Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler (De-Horst Köhler.ogg listen (help·info), born 22 February 1943 in Skierbieszów, Poland) is a German politician (CDU) and economist who serves as the current President of Germany. Köhler was elected by the Federal Assembly on May 23, 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on July 1, 2004. Prior to his election, 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.
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 Ryschkanowka, Riscani 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.
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 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.
He is married to Eva Köhler, née Eva Luise Bohnet, a teacher of German. They have two children, a daughter Ulrike (born in 1972) and a son Jochen (born in 1977). Horst Köhler is a member of the Lutheran Church in Germany.
Related posts
Leave your response!