Klaus Reichenbach

Klaus Reichenbach (born 22 September 1945) is a retired German football official and former politician. As the son of a prominent textile manufacturer in East Germany, he inherited his father's business in 1969 and managed several different textile firms up until the 1980s. In 1974, he became district chairman of the East German CDU in Karl-Marx-Stadt. His role within the bloc party system later drew criticism from reformers within his party, as the CDU merged with its West German counterpart.

After being elected to the Volkskammer in March 1990, Reichenbach was appointed Minister in the Office of the Minister-President in the final government of the GDR under Lothar de Maizière. In this role, he helped coordinate the negotiations that led to German reunification and was among the members co-opted to the Bundestag in October 1990. He won the Chemnitz constituency in the December 1990 German federal election, chaired the reconstituted CDU in Saxony from 1990 to 1991, and served in the Bundestag until 1994, before retiring from politics to practice law.

Since reunification, Reichenbach has been prominent in the administration of German football. He was the founding president of the Saxony Football Association from 1990 to 2016, served on the board of the German Football Association (DFB) from 1997 to 2016, and helped organize the Leipzig and Dresden venues for the 2006 FIFA World Cup and the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup respectively. He is an honorary member of the DFB and recipient of the association’s silver and gold badges of honor.

Life Childhood and education Dorfkirche St. Walburga, the Protestant village church of Wolperndorf, where Reichenbach spent part of his childhood. Fewer than 150 days after the Nazis' surrender in World War II, Reichenbach was born into a Protestant family on 22 September 1945 in Altenburg, a city in the Soviet occupation zone and 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Leipzig. His father, Hermann, was a prominent textile manufacturer in Saxony before, during, and after the Nazi regime, having founded the company that would become the family's main textile enterprise in 1903, as a mechanical engineering firm making circular knitting machines.

In 2020, Reichenbach claimed his father had co-founded the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in the East in 1946 after the end of the war, but this claim is unsubstantiated elsewhere. earning a diplom in political science. From 1982 to 1986, he also completed a distance-learning law program at Humboldt University of Berlin, earning a diplom in law, and graduating as a lawyer. As of October 2025, the Reichenbach family's textile company is still in operation in Chemnitz as "Hereiha Textil GmbH" (derived from Hermann Reichenbach in Hartmannsdorf), having been returned to private ownership after German reunification.

In June 1988, he was made full-time chairman of the Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt CDU district association. This report would go on to create political friction later in his career, as he signed it with a "socialist greeting". Although he initially insisted he had only written one iteration of the annual report in 1988, after a 1989 version was obtained by the tabloid Dresdener Morgenpost, Reichenbach confirmed he had signed the 1989 document. later recalling it was evident “things could not go on; we were sliding toward the abyss." During the upheavals of autumn 1989, he aligned himself with the CDU’s “new forces", recounting that he urged long-time party chair Gerald Götting to resign on the executive board.

He was considered a candidate for the role of Minister-President of Saxony, but he declined, saying his wife wouldn't have approved.

Soon after reunification, the Saxon CDU faced immense internal turmoil and pressure regarding its political future, particularly concerning the influence of former bloc party members, known as "recorders". In 1991, Der Spiegel described the reputation of the Eastern CDU as being "in tatters"; the organization struggled severely, reportedly losing around 1,000 members every month in Saxony alone. The internal conflict was a microcosm of wider social tensions "between the CDU grassroots on the one hand and former CDU leaders on the other." He was also vice-president of the Northeastern German Football Association (NOFV) He says he has maintained very good ties to his birthplace of Altenburg, since he has a large family connection there. During his 25-year tenure as president of the Saxon Football Association, Reichenbach acknowledged that balancing his demanding role with family life was a concern, joking that his wife would not have been particularly happy had he spent every weekend attending matches rather than with his family. Despite his professional involvement in football, Reichenbach has stated he was never a passionate stadium fan, preferring instead to watch matches on television at home where he could enjoy the games in peace.