Rudolf Henke


Rudolf Henke is a physician and politician of the Christian Democratic Union who has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2009.

Education and early career

Born in Düren, Henke completed his Abitur at the Stiftisches Gymnasium in Düren before studying medicine at RWTH Aachen University between 1972 and 1979. The following year, he became assistant physician at St Antonius Hospital in Eschweiler, rising to become a consultant in hematology and oncology in September 1988.
Henke has been on the board of directors of the physicians' trade union Marburger Bund since 1989, becoming chair in 2007. He is a German delegate to the World Medical Association.

Political career

Henke joined the Christian Democratic Union in 1992 and became a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia in the 1995 state elections. He remained a member of the parliament until 2009, having been twice re-elected, holding positions on the Committee on Labour, Health and Social Affair and the Committee on Research and Technology. Between 2005 and 2009, he was deputy leader of the CDU parliamentary group.
Henke was directly elected to the Bundestag in the Aachen I constituency in 2009, receiving more votes than incumbent federal health minister Ulla Schmidt in the process. He has been a member of the Health Committee since his election, becoming deputy chairman of the committee in 2014. Henke was re-elected in 2013. In the negotiations to form a coalition government under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, he was part of the working group on health policy, led by Hermann Gröhe, Georg Nüßlein and Malu Dreyer.

Other activities

In addition to his parliamentary work, Henke holds various positions that have contributed to making him one of the highest-earning members of the Bundestag, including the following:
In June 2017, Henke voted against Germany's introduction of same-sex marriage.

Personal life

Henke is married with four children, and lives in Burtscheid, Aachen. He was deputy chair of the CDU in the city between 1999 and 2013.