Anyone who is no longer running: It’s not just older people and backbenchers who say: Bye bye, Bundestag!

Alexander Gauland (83) and Albrecht Glaser (82) from the AfD will no longer run in the next federal election – for reasons of age. And it is certainly no surprise that two long-serving parliamentarians, Renate Künast (Greens) and Petra Pau (Left), have ruled out running for office again. However, among the MPs who have announced in recent weeks and months that they no longer want to take part in the election campaign, there are some men and women who would have had a good chance of securing a secure place on the list and of prominent positions after the next election.

In individual cases this is probably also due to the fact that celebrities and contact with citizens are not always fun in these politically heated times. Some of the dropouts are also frustrated because they were unable to gain traction with their political goals, even within their own parliamentary group. But often it’s simply about spending more time with your own children, spouse or infirm parents – especially if the constituency is far away from Berlin.

The successful ones:

Tobias Lindner from the Greens is 42 years old, a father, and has been in the Bundestag since 2011. Even some members of other factions who appreciate his objective, calm manner find it a shame that he no longer wants to run. He himself says: “I think you should go when it’s most beautiful.” His current job as Minister of State in the Foreign Office is very demanding, but at the same time gives him a lot of joy. He’s leaving “without frustration or resentment” and doesn’t have a new job up his sleeve yet. Politics is the most exciting thing he has done in his life, “but it’s not my whole life.” He knows some parliamentarians who are his age, have families and no longer want to run for office, who feel the same way.

Like Lindner, FDP man Mario Brandenburg (41), currently Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Education, and 42-year-old Thomas Hitschler (SPD), Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Defense, also come from the southern Palatinate, have children and both no longer want to serve in the Bundestag run for office.

In fact, politicians who arrive home after a week of meetings in Berlin often find that party colleagues in the constituency have little understanding when their daughter’s piano recital or their son’s lantern parade takes priority over local appointments at local companies or meetings with volunteers.

Three women from the CDU:

At the Union it is noticeable that three prominent middle-aged women, Nadine Schön (41), Yvonne Magwas (44) and Katja Leikert (49), have announced that they have had enough for now. Schön has been deputy chairwoman of the Union parliamentary group since 2014. Magwas was elected Vice President of the Bundestag in 2021. Leikert is chairwoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the family committee.

Family reasons:

For her it was “a classic female departure,” says Leikert. Even though her children are now teenagers, it is important to her to spend more time with them. That’s not a pretextual reason either, because “there isn’t a single post in an association that’s waiting for me.” Leikert, who counts the lack of daycare places and questions about organ donation among her heartfelt issues, says she has no problem with her party’s current course, but is “still strongly connected to the idea of ​​the CDU” and wants to continue to be politically involved engage.

Michelle Müntefering (SPD) also cited family reasons for wanting to spend more time with her husband, the former SPD federal chairman Franz Müntefering (84).

Frustration with your own party:

Canan Bayram (Greens) announced her departure in a completely different way. The 58-year-old lawyer, who belongs to the left wing of the party, wrote in a public statement that she was not prepared to become a “fig leaf for my group, which focuses less on human rights than on populist discourses in its work.” However, it was probably not certain whether her district association Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg Ost would nominate her as a direct candidate again. One of the issues that Bayram was particularly committed to in the Bundestag for years was the legalization of cannabis use for adults, which has now been decided.

Katrin Schmidberger, who has now been elected by the Greens in Bayram’s constituency as the constituency’s new direct candidate, also belongs to the left wing of the party. In her application speech, she emphasized solidarity with refugees and promised to campaign against rising rents in the Bundestag.

Gesine Lötzsch (63), who won a direct mandate for Die Linke six times in Berlin-Lichtenberg, also used her farewell statement to settle accounts. She demanded: “We must become recognizable as a peace party again.”

Bundestag newcomer Claudia Raffelhüschen from the FDP has had enough after just one election period. The 55-year-old justified her departure by saying, among other things, “that the politics of the traffic light coalition are not always in line with my basic liberal beliefs.”

Stress, insults and agitation:

What came as a surprise to many was the announcement by SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert (35), who declared on October 7th that he was giving up his party office for health reasons and did not want to run for office again.

The CDU politician Magwas is one of the MPs who are calling for a ban on the AfD. She announced her retirement from active politics in July. In a personal statement she wrote: “It is also true that the social climate has become considerably harsher in recent years, especially in Saxony (…) There is lying, discrediting and incitement; democracy and its institutions are being attacked by the AfD , Free Saxony, III. Weg, NPD and whatever they are called, day after day and systematically questioned with the aim of abolishing them.” As a member of parliament you are particularly under fire. “I experienced a lot of insults, threats, but unfortunately also a lot of indifference. That takes away my strength,” complained Magwas.

The AfD has already put forward candidates in some state associations. The MPs Christina Baum and Mariana Harder-Kühnel, among others, were unable to prevail. The notorious heckler Beatrix von Storch was re-elected to the top spot on the Berlin AfD candidate list. The fact that only a few of the middle-aged MPs voluntarily say goodbye to the Bundestag could, some in the parliamentary group speculate, in some cases perhaps be due to the fact that a return to the old job – if available – with an AfD biography is not always easy in some industries and regions.