Life · Chapter 04
Sixteen years separate Dobrindt’s first party card from his first seat in the Bundestag. They were spent almost entirely in his home district — in the Junge Union, the local CSU and the councils of Peißenberg and Weilheim-Schongau.
1986 – 1997
Fact
Dobrindt joined the Junge Union (JU), the youth organisation of the CDU and CSU, in 1986 at the age of sixteen. The JU is the traditional recruiting ground for the CSU’s political class: many of the party’s leaders, including Markus Söder, rose through it. According to his German Wikipedia biography, Dobrindt chaired the JU district association of Weilheim-Schongau from 1990 to 1997 and was deputy chairman of the JU in Upper Bavaria from 1993 to 1997.
1990
Fact
He became a member of the Christian Social Union itself in 1990, while studying sociology in Munich. The CSU is organised from the local association (Ortsverband) through the district (Kreisverband) and the region (Bezirksverband) to the state party. Dobrindt’s career followed that ladder: he later chaired the CSU in Peißenberg (from 2001, according to German Wikipedia) and, from 2009, the CSU district association of Weilheim-Schongau.
1996 – 2018
Fact
In 1996 Dobrindt was elected both to the market council of Peißenberg and to the district council (Kreistag) of Weilheim-Schongau. According to the Federal Government’s official CV he served on the Peißenberg council until 2011 and on the district council until 2018. Local mandates are common among Bavarian Members of the Bundestag; keeping them for so long while holding national office is less so.
Analysis
The local offices gave him a network in the constituency that has proved remarkably stable. Even in 2017, a difficult year for the CSU, he won 47.9 per cent of the first votes in Weilheim.
2002
Fact
At the federal election of 22 September 2002 Dobrindt won the Weilheim constituency (then numbered 227) and took his seat at the constitutive session of the 15th Bundestag on 17 October 2002. At the time the constituency covered the districts of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Landsberg am Lech and Weilheim-Schongau. The Union, led by the Bavarian Minister-President Edmund Stoiber as candidate for chancellor, narrowly lost the election, and Dobrindt began his parliamentary career on the opposition benches.
2002 – 2009
Fact
His first years in Parliament were devoted to economic policy. In January 2005 he became deputy chairman of the Committee on Economics and Labour. After the 2005 election he served as economic-policy spokesman of the CSU group in the Bundestag until 2008, chairing its working group on the economy, technology, energy, education and research. From November 2008 to February 2009 he chaired the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s working group on education and research.
Analysis
The appointment as CSU Secretary General in February 2009 marked a break: a relatively unknown economic specialist was brought into the most visible campaigning job in the party. The skills he developed there — message discipline, political confrontation and campaign management — defined his public image far more than his early policy work. That story continues in CSU Career.