Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Frank-Walter Steinmeier has been President of Germany since March 2017 and was re-elected in 2022. Born in Detmold in 1956 to a carpenter and a factory worker, both expellees from formerly German territory, he was the first in his family to attend university, studying law and political science at Giessen and taking a doctorate on state responsibility for preventing homelessness. He joined Gerhard Schröder's staff in Lower Saxony and followed him to Berlin, becoming head of the Chancellery and coordinator of the intelligence services from 1999. In that role he was the principal architect of the Agenda 2010 labour-market and welfare reforms — the Hartz laws — which cut unemployment over the following decade and split the Social Democratic Party, driving part of its left into what became Die Linke. He was foreign minister from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2017, and led the SPD into the 2009 election, which produced the party's worst postwar result. In 2010 he donated a kidney to his wife. As foreign minister he helped negotiate the Minsk agreements on Ukraine in 2014-15 and the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. That record became the central charge against him after February 2022: he had promoted Nord Stream 2 and the policy of binding Russia through trade, and in April 2022 he publicly acknowledged the failure, saying he had been wrong about Vladimir Putin. Ukraine initially declined a visit from him. The presidency is ceremonial, signing laws and representing the state. He has used it to warn about polarisation and the rise of the AfD.
- Lived: 1956 CE – ?
- Nationality: German
- Roles: President of Germany (2017-present)
