Wolfgang Schuster (born 5 September 1949 in Ulm) is the former Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Germany, from January 1997 until January 2013. He was the successor to Manfred Rommel and he is a member of the CDU.
Schuster studied law and political science in Tübingen, Geneva and Freiburg from 1969 to 1973. During his studies he joined Guestfalia Tübingen, one of Germany's largest Catholic student associations. From 1974 to 1976 he trained in Ulm before completing his doctorate in civil law.
From 1976 to 1977 Schuster studied at the Paris École nationale d'administration (ENA).
In 1975, he represented the CDU on Ulm city council before acting as personal assistant to Manfred Rommel from 1985 onwards. In 1986, he was elected mayor of Schwäbisch Gmünd where he was in office until 1993 before becoming burgomaster for the arts, education and sport in the Baden-Württemberg capital of Stuttgart in 1996.
In elections for the post of Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, he won the office in the second ballot on 10 November 1996, defeating Rezzo Schlauch, the candidate for the Alliance '90/The Greens on a relatively narrow margin of 43.1% versus 39.3%.
On 24 October 2004, Schuster was re-elected to the post in the second ballot with 53.3% of votes. His opponents were Ute Kumpf (SPD), who gained 45.2% of votes in the 2nd ballot, and Boris Palmer (Alliance '90/The Greens) – who withdrew his candidacy after the first ballot, indirectly recommending that his supporters should back Schuster instead.
On 6 December 2010 Schuster was elected president of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions.
When completing his term as Lord Mayor on 6 January 2013, he was made "honoured citizen" (Ehrenbürger). His successor Fritz Kuhn is member of the German Green party, thus being the first post-war Mayor of Stuttgart not member of CDU.
Schuster's political agenda includes the furthering of economic development and construction, intercultural dialogue and the promotion of child-friendly policies, among others.
He promotes the interests of intercultural dialogue and the sharing of religious ideas and is the founder of the Stuttgart Religious Round Table. As a representative of the Deutsche Städtetag, a voluntary coalition of county boroughs and district-affiliated towns in Germany, Schuster is a member of the broadcasting council of SWR radio.
Schuster has a declared aim to turn Stuttgart into Germany's most child-friendly city.
In 2004 Schuster's re-election to office was attributed to Stuttgart's favourable economic development during his first term.
The biggest and most high-profile project during his office has been Stuttgart 21 – a major rail project to build a new underground through station for Stuttgart, also encompassing connections to existing surface and underground lines. The project was officially approved on 19 July 2007.
Schuster is longlisted for the 2008 World Mayor award and was voted second most successful Mayor in Germany in a survey by Wirtschaftswoche magazine. In 2004, he was the only (active) local politician nominated for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "Reformer of the Year" award.
He was awarded a UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize for his work advancing integration of immigrant communities, and has established the EU Cities for Children network in cooperation with the Robert Bosch Foundation and Stuttgart-based carmaker Daimler.
In October 2008, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel named Schuster the German member of a 12-strong reflection group called the "Council of Wise Men to Rethink Europe" which is headed by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. [1]
Shortly after funding was finalised for Stuttgart 21, the political opponents of Wolfgang Schuster were quick to condemn him for backtracking on a promise made during the mayor elections of 2004 – namely that he would allow the population of Stuttgart to decide the fate of Stuttgart 21 if the additional costs of the project for the city of Stuttgart amounted to more than €200 million. The agreement contained a provision that the local government would have to participate in covering a cost increases possibly up to an amount above €200 million should the actual project costs significantly exceed planned costs. The Greens subsequently accused Schuster publicly of breaking his word. [2] Schuster responded that the projected cost increase for the city of Stuttgart amounted to €84 million and thus significantly less than the amount for which he had promised a referendum.
In November 2007 a citizens' petition against the Stuttgart 21 project gained 67,000 signatures. After further legal wrangling appeals were submitted for a local referendum which experts subsequently deemed unlawful as contracts had already been signed and Stuttgart was not the main source (other backers include Deutsche Bahn, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the EU). [3]
Failed projects pointed to by opponents during the office of Schuster include Stuttgart's last place as German candidate for the 2012 Olympic games and the stopping of a project to build a German Trump Tower in the north of Stuttgart.
Schuster is married to a physician since 1979 and has three children and four grandchildren.
Baden-Württemberg, commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants as of 2019 across a total area of nearly 35,752 km2 (13,804 sq mi), it is the third-largest German state by both area and population. As a federated state, Baden-Württemberg is a partly-sovereign parliamentary republic. The largest city in Baden-Württemberg is the state capital of Stuttgart, followed by Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Other major cities are Freiburg im Breisgau, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, Pforzheim, Reutlingen, Tübingen, and Ulm.
Fritz Kuhn is a German politician who served as Mayor of Stuttgart from 2012 until 2021. He was co-chairman of Alliance 90/The Greens, the German Green party, in 2002 and its parliamentary group from 2002 to 2013.
Stuttgart Airport is the international airport of Stuttgart, the capital of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is christened in honor of Stuttgart's former mayor, Manfred Rommel, son of Erwin Rommel, and is the sixth busiest airport in Germany with 11,832,634 passengers having passed through its doors in 2018.
Südwestrundfunk is a regional public broadcasting corporation serving the southwest of Germany, specifically the federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The corporation has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is a part of the ARD consortium. It broadcasts on two television channels and six radio channels, with its main television and radio office in Baden-Baden and regional offices in Stuttgart and Mainz. It is the second largest broadcasting organization in Germany. SWR, with a coverage of 55,600 km2, and an audience reach estimated to be 14.7 million. SWR employs 3,700 people in its various offices and facilities.
Blaubeuren is a town in the district of Alb-Donau near Ulm in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Rainer Wieland is a German politician and member of the European Parliament for Germany. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, part of the European People's Party. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 1997 and one of its vice-presidents since 2009. His area of responsibility as a member of the European Parliament includes the Stuttgart administrative district. Since 2011, Wieland has been president of the non-partisan Europa-Union Deutschland.
Horb am Neckar is a town in the southwest of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river, between Offenburg to the west and Tübingen to the east. It has around 25,000 inhabitants, of whom about 6,000 live in the main town of Horb, and the remainder in 18 associated villages and districts which form part of the same municipality. If the entire municipality is counted, it is the largest town in the District of Freudenstadt.
Ammerbuch is a municipality in the district of Tübingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 7 km northwest of Tübingen.
Wendlingen-Ulm high-speed line is a high-speed railway in Germany, entirely within the state of Baden-Württemberg. The line crosses the Swabian Jura mountain range, with trains traveling at speeds up to 250 km/h. It mostly follows the A8 motorway, connecting with the Neu-Ulm station in the east and Stuttgart in the west. Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof is currently being redeveloped as part of the Stuttgart 21 project.
Stuttgart 21 is a railway and urban development project in Stuttgart, Germany. It is a part of the Stuttgart–Augsburg new and upgraded railway and the Main Line for Europe (Paris—Vienna) within the framework of the Trans-European Networks. Its core is a renewed Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, among some 57 kilometres of new railways, including some 30 kilometres of tunnels and 25 kilometres of high-speed lines.
Boris Erasmus Palmer is a German politician and former member of the Green Party. He has been mayor of Tübingen since January 2007. From March 2001 to May 2007, he was a member of the Baden-Württemberg Landtag, the State parliament in Stuttgart.
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.
The 2011 Baden-Württemberg state election was held on 27 March 2011 to elect the members of the 14th Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. The incumbent coalition government of the Christian Democratic Union and Free Democratic Party led by Minister-President Stefan Mappus lost its majority. The Greens achieved their best result in a state election up to this point at 24%, and became the second largest party in the Landtag. They subsequently formed a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Greens leader Winfried Kretschmann was elected Minister-President. He became the first Green politician to serve as a state head of government in Germany.
Winfried Kretschmann is a German politician serving as Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg since 2011. A member of the Alliance '90/Greens, he was President of the Bundesrat and ex officio deputy to the President of Germany from 2012 to 2013. He is the first member of the Greens to serve in these offices. Identifying himself as a green conservative, Kretschmann has been associated with both culturally and economically liberal policies.
Thomas Strobl is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as Deputy Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg since 2016.
Steffen Bilger is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Ludwigsburg.
Richard Josef Arnold is a German politician. A member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, he has served as the Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) of Schwäbisch Gmünd since 2009 and is the city's first openly gay mayor. As mayor, he has pushed for opening up the city to refugees. Previously, Arnold was the head of the State Agency of Baden-Württemberg to the European Union.
Herman-Hartmut Weyel was a German politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, he served as Mayor of Mainz from 1987 to 1997.
The 2023 Berlin repeat state election was held on 12 February 2023 to once again elect the 19th Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. The 19th Abgeordnetenhaus was originally elected on 26 September 2021. On 16 November 2022, the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin declared the results invalid due to numerous irregularities and ordered a repeat election within 90 days. A decision by the Federal Constitutional Court regarding five constitutional complaints is still pending, but will not be decided until after the repeat election. The incumbent government was a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), The Greens, and The Left led by Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey.
Klaus Mack is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since the 2021 elections. Previously, he was mayor of the town of Bad Wildbad from 2006 to 2021 and mayor of the municipality of Enzklösterle from 2000 to 2006.
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