Wolfgang Schäuble

Wolfgang Schäuble (German pronunciation: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʃɔʏblə]; 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. Schäuble served as the 13th president of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.

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

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. 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.

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 2017 and held that position until the CDU/CSU was defeated in the 2021 federal election.