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Martin Werner Walter Horn (née Hoffmann; born November 7, 1984, in Annweiler am Trifels) is a German politician. Since 2018 he has been mayor (Oberbürgermeister) of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Early Life
Martin Horn grew up as the son of a protestant pastor together with three sisters in a clergy house in Hornbach. He was engaged in church youth work from a young age, like as a youth leader in the association “Feuer und Flamme” as part of the Hornbach church community. In 2009, Horn began studying International Social Work at the Protestant University Ludwigsburg and finished his Bachelor’s degree in 2013. Following these studies, in 2014, he earned a Master’s degree in European and World Politics at the City University of Applied Sciences in Bremen. He moreover studied abroad in Botswana, Jordan, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. In 2014 he started working as the coordinator for Europe and development in the Sindelfingen city administration and as a free-lance docent at the Protestant University Ludwigsburg.

In April of 2019, Horn participated in the quiz show Ich weiß alles!, hosted by Jörg Pilawa in Das Erste. Although he was eliminated in the third round, he took the opportunity to advertise Freiburg’s 900th anniversary celebration in 2020 and managed to convince Pilawa to host a quiz show in and about Freiburg.

Horn is married and has two sons. He gets to work by tram every morning. Before moving to Freiburg in 2018, he had lived in Stuttgart with his family.

Political career
In 2018, Horn ran for mayor of Freiburg im Breisgau without party affiliation. The SPD and the voter initiative Freiburg Lebenswert supported his campaign. During his campaign, the media made a subject of Horn’s alleged ties to the evangelical neo-charismatic ICF and their engagement in his campaign team. Right before the election, according to his own statement, Horn visited two ICF in Freiburg upon invitation by a preacher. Horn clarified in an interview that he was neither part of ICF nor any other independent church, but a member of the Protestant church.

With 34.7%, Horn received more votes on the first ballot than incumbent Dieter Salomon (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen).

Four candidates campaigned on the second ballot on May 6, 2018. Horn received a simple majority of 44.2% which was sufficient for an election win. He stated in an interview with Badische Zeitung that he wanted to focus on housing, as well as accountability and transparency towards citizens in his first 100 days in office. At the election after-party, Horn was attacked by a 54-year-old man who injured his face<; it broke his nose and damaged one of his teeth. The perpetrator, who ostensibly had psychological problems, was arrested on site.

Due to an election contestation lawsuit by an opponent candidate that was kept off the ballot, Horn could not assume the office of mayor as scheduled on July 1 2018. However, while the claim was processed, the city council appointed him Amtsverweser, an interim representative and preliminary chief of the administration without representation in the city council. On March 5, 2019, the case was definitively rejected by the Mannheim administrative court.