Biography · File NW–01

NinaWarken

Federal Minister for Special Tasks and Head of the Federal Chancellery since 29 July 2026. Federal Minister of Health, 6 May 2025 – 29 July 2026. Member of the Bundestag for Odenwald–Tauber.

A lawyer from the Tauber valley whose career has moved through every level of German public life: town council, district council, the Bundestag, party management, a federal ministry and, finally, the coordinating centre of the federal government.

Nina Warken, head-and-shoulders portrait in a red top against a dark background — Nina Warken.Press photograph · editorial use

Key facts

The record in brief

Dates follow the official curriculum vitae of the Federal Government and the biographical entries of the German Bundestag, which are based on the member's own information.

Born: 15 May 1979, Bad Mergentheim (Baden-Württemberg)
Personal: Roman Catholic; married; three children
School: Abitur 1998, Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium, Tauberbischofsheim
University: Law, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 1998–2002
Qualification: First State Examination 2003; traineeship at Mosbach Regional Court; Second State Examination 2005
Profession: Lawyer (Rechtsanwältin) since 2006
Party: CDU member since 2000; Junge Union 1999–2014
Bundestag: 2013–2017 and since December 2018; directly elected for Wahlkreis 276 Odenwald–Tauber since 2021
Former office: Federal Minister of Health, 6 May 2025 – 29 July 2026
Current office: Federal Minister for Special Tasks and Head of the Federal Chancellery, since 29 July 2026

I1979

Origins

Bad Mergentheim and Tauberbischofsheim

Nina Warken was born on 15 May 1979 in Bad Mergentheim, a spa town in the Main-Tauber district in the far north-east of Baden-Württemberg. The district follows the valley of the Tauber, a tributary of the Main, and borders Bavaria. It is a largely rural area of small towns and villages, far from the state capital Stuttgart and closer to Würzburg than to most of Baden-Württemberg's large cities.

Her schooling took place a short distance down the valley, in Tauberbischofsheim, the district town of the Main-Tauber-Kreis and the seat of its administration. Tauberbischofsheim became the fixed point of her public life: she would sit on its town council for two decades. The official record does not describe her childhood in detail, and this biography does not add to it. What the record does show is continuity of place — the same region that shaped her school years later became the basis of her constituency mandate.

Early life and the region

II1998

Education

Heidelberg and the two state examinations

After her Abitur at the Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium in Tauberbischofsheim in 1998, she studied law at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany's oldest university, from 1998 to 2002. In 2003 she passed the First State Examination in Law, the first of the two examinations that the German system requires before anyone can practise as a judge, prosecutor or lawyer.

The second stage followed directly: a practical traineeship (Rechtsreferendariat) based at the Landgericht Mosbach, the regional court seated in Mosbach in the Neckar-Odenwald district, from 2003 to 2005. Trainees in Germany rotate through the courts, the public prosecution service, public administration and a lawyer's office. She completed the Second State Examination in 2005, which qualified her for all the regulated legal professions.

How German legal education works

III2006

Professional life

Lawyer in medium-sized firms

Since 2006 she has been admitted to the bar as a Rechtsanwältin. According to her Bundestag biographies she worked in medium-sized law firms; the biography for the 19th electoral term names administrative law and social law, as well as intellectual-property and competition law (gewerblicher Rechtsschutz), as her areas of practice. Her disclosures to the Bundestag list a firm in Tauberbischofsheim as her professional activity before she entered parliament, and Rechtsanwälte Warken und Kollegen in Püttlingen as a paid activity alongside her mandate. That activity has been recorded as suspended since 13 May 2025, a week after she joined the federal government.

Administrative and social law are the fields in which citizens most often meet the state as an opponent — over permits, benefits and public decisions. That background is visible in the committees she later chose in the Bundestag.

The legal career in detail

IV1999

Political entry

Junge Union and the CDU

Her political path began in the Junge Union, the joint youth organisation of the CDU and CSU, which she joined in 1999. She became a member of the CDU in 2000, while still a student. From 2006 to 2014 she served as deputy federal chair of the Junge Union Deutschlands — a national role that brought her into the party's federal networks years before she held a federal mandate.

Within the party she also sat on the CDU district executive for Main-Tauber and the regional executive for North Württemberg, and her Bundestag biographies record that she chaired the CDU's federal expert committee on internal security. The pattern is one of parallel tracks: local office in her home town on one side, national youth-organisation work on the other.

Political beginnings

V2004

Local government

Twenty years on the Tauberbischofsheim council

In 2004, aged 25, she was elected to the municipal council of Tauberbischofsheim. She remained a member until 23 July 2024 — a full twenty years, spanning four complete council terms and continuing through her first decade in the Bundestag. From 2014 to 2019 she also sat on the Kreistag, the council of the Main-Tauber district, which is responsible for tasks beyond a single municipality such as district roads, public transport and social services.

Her disclosures record related local functions: a deputy seat on the supervisory board of the town's urban-development company, a seat on the supervisory board of the district transport company until 2019, and membership of the board of the Bürgerstiftung Tauberbischofsheim, a citizens' foundation, until July 2024.

Local politics in Tauberbischofsheim and the district

VI2013

Federal parliament

From the state list to a direct mandate

She first entered the Bundestag in 2013 through the CDU's Baden-Württemberg state list and served in the 18th electoral term until 2017. In that term she was a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and of the first committee of inquiry — the inquiry into the activities of the US National Security Agency — in which she acted as her group's spokesperson (Obfrau).

She was not re-elected in 2017 but returned on 5 December 2018 as successor to Stephan Harbarth, who left parliament on his election to the Federal Constitutional Court. In the 19th term she sat on the interior and legal-affairs committees and was deputy chair of the inquiry into the federal car-toll project. In 2021 she won the Odenwald–Tauber constituency directly, and she held it again in the federal election of 2025.

The Bundestag career · The constituency

VII2021

Party leadership

Group management, state party, Frauen Union

Between 2021 and 2025 three leadership roles accumulated. In the 20th Bundestag, when the CDU/CSU sat in opposition, she was one of the Parliamentary Secretaries (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer) of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group — the managers who organise a group's plenary business, speaking time and majorities. From 2023 to 2025 she was Secretary General of the CDU in Baden-Württemberg under state chair Manuel Hagel, responsible for the party organisation and campaigns.

In 2025 the delegates of the Frauen Union, the CDU's women's association, elected her federal chair at a conference in Reutlingen; the outgoing chair, Annette Widmann-Mauz, had not stood again. As federal chair she is a member of the CDU's federal executive. Alongside these roles she was President of the THW state helpers' association in Baden-Württemberg from 2015 to December 2023, a volunteer organisation supporting the Federal Agency for Technical Relief.

CDU leadership · THW leadership

VIII2025

Federal executive

Federal Minister of Health

On 6 May 2025 she was appointed Federal Minister of Health in the cabinet of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, succeeding Karl Lauterbach. Her fourteen months in office were dominated by the finances of statutory health and long-term care insurance. The Bundestag adopted an adjustment of the previous government's hospital reform on 6 March 2026, expanded powers for nursing professionals came into force on 1 January 2026, and her draft Medical Registers Act received its first reading on 21 May 2026.

Her last major law, the GKV contribution-rate stabilisation act with savings of around €19 billion, passed the Bundestag on 10 July 2026 by 318 votes to 284 amid sharp criticism from the opposition, doctors' and hospital organisations. Her tenure also included a public dispute over the redacted release of a report on COVID-19 mask procurement under a predecessor, which opposition politicians criticised and she defended.

The Health Ministry record · Criticism and controversies

IX2026

Chancellery · current

Head of the Federal Chancellery

On 24 July 2026 Chancellor Merz announced a cabinet reshuffle after Jens Spahn stepped down as chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Thorsten Frei moved from the Chancellery to lead the group, Carsten Linnemann became health minister, and Nina Warken was named Head of the Federal Chancellery. According to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, Merz said she would be the first woman to lead the Chancellery. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented the certificates of appointment on 29 July 2026. As a member of the government already sworn in when she became health minister, she was not among the ministers who took the oath before the Bundestag on 8 September 2026 — only the newcomers Carsten Linnemann and Steffen Bilger did.

The office carries cabinet rank as Federal Minister for Special Tasks but no portfolio of its own. Its task is to support the Chancellor: preparing cabinet, coordinating the ministries and keeping the government's agenda moving. Her former health-policy programme now belongs to her successor.

The Chancellery role

Reading the record

A career built on procedure

Three threads run through the record. The first is law: the training as a lawyer, the practice in administrative and social law, and a parliamentary career spent largely in the interior and legal-affairs committees and the judicial-appointments body. The second is organisation: the deputy chair of a national youth organisation, the management of a parliamentary group in opposition, the general secretaryship of a large state party. The third is place: twenty years on a small-town council and a constituency in a rural district.

Each of these is a form of coordination rather than of headline policy. The Chancellery is an office whose work is preparation and alignment rather than legislation of its own; it draws on precisely these procedural and organisational skills, in contrast to a ministerial spell defined by contested reforms.

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