Frank-Walter Steinmeier, born on January 5, 1956, in Detmold, Lippe District, has been married to Elke Büdenbender since 1995. Together, they have a daughter. A lawyer and former Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Steinmeier was elected as the 12th Federal President of Germany in 2017. In 2022, the 17th Federal Assembly confirmed him for a second term.
After attending the Neusprachliches Gymnasium in Blomberg and completing two years of military service, Steinmeier began studying law in 1976 at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, adding political science to his studies in 1980. In 1982, he passed his First State Examination in Law, followed by a legal preparatory service in Frankfurt am Main and Gießen, completing his Second State Examination in 1986. Steinmeier then worked as a research associate at the Chair for Public Law and Political Science at the University of Gießen. In 1991, he earned his doctorate in law with a dissertation titled *Homeless Citizens: Between Duty for Accommodation and Right to Housing. Traditions and Perspectives of State Intervention in Preventing and Eliminating Homelessness*.
That same year, Steinmeier became a consultant for media law and media policy at the State Chancellery of Lower Saxony in Hanover. In 1993, he was appointed head of the personal office of Lower Saxony’s Minister President Gerhard Schröder and in 1994 became head of the department for policy guidelines, departmental coordination, and planning. In 1996, he became the head of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery, earning the rank of State Secretary in January 1997.
In 1998, Steinmeier became a State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery and Coordinator for the Intelligence Services, taking on the additional role of Chief of the Federal Chancellery in 1999. He assumed the office of Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2005 and became Vice Chancellor in 2007. In 2009, he won a direct parliamentary mandate in Brandenburg and entered the Bundestag, where he was elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Four years later, he returned to the Foreign Ministry and led it until January 2017.
Steinmeier has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions, including the Ignatz Bubis Prize for Reconciliation, the European Prize for Political Culture, the Prize for European Understanding, the Willy Brandt Prize, the Tolerance Prize of the Evangelical Academy Tutzing, and the Ecumenical Prize of the Catholic Academy of Bavaria. He is an honorary citizen of Helsinki, Sibiu, Kalamata, Oulu, and Reims, and holds honorary doctorates from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Lebanese University Beirut, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Paderborn, and University of Piraeus. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he returned the honorary doctorate awarded to him by the University of Yekaterinburg in March 2022.
Own or work here?