CDU politician from Stuttgart likely to take over Schäuble's mandate
In August 2022, Stefan Kaufmann from Stuttgart leaves politics and goes into business. A good year later, the CDU politician is apparently returning: Kaufmann is to be the first successor to Wolfgang Schäuble's seat.
Stuttgart CDU politician Stefan Kaufmann will apparently take over the seat in the Bundestag from his deceased party colleague Wolfgang Schäuble. The former member of the Bundestag and government commissioner for green hydrogen wants to accept the mandate, according to CDU parliamentary group circles. The 54-year-old could not yet be reached for comment.
Kaufmann sat in the Bundestag for the CDU from 2009 to 2021, but then lost the direct mandate in the Stuttgart I constituency in the Bundestag election in September 2021 to Cem Özdemir from the Greens, who later became Federal Minister of Agriculture. Kaufmann is the first successor on the CDU's Baden-Württemberg state list. However, he is free to decide whether he accepts the mandate and takes office.
During his time in the Bundestag, Kaufmann was appointed "Green Hydrogen" Innovation Commissioner at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) by the then CDU Research Minister Anja Karliczek in June 2020. Kaufmann retained this position even after the CDU/CSU was voted out of office in September 2021: Karliczek's successor, Bettina Stark-Watzinger from the FDP, also appointed the CDU politician as the German hydrogen commissioner. In August 2022, the Stuttgart native left politics and moved into business as a consultant for the steel group Thyssen-Krupp.
"Outstanding personality"
Schäuble died on Tuesday evening at the age of 81 at home with his family in Offenburg, Baden. Former German Chancellor and CDU leader Angela Merkel paid tribute to him as an "outstanding personality with political and programmatic foresight".
Merkel was German Chancellor from November 2005 to December 2021. Schäuble was a minister in her government from 2005 to October 2017. During Merkel's fourth term in office, Schäuble was then President of the German Bundestag, to which he belonged as an ordinary member of parliament after the change of government in 2021.
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After Stefan Kaufmann's departure from politics in 2022 and return in 2023, he is expected to succeed Wolfgang Schäuble in the German Federal Parliament as a CDU representative from Stuttgart. Following Schäuble's death in 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recognized his significant contributions, describing him as an "outstanding personality with political and programmatic foresight."
Source: www.ntv.de
