Chapter 01 — Biography
Frank-Walter Steinmeier (born 5 January 1956) is a German jurist and Social Democratic politician who has served as the twelfth Federal President of Germany since 19 March 2017. This biography follows him from a carpenter's household in Lippe to the highest office of the Federal Republic.
Steinmeier was born in Detmold and grew up in Brakelsiek, a village in the Lippe district of what is now North Rhine-Westphalia. His father, Walter, was a carpenter in the Reformed tradition of the Church of Lippe; his mother, Ursula, came from Breslau (today Wrocław) and had arrived in the west as a refugee from Silesia after the Second World War. He took his Abitur in 1974 at a Gymnasium in Blomberg.
After military service with the Air Force in Goslar he studied law, and from 1980 also political science, at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. He passed the first state law examination in 1982 and the second in 1986, then worked as an academic assistant at the chair of public law and political science. His doctoral thesis, completed in 1991, examined the role of the state in preventing and remedying homelessness. He joined the SPD in 1975.
In 1991 he joined the State Chancellery of Lower Saxony as an adviser on media law and policy. Two years later he became head of the personal office of Minister-President Gerhard Schröder, and on 30 October 1996 he was appointed head of the State Chancellery with the rank of State Secretary. The partnership formed in Hanover would carry him to Berlin.
When Schröder became Chancellor in October 1998, Steinmeier followed as State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery and Commissioner for the Federal Intelligence Services. On 31 July 1999 he became Head of the Federal Chancellery, a post he held until November 2005. He was the principal coordinator of the Agenda 2010 reform programme and managed the government machine through the Iraq crisis of 2002–03 and the security agenda that followed the attacks of 11 September 2001.
In Angela Merkel's first grand coalition he became Federal Foreign Minister on 22 November 2005 and, from 21 November 2007, Vice-Chancellor. He briefly served as acting SPD chairman in autumn 2008 and led the party into the 2009 federal election as its candidate for chancellor; the SPD's 23.0 per cent was then its weakest result in the history of the Federal Republic.
Elected to the Bundestag for a constituency in Brandenburg, he chaired the SPD parliamentary group from 2009 to 2013, making him leader of the opposition to Merkel's centre-right coalition. In August 2010 he took a leave of absence to donate a kidney to his wife, Elke Büdenbender — a decision that drew wide public respect.
Returning to the Foreign Office on 17 December 2013, he faced the Ukraine crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea, the Minsk process, the war in Syria, the conclusion of the Iran nuclear agreement and Germany's chairmanship of the OSCE in 2016. He left office on 27 January 2017, succeeded by Sigmar Gabriel.
Nominated by the governing CDU/CSU and SPD, he was elected Federal President on 12 February 2017 with 931 of 1,239 valid votes and took office on 19 March 2017. On 13 February 2022 he was re-elected with 1,045 votes. His presidency has been shaped by government formation crises in 2017 and 2024–25, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and an insistent emphasis on remembrance and democratic resilience. Under Article 54 of the Basic Law he cannot seek a third consecutive term; his tenure ends in March 2027.