Horst Köhler

Horst Köhler
President of Germany
Incumbent
Assumed office  1 July 2004
Chancellor	Gerhard Schröder Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Johannes Rau
Chairman and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
In office 1 May 2000 – 4 March 2004
Preceded by	Michel Camdessus
Succeeded by	Rodrigo Rato
Born	22 February 1943 (1943-02-22) (age 66) Skierbieszów, General Government (now Poland)
Political party	Christian Democratic Union
Spouse(s)	Eva Bohnet
Alma mater	University of Tübingen
Profession	Economist
Religion	Evangelicalism
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Horst Köhler (pronounced [hɔɐ̯st ˈkøːlɐ]  ( listen), born 22 February 1943 in Heidenstein, Generalgouvernement, today Skierbieszów, Poland) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union, and the current President of Germany. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on 23 May 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on 1 July 2004. He was reelected to a second term on 23 May 2009.

Prior to his election as President, Köhler had had a distinguished career in politics, the civil service and as a banking executive. He was President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1998 to 2000 and head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2000 to 2004.
Although the office of President is less influential than that of the Chancellor, and mostly concerned with ceremonial matters, Köhler has become Germany's most popular politician during his tenure, with record-high approval ratings. He has called for more influence for the President, and has suggested the President should be directly elected again, as was the case under Germany's Weimar Constitution.

Early life

Köhler was born in Skierbieszów (then named Heidenstein), in the General Government area of German-occupied Poland, as the seventh child of Elisabeth and Eduard Köhler, into a family of Bessarabian Germans from Rîşcani in Romanian Bessarabia (near Bălţi, present-day Moldova). In 1860/65 George Rischkan, the largest estate owner in northern Bessarabia had founded this German village. Horst Köhler's parents, ethnic Germans and Romanian citizens, had to leave their home in Bessarabia in 1940 during the Nazi-Soviet population transfers that followed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which awarded Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. As part of the Generalplan Ost, they were resettled in 1942 at Skierbieszów, a village near Zamość, Poland (then part of the General Government). As the Wehrmacht was pushed back and first parts of Poland had to be abandoned in 1944, the Köhler family fled to Leipzig. In 1953, they left the Soviet Zone – via West Berlin – to escape from the communist regime. The family lived in refugee camps until 1957, when they settled in Ludwigsburg. Horst Köhler hence spent most of his first 14 years as a refugee.

Studies and military service

A teacher recommended that the refugee boy should apply for the Gymnasium, and Köhler took his Abitur in 1963. After a two-year military service at a Panzergrenadier battalion in Ellwangen, he left the Bundeswehr as “Leutnant der Reserve” (reserve officer). He studied and finally earned a doctorate in economics and political sciences from Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he was a scientific research assistant at the Institute for Applied Economic Research from 1969 to 1976.

 Career in the civil service

Köhler joined the civil service in 1976, when he was employed in the Federal Ministry of Economics. In 1981, he was employed in the Chancellory of the state government in Schleswig-Holstein under Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg. The following year, Köhler was made head of the Ministers office in the Federal Ministry of Finance, upon Stoltenberg's recommendation. He rose to head of department in 1987, with responsibility for financial policy and federal industrial interests. In 1989 he became head of the department for currency and credit.