Gerhard Schröder is the Chancellor of Germany. He was elected by the Bundestag in 1998 following elections in September of that year in which his Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) achieved the status of largest party, thus bringing to an end 16 years’ of government by a coalition between the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union and the Free Democratic Party under Helmut Kohl. His victory in 1998 was significant in that it was the first time in the history of post-war Germany that a change of government had resulted from an electoral defeat rather than from changes in coalition choices. The new government was also the first national coalition between the SPD and Alliance 90/ The Greens, and the first purely left-of-centre government. Schröder was reappointed as Chancellor of a second red-green coalition following a narrow victory in elections to the Bundestag held on 22 September 2002. His re-election was secured by his principled opposition to the involvement of German troops in the anticipated war in Iraq in 2003, his management of the East German flood crisis in the summer of 2002, and his concrete plans to tackle Germany’s high rate of unemployment.
Labelled as a modernizer and a reformer in the SPD, Schröder campaigned for office in 1998 by appealing to the ‘Neue Mitte’ (new centre) political ground. This position was much criticized among the traditional left of the SPD and led to conflict with his party. Schröder’s position within his party was strengthened in 1999 when he was elected as its leader following the resignation of left-wing party leader and finance minister Oskar Lafontaine. Schröder appointed Franz Müntefering as chairman of the SPD in February 2004 in order to concentrate on managing the government. As Chancellor, Schröder has struggled to secure the support of traditionalists in his party and of the green coalition partners on a number of controversial issues. His decision to dispatch German troops to Kosovo in 1999 and to Afghanistan in 2001 met with opposition from the greens, and the second deployment was only endorsed after a vote of confidence in his government had been held in the Bundestag in November 2001. Schröder encountered opposition from the traditional wing of his own party for his policies to reduce unemployment and reform the welfare state—the so-called Hartz reforms.
A member of the SPD since 1966, Schröder’s political career began in 1978 when he was elected as national leader of Jusos, the youth movement of the SPD. In 1980 he was elected to the Bundestag. Following the defeat of the SPD government in 1982, Schröder’s political focus shifted to Hanover where he became leader of the city party in 1983 and of the SPD in the state (Land) parliament of Lower Saxony in 1986. He became Minister President of Lower Saxony in 1990, heading a coalition between the SPD and the Green Party, and led the SPD to two further victories in the Land, in 1994 and 1998, before becoming the SPD’s candidate for the chancellorship for the 1998 Bundestag elections.
Born on 7 April 1944 in Mossenberg, Schröder completed a commercial apprenticeship and finished his secondary education at night school. He later studied law at Göttingen University from 1966, and worked for a law firm in Hanover from 1976. Gerhard Schröder has been married to his fourth wife, Doris Köpf, since 1997. The couple adopted a child in 2004.
