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Board of Trustees

Here you can find information on all members of our board of trustees.

Bettina Limperg, born in 1960, was the first woman to be appointed President of the Federal Court of Justice in 2014. After studying law at the universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, she worked as a public prosecutor at the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office from 1989 to 1994 and as a judge at the district court and regional court in civil and criminal cases before moving to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe as a research assistant from 1994 to 1995. This was followed by six years as a judge at the Regional Court of Stuttgart until 2001, after which she worked as a (presiding) judge at the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart. In 2004, Ms. Limperg became Director of the Waiblingen District Court; from 2009 to 2011, she held the office of Vice President of the Stuttgart Regional Court. From 2011 until her move to the highest German civil and criminal court in 2014, she was head of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Justice (Ministerial Director) and permanent representative of the Minister.

Bettina Limperg is involved in a wide range of voluntary work. For example, she is a co-founder of the Law Forum initiative, was President of the 3rd Ecumenical Church Congress 2021, is a board member of the Projekt Chance association and President of the Network of Presidents of the Supreme Courts of the European Union.

Copyright Foto: Anja Köhler

Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer, LL.M. (Michigan), was a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court in the First Senate in Karlsruhe from February 2011 to February 2023. She holds a professorship in Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and is Bates Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She received honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan in 2014, the Universities of Hasselt and Lucerne in 2018 and is a Fellow of the British Academy of Arts and Sciences. Until 2011, she taught regularly at CEU Budapest and as a guest lecturer in Toronto and Linz.

She studied law and political science, is involved in initiatives against domestic violence and discrimination and works on comparative constitutional law, anti-discrimination law and critical legal research/sociology of law. At Humboldt University, she was Vice President, spokesperson for the Center for Gender Studies, Dean of Studies at the Faculty of Law, founded the Law & Society Institute Berlin and the Humboldt Law Clinic for Fundamental and Human Rights. She has been committed to legal education for years, including for the nationwide Forum Recht, clinical training at law faculties and #rechtreal.

Copyright Foto: Britney Majure

Marc Bernhard, born in 1972, is a lawyer, MBA and member of the Bundestag. He lives in Karlsruhe. After graduating from American high school and completing his Abitur (1992), he studied law at the University of Augsburg (second state examination in 2000) and studied for an MBA while working. After working as a lawyer in Italy and as an in-house lawyer, Bernhard worked for almost 15 years in the management of large medium-sized companies as an authorized signatory, head of the legal department, commercial director, legal director and managing director.
Bernhard gained almost 20 years of local political experience as a local councillor. He has been a member of the AfD since 2013 and a member of the German Bundestag since 2017. He is the construction policy spokesperson for the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, spokesperson for the Baden-Württemberg state group and has been a member of the AfD state executive committee – with interruptions – since 2017.


Coypright Foto: Paavo Blåfield

Lukas Benner (*1996 in Aachen) has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2021. After studying law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn in 2020, he began his doctorate in 2021 on the topic of “Decarbonization of shipping” at the University of Greifswald under Prof. Dr. Michael Rodi (suspended since September 2021). During his doctorate, he worked at the Institute for Climate, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) in Berlin. He has been a member of B90/The Greens since 2014 and was elected to the StädteRegionstag in Aachen in the 2020 local elections. In the Bundestag, Lukas Benner is a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Petitions, as well as a deputy member of the Committee on Home Affairs and Regional Policy, the Committee on Tourism, the Committee on Transport and the Subcommittee on European Law. Lukas Benner lives in Aachen.

Credit: Daniel Hofer

Esther Dilcher, born in 1965 and raised in Hofgeismar, has been a directly elected member of the German Bundestag since 2017, where she is a full member of the Budget and Audit Committee, the Legal Affairs Committee and the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure. In the 20th parliamentary term, the MP was a member of the Commission for the Reform of Electoral Law and the Modernization of Parliamentary Work.

After studying law at the University of Marburg and joining the SPD in 1998, Esther Dilcher has worked as a lawyer since 1999 and as a notary since 2016. From 2001 to 2013, she was active in local politics as a city councillor in Hofgeismar.

Ms. Dilcher is widowed and has three adult children.


Credit: Studio Blofield

Born in 1972, Johannes Fechner graduated from high school in 1992 and then completed his civilian service in the rescue service of the German Red Cross. His first state examination in law in 1997 and his second state examination in law in 2000 were followed by his doctorate. Johannes Fechner has been working as a lawyer since 2001 and has been a member of the German Bundestag for the SPD since 2013. He is the parliamentary managing director and legal advisor of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag and a member of the Legal Affairs Committee and the Committee on Immunity, Rules of Procedure and the Scrutiny of Elections. Johannes Fechner is also an international soccer player in FC Bundestag, the parliamentary team of the German Bundestag.

Copyright Foto: Susie Knoll

Katrin Helling-Plahr MdB (*1986) has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2017 and has also been the legal policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2021. After studying law in Münster and passing the second state examination in law, she completed a postgraduate degree in medical law in Düsseldorf. She has also been a specialist lawyer for medical law since 2017. In the German Bundestag, Helling-Plahr is a full member of the Legal Affairs Committee and a member of the Committee on the Election of Judges as well as a deputy member of the Health and Family Affairs Committee.

Katrin Helling-Plahr MdB

Credit: Katrin Helling-Plahr

Franziska Hoppermann, born 1982 in Hamburg, has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2021 and a member of the CDU Federal Executive Committee since 2022. She is a full member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and a permanent deputy member of the Budget Committee. Hoppermann has been a full member of the Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Forum Recht since July 2024. From 2001 to 2008, Hoppermann studied business administration at the University of Hamburg (degree in business administration) with the support of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. She has been a civil servant of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg since 2009, most recently as Head of Office in the Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection with the rank of Senate Director. Hoppermann has been a member of the CDU in various functions since 1999. Since 2017, Hoppermann has been state chairwoman of the Frauen Union HH and a member of the federal board of the Frauen Union der CDU Deutschland. She is also a member of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Credit: Tobias Koch

Burkhard Jung, born in Siegen in 1958, has been Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig since 2006, Vice President of the Association of German Cities since 2021 and currently also President of the EUROCITIES city network.

Burkhard Jung studied German and Protestant theology in Münster and initially worked as a teacher in Siegen-Weidenau and, from 1991, as principal of the Protestant School Center in Leipzig, which was Saxony’s only cooperative comprehensive school at the time. In 1999, he moved into local politics and became an alderman for youth, schools and sport in the city of Leipzig (from 2001: alderman for youth, social affairs, health and schools). In 2020, he was elected Mayor of the City of Leipzig for a third time.

Credit: Stadt Leipzig

Dr. Andreas Korbmacher, born in 1960, began his judicial career at the Berlin Regional Court in 1988. In January 1990, he moved to the administrative court there. In the same year, he completed his doctorate at the Free University of Berlin. This was followed by secondments as a research assistant to the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin and to the Senate Department for Justice. From January 2003, he worked as a judge at the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin (later the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg). He was appointed presiding judge there in May 2005. He has been an honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin since 2007.

Following his appointment as a judge at the Federal Administrative Court in 2008, Prof. Korbmacher was a member of the 9th Revision Senate. Since May 2017, he has been Chairman of the 7th Revision Senate. This is responsible in particular for environmental protection law, including immission control law, waste law, nuclear law, mining law and the law on the construction of waterways. From May 2019, he was Vice President of the Federal Administrative Court. In September 2022, he was appointed President of the Federal Administrative Court.

Copyright Foto: Bundesverwaltungsgericht/ Michael Moser

Prof. Dr. Günter Krings studied law and history at the University of Cologne. In 1994/1995, he completed a Master of Law at Temple University in Philadelphia as a Fulbright Scholar. In addition to his work as a research assistant and his doctorate at the Institute for Constitutional Law at the University of Cologne, Krings was a lawyer in Mönchengladbach from 1998 to 2013 and has been a lecturer at the University of Cologne since 2004 and an honorary professor since 2010.

He has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2002 and has been involved in various committees and functions, including as a deputy member of the Federalism Commission I and member of the Federalism Commission II as well as legal advisor to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Deputy Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2009 to 2013 and Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of the Interior, Building and Community from 2013 to 2021. Krings has been Chairman of the Federal Association of Christian Democratic Lawyers (BACDJ) since 2009. He is Chairman of the German Society for Legislation (DGG) and editor of the Journal for Legal Policy (ZRP). Günter Krings has been Chairman of the NRW regional group of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag since 2017 and legal policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag since December 2021.

Günter Krings

Copyright Foto: Tobias Koch

Renate Künast, born in Recklinghausen in 1955, is a politician, lawyer and social worker. From 2000 to 2001, she was Federal Chairwoman of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and from 2001 to 2005, Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture; from 2005 to 2013, Chairwoman of her party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag and from 2014 to 2017, Chairwoman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. She has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2002 and lives in Berlin.
In the current 20th parliamentary term, Renate Künast is the spokesperson for food and agriculture for the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen parliamentary group and a member of the committee of the same name, as well as a deputy member of the Legal Affairs Committee. She is also Chair of the German-South Asian Parliamentary Group and a member of the Joint Commission of the Bundestag and the Federal Government for the Victims of “Colonia Dignidad”. She has been Vice President of the German Library Association since 2022.

Renate Künast

Copyright Foto: Anne Hufnagl

Thorsten Lieb (*1973) has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2021 and represents constituency 183, Frankfurt am Main II. After graduating from high school and the German Armed Forces, he studied in Bayreuth and received his doctorate there. He completed his legal clerkship in Regensburg. He has lived in Frankfurt am Main with his wife and four children since starting his career in 2002.
As a lawyer and partner in a small law firm, Lieb specializes in trademark, copyright and IT law and advises companies internationally on their trademark strategy and on large IT projects. As a passionate liberal and European, freedom, the safeguarding of our liberal democracy, opportunities for advancement and participation for all and the future of the European Union and the entire continent are particularly close to his heart.

Credit: Sanjar Khaksari

Holger Mann was born in Dresden in 1979 and grew up in the Ore Mountains. He has lived in Leipzig since 1997 and started his family here. After completing his service in Wiederitzsch, he studied politics, journalism and history at the University of Leipzig. He was also involved in numerous associations and initiatives. Above all with Sojus, the Jusos and the Leipziger Hörspielsommer. Until March 2009, he worked as an employed managing director of a small development company in and around Leipzig’s Neuseenland region.

From 2009 to 2021, he was a member of the Saxon state parliament for the SPD. There he was spokesman for science and higher education as well as business, technology and digitalization. In the 2021 Bundestag elections, he stood as Saxony’s top SPD candidate for the Bundestag and now represents constituency 152 – Leipzig I in Berlin. He is involved in politics on a voluntary basis as chairman of the Leipzig SPD city association. Since 2022, he has been the spokesperson for education, research and technology assessment in the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

Holger Mann, MdB

Foto: Katrin Lorenz

Dr. Frank Mentrup has been mayor of the city of Karlsruhe since 2013. After studying medicine in Heidelberg and Mannheim, he worked as a doctor in child and adolescent psychiatry in Mannheim and Karlsruhe until 2011. From 2006 – 2013, he was a member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, spokesperson for education policy for the SPD parliamentary group and deputy chairman of the commission of inquiry “Fit for life in the knowledge society”. From 2011 – 2013, he was Political State Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport in Baden-Württemberg. He is President of the German Library Association, Chairman of the Karlsruhe Technology Region, Chairman of the Magistrale for Europe initiative, Vice-President of the German section of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), member of the main committee of the German Association of Cities and President of the Baden-Württemberg Association of Cities. He is one of the initiators of the Federal Foundation Forum Recht, based in Karlsruhe, on whose board of trustees he sits.

Copyright Foto: Fionn Große

Dr. Yvonne Ott, born in Hesse in 1963, began her law studies in Frankfurt am Main in 1982. After her first state examination, she initially worked as a research assistant until she began her legal clerkship in Frankfurt in 1992. At the same time, she completed her doctorate on municipal and state representative bodies in 1994 under Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Meyer.

After her second state examination in law, she headed the Department for Parliamentary and Cabinet Affairs at the Hessian Ministry of Finance from 1995 to 1998. She then spent six years as a judge at the Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main and was temporarily seconded to the Federal Constitutional Court as a research assistant. From 2004, she was presiding judge at the Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main before being appointed as a judge at the Federal Court of Justice in 2010. Yvonne Ott has been a judge of the First Senate at the Federal Constitutional Court since 2016.

Credit: Bundesverfassungsgericht │ lorenz.fotodesign, Karlsruhe

Mahmut Özdemir, born in 1987, has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of the Interior and for Home Affairs since December 2021. After graduating from high school in Duisburg, he studied law at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf until 2011, specializing in public law. He completed his legal traineeship at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court district from 2011 to 2013.

He has been a member of the SPD since 2010 and a member of the Bundestag since 2013. From 2018 to July 2021, he was deputy chairman of the 1st Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. He served as the SPD parliamentary group’s spokesperson on sports policy from 2020 to October 2021 and has also been Chairman of the SPD Duisburg since October 2021.

Mahmut Özdemir, PSt

Foto: Henning Schacht

Frauke-Katrin Scheuten was born in Essen in 1959. After studying law at the University of Regensburg and completing her legal clerkship in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Celle, she worked in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Celle from 1987 to 1992, first as a probationary judge and then as a public prosecutor at the public prosecutor’s office in Hanover. In 1992, she was seconded to the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice as a research assistant and in 1997 was appointed to the federal service as a senior public prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice. In 2011, she was appointed Federal Prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice. From 2000 to 2006, she was press spokesperson for the Federal Public Prosecutor General; she then worked in the Department for Criminal Appeals until the end of 2021 – since 2014 as Head of Division. Since mid-2022, Frauke-Katrin Scheuten has headed the Department for Central Tasks, Espionage, Crimes under the Foreign Trade and Payments Act and International Criminal Law at the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Frauke-Katrin Scheuten

Foto: Fotocenter Berlin

Elmar Steinbacher comes from Göppingen, where he was born in December 1966. After studying law in Tübingen and completing his legal clerkship in Ulm, he joined the judiciary in Baden-Württemberg in 1995. He initially worked as a judge at Stuttgart Regional Court. After a secondment to the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry, he returned to judicial practice at Stuttgart Regional Court before being seconded to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe as a research assistant. In 2002, Elmar Steinbacher took over as Head of the Department for Personnel and Justice at the State Ministry, and in 2010 he moved to the Ministry of Transport as Head of Department. On June 3, 2016, Elmar Steinbacher was appointed Ministerial Director and thus permanent representative of the Minister in the Ministry of Justice and for Europe Baden-Württemberg. Since May 2021, he has held the same position in the Ministry of Justice and Migration following the reassignment. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Forum Recht as a representative of the state justice administration. Elmar Steinbacher is married and has two daughters.

Copyright: Verena Müller

Benjamin Strasser was born in Weingarten (Württ.) in 1987. After graduating from high school, he studied law at the University of Constance. He completed his legal clerkship at Stuttgart District Court. Between 2014 and 2016, he was parliamentary advisor to Prof. Dr. Ulrich Goll MdL for the NSU investigation committee of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament. He then worked as an in-house lawyer for a medium-sized temporary employment agency until the 2017 Bundestag elections. In the 19th parliamentary term of the German Bundestag, Benjamin Strasser was a member and chairman of the FDP parliamentary group on the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland Security and on the Committee of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz. From 2020 until the end of the last legislative period, he was also his parliamentary group’s spokesperson on religious policy and anti-Semitism. Since 2021, he has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Justice.

Benjamin Strasser joined the FDP in 2006. In 2013, he was elected to the state executive of the FDP Baden-Württemberg. He has been district chairman of the FDP Ravensburg since 2014. Since 2019, he has also been honorary president of the Bundesmusikverband Chor & Orchester e.V. (BMCO).

Benjamin Strasser, PSt

Credit: Bundesregierung/Steffen Kugler

Dr. Volker Ullrich was born in Illertissen in 1975. After graduating from high school, he studied law and economics at the University of Augsburg and the University of Hagen. In 2002, he received his doctorate in law (Dr. jur.). In 2004, he passed the second state examination in law and also completed his studies in economics with a degree in business administration. He then worked as a lawyer and, from 2011, as a professional city councillor for safety and order in the city of Augsburg. Ullrich has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2013. Here he is active in various committees. Among other things, he is the legal and domestic policy spokesperson for the CSU parliamentary group, the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Committee of Inquiry and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He has also been district chairman of the CSU Augsburg since 2019.

Credit: Tobias Koch

Lawyer and notary Dr. Ulrich Wessels studied law in Freiburg and Münster. After a period abroad in London and a doctorate on the subject of “Execution of a will in a limited partnership share”, he was admitted to the bar in 1988. He is a partner in the law firm Dr. Koenig & Partner GbR in Münster/Westphalia. He has been a member of the board of the Hamm Bar Association since 1994, was its treasurer for several years and was president of the association from 2012 to November 2019. He has been a board member and treasurer of the German Lawyers‘ Institute since 2003. In 2015, Ulrich Wessels was elected 2nd Vice President of the BRAK Executive Committee. Since September 2018, lawyer and notary Dr. Ulrich Wessels has been President of the BRAK.

Credit: BRAK

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