Klaus Wowereit

Klaus Wowereit (born 1 October 1953) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and was the Governing Mayor of Berlin from 21 October 2001 to 11 December 2014. In 2001 state elections his party won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He served as President of the Bundesrat (the fourth highest office in Germany) in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections; after the 2011 elections the SPD's coalition partner changed from the Left to the Christian Democratic Union. He was also sometimes mentioned as a possible SPD candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany (Kanzlerkandidatur), but that never materialized.

Wowereit was born in West Berlin. Until 1973, Wowereit attended the Ulrich-von-Hutten-Oberschule in Berlin-Lichtenrade. Afterwards, he studied law at the Free University Berlin (State Exams, 1981 and 1984).^{[citation needed]}

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.

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"), 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. 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. However, concern about gentrification and increasingly expensive rents is often expressed by seasoned Berliners and new-comers alike.

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.

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. Recent statistics of the German Buro of Statistics reported 21.9 million people with a "migration background" (citizens and non-citizens) in Germany, 2020. Of those, in the same year, according to the statistics agency Statista, 5.5 million were Muslim. 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"). That same year, he appointed Turkish-origin politician Dilek Kolat Senator for Labour, Integration and Women. In May 2012, Wowereit named Şermin Langhoff artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theater.

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Wowereit led the SPD delegation in the working group on cultural and media affairs; his counterpart of the CDU was Michael Kretschmer.