Bruno Guntram Wilhelm Kahl (born 12 July 1962 inEssen, West Germany^[1]) is a German civil servant and administrative lawyer. Since 1 July 2016, he has been President of theFederal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst).^[2]

Kahl was born as the first child of Bernhard and Ute Kahl (née Schoenitz) in Essen, West Germany. He completed hisAbitur in 1981 atKardinal-Frings-Gymnasium inBonn-Beuel and military service from 1981 until 1983, then studied law until 1988 at theUniversity of Bonn and theUniversity of Lausanne.^[1] Alongside his studies, he also completed journalistic training at theKatholische Journalistenschule ifp [de] in Munich. After his firststate examinations, he clerked inBonn andSpeyer, Germany, andSydney, Australia.

Kahl is a colonel (Oberst) in the Reserves of theBundeswehr.^[2]

In 1994, Kahl completed his second state examination at theOberlandesgericht of Cologne, and then worked for theConfederation of German Employers' Associations. From 1995 to 1996, he was a desk officer at theFederal Chancellery. From 1996 until 2005, he was assigned as an adviser to theCDU/CSU parliamentary group, where he performed preliminary work for the group's chairmanWolfgang Schäuble. Since then, he has been a close confidant of Schäuble.^[3][4]

In 2005 in theFirst Merkel cabinet, Kahl served as Head of the Minister's Office and spokesman of Schäuble at theFederal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), where he became head of the executive group in 2006.^[1] In 2008, Kahl was awarded aDoctor of Law by the University of Bonn, authoring his dissertation on elements of Catholic thought inCarl Schmitt's secular political theory. In 2010, Kahl followed Schäuble to theFederal Ministry of Finance (BMF), where he also served as head of the executive staff. Beginning in 2011, Kahl acted asUndersecretary for Directorate-General VIII (Privatisation, industrial holdings and federal real estate) at BMF.^[3] In this capacity, he also served on the Supervisory Board ofPortigon AG from 2012 until 2015.^[5]

Kahl was appointed President of theFederal Intelligence Service on 27 April 2016, effective 1 July, after the dismissal ofGerhard Schindler.^[6][4] His replacement at the BMF isJohannes Schmalzl [de].^[7]

Kahl is a member of theChristian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU).^[8]

In February 2022, Kahl was in Ukraine whenRussia invaded and had to be taken home overland in a two-day journey by special forces when the country's airspace was closed.^[9]

Only a few days before, Kahl had declared that Putin had not yet decided whether to attack Ukraine.^[10]

Kahl has two daughters and has been widowed since 2008.^[11]

• Europäische Union: Bundesstaat – Staatenbund - Staatenverbund? Zum Urteil des BVerfG vom 12. Oktober 1993. In:Der Staat, Volume 33, 1994, p. 241 ff.
• Bruno Kahl: "Elemente katholischen Denkens in säkularer Staatslehre zum Frühwerk Carl Schmitts", Dissertation, Berlin, 2007
• Bruno Kahl et al. (ed.):Der fröhliche Sisyphos – für Wolfgang Schäuble, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2012ISBN 978-3-45130663-1.
• Der Große Vaterländische Betrieb – Warum die Treuhand eine Erfolgsgeschichte wurde? In:Otto Depenheuer,Karl-Heinz Paqué (eds.):Einheit – Eigentum – Effizienz: Bilanz der Treuhandanstalt. Gedächtnisschrift zum 20. Todestag von Dr. Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg 2012,ISBN 978-3-64233114-5, pp. 95–97.
• Bruno Kahl, Andreas Kerst:Öffentliche Unternehmen. In:Werner Gatzer, Tilmann Schweisfurth (eds.):Öffentliche Finanzwirtschaft in der Staatspraxis, BWV Verlag, Berlin, 2015ISBN 978-3-83053325-2, pp. 613–642.

• 1962 births
• 21st-century German politicians
• Living people
• People of the Federal Intelligence Service
• University of Bonn alumni
• University of Lausanne alumni

• CS1 German-language sources (de)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata