Martin Sonneborn
Martin Hans Sonneborn (born 15 May 1965) is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP). He founded and leads the satirical party Die PARTEI in 2004. From 2000 to 2005 he was editor-in-chief of the satirical magazine Titanic and later worked for Spiegel Online and ZDF.
Sonneborn grew up in Göttingen with his brother. He is the son of Engelbert Sonneborn, a career counselor who later ran for president, and his mother was a housewife. He studied communication, German, and political science in Münster, Vienna, and Berlin, and his master’s thesis looked at Titanic and the impact of satire.
He has two daughters. Before joining the European Parliament, he helped film a documentary about Die PARTEI’s development and performed readings solo and with the Titanic Boygroup (alongside Thomas Gsella and Oliver Maria Schmitt).
Since 2014 he has been an MEP for Germany. He sits on the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), is part of the Korea delegation, and serves as a substitute on the Budgetary Control Committee. In 2018 he met Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and was praised for his pro-Armenian activities regarding the Armenian Genocide and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In February 2023 he was among 69 signatories of the Manifest fuer Frieden, which calls for stopping arms deliveries to Ukraine and pursuing peace negotiations with Russia. In 2011 the UK media criticized a blackface Obama billboard used in a Berlin campaign piece.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:38 (CET).