Merz reshuffles CDU and cabinet: Franziska Hoppermann to become party general secretary, Linnemann moves to health ministry

The new general secretary

Chancellor and CDU leader Friedrich Merz proposed Franziska Hoppermann as the party's new general secretary during a presidium meeting in Berlin on Monday. The 44-year-old Hamburg MP, who has served as CDU federal treasurer since 2025, will succeed Carsten Linnemann. Linnemann is slated to become federal health minister. Hoppermann is the third woman to hold the post, after Angela Merkel (1998 to 2000) and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (February to December 2018).

Schon als Kind habe ich meinen Großvater bewundert, der lange Jahre Bundestagsabgeordneter gewesen war.

Hoppermann joined the Junge Union in 1998 and the CDU a year later. She has been a member of the party's federal executive board since 2022 and entered the Bundestag in 2021 for the Hamburg-Wandsbek constituency. In parliament she sits on the budget committee and the digital affairs committee, and chairs the Corona enquiry commission tasked with improving Germany's pandemic preparedness. In Hamburg she chairs the Women's Union, and from 2004 until her election to the Bundestag she served in the Wandsbek district assembly.

A wider cabinet reshuffle

The general secretary appointment is one piece of a larger personnel package Merz has been assembling since parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn resigned just over a week ago. Thorsten Frei, currently head of the chancellery, is expected to be elected Spahn's successor on Wednesday. Health minister Nina Warken will move into Frei's chancellery role, making way for Linnemann at the health ministry.

Further changes are taking shape across government departments. Gitta Connemann, currently parliamentary state secretary in the economics ministry, will move to the same role in the digital ministry. She will be replaced in the economics ministry by Johannes Steiniger, the CDU general secretary from Rhineland-Palatinate, a move that also appears to compensate for the planned dismissal of transport minister Patrick Schnieder, who hails from the same state. Christiane Schenderlein, the sports minister of state in the chancellery, will become parliamentary state secretary in the health ministry, replacing Tino Sorge. Her successor in the chancellery has not yet been named. Schenderlein's departure from the chancellery had been known for several days and has drawn sharp criticism from CDU state associations in eastern Germany.

What the role demands

As general secretary, Hoppermann will manage the party headquarters at the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, coordinate party branches, and organise election campaigns. The usual 100-day grace period for politicians in new posts will not apply: state elections are already scheduled for September in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. Hoppermann's second great passion after politics is classical music. She began playing piano at age four, later took up the cello, and sings as a soloist and in chamber choirs, though the dual burden of MP and general secretary is likely to leave less time for that.

Women in the CDU

By choosing Hoppermann, Merz strengthens the position of women in a party where they remain underrepresented among members and in parliaments, despite a women's quota adopted at a 2022 federal party conference. Hoppermann became Merz's preferred candidate for treasurer after Julia Klöckner vacated the post following the February 2025 federal election to become Bundestag president.