After finishing school, he studied business administration, law administration, and management in Reutlingen, Munich, Starnberg and Bratislava.
He worked as a legal counselor from 2005 – 2013 and as an executive shareholder of the Illertisser Sonnenschein GmbH & Company Knight of the Order of the Garter. He is a coeditor of the political magazine “Berliner Republik” and serves as chairman of the “Freundeskreis Illertissen – Loket”. Brunner is married and has two adult children.
Since 2011 he is a lecturer for “Public Private Partnerships” at the University of Applied Sciences Biberach.
Brunner joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1982. He ran for the constituency seat of Neu-Ulm / Günzburg in 2009 and 2013.
He has since been serving on the Defence Committee, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, as well as a on the Subcommitte on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. On the Defence Committee, Brunner serves as the rapporteur of his parliamentary group for the German Air Force.
He is the rapporteur for bankruptcy law and LGBT rights on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection.
He is also spokesman for defense of the Bundestag group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany parliamentarians from Bavaria, as well as vice-chairman of the German-Austrian parliamentary group. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election observation mission in Ukraine, 2014
While in Ukraine, he also met with representatives of the local LGBT community. German Military Reserve Association, Vice-President
Czechoslovakian Social Democratic Party (ČSSD), Member
Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialistische Partei Österreichs (Socialist Party of Austria)), Member
German Association for Prevention of Road Accidents (DVW), Member.
He is engaged with local politics since 1985. In 2013 he obtained a seat via the Bavarian Social Democratic Party of Germany party list.
Seeheimer Kreis; Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Defence Committee; Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection]
He was elected a member of the German parliament (Bundestag) in the federal election of 2013. He is an honorary member of the Bavarian Red Cross since 1970 and the Workers’ Welfare Organisation.
He was mayor of Illertissen from 1990 to 2002 and is a member of the county counsel of Neu-Ulm since 1996.
Member of the German Bundestag, 2013–present
Brunner has been a Member of the German Bundestag since the 2013 federal elections. He is also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and the Czechoslovakian Social Democratic Party.
As a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Parliamentary Assembly, Brunner joined the election observation mission for the 25 May 2014 early presidential election in Ukraine during the conflict in Donbass. Deutsche Härtefallstiftung, Member of the Board of Trustees.