Karin Prien is of Jewish origin and first grew up in the Netherlands, where her maternal grandparents had fled in the early 1930s before the emergence of National Socialism in Germany. She later moved to Germany. After graduation in 1984 in Rhineland-Palatinate, Prien studied law and political science in Bonn. From 1986 to 1989, she was a student assistant of the press secretary of the Federal PresidentRichard von Weizsäcker. She took the first Staatsexamen in 1989, which was followed by the LL.M. after postgraduate studies in Amsterdam in 1991 and the second Staatsexamen in Celle in 1994. Since 1994, she has been an independent lawyer specializing in commercial and insolvency law in Hanover, Leipzig and Hamburg. Since 2008, she has been a certified lawyer for commercial and corporate law, and also a mediator since 2011. Karin Prien is married to lawyer Jochen Prien and has three children.
Politics
Party
Karin Prien became a member of the CDU in 1981. She was from 2004 to April 2012 deputy CDU local chairwoman in Blankenese, since 2006 Deputy District Chairwoman in the district association Altona-Elbvororte, and since 2010 a member of the CDU state executive committee. Since January 21, 2014, Karin Prien had been local chairwoman of the CDU Blankenese, an office she gave to Johann Riekers after her move to Schleswig-Holstein. In addition, Prien is chairwoman of the Jewish Forum of the CDU. Since November 17, 2018, she is one of the four deputy chairmen of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein and thus succeeds State Justice MinisterSabine Sütterlin-Waack, who did not run for reelection. Prien supports the CDU-internal group "Union of the Middle," which is regarded as the counterpart of the conservative "value union."
Member of the Hamburg Parliament (2011-2017)
As a candidate of the CDU in her constituency of Blankenese, she was elected to the Hamburg state parliament in 2011 for the first time. She was a political spokeswoman for the CDU parliamentary group and a member of the parliamentary group's leadership. In the 2015 state election, she again won a direct mandate in the constituency of Blankenese with 11.5 percent of the votes. In the parliament, she was a member of the Budget Committee, the Constitution and District Committee, the School Committee and the Committee on Social Affairs, Labor and Integration. She was Deputy Group Chair and Specialist for the School and Constitution of the CDU. In the course of her change to the state government of Schleswig-Holstein, she resigned in June 2017 from the Hamburg Parliament; her parliament mandate was taken over by Wolfhard Ploog.
After formation of a Jamaica coalition of CDU, FDP and Greens in the wake of the 2017 Schleswig-Holstein state election, Karin Prien was appointed Minister of Education, Science and Culture of Schleswig-Holstein on June 28, 2017 and is part of the state government of Minister-President Günther.
