Gerhard Schröder

Biography of Gerhard Schröder

Date of Birth: 07.04.1944

Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder - a German politician, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Chancellor of Germany from October 27, 1998, to November 22, 2005. In 2005, he initiated a vote of no confidence (which he lost), and subsequently early elections to the Bundestag, which he also lost. Chairman of the supervisory board of Nord Stream AG, a member of the supervisory board of Gazprom, a personal friend of Putin. Chairman of the supervisory board of PAO NK Rosneft since September 29, 2017.

Place of Birth. Education. Gerhard Schröder was born on April 7, 1944, into a poor Protestant family in the settlement of Mossenberg (North Rhine-Westphalia). In the Schröder family, there were two sons, raised by their mother, who worked on the farm. Schröder's father was called up to the Wehrmacht in 1940. At the end of 1943, he had a short leave, and in mid-1944, he received a letter from his wife Erika about the birth of his son Gerhard. On October 4, 1944, Fritz Schröder was killed. Gerhard Schröder never saw his father but always kept his photo in military uniform on his desk. On August 12, 2004, Gerhard Schröder visited Romania, where he visited his father's grave for the first time, located in the small village of Ceanu Mare (Transylvania).

When Gerhard was 14, he was forced to leave school and take a job as a junior salesman. He then began studying at the law department of the University of Göttingen and graduated in 1976. After completing his studies, Schröder worked as a lawyer, and from 1978 to 1990, he ran a private legal practice in Hanover.

Political Career. Since 1963, Schröder has been an activist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1978, he was elected chairman of the youth section of the SPD. In 1980, he was first elected to the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament. Initially, Schröder collaborated with the ultra-left wing of the SPD, but gradually his political views tempered. In the 90s, he began to take a more favorable view of the business environment. He was a member of the supervisory board of Volkswagen.

In 1986, Schröder became the chairman of the SPD faction in the Lower Saxony parliament. He then began to work in the leadership structure of the SPD. When in 1990 the SPD entered into a coalition with the Green Party, Gerhard Schröder became the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony and held this position until 1998.

In April 2000, the SPD put forward Schröder's candidacy for Chancellor of Germany. The SPD won the elections on September 27, 2000, which effectively ended the political career of Helmut Kohl, who had been Chancellor for 16 years.

As the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder led a coalition of social democrats and greens, which came to power in October 1998 after 16 years of opposition, promising to modernize the economy, support entrepreneurship, and maintain social care. The victory of the social democrats was significantly aided by the promise to stop the rise of unemployment and economic stagnation in the country.

The new government faced the decision between two concepts for overcoming the crisis - reducing social support for citizens (proposed by liberal economists) or raising taxes for the wealthy sections of society (leftist social democrats led by Oskar Lafontaine). Schröder chose the first option, which led to a breakup with Lafontaine, who resigned from the leadership of the SPD. At the same time, Schröder's attempt to start implementing a program of cutting citizens' social rights led to a sharp drop in support for the SPD among the population.

Having failed to solve structural economic problems, Schröder nearly suffered a defeat in the elections on October 22, 2002. Only a decisive opposition to the American intervention in Iraq and effective aid to the victims of the floods in eastern Germany helped the SPD gain a slight advantage over the CDU.

In March 2003, Schröder introduced a program of structural economic reforms known as 'Agenda 2010'. It provided for the reduction of healthcare, pension, and social benefit expenditures, as well as the liberalization of labor law to stimulate the creation of new jobs. However, it failed to overcome economic stagnation, and the number of unemployed in Germany remained at 5 million, or 12% of the workforce.

In 2004, many members of the SPD with leftist views left the party. In 2005, they together with former communists from the GDR created the Left Party. In 2004, Schröder resigned as chairman of the SPD, and his successor became Franz Müntefering.

On May 22, 2005, after the defeat in local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schröder announced that the SPD intended to initiate early national elections in September 2005, a year before the end of his term.

The social democrats had ruled in North Rhine-Westphalia for the last 39 years, but on May 22, they obtained only 37.1% of the votes, while the CDU received 44.8%. The defeat deprived Schröder of the majority in the Bundesrat, since then he has belonged to a coalition with the CDU.