Klaus Wowereit

Klaus Wowereit
Governing Mayor of Berlin
Incumbent
Assumed office June 16, 2001
Preceded by	Eberhard Diepgen
Member of the Berlin House of Representatives
Incumbent
Assumed office 1995
Vice Chairman of SPD with Hannelore Kraft, Manuela Schwesig and Olaf Scholz
Incumbent
Assumed office 13 November 2009
Preceded by	Frank-Walter Steinmeier Peer Steinbrück Andrea Nahles
Personal details
Born	(1953-10-01) 1 October 1953 West Berlin, West Germany
Political party	Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Alma mater	Free University of Berlin
Signature
Website	klaus-wowereit.de (German)

Klaus Wowereit (born 1 October 1953 in Berlin) is a German politician, member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), and has been the Mayor of Berlin since the 2001 state elections, where his party won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He served as President of the Bundesrat (the fourth highest office in Germany) in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections. He is also sometimes mentioned as a possible SPD candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany (Kanzlerkandidatur) in the next German federal election.

Background

Until 1973, Klaus Wowereit attended the Ulrich-von-Hutten-Oberschule in Berlin. Afterwards, he studied law at the Free University Berlin (State Exams, 1981 and 1984).

Political career

After 3 years as a civil servant in the Senate office of the Interior, Wowereit stood for election as municipal councillor in the Tempelhof district. At the age of 30, he was, therefore, the youngest councilor in the city of Berlin. After eleven years as a District Councillor he stood for the Berlin House of Deputies (Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin) which serves as the City's Landtag or state legislature in 1995. In December 1999, he was elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus. Since June 2001 he has served as Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) of Berlin. Previously, the SPD had left the grand coalition with the CDU and initiated new elections. After this election and following long-time negotiations, Wowereit finally started a coalition with the PDS.

In the elections held on 17 September 2006, Wowereit's SPD finished as the strongest party. A coalition with Die Linke was continued. However the 16th Abgeordnetenhaus re-elected Wowereit as Governing Mayor on 23 November 2006, in the second ballot with only a 75:74 majority. CDU, Free Democrats and the Green Party voted against him. In the elections held on 18 September 2011 he and his party were again the strongest party.

In 2011 he wrote a book as a response to the scandalous book "Germany Abolishes Itself" written by former member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank - Thilo Sarrazin.

Personal life

Wowereit is youngest to two brothers and two sisters and grew up without a father. One of his brothers supported his studies and later he nursed himself his brother, who became paralyzed after an accident, and his mother, who was suffering from cancer.

Wowereit is one of the most famous German politicians who is openly gay. In coming out, prior to the 2001 mayoral elections, he coined the now famous German phrase "Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so." ("I'm gay, and that is good the way it is.") In his autobiography, Wowereit states that his decision to come out in public was made because after his nomination as candidate to become the Mayor of Berlin, he felt that the German tabloids were already "on the right track". With his coming out, Wowereit wanted to beat the tabloids to it and prevent them from writing wild, sensational and made-up stories about his private life. Wowereit said those now famous words during a convention of the Berlin SPD. After the end of his speech, there was half a second of surprised silence, then spontaneous cheering and loud applause to support him.

His election as mayor made Berlin one of three major European cities with an openly gay mayor, along with Paris, whose mayor is Bertrand Delanoë, and Hamburg, whose mayor was Ole von Beust at that time, who both also took office in 2001. However, von Beust resigned in 2010, making Wowereit the only gay mayor of a major German city. Previously, the largest city with a gay mayor had been Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, with mayor Glen Murray. Berlin being the largest and Hamburg being the 2nd largest city in Germany, they are also German states in their own right, having made both Wowereit and von Beust also state premiers.

In September 2007, Wowereit published an autobiographical book titled "…und das ist auch gut so.", after his famous coming-out phrase (ISBN 3896673343).

Wowereit's partner, Jörn Kubicki, is a neurosurgeon. They have been in a relationship since 1993.

External links

• Konsequent Berlin (Personal website for British and French readers)
• CityMayors.com profile
• Interview with Klaus Wowereit in Exberliner magazine