Wolfgang Schäuble

Wolfgang Schäuble (18 September 1942 – 26 December 2023) was a German politician whose political career spanned more than five decades.

A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the longest-serving member of any democratic German parliament.

Born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1942, Schäuble studied at both the University of Freiburg and the University of Hamburg and subsequently began a career in law at the district court of Offenburg in 1978.

After completing his Abitur in 1961, Schäuble studied law and economics at the University of Freiburg and the University of Hamburg, which he completed in 1966 and 1970 by passing the First and Second State Examinations respectively, becoming a fully qualified lawyer.

Schäuble's political career began in 1961 with him joining the Junge Union ("Young Union"), the youth division of the CDU.

During his studies he served as chairman of the Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten (Association of Christian-Democrat Students, RCDS), in Hamburg and Freiburg.

In 1965 Schäuble also became a member of the CDU.

His political career began in 1969 as a member of the Junge Union, the youth division of the CDU and CSU; in 1972, Schäuble was elected to the Bundestag by winning the constituency seat of Offenburg, and he was a member of the Bundestag until his death.

From 1969 to 1972, he was district chairman of the Junge Union in South Baden.

In 1971, Schäuble obtained his doctorate in law, with a dissertation called "The public accountant's professional legal situation within accountancy firms".

Schäuble entered the tax administration of the state of Baden-Württemberg, eventually becoming a senior administration officer in the Freiburg tax office.

Schäuble has been a member of the Bundestag since 1972.

From 1976 to 1984, he served as chairman of the CDU National Committee for Sport.

Subsequently, he became a practising registered lawyer at the district court of Offenburg, from 1978 to 1984.

From 1981 to 1984 he was parliamentary whip of the CDU/CSU group and in November 1991 he became its chairman.

His ministerial career began in 1984 when he was appointed minister for special affairs by chancellor Helmut Kohl.

On 15 November 1984, Schäuble was appointed as Minister for Special Affairs and head of the Chancellery by Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

When in 1986 Soviet press belabored Kohl for having, in a magazine interview, made a comparison between the propaganda skills of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Joseph Goebbels, Schäuble was reported to have counseled the Chancellor against writing Gorbachev an apology for the remark, saying it would be misunderstood as a sign of weakness.

In his capacity as Minister for Special Affairs, Schäuble was put in charge of the preparations for the first official state visit of Erich Honecker, Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in 1987.

By that time, he was widely considered to be one of Kohl's closest advisers.

In a 1989 reshuffle, Schäuble was appointed minister of the interior, and he led negotiations for reunification on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany.

During his tenure as minister of the interior, Schäuble was one of the most popular politicians in Germany and was regularly mentioned as a possible future chancellor, though he faced occasional criticism from civil rights activists for his law and order policies.

In a cabinet reshuffle Schäuble was made Minister of the Interior on 21 April 1989.

In this role he also led the negotiations on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany for reunification with the GDR in 1990.

He and East German State Secretary Günther Krause signed the Unification Treaty on 31 August 1990.

In a speech to parliament in 1991, Schäuble clinched the argument in favour of moving the German capital from Bonn to Berlin.

After the defeat of the CDU/CSU in the 1998 federal election, Schäuble succeeded his mentor Helmut Kohl as chairman of the CDU, but resigned after less than two years in the aftermath of the 1999 CDU donations scandal.

Schäuble gave up this position as chairman in 2000 as another consequence of the financing scandal.

Between October 2002 and 2005, Schäuble served as the parliamentary group's deputy chairman, under the leadership of Angela Merkel.

Schäuble has always been elected to the Bundestag by means of winning an electorate seat, rather than through a list placing in Germany's system of proportional political representation.

In 2005, Schäuble again became minister of the interior in the cabinet of chancellor Angela Merkel, and in 2009 minister of finance, a position he remained in for almost eight years.

Described in this capacity as "Germany's second most powerful person" after Merkel, he took a hard line toward Southern European countries during the eurozone crisis, and rejected calls from the International Monetary Fund to give Greece more time to rein in deficits.

A proponent of austerity policies, Schäuble's 2014 budget allowed Germany to take on no new debt for the first time since 1969, which is generally known as Black Zero in CDU election campaigns.

Schäuble served as the 13th president of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.

On 27 September 2017, the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag announced Schäuble's nomination as president of the Bundestag.

He was elected to that position on 24 October.

Following the defeat of the CDU/CSU in the 2021 federal election, Schäuble lost the office by October 2021.

Schäuble was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, as the son of tax finance advisor and politician Karl Schäuble and Gertrud Göhring.

He is the middle brother of three.

On 21 October 2017, Schäuble became the longest serving member of parliament in German history overtaking August Bebel, who had been a member of the North German Reichstag and the Reichstag from 1867 until 1881 and from 1883 until 1913.