Guido Westerwelle

Guido Westerwelle was born in Bad Honnef in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. His parents were lawyers. He graduated from Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in 1980 after academic struggles resulted in his departure from previous institutions where he was considered an average student at best, but substandard otherwise. He studied law at the University of Bonn from 1980 to 1987. Following the First and Second State Law Examinations in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he began practising as an attorney in Bonn in 1991. In 1994, he earned a doctoral degree in law from the University of Hagen.

Westerwelle joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in 1980. He was a founding member of the Junge Liberale (Young Liberals), which became the party's official youth organization in 1983, and he was its chairman from 1983 to 1988. In a 1988 newspaper interview, he singled out the FDP's rejection of an amnesty for tax offenders and its diminished enthusiasm for nuclear power as fruits of the youth wing's labors.

He was a member of the executive board of the FDP from 1988, and in 1994, he was appointed secretary general of the party.

In 1996, Westerwelle was first elected a member of the Bundestag, filling in for Heinz Lanfermann, who had resigned from his seat after entering the Ministry of Justice. In the 1998 national elections, he was re-elected to parliament. As his parliamentary group's home affairs spokesman, he was instrumental in swinging the FDP behind a 1999 government bill to make German citizenship available to children born in Germany of non-German parents.

In 2001, Westerwelle succeeded Wolfgang Gerhardt as party chairman. Gerhardt, however, remained chairman of the FDP's parliamentary group. Westerwelle, the youngest party chairman at the time, emphasized economics and education, and espoused a strategy initiated by his deputy Jürgen Möllemann, who, as chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia branch of the FDP, had led his party back into the state parliament, gaining 9.8% of the vote. This strategy, transferred to the federal level, was dubbed Project 18, referring both to the envisioned percentage and the German age of majority. Leading up to the 2002 elections, he positioned his party equidistantly from the major parties and refused to commit his party to a coalition with either the Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats. He was also named the FDP's candidate for the office of chancellor. Since the FDP had never claimed such a candidacy (and hasn't done since) and had no chance of attaining it against the two major parties, this move was widely seen as political marketing alongside other ploys, such as driving around in a campaign van dubbed the Guidomobile, wearing the figure 18 on the soles of his shoes or appearing in the Big Brother TV show. Eventually, the federal elections yielded a slight increase of the FDP's vote from 6.2% to 7.4%. Despite this setback, he was reelected as party chairman in 2003.

In the federal elections of 2005, Westerwelle was his party's front-runner. When neither Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats and Greens nor a coalition of Christian and Free Democrats, favored by Angela Merkel and Westerwelle, managed to gain a majority of seats, Westerwelle rejected overtures by Chancellor Schröder to save his chancellorship by entering his coalition, preferring to become one of the leaders of the disparate opposition of the subsequently formed "Grand Coalition" of Christian and Social Democrats, with Merkel as chancellor. Westerwelle became a vocal critic of the new government. In 2006, according to an internal agreement, Westerwelle succeeded Wolfgang Gerhardt as chairman of the parliamentary group.

Over the following years, in an effort to broaden the party's appeal, Westerwelle embraced its left wing under former justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger and focused his campaign messages on tax cuts, education and civil rights.

On 20 July 2004, Westerwelle attended Angela Merkel's 50th birthday party accompanied by his partner, Michael Mronz. It was the first time he had attended an official event with his partner and this was considered his public coming-out. The couple registered their partnership on 17 September 2010 in a private ceremony in Bonn.

On economic policy

Westerwelle was a staunch supporter of the free market and proposed reforms to curtail the German welfare state and deregulate German labor-law. In an interview in February 2003, Westerwelle described labor unions as a "plague on our country" and said union officials were "the pall bearers of the welfare state and of the prosperity in our country". He called for substantial tax cuts and smaller government, in line with the general direction of his party.

On sexual equality

Westerwelle was a staunch campaigner for sexual equality. He long criticized German laws not giving complete adoption rights to gay couples. In 2012, he and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble were at loggerheads after a high-court ruling demanded the government provide equal tax treatment to gay civil servants and armed forces members. In the German daily Bild, Westerwelle said that if "registered partnerships have the same responsibilities as married couples, then they should have the same rights. It is not weakening marriage but ending discrimination. We do not live in the 1950s."

On data-protection

In 2001, Westerwelle was one of the first politicians to push for a biometric passport.

He opposed Google Street View's automated photography of streetscapes, and stated "I will do all I can to prevent it". In 2013, he announced plans to launch an initiative at the United Nations General Assembly to agree an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that would give greater data protection to internet users.

WikiLeaks controversy and election defeats

In late November 2010, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables revealed that American diplomats considered Westerwelle an obstacle to deeper transatlantic relations and were skeptical of his abilities, with one cable comparing him unfavorably to former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. On 3 December 2010, Westerwelle dismissed his personal assistant Helmut Metzner following a WikiLeaks diplomatic cables release which led to Metzner admitting that he regularly spied for the U.S. By May 2011, opinion polls ranked Westerwelle as one of the most unpopular and ineffective foreign ministers since the late 1940s. At the time, his party had collapsed in several states, including Rhineland-Palatinate and Bremen where they failed to secure the 5% threshold necessary for a seat in parliament. Analysts said one of the main reasons Westerwelle had become so unpopular was that he had been unable to fulfill the expectations of his voters, the majority of whom were middle-class professionals or entrepreneurs. Westerwelle subsequently stepped down as party leader. By July the party was only receiving 3% support in opinion polls, a record low, reflecting what political insiders had called his "last stand" in January, comparing Westerwelle and his party to Captain Ahab and the Pequod.

Westerwelle's party chairmanship saw considerable controversy. Critics inside and outside the FDP accused him of focusing on public relations, as opposed to developing and promoting sound public policy, especially in the election campaign of 2002. Westerwelle himself, who was made party chairman particularly because his predecessor Wolfgang Gerhardt had been viewed by many as dull and stiff, labelled his approach as Spaßpolitik (fun-politics).

In 2006, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder won a court order against Westerwelle who had criticized Schröder for accepting a lucrative job at Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas company, soon after losing the parliamentary election to Angela Merkel. Despite losing, Westerwelle said he would stick to his original assessment that Schröder's appointment as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline Company was "problematic".

On 27 September 2009, at a press conference after the election, Westerwelle refused to answer a question in English from a BBC reporter, stating that "it is normal to speak German in Germany". Critics have noted that this was in part due to Westerwelle's poor command of English. He earned the epithet "Westerwave" (a literal translation of his surname into English) as a consequence of these remarks.

Westerwelle made public statements in 2010 about the "welfare state", saying that promising the people effortless prosperity may lead to "late Roman decadence", in reference to a verdict in the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany regarding Hartz IV.

In 2010, Westerwelle announced he would not be taking his civil partner Michael Mronz to anti-gay countries. Other official trips as foreign minister included Mronz, an event manager, and Ralf Marohn, a partner in his brother's company, also causing controversy. Westerwelle retorted that it was normal for foreign ministers to take industry representatives on their trips, calling himself a victim of "a left-wing zeitgeist that considers making business questionable".

According to Politico Europe Westerwelle contributed to the decline of the power of the German foreign ministry due to his lack of expertise in the area and was considered ineffective in the role.