Karin Prien in portrait – first Jewish Federal Minister

The Schleswig-Holstein CDU politician Karin Prien becomes the first Jewish Federal Minister. Prien was born in 1965 in Amsterdam, where her German grandparents fled to the Nazis. Only at the age of 26 she accepted German citizenship. In the future federal government, she will be Minister of Education, Family, Seniors, Women and Youth.

“Of course, my decision to become politically active has a lot to do with my family history,” said Prien 2019 of the “Jewish general”. “I come from a classic Jewish European migrant family. The Schoa played a dominant role.”

As a child, Prien moved with her parents from the Netherlands to Neuwied in Rhineland-Palatinate, where she took off her high school diploma in 1984. She had already joined the CDU in 1981 as a student. In 2012 she became a CDU member in Hamburg. In 2017 she moved to the state government of Schleswig-Holstein as Minister of Education.

Prien profiled herself nationwide as an education politician-and as a decidedly liberal voice in the federal CDU. Since 2018, Prien has also been a spokeswoman for the Jewish Forum in the CDU, deputy party leader since 2022.

Prien has not talked about her Jewish origin for a long time. When her family moved to Germany from Amsterdam, “the confession to be a Jewish was not a matter of course, and you didn’t do it without grimity,” said Prien in 2022 to “Zeit Magazin”. She described the mood in her family at the time: “Don’t do it, that’s dangerous, because Nazis are still here.”

She didn’t notice anything from the Jewish traditions and content of the belief. “I very much regret that, I lack a piece of identity myself,” said Prien of the “Jewish general”. “My husband and I tried to give our children rituals. I read a lot for that, but I wasn’t really credible.”

Since the attack by the radical Islamic Hamas on October 7, 2023, Prien has been more likely to have commented on her own experiences than Jew in Germany. Powerfully, she addresses her concern about anti -Semitism and the rise of the AfD.

Prien published a photo of a Davidstern on platform X. She wrote: “Mom, today I carry your little Davidstern over my dress, you have only worn him under your clothing for decades.

As the most effective remedy for the strengthening right -wing extremism, Prien sees a everyday policy that takes care of those people who suffer from fear of relegation. “We have a policy that no longer shows the evidence that it really solves the big problems of our country,” she criticized before the Bundestag election.

Prien now takes over a ministry that is responsible for many everyday topics – and can therefore also make noticeable relief for people. The ministry takes care of the financial support for families, daycare care, compatibility of family and work as well as equality between men and women. The area of ​​education is new because the Union and the SPD have agreed a new cut -off of the competencies of the ministries.

The ministerial office therefore has great design potential for Karin Prien. In a time scarcity, however, she will have to prove a lot of assertiveness in order to actually enforce her own projects, because family policy improvements usually cost a lot of money. A warning example is likely to be the previous family minister Lisa Paus of the Greens, which has failed with her heart’s concern, the basic child security – also because of the costs.