Brand New Bundestag (BNB) is a grassroots organisation in Germany that seeks a new generation of courageous and inspiring decision-makers and supports them in entering our parliaments.

The initiators of the organisation are Eva Thurnhofer, Maximilian Oehl and Daniel Veldhoen. Soon after the start, Alisa Wieland was an early and important supporter of the project. Our team is growing daily and is made up of many committed people. They share our vision and the desire for change. They are ready to give advice and support to the organisation, the candidates and the operational team.

We fight for a society in which people shape their future together and courageously.
For a society that includes all people. We fight for a right to equal opportunities and individual participation. For a society that reflects on its own actions and is aware of its global significance. We fight for a European society that protects diverse identities and is open to everyone. For a European policy that understands sustainability as a maxim for action in all areas. A policy that promotes and constantly redefines a just world on an equal footing with other regions.

Our first priority is to preserve our free democratic basic order and the values formulated in the Basic Law. The values of freedom, peace, tolerance and dignity should be emphasised. For us, it is important to apply these values to current issues. Our focus is, among other things, on an inclusive society that enables participation for as many people as possible, and the protection of natural resources, including from a sprawling national economy.

We demand that politics be made again for those for whom it is intended: for you and me. For all of us. We strive for a society that is democratic and inclusive, that thinks sustainably and takes action locally and globally.
You can see our concrete demands  here.
You can find out more about our team here.

Our demands are the result of many talks and discussions with experts, partners and advisors from very different areas of society. In addition, the results of studies and citizen surveys as well as demands from academics have been incorporated into the drafting process. We will continue to include as many opinions as possible and constantly update our demands. If you have suggestions for topics or other points of content, please send us an email to [email protected].

Brand New Bundestag was initiated by three friends based in Cologne, Berlin and Munich. Max is now the executive director of the initiative. Daniel and Eva continue to support BNB in an advisory capacity. Together with four coordinators, Max Walles is responsible for everything that happens at BNB. This includes volunteer and candidate management, strategic orientation, fundraising, the expansion of the supporter network, press and public relations, data analysis, website programming, events and much more. This happens in a close exchange with our volunteers, who work in a specific team (volunteer management, fundraising, etc.). They also participate in the election campaigns of the NBB candidates, depending on their needs and interests. The work strands are brought together within the framework of video calls of the individual teams; the Coordinators Team currently meets once a week. In addition, a community call takes place every two weeks (currently every second Thursday), in which joint votes are taken and decisions are made.

Our team basically works decentrally and digitally. We also have an office based in Berlin. The association is based in Munich, the cooperative in Berlin.
You can contact us at [email protected]

It all started with the realisation that something had to change, that our political system needed an upgrade. Especially given the current social and environmental challenges, we want politicians in parliament who are willing and able to progressively shape and change our future.
Most of us have been involved in civil society for a long time. Time and again we have come up against the limits of the political system when it comes to implementing our concerns. This might partly explain our motivation to create a “channel” between engaged civil society and institutionalised politics.
We actually owe the concrete idea in part to a certain large American streaming service. When the documentary “Knock Down the House” about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”) was released, it inspired our team of initiators to sit down together and think about how the approach of “Brand New Congress” or “Justice Democrats” could be implemented in Germany.

The team of initiators consists of one woman and two men. We were all born and raised in West Germany. Since we initiated Brand New Bundestag as a grassroots civil society organisation, diversity is particularly important to us. The current circle of supporters is West and East German, POC, queer, with and without migration experience, with and without physical disabilities, with and without higher education. In the structure of our organisation, the volunteer teams and our network, we make sure that Brand New Bundestag becomes more and more diverse. Among other things, we are helped in this by the “Volk und Vertreter” project of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which we see as a yardstick. To the Article
If you have any questions or suggestions on the topic of diversity, you can write us a message at 
[email protected] 

Basically, every person who enters into dialogue with us advises us. That is the idea of our movement. We welcome every opinion and every feedback. Apart from that, we are not bound to any political or other advisors – except when needed for legal or other organisational/accounting questions.

We are currently making the central organisational decisions together in the course of the bi-weekly Community Call. Anyone who is involved in BNB can take part in this call. The team of coordinators and executive Director Max have veto powers in certain areas that affect the basic direction of the project. In practice, however, we make almost all decisions together, as a team. We organise our non-profit activities in a cooperative-democratic way. In order to make qualified decisions, we draw on our large network of partners, supporters and various civil society groups. Candidates are selected by our jury, which is made up of a diverse group of civil society actors. We strive for transparency in our decision-making processes. Everyone who participates in BNB can contribute their own ideas and get actively involved. But of course, our BNB activities also need to be coordinated, especially because otherwise we would not be able to accomplish the big tasks, such as successfully implementing a campaign. For this purpose, we have agreed on flat hierarchies including the clear decision-making structures described in more detail above.

The basic idea comes from the USA. Our friends from Brand New Congress have already successfully brought a number of progressive candidates into the US House of Representatives. A similar project related to the Democratic Party in the US is Justice Democrats. Another project that seeks to link civil society with institutionalised politics exists in the UK in the form of Momentum, which works closely with the Labour Party. In Spain, there is the “Podemos” movement, which as a grassroots movement has now become a political party and as such is represented in parliament.

Our organisation was initiated by private individuals and is also supported by them. It is important to us that everyone has a voice and can contribute. We do not create rigid structures and want to act unbureaucratically and quickly. We want to reach as many people as possible from society – carried from below – and change politics “bottom-up” from this strong network.