Gabriel Sigmar is a German politician who was born on September 12, 1959 in the lower Saxon city of Goslar. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which currently also includes the German Federal President.
In 1998, Sigmar was appointed chairman of the SPD parliamentary faction in the Lower Saxony Landtag, and a year later became prime minister of this land. After losing to Christian Wulf in the 2003 elections, he returned to the post of chairman of the SPD parliamentary group and remained in it until his election to the Bundestag in 2005.
On November 22 of the same year, he became the new Federal Minister for the Environment as part of the coalition government of Angela Merkel. After the 2009 parliamentary elections, the coalition ceased to exist, and Gabriel Sigmar was elected chairman of his party, which had just suffered a crushing defeat.
Four years later, in December 2013, a new coalition was formed, where Gabriel served as vice chancellor and federal minister of economics and energy.
Biography
Sigmar Gabriel, whose father adhered to ultra-right views, was born in 1959 in Goslar. Already in 1976, he began working in a youth organization called the Sokols German Socialist Youth Union (SJD). Three years later, he graduated from high school in Goslar and was called up to the Bundeswehr, where he served two years. After military service, in 1982, Gabriel entered the University of Gottingen, where he graduated in political sciences, sociology and German philology.
Since 1983, he began working in adult education from the ÖTV and IG Metall unions. In 1987, Gabriel Sigmar passed the first state exam and spent two years training at the Goslar Grammar School. At the end of this internship (the so-called referendum), he passed the second state exam and received a diploma.
He resigned from his trade union posts and a year later began teaching at the Federation of National Universities of Lower Saxony, where he worked until 1990.
Personal life
He divorced his first wife and in 2012 he married a second time, raising two daughters. My wife’s name is Anke, she works as a dentist in her own office.
The names of the daughters are Saskia and Marie. Saskia, the daughter of her first marriage, is already an adult and openly criticizes her father. Marie still goes to kindergarten.
Career at the SPD and its affiliates
In 1976, Sigmar Gabriel became a member of the Falcons socialist youth organization, and only a year later joined the ranks of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He was the chairman of the Sokolov branch in Goslar and was a member of the organization’s presidium in the city district of Braunschweig, where he served as secretary and oversaw anti-war actions. Gabriel later became the head of this Sokolov unit. In 1979, he joined the ÖTV civil servants union.
In 1999, he was elected a member of the federal executive committee of the SPD, and in 2003 he was appointed executive press secretary for pop culture issues, deputy chairman of the party in Lower Saxony and chairman in Braunschweig. Two years later, he refused membership in the federal executive committee.
On October 5, 2009, at a party meeting, 77.7% of the committee members voted for Gabriel's candidacy for the post of federal chairman of the party. About a month later, on November 13, Sigmar Gabriel led the SPD; this time, 94.2% of the delegates voted for him.
On November 15, 2009, he announced the need to restore the progressive tax on wealth.
At local and regional levels
Gabriel Sigmar received his first mandate in 1987, when he was elected to the Goslar district parliament. Three years later he was in the Lower Saxony Landtag, and in 1991 he was elected to the city council of Goslar.
In 1994, Gabriel was appointed spokesman for the internal affairs of the SPD parliamentary group in the regional parliament, and in 1997 became deputy chairman of the faction. The following year, he left the district legislature and became chairman of the SPD faction in the Landtag, where the party won an absolute majority of 83 seats out of 157. On December 15, 1999, after the resignation of Gerhard Glogowski, Sigmar Gabriel assumed the post of Prime Minister of Lower Saxony. At the same time, he renounced his mandate in the city council.
In the 2003 regional elections, the current prime minister, Sigmar Gabriel, defeated Christian Wulf with a crushing score: the result of the SPD was 33.5% of the vote, compared with 48% in the last election, while the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) made a breakthrough. having received 48.3% of the vote against 36% five years earlier. Wulf quickly formed the so-called black-yellow coalition, and on March 4, Gabriel transferred power to him.
Despite the defeat, he again took the post of chairman of the SPD parliamentary faction and became an opposition leader in the regional government of Christian Wolfe. Gabriel resigned in 2005.
As Federal Minister for the Environment
In the early federal elections of September 18, 2005, Sigmar Gabriel was elected to the Bundestag from the Salzgitter-Wolfenbüttel district in Lower Saxony, gaining 52.3% of the vote. In the same year, November 22, he was appointed the new Federal Minister for the Environment in a coalition government led by Angela Merkel. Gabriel is the first Social Democrat appointed to this post since its inception in 1986.
As minister, he continued the line of his predecessor, Jürgen Trittin, supporting the decision to abandon nuclear energy made by the “red-green” coalition of Gerhard Schroeder in 2001. Gabriel used the German Presidency of the European Union and the G8 in 2007 to promote environmental issues internationally. Together with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, he is a supporter of the New Deal environmental program.
Opposition leader
In the parliamentary elections of September 27, 2009, Gabriel was again elected as a deputy, gaining 44.9% of the vote in his constituency. Exactly a month later, he lost his portfolio to Norbert Röttgen in connection with the formation of a black and yellow coalition. Together with Steinmeier, chairman of the SPD faction in the Bundestag, he takes over the duties of the opposition leader in the new cabinet of Angela Merkel. In September 2012, at the proposal of the former Minister of Finance, Peer Steinbrück, he becomes a candidate from the SPD for the position of chancellor, but loses.
Vice Chancellor
In the federal elections of September 22, 2013, the SPD received only 25.7% of the vote, while the Christian Democrats did not quite reach the absolute majority, gaining 41.5%. Two factions began negotiations on the formation of a "big coalition"; the chairman of the SPD submitted a decision on this issue for approval to members of his party. On December 17, 2013, after more than 75% voted for him, Sigmar Gabriel was appointed Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Economics and Energy.
Interesting Facts
During a press conference on February 14, 2014, Federal Minister of Agriculture Hans-Peter Friedrich announced his resignation. A few hours earlier, he admitted that in October 2013, as the Federal Minister of the Interior, he passed on to Sigmar Gabriel information related to the investigation into the Lower Saxony deputy, Sebastian Edati, who had been caught in child pornography crimes. Because of this, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel lost the trust of Angela Merkel.
