Status: 10/10/2022 2:10 p.m
One day after the Lower Saxony elections, the CDU filled top positions: federal manager Hennewig had to go, successor was manager Hoppe. The Strategic Planning and Communication department is also getting a new head.
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz is reorganizing the leadership of the party headquarters. Federal managing director Stefan Hennewig will be replaced by the former manager Christoph Hoppe, as the CDU announced. The federal manager is a kind of head of administration in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus.
The former marketing director of the Boston Consulting Group and former ARD– Journalist Kathrin Degmair. The step was announced immediately after the CDU lost the state elections in Lower Saxony.
Merz: “Bridge builders and ‘doers'”
“I am pleased to have won two excellent leaders for the CDU in Kathrin Degmair and Christoph Hoppe,” said Merz. “Both are team-focused bridge builders and ‘doers’,” he said.
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja said the party leadership was pleased “to have Christoph Hoppe, an internationally experienced CEO with a political background, and Dr. Kathrin Degmair, a long-standing, experienced manager in the media industry and expertise in strategic consulting, new to our team”. He characterized the new top executives as “passionate team players” with a lot of know-how “in the management of complex organizations as well as in change and transformation processes”.
Hennewig came from Kramp-Karrenbauer
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 parliamentary group and the Chancellery in the early 1990s, then for around 25 years as a manager “in civil aviation, the defense and railway industries”.
Merz and his general secretary Mario Czaja accused him of a lack of clout in the recent campaigns, wrote the portal “The Pioneer”.