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| Affiliation | Free Democratic |
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| Name | Guido Westerwelle |
| Address |
, Germany , Germany |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
December 27, 1961
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| Died | March 18, 2016
(54 years)
|
| Contributor | Bob |
| Last Modifed | IndyGeorgia
Mar 22, 2016 01:40pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - German - Cancer - Gay -
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| Info | Dr. (jur.) Guido Westerwelle is a German politician and leader of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP).
Guido Westerelle was born in Bad Honnef in Germany. After graduating from high school in 1980, he attended law school at the University of Bonn from 1980 to 1987. Following the First and Second State Law Examinations in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he practiced as an attorney in Bonn since 1991. In 1994, he earned a doctoral degree in law from the University of Hagen.
Westerwelle joined the FDP in 1980. He was also a founding member of Junge Liberale, the youth organisation of the FDP, and their chairman from 1983 to 1988. He has been a member of the Executive Board of the FDP since 1988, in 1994 becoming Secretary General . In 1996, he was elected to the Bundestag (the German parliament), and in the elections of September 2002, he was the FDP's chancellor-candidate.
Westerwelle is a staunch supporter of a free market economy and has launched vigorous attacks on the German welfare state and on the (in his view) too tight regulation of business in particular and of the life of citizens in general. He passionately advocates substantial cuts in taxes and goverment spending. While this is in line with the general direction of his party, his chairmanship has not been uncontroversial. Critics inside and outside the FDP have accused him of laying too much emphasis on public relations and too little on substantial policies, inter alia referring to his appearance on the German version of the television show Big Brother. Westerwelle himself, who was made party chairman particularly because his predecessor Wolfgang Gerhardt had been viewed by many as dull and stiff, has labeled his approach as Spasspolitik (fun politics) in the past, a term that seems to haunt him now.
On July 20, 2004, he attended conservative leader Angela Merkel's 50th birthday party accompanied by his male partner, Cologne businessman Michael Mronz, for the first time at an official gathering. This made it evident that he no longer expected his relationship with Mronz to be treated discreetly. Westerwelle effectively came out in public as a homosexual, but this caused markedly less sensation than recent coming outs by leading politicians in Western Europe, such as the popular heads of government in the states of Berlin (Wowereit), Hamburg (Ole von Beust) and Peter Mandelson in Britain or Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris.
However, the sexual orientation of leading politicians is not a totally uncharged topic in Germany. Westerwelle's main opponent in the FDP, the late Jürgen Möllemann, hinted that Westerwelle's then-unrevealed sexual leanings could pose a security risk, alleging that Westerwelle was "excessively pro-Israel" because the Mossad acquired compromising evidence of his private life. Although this debate within the FDP was carried out in the language of anti-semitism versus uncritical support of Israel's suppression of the Palestinians, it was also connected to the party's stance on Gay rights issues.
For Germany's future politics, it may be relevant that the southern Catholic Conservative electorate of the Bavarian CSU may be alienated if, as is likely, they are asked to vote for a female Hamburg-born Lutheran ex-East German Angela Merkel for Chancellor with a homosexual liberal Westerwelle, from westernmost Germany, as her running mate.
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