Christoph Ahlhaus (born 28 August 1969) is a German politician. He is a representative of the German Christian Democratic Union which he joined in 1985. He was the mayor of Hamburg from August 2010 to March 2011. Personal life Ahlhaus was born on 28 August 1969 in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, where he grew up. From 1988 to 1990 he completed an apprenticeship for banking, and from that same year went on to study law at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Berlin, and Speyer. In 1998 he did a clerkship, with a station at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. In 1999 he qualified as an attorney. Since May 2006, he has been married to Simone Ahlhaus (née Götz). Ahlhaus was a member of the fraternity Turnerschaft Ghibellinia zu Heidelberg. In the summer of 2014 Ahlhaus moved with his family to Berlin. There he works as a lawyer in a law firm. Politics in the CDU Christoph Ahlhaus, who represented the CDU from 1985, was Chairman of the municipality association of Heidelberg-Altstadt-Schlierbach and Deputy Chairman of the District Association of Heidelberg until 2001. From 2001 to 2006 he was regional secretary of the CDU in Hamburg. From March 2004 to March 2006 he was a member of the Parliament of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, as part of the legal and home affairs committees. Until June 2012, he was the Chairman of the CDU in Hamburg-Nord. Member of the Hamburg Senate In April 2006, Mayor Ole von Beust appointed him as state councilor of the Department of Sport and Home Affairs. On 7 May 2008, Ahlhaus replaced Udo Nagel and became the Home affairs senator of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. in September 2009, without having informed his party beforehand, Ahlhaus planned to reduce the casino tax in Hamburg from 90% to 50%. This would have allowed the casinos to save approximately 30 million euros in taxes up to 2010. A scandalous fact was that John Jahr Jr. (from Gruner & Jahr) was one of the bosses of the casino, as well as the co-founder of the real-estate company in which Ahlhaus' wife had led their license marketing since 2009. Also criticised was the use of state-funded money for paying towards his villa and second home in Altona (which cost around 1.2 million Euros). In the "company car affair", he had to make an additional payment