After three 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 Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin) which serves as the City's State Parliament in 1995. In December 1999, he was elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus.
Mayor of Berlin, 2001–2014
Wowereit took office as Governing Mayor of Berlin (Regierender Bürgermeister) in June 2001. 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 2003, Wowereit declared that "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy" ("Berlin is poor, but sexy"),[2][3] a description that reflected on the one hand the city's working class history and on-going financial woes, and on the other its cultural vibrancy, aided by a relatively low cost of living for a major European capital.[4][3] The phrase helped to market the city to the rest of the world, and it drew in tourists, as well as attracting artists, writers, musicians and subsequently technology entrepreneurs.[2][4][5] However, concern about gentrification and increasingly expensive rents is often expressed by seasoned Berliners and new-comers alike.[2][3][5]
In the elections held on 17 September 2006, Wowereit's SPD finished as the strongest party with a plurality of 30.8%. 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.[6]
Public attitude in Germany on the topic of migration has a long history of controversy. A regular German poll by the opinion polling agency Ipsos indicates that the number of immigrants in Germany, as well as the proportion of Muslim immigrants among Germany's migrant population is vastly overestimated by those polled, so too in 2019.[7] Recent statistics of the German Buro of Statistics reported 21.9 million people with a "migration background" (citizens and non-citizens) in Germany, 2020.[8] Of those, in the same year, according to the statistics agency Statista, 5.5 million were Muslim.[9] The publication of former Berlin state Minister of Finance Thilo Sarrazin's 2010 polemic Germany Abolishes Itself fell in Klaus Wowereit's tenure as governing mayor of Berlin. This prompted heated debates throughout the German-speaking countries. In response, in 2011, Mayor Wowereit published Mut zur Integration – für ein neues Miteinander ("Courage for integration - for a new together").[10] That same year, he appointed Turkish-origin politician Dilek Kolat Senator for Labour, Integration and Women.[11] In May 2012, Wowereit named Şermin Langhoff artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theater.[12]
On 26 August 2014 Wowereit announced that he would resign his position as of 11 December 2014.[13] At the time of his resignation, he was the longest-serving head of a German state.
Resignation and Berlin-Brandenburg Airport debacle
On 21 October 2003 Wowereit became one of four members representing the Land of Berlin in the supervisory board of the project to build the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport. In 2006, he was elected chairman of the board.[14] However, on 7 January 2013, Wowereit relinquished his chairmanship after the continuing delay of the airport's opening date.[15] The prime minister of the Land of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck was appointed as his successor.[16] Wowereit survived a vote of no confidence brought against him in the Berlin House of Representatives on 12 January. When Platzeck gave up his political offices for health reasons in July 2013, Wowereit was eventually appointed chairman again, despite much criticism.[17] Critics have accused Wowereit of being responsible for the various delays and cost overruns of the airport project. He has been accused of being blind to looming problems, and reacting angrily to unfavorable reports. Also, he is said to have filled the board with political friends rather than professionals.[18]
Wowereit announced his intention to resign at the end of 2014 due to the airport delays saying it was the "biggest failure" of his term in office, but that there were also other "several difficult times here."[19]
Life after politics
Alongside Jutta Allmendinger, Wowereit co-chaired an independent expert commission on gender-based discrimination at Germany's Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency from 2015 until 2016.[20] In 2017, he briefly arbitrated wage negotiations between Eurowings and UFO, a flight attendant trade union.[21]
Development and Peace Foundation (SEF), Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Personal life
Wowereit is the youngest child in his family, with two other brothers and two sisters, who grew up without a father. One of his brothers supported his studies and later he took care of his brother, who was paralyzed after an accident, as well as 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's a good thing.") 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 fabricated 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.
In a 2010 interview with Time magazine, he said that coming out may actually have strengthened his campaign.[24][25]
His election as mayor made Berlin one of three major European cities with an openly gay mayor, along with Paris, whose mayor was 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 and Delanoë left office in 2014, making Wowereit the only gay mayor of a major European city or of a major German city. Berlin being the largest and Hamburg being the second 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 ( ISBN3896673343).
Wowereit's civil partner, Jörn Kubicki, was a neurosurgeon. They were in a relationship from 1993 to March 2020 when Kubicki died as a result of a COVID-19 infection.[26]
Ole von Beust is a former German politician who was First Mayor of Hamburg from 31 October 2001 to 25 August 2010, serving as President of the Bundesrat from 1 November 2007 on for one year. He was succeeded as mayor by Christoph Ahlhaus.
Otto Ernst Heinrich Hermann Suhr was a German politician as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He served as the Governing Mayor of Berlin from 1955 until his death.
The 2001 Berlin state election was held on 21 October 2001 to elect the members of the 15th Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. Prior to the election, Mayor Klaus Wowereit had led a minority government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Greens since June, which had replaced a coalition between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and SPD which collapsed in June. The SPD–Green government made gains, but remained short of a majority. The SPD first sought to form a traffic light coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Greens, but were unsuccessful. They subsequently agreed to a government with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
Friedbert Pflüger is a former German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was a Member of the German Bundestag (1990–2006). He was Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Defence (2005–2006), and the CDU's candidate for Governing Mayor of Berlin in the 2006 Berlin state election. He was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives (2006–2011) and a member of the executive board of the CDU (2000–2010). Today, he is a businessman and teaches Energy and Climate Security at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS), University of Bonn. He is Visiting Professor at King’s College London.
Matthias Platzeck is a German politician. He was Minister President of Brandenburg from 2002 to 2013 and party chairman of the SPD from November 2005 to April 2006.
Eberhard Diepgen is a German lawyer and politician who served as Mayor of West Berlin from 1984 to 1989 and again as Mayor of (united) Berlin, from 1991 until 2001, as member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
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Klaus Schütz was a German politician, who served as the Mayor of West Berlin from 1967 to 1977, as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Dietrich Stobbe was a German politician who served as the Mayor of West Berlin from 1977 to 1981, as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Stobbe also served as President of the Bundesrat from 1 November 1978 to 31 October 1979.
The 2011 Berlin state election was held on 18 September 2011 to elect the members of the 17th Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. The incumbent government consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left lost its majority.
Raed Saleh is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He is serving as parliamentary leader of the SPD in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin since 2011, and co-leader of the Berlin branch of the SPD since 2020.
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Ute Vogt is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as a member of the Bundestag from 1994 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2021. Since 2021, she has been serving as president of the German Life Saving Association (DLRG).
Thomas Heilmann is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Born in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, he has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Berlin since 2017.
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The first Müller senate was the state government of Berlin between 2014 and 2016, sworn in on 11 December 2014 after Michael Müller was elected as Governing Mayor by the members of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. It was the 26th Senate of Berlin.
The fourth Wowereit senate was the state government of Berlin between 2011 and 2014, sworn in on 24 November 2011 after Klaus Wowereit was elected as Governing Mayor by the members of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. It was the 25th Senate of Berlin.
The 2023 Berlin repeat state election was held on 12 February 2023 to once again elect the 19th Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin as the 2021 Berlin state election held on 26 September 2021 was declared invalid due to irregularities. Also affected were parts of the 2021 German federal election in Berlin, these were repeated on 11 February 2024.
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