Wolfgang Thierse

Wolfgang Thierse was born on 22 January 1943 in Breslau. On finishing school, he trained as a typesetter and worked in Weimar. He then began an academic career in Cultural Studies and German at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where from 1968 to 1975 he worked as an assistant in the area of cultural theory and aesthetics. After, he worked for a year at the Ministry of Culture of the GDR, before joining the academic staff of the Central Institute of Literary History at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in 1977. A turning point in his career came, when he joined the newly-formed SPD of the GDR in January 1990. In June 1990, he was elected Chairman of the SPD of the GDR, in September of the same year, Deputy Party Chairman and, soon afterwards, Leader of the parliamentary group. Since the 3 October 1990, he has been a Member of the German Parliament, where, until 1998, he was Deputy Chairman of the SPD group. On 26 October 1998, he was appointed Speaker of the German Bundestag. After the 2005 election he took office of a Vice-President of the Bundestag. In addition to Wolfgang Thierse's political work, he is chairman of a large number of bodies in the area of cultural policy, such as the SPD Executive's Commission on Basic Values, the Cultural Forum of Social Democracy, the supervisory board of the Willy Brandt Foundation and the supervisory board of the Foundation for a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.