that time, the Family Business Foundation had 78 entrepreneurs in parliament, a doubling of the previous legislature - but immediately distanced itself from the results of its own study. Whether someone is an entrepreneur is based on the self-assessment of the MPs. Many of them interpreted the term entrepreneur too broadly from the point of view of foundation director Brun-Hagen Hennerkes.
A look at the list of candidates published by the Federal Returning Officer shows that entrepreneurship appears to be less popular in 2021, with most of the mentions from small parties with no realistic chance of overcoming the 5 percent hurdle.
The signs are on a downward path, especially for the Mittelstand parliamentary group (PKM), which claims to have 161 members of the 245 CDU / CSU MPs.
CDU entrepreneur with difficult tasks
Veteran
Hans Michelbach
(72, CSU), who has expanded the trading company inherited from his parents with several acquisitions, is withdrawing from the Bundestag after 27 years. A few other middle-class representatives are leaving after the Union's lobby scandals. After all, PKM boss
Christian von Stetten
(51) should remain pretty safe. He represents the stronghold of the middle class par excellence: the Baden-Württemberg constituency of Schwäbisch Hall-Hohenlohe, which he has practically inherited along with the Schloss Stetten Holding with various company holdings.
CSU grandees such as master miller and ex-transport minister
Peter Ramsauer
(67) and his successor
Alexander Dobrindt
(51), who before his ministerial job led the mechanical engineering company Holzner and is now the CSU's top candidate in Bavaria, can
also count on secure direct mandates
.
Also
Carsten Linnemann
(44), head of the party-affiliated SME Union has one of the safest in Paderborn CDU constituencies.
However, he should fall under the Hennerkes verdict of the lack of real reference as an entrepreneur: Before his political career, Linnemann worked as an economist for Deutsche Bank and the industrial bank IKB.
Some active entrepreneurs do stand up for the CDU, but in many cases a mandate seems unlikely.
The most prominent example is the music manager
Joe Chialo
, recently introduced as a member of the eight-person competence team by Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet.
The founder and boss of the label Airforce1 Records, which is operated jointly with Universal Music, is supposed to chase away the Berlin-Spandau constituency from the SPD without being covered by the state list.
Multi-entrepreneur
Angelika Westerwelle
in Bielefeld and
Sandra von Möller
should also have lower list positions in North Rhine-Westphalia
(52) win in the west of Cologne on difficult terrain.
After a career at Deutsche Post, Möller runs the lighting company Bäro together with her husband.
The telecommunications strategist from the SPD
The memory of a CDU victory in Salzgitter-Wolfenbüttel, where
Holger Bormann
(40) is running, is the fourth generation owner of a car dealership that he had to rebuild at the age of 26 after his parents went bankrupt.
For the automotive industry, the constituency is safe: The successor to ex-economics minister and multi-supervisory board member Sigmar Gabriel as SPD representative is
Falko Mohrs
(37), who is already in the Bundestag and previously coordinated the production of the Tiguan and Touran models for Volkswagen.
The Social Democrats still have several salaried managers in their ranks, mostly from municipal companies. One of them is
Florian Post
(40) from Stadtwerke München, who for the first time since 2005 would have to win a direct mandate from the CSU in order to remain in the Bundestag due to a poor list position. The chances in Kaiserslautern are quite good for the telecommunications manager
Matthias Mieves
(35), who most recently headed the innovation program and investment management of the Bonn-based group and also has a care service. For his candidacy, Mieves topped up his working hours account and has been doing a similar job as an election campaigner since January in the sabbatical year.
Self-employed entrepreneurs are rarer in the SPD.
The Bavarian MP
Andreas Schwarz
(56) had to file for bankruptcy with his shipping for wooden toys in 2018 after a major customer went bankrupt.
Daniel Schneider
(44), co-founder and managing director of the Deichbrand music festival and several other event companies, will be
in Cuxhaven
.
Liberal traditional entrepreneur
Even with the FDP, which is successful with major donors in the German economy, active entrepreneurs in parliament are rare.
Alexander Kulitz
(40), partner in the apparatus construction company Esta and former head of the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Business Jurors, has little chance of re-election at 26th place on the list in Baden-Württemberg. For
Lencke Wischhusen
(36), who started as a model entrepreneur in 2017, number 1 on the Bremen state list was not enough to move into the Bundestag, and this time she is in second place - after all, behind another entrepreneur,
Volker Redder
(62). With 12th place in North Rhine-Westphalia,
Carl-Julius Cronenberg
has good chances
(59), who until his election in 2017 managed the family-owned traditional company with several metal processing companies, which goes back to a scythe forge founded in Arnsberg in 1711.
In the Hochsauerlandkreis, Cronenberg is a rival of CDU finance politician Friedrich Merz.
But the Liberals count the only MPs with experience as Dax board members in their ranks:
Thomas Sattelberger
(72, formerly at Daimler, Lufthansa, Continental and Deutsche Telekom and, in addition to his mandate outside of election campaign times, also an mm columnist), who is again in 5th place candidate from the Bavarian list.
Green founder
The Greens have been building a dense network in the economy for years, but Hamburg's top candidate
Katharina Beck
(39)
would bring
a new facet
to the parliamentary group
.
Most recently she worked as director for sustainability strategy at the management consultancy Accenture and has experience as a founder ("Brave New World delüx").
Left world market leader
Business leaders in the left-wing faction are even more exceptional.
For a long time, the spokesman for the left-wing entrepreneurs was the singer-songwriter
Diether Dehm
(71), as the label owner a colleague of CDU man Chialo, who is also often offensive in his own party and is now on the brink of list position 5 in Lower Saxony.
Yvonne Mahlo
would be a huge surprise as a newcomer to parliament
(40), who worked for several years as managing director of the medium-sized plant manufacturer Kjellberg from Finsterwalde - a company that is one of the world market leaders in its specialty plasma cutting.
Mahlo would have to win the constituency in the south of Brandenburg, where the left was only close to victory once and which is now more of a contested between the CDU and the AfD.
Anke Domscheit-Berg
(53), whose career led through Accenture, McKinsey, Microsoft and her own company for fiber optic network expansion to the Pirate Party, the Greens and then the Left,
has bigger chances in second place on the state list
.
Right wildcards
The AfD, on the other hand, still has several entrepreneurs in its ranks, albeit significantly fewer than when the right-wing parliamentarians entered parliament in 2017. As newcomers,
Edgar Naujok
(61), who owns the Leipzig IT system provider Allsyson, and
Mathias Weiser
could fill the gaps, commercial director of the family business Weiser Fassadentechnik in Schleiz in Vogtland.
However, both would need very strong first vote results.
Party leader
Tino Chrupalla
(46) has one of the most promising AfD direct mandates in Görlitz, but is no longer a painter.
The corporate career of co-top candidate
Alice Weidel
(42, Goldman Sachs, Allianz, Rocket Internet) has also been a thing of the past for a while.
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