Sometimes Andreas Ellendt would like his party friends to be more serious: “We won’t win an outbidding competition against the right and the left,” says the 62-year-old. In 1998 – after losing a federal election – the Kiel native, whose main job is a chemistry and physics teacher at the scholarly school, joined the party with the C.
In addition to environmental issues, social policy was always his topic: “I thought it couldn’t hurt the CDU if people with this focus got involved.”
Accordingly, the latest demands from the economic wing of the Union, including the idea that To ban “lifestyle part-time” and to remove dentures from the catalog of statutory health insurance companiesEllendt on the barricades: Money from unemployment or health insurance is “not a benefit”.
He is for the idea of performance and not against the economy, but it is not an end in itself, but must be there for people. In a press release he writes: “Christian democratic politics is more than cost accounting. A CDU without social guardrails loses its center.”
Disappointed with Merz
Ellendt has been state chairman of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association of Schleswig-Holstein (CDA) since 2023. He was recently confirmed in office with 100 percent of the vote.
In his criticism of the positions of the SME and Economic Union and the CDU-affiliated Economic Council, Ellendt has many comrades-in-arms at his side, including the CDA federal chairman Dennis Radtke and Manuel Hagel, the top candidate for the election in Baden-Württemberg. Ellendt is convinced that calls for further cuts in the social network do not have a majority. “Some people overshot the mark.”
The claims come from Applications for the CDU federal party conferencewhich begins in Stuttgart at the end of February. Ellendt, who holds a doctorate in physics, believes that there is disappointment in the business wing: “Before the federal election, Merz was an idol for many. A lot has been announcedwhich cannot be implemented in government work.”
Nevertheless, Ellendt believes that arguments are unlikely to break out on the open stage: “I think the CDU has no alternative but to get together again.” Because the real threat comes from another side: “If there are no middle-class majorities in the upcoming state elections, that is a systemic danger.”
Christian democratic politics is more than cost accounting. A CDU without a social guardrail loses its center
Andreas Ellendt, state chairman of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Union
So instead of just in a super election year To avoid falling into the “promise trap” of his own making, Ellendt would like his CDU to come up with concepts that help more than just part of society. “Tax relief is often the wrong approach because it helps higher earners, but not those who have little.”
Ellendt also sits as a councilor in the Kiel parliament, is on the supervisory board of the city theater and is involved in the transport company. In 2019 he ran unsuccessfully as a mayoral candidate for Kiel.
The father of four children – the younger two from his second marriage still live at home – therefore hardly gets to enjoy his hobby of playing the violin. Ellendt will not be traveling to the party conference either: it would be difficult to get time off from classes for party work. “I’ll watch it from a distance.”