“Regardless” of the outcome of the election
Merz fills important CDU positions
10/10/2022, 4:21 p.m
CDU boss Merz appoints a new managing director and a new head of communications. The two important personal details have nothing to do with the disappointing outcome of the elections in Lower Saxony, he assures.
The day after the state elections in Lower Saxony, the CDU announced that important top positions would be filled: Federal Managing Director Stefan Hennewig has to go, his post will be taken over by long-standing group manager Christoph Hoppe from Saturday, as the party announced. The journalist Kathrin Degmair will be the new head of the Strategic Planning and Communication department.
“I am pleased to have won two excellent leaders for the CDU in Kathrin Degmair and Christoph Hoppe,” said CDU Chairman Friedrich Merz. “Both are team-focused bridge builders and ‘doers’,” he said.
After the meeting of the federal executive board, Merz emphasized that the personnel decisions were “completely independent” of the performance of the CDU in Lower Saxony. He decided “a long time ago” to fill the post of federal manager after this year’s state elections. Hoppe’s appointment was unanimously confirmed by the federal executive board. The “structures” in the party headquarters were to be modernized with the new federal manager.
The previous federal manager Hennewig was brought into office in the summer of 2019 by the then party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. He had previously worked in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus for many years – unlike his successor: According to party information, Hoppe worked for the Union faction and the Chancellery in the early 1990s, but then worked for around 25 years as a manager “in civil aviation, the defense and railway industries”.
Degmair worked as a journalist for Bayerischer Rundfunk for a long time. According to the information, she has worked for the international strategy consulting company Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for the past year and a half.
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja characterized the new top executives as “passionate team players” with a lot of know-how “in the management of complex organizations and in change and transformation processes”. Czaja thanked Hennewig “for his substantial and highly committed work as federal manager”. The previous federal manager will “continue to shape the knowledge transfer in the CDU family in the coming months”.