What a journey this woman has taken in nine decades. Born in Reval, today's Estonian capital Tallinn, Margarete von Holst ended up in Leipzig as a refugee child. In the years that followed, it went north via stops in the Lüneburg Heath, West and East Berlin. Margarete, called Gretel, wants to become a missionary and ends up becoming a pastor. Today the 89-year-old lives in Güstrow. Now she is running for state parliament.
It's not her first attempt. Margarete von Holst ran in the state elections five years ago. At 84 years old, she was already the oldest in the field of applicants. She fails, as she is likely to fail this time too. Because the retired pastor is running for office on the state list of Alliance C - Christians for Germany. The small party received a full 0.1 percent of the vote in the 2021 state election.
What drives them then? "It's simply important to me that our Christian party gets a lot of votes," says von Holst. "A lot of people know me because I often preach in various churches and am also active in other ways." Rest is not her thing. “My life is colorful,” she says.
Born in the Baltics
Margarete von Holst comes from an old Baltic German noble family. Her parents' home is Christian, her father is a pastor, as was her maternal grandfather. Gretel, as she is called to distinguish herself from her mother, who is also called Margarete, grows up as the youngest of six children. In addition to her, a sister still lives in Jena today.
As a small child, Gretel lost her home for the first time and was relocated with her family from Reval to what was then Warthegau in 1939 as part of the Hitler-Stalin pact, as she tells it. The region belonged to the German Empire at the time and is now part of Poland.
Deported
In an audio document from the Association of Baltic Knights, Gretel's mother reports how Stalin got the three Baltic states, which had been independent since 1918, and the German minority living there was deported.
The Hitler-Stalin Pact was concluded in August 1939 as a non-aggression pact between the German Reich and the Soviet Union. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, it paved the way for the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 - because thanks to the agreement, Hitler did not have to fear any intervention by the Soviet Union. A secret additional protocol provided for the division of the Baltics and Poland into a Soviet and a German sphere of interest.
The life of the von Holst family in the Warthegau only lasted a few years - until shortly before the end of the Second World War. Then they have to flee from the approaching Red Army. “We came to Leipzig as refugees in January 1945,” says Gretel von Holst. A little later her father became a pastor in Alt Ruppin. Moving again.
Fear of deportation
“After two years it was said that the Balts would be sent back to Estonia, that would mean Siberia, so we fled to Berlin-Lichterfelde West.” Then, in 1950, another move, now to East Berlin, where the father works as a hospital chaplain. Gretel von Holst continues to go to school in West Berlin.
She continues her family's Christian professional tradition. As she explains, she left school after the eleventh grade and went to a church house in Werle near Güstrow for a year. The young woman stays in the GDR, even though it wasn't easy for people involved in the church, especially in the 1950s.
Career wish: missionary
“I wanted to be a missionary,” she says. She received training and, after completing her exams, worked as a community helper in Kavelstorf, Rostock-Reutershagen, Alt-Karin near Kröpelin and in Serrahn, among others. Years later, a big promotion followed. “The state superintendent wanted to ordain women who had not studied and so I was ordained in 1981.” But it was only after the fall of communism that she was taken over by the church and was now allowed to call herself a pastor. Retired since 1998, she now lives in Güstrow.
Margarete von Holst still travels a lot. “I’m still often able to preach in various rural communities,” says the senior citizen. Every Monday she also invites people to a home group at her home. “I belong to the regional church community here and have a senior citizens’ group once a month, including one in Krakow.”
The elders
Just like the 89-year-old, older people in Germany often apply for a seat in parliament. A prominent example is the former head of the magazine “Focus”, Helmut Markwort. He ran for the Bavarian state parliament in 2023 as an 86-year-old. According to the Federal Election Commission, an 88-year-old from Hamburg was the oldest applicant in the 2025 federal election.
The oldest member of the current Bundestag is Alexander Gauland from the AfD at 85 years old. Konrad Adenauer is considered the oldest member of the Bundestag in history. The CDU politician was a member of parliament until his death in 1967. Adenauer was 91 years old.
