Horst Seehofer
Horst Lorenz Seehofer (born 4 July 1949) is a German politician who served as Minister for the Interior, Building and Community under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. A member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), he served as the 18th minister-president of Bavaria from 2008 to 2018 and Leader of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria from 2008 to 2019.
Horst Seehofer
Thomas de Maizière (Interior)
Nancy Faeser (Interior and Community)
Klara Geywitz (Housing, Urban Development and Building)
Karl Heinz Gierenstein
Constituency established
Matthias Enghuber
4
First elected to the Bundestag in 1980, he served as Minister for Health and Social Security in the Christian-liberal cabinets of Helmut Kohl from 1992 to 1998, going to the opposition afterwards and returning to the government as Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the grand coalition cabinet of Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2008. Following a disastrous result for his party in the 2008 Bavarian state election, he became both Leader of the CSU and Minister-president of Bavaria, an office he had never sought, after forming a coalition government with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), the first coalition on state level in five decades. In 2013 he returned his party to an absolute majority on state level. He served as President of the Bundesrat from 2011 to 2012. As such he was acting head of state of Germany from the resignation of President Christian Wulff on 17 February 2012 until the election of Joachim Gauck as Wulff's successor on 18 March 2012.[1]
A staunch opponent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's response to the 2010s migrant crisis,[2] Seehofer threatened to file a formal complaint with the Constitutional Court,[3] with the historic CDU/CSU alliance in danger of splitting and running against each other in the whole of Germany for the first time, but neither happened. He is a proponent of a federal cap on the number of refugees the German government is to take in.[4] After faring historically badly in the 2017 federal election, the party receiving its worst result since 1949, and unsuccessfully trying to run for a third term as minister-president in 2018, he was pressured by his party to resign and instead accepted the office of Minister for the Interior, Building and Community (originally intended for Joachim Herrmann) in Merkel's fourth government, in order to shape the migrant policy after his views. In July 2018, a week-long dissent between Seehofer and Merkel nearly brought down the government and again seriously threatened a CDU/CSU split, but they ultimately found a compromise.
Early life and education[edit]
After secondary school, Seehofer started working as civil servant in the local administration in Ingolstadt.[5]
Political career[edit]
Federal Minister and Member of the Bundestag (1980–2008)[edit]
Seehofer served as member of the German federal parliament (Bundestag) as a directly elected delegate (Direktkandidat) from his constituency Ingolstadt from 1980 until 2008. At the 2005 federal election he received 65.9 percent of the votes in his district.
Seehofer was Federal Minister for Health and Social Security from 1992 to 1998 in the cabinet of Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
In 1993, Seehofer ordered that Germany's 117-year-old Federal Health Agency be dissolved following a review of how the government in the 1980s handled the cases of thousands of hemophiliacs who were infected through blood contaminated with HIV. The Health Ministry took over the agency's responsibilities.[6] Also, Seehofer announced that Germany would contribute to an emergency fund for victims of the scandal.[7] In the context of the crisis, he came under considerable pressure to resign.[8]
Personal life[edit]
Seehofer married to Karin Starck. They live in the Ingolstadt district of Gerolfing. A father of three, Seehofer failed in a 2007 bid for the CSU leadership when it emerged that he had a daughter born out of wedlock, from an extramarital affair with a much younger staffer of the German Bundestag.[5] After a period of indecision, he opted to return to his wife.[21]
In 2002, Seehofer survived a serious myocarditis.[22] His health again became a subject of public debate when he collapsed during a speech at a party event in early 2015.[61]