The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is constituted as an association, the highest body of which is the General Assembly, which makes fundamental decisions concerning the foundation’s work and elects the Executive Board on the basis of the association’s statutes. The statutes also stipulate the establishment of additional committees intended to support the work of the foundation. The Council of Regional Foundations consists of the state foundations that are part of the foundation network and recognized by the foundation. Among other things, it ensures the successful coordination of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s educational work throughout Germany. The Academic Advisory Board is an advisory committee that contributes to the qualitative development of the foundation’s work, particularly from an analytical perspective.
A number of working and discussion groups also act as issue- and area-related advisory boards.
General Assembly
The General Assembly is the highest body of the association. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation currently has 150 members (as of 1 December 2025), of which 125 are individual, 16 are institutional (the state foundations), and nine are passive members. There are also 13 honorary members. These meet at least once per year for a General Assembly. Their central tasks include determining the focus of the association’s activities, appointing the Executive Board and the members of the Academic Advisory Board, as well as electing the Executive Director.
The General Assembly also receives the reports from the Executive Board and decides on the admission of new members. Here, care is taken to ensure that at least as many women are taken into account as men. Passive members are those members who are directly or indirectly employed by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
The detailed rights and obligations of the General Assembly are regulated by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s statutes. The association includes active and former politicians from Die Linke, scholars, activists from the state foundations of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and other figures from a broadly understood democratic socialist movement that extends beyond Die Linke as such.
Excecutive Board
The Executive Board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is elected by the General Assembly for three years and consists of the chair, the two deputy chairs, the executive director, and at least eight and a maximum of ten other members. The board currently has 13 members (six women and seven men). With the exception of the executive director, it is a voluntary body.
A balanced gender distribution is also taken into account when appointing the board. The primary task of this body is to manage the association’s affairs and define the basic principles of the foundation’s work. In this sense, the board decides on the basic structure of the foundation and the key points of the personnel and financial structure. Taking into account the need to maintain independence of political parties, members of boards of political parties at the federal or state level may not simultaneously serve on the board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Members of the Executive Board:
- Chair:
Bernd Riexinger, Baden-Württemberg, board member since 2022 - Deputy chair:
Lena Saniye Güngör, MP in Thuringia, board member since 2022 - Executive Director:
Heike Werner, Thuringia, board member since November 2025 - Prof. Dr. Ulrich Brand, Vienna, board member since November 2025
- Prof. Dr. Michael Brie, Berlin, board member from 1992 to 2007 and since November 2025
- Prof. Dr. Alex Demirović, Basel/Berlin, board member from 2007 to 2014 and since 2020
- Dr. Philipp Frey, Baden-Württemberg, board member since November 2025
- Franziska Heinisch, Berlin, board member since November 2025
- Stephan Krull, Hamburg, board member since November 2025
- Sabine Leidig, Hesse, board member since November 2025
- Cornelia Möhring, Schleswig-Holstein, board member since November 2025
- Victor Perli, Lower Saxony, board member since 2022
- Sonja Staack, Berlin, board member since 2022
Academic Advisory Board
This voluntary advisory board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation was established by resolution of the General Assembly in 2008. The Academic Advisory Board supports the foundation’s work primarily from a scientific and strategic perspective. It consists of a minimum of six and a maximum of 20 members. Membership in the association is not a condition for participation in the Academic Advisory Board. Members are elected for four years by the General Assembly. The chair is chosen by the advisory board members from among themselves.
Chair:
Prof. i. R. Dr. Birgit Sauer, retired professor of political science, University of Vienna
Deputy Chairs:
Dr. phil. Nadja Rakowitz, managing director of the Association of Democratic Doctors, active in the “Hospital instead of Factory” alliance, educational work for the ver.di trade union and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
Dr. Axel Rüdiger, political scientist at the Free University of Berlin
Dr. Christa Wichterich, freelance sociologist, former visiting professor of gender studies, University of Kassel
Other members:
Prof. Dr. habil. Ilker Ataç, Professor of Political Science at Fulda University
Prof. Dr. María do Mar Castro Varela, Professor of Social Work and General Pedagogy with a focus on diversity, especially gender, Alice Salomon University Berlin; lecturer in pedagogy at the University of Basel
Dr. Stefanie Hürtgen, Associate Professor of Sociology and Geography at the University of Salzburg and Permanent Fellow of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research
Prof. Dr. Mario Keßler, Senior Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research, Potsdam
Prof. Dr. Katrin Reimer-Gordinskaya, professor of child development, education, and socialization at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences
Prof. i. R. Dr. Steffi Richter, retired professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Leipzig
Dr. David Salomon, political scientist at TU Darmstadt
Prof. Dr. Wolfram Schaffar, Professor of Development Policy, University of Passau
Dr. Franziska Scheier, Managing Director of the IMU-Institut Berlin GmbH. Key areas of work: work, education and employment; training and advice for company employee representatives; accompanying change processes in teams and organizations
Dr. Sarah Schilliger, Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich (SPUR — Spatial Planning and Urban Policy) and lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies, University of Bern
Dr. habil. Susanne Schultz, lecturer at the Universities of Frankfurt and Vienna, DFG project on the “demographicization of politics”, currently private lecturer in biotechnology, nature, and society at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Formerly Rosa Luxemburg Foundation employee in Latin America regional work
Prof. Dr. Markus Wissen, Professor of Social Sciences with a focus on social-ecological transformation processes at the Berlin University of Economics and Business (HWR)
Council of Regional Foundations
The 16 independent state foundations are brought together in the Council of Regional Foundations. Together with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, they shape the educational and networking work in all of Germany’s federal states.
Speaker of the Council of Regional Foundations (acting): Dr. Philipp Frey (Co-Chair of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Baden-Württemberg)
Deputy speaker according to §11 of the statutes: Julian Degen (Chair of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Thuringia)
Additional deputy speaker: Judith Kluthe (Chair, Rosa-Luxemburg-Initiative Bremen)