Maria Flachsbarth

Maria Flachsbarth, a Roman Catholic, was born in 1963 in Luenen, Germany. She is married with two sons. From 1982 to 1987, she studied veterinary medicine at the University of Veterinary Medicine (TiHo), Hanover. From 1987 to 1990, she pursued combined doctoral and postgraduate studies at TiHo, where she received her doctorate in 1990. From 1989 to 1997, she was a research assistant at the TiHo Institute for Anatomy. After a period of parental leave from 1993 to 1997, she was assistant to the Principal of TiHo and headed the TiHo press office until 2002. In 1991, Maria Flachsbarth joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). She became a member of the German Parliament in 2002. Since 2006, she has been deputy chair of the CDU in the state of Lower Saxony, and since 2007, she has chaired the CDU district association for Hanover. From 2002 to 2013, she served on the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. From 2009 to 2013, she chaired a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on the envisaged radioactive waste disposal facility at Gorleben, and she was the special representative for churches and religious communities of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Then from the end of 2013 to March 2018, she served as Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture. Since March 2018, she has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development.