Winfried Kretschmann | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Kretschmann in 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assumed office 12 May 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deputy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Stefan Mappus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President of theBundesrat | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 1 November 2012 – 31 October 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First Vice President | Horst Seehofer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Horst Seehofer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Stephan Weil | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | (1948-05-17)17 May 1948 (age 77) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Political party | Alliance 90/The Greens (since 1979) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | Communist League of West Germany (1973–1975) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 3, includingJohannes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Hohenheim | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation |
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| Website | www.winfried-kretschmann.de | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Military service | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Allegiance |  Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Branch/service |  Bundeswehr | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years of service | 1968–1970 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Winfried Kretschmann (German:[ˈvɪnfʁiːtˈkʁɛtʃman]; born 17 May 1948) is a German politician serving asMinister-President of Baden-Württemberg since 2011. A member of theAlliance '90/Greens, he wasPresident of the Bundesrat andex officio deputy to thePresident of Germany from 2012 to 2013. He is the first member of the Greens to serve in these offices. Identifying himself as agreen conservative, Kretschmann has been associated with bothculturally andeconomically liberal policies.
Kretschmann has been a member of the state parliament, theLandtag of Baden-Württemberg, since 1980, in the constituency ofNürtingen. In 2006 he was the frontrunner in theBaden-Württemberg state election for his party, as he was in thestate election on 27 March 2011. He was also the chairman of his party's parliamentary group.[1]
Following the state election of 2011,[2] Kretschmann was elected on 12 May 2011 by the combined Green-SPD majority in the Landtag to succeedStefan Mappus as Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, becoming the first ever Green Minister-President of any German state. Kretschmann has wide personal popularity; if it were possible to elect the Minister-President directly during theBaden-Württemberg election of March 2016, Kretschmann would have won an outright majority according to polls; he was even favored by 45% of CDU supporters.[3] Kretschmann was re-elected in May 2016 as Minister-President while leading a new coalition with the Christian Democrats.[4]
On 12 October 2012 he was electedPresident of the German Bundesrat for the term from 1 November 2012 to 31 October 2013.[5] This was the first time since 1953, and only the second time ever, that the President was not drawn from the ranks of either the CDU/CSU or the SPD, until November 1, 2021, whenBodo Ramelow ofThe Left was elected president of the Bundesrat.
Kretschmann was born atSpaichingen in Baden-Württemberg. His parents wereexpellees from the mostlyRoman Catholic region ofErmland (East Prussia) afterWorld War II.[6] He grew up on the ruralSwabian Alb (southern Baden-Württemberg). Kretschmann attended aCatholic boarding school inSigmaringen and passed hisAbitur inRiedlingen. Following hismilitary service, he studied to be a teacher ofbiology andchemistry (laterethics) at theUniversity of Hohenheim inStuttgart, graduating in 1977.
From 1973 to 1975 Kretschmann was active in theCommunist League of West Germany.[7] He later denounced this orientation towards the revolutionary positions of theGerman student movement as a "political misapprehension"; today he is more ecologically oriented and counted among the members of the more conservative wing of the Greens.
After three years as a school teacher at Sigmaringen, Kretschmann went into politics. He is one of the founding members of the Baden-Württemberg section of the German Green Party (atSindelfingen on 30 September 1979).
In 1980, Kretschmann was for the first time elected into the Landtag, the state parliament, and a first stint of his chairmanship of his party's parliamentary group followed from 1983 to 1985. In 1985 he left Stuttgart to work inHessen at the ministry of environment, then run by party colleagueJoschka Fischer for two years.
In 1988, Kretschmann returned to Baden-Württemberg, being re-elected into the Landtag in 1988. He lost his seat in 1992, but returned – after four years back as a teacher – in 1996 and held his seat in2001 and2006. In 2002, he was again elected chairman of his party's parliamentary group.[8]
In the2011 state elections, amid a surge in support for the anti-nuclear Greens following theFukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan,[9] acoalition government of Greens and Social Democrats won over the former predominating conservative CDU; Kretschmann was elected as the new state Minister-President ofBaden-Württemberg.[10] He ran on a platform that called for shutting down nuclear power plants, overhauling a public school system the Greens see as elitist, and imposing speed limits onAutobahns.[11] Also, Kretschmann is widely regarded as having benefited from his party's opposition toStuttgart 21, a massive development project in Baden-Württemberg's capital.[12] Kretschmann's election ended 58 years of uninterrupted rule in Baden-Württemberg by theChristian Democratic Union party.[9]
As Minister-President, Kretschmann is a member of the German-French Friendship Group set up by theGerman Bundesrat and theFrench Senate as well as of the German-Russian Friendship Group set up in cooperation with theRussian Federation Council.[citation needed] During his tenure, he has made several foreign trips, including to Argentina (2011), Brazil (2011),[13] Turkey (2012), Japan (2013), South Korea (2013), Israel (2013), the United States (2015, 2018, 2022)[14] and China (2015).[15]
When GermanChancellorAngela Merkel held preliminary talks to sound out possible common ground with the Green Party in an attempt to form a coalition government following the2013 elections, Kretschmann was part of the Greens’ delegation.[16]
In the2016 state elections, Kretschmann led the Green Party to a historic 30%, thus coming three points ahead of the Christian Democrats.[17] For the first time in any German regional election, the Greens emerged the strongest single party in the state.[18] Kretschmann was confirmed as leader of acoalition government of Greens and Christian Democrats in May 2016.[4] As the Green Party's only Minister-President, Kretschmann plays a crucial role to organize the party's informal coordination committee for the Bundesrat.[19]
In July 2020, Kretschmann-led government of Baden-Württemberg banned full-face coverings burqas, niqabs for all school children. The rule will apply to primary and secondary education. Kretschmann said that full-face veiling did not belong in a free society.[20][21]
Following the ongoing success of the Greens in the2021 state elections, Kretschmann was subsequently re-elected for serving a third term asminister president on May 12, 2021.[22]
Kretschmann belongs to the moreRealpolitik-oriented, centrist wing of the Green Party, and has been characterised as holdingeconomically liberal, pro-business views.[23] He identifies as agreen conservative.[24] His business-friendly approach to policy has caused him to clash with his party on more than one occasion. While he shared his party's official position of favoring an alliance with the SPD after the2013 federal elections, he repeatedly criticized its campaign.[9] He objected to the Greens’ election platform of tax increases, warning the leadership in a public letter to avoid any move that would be detrimental to business.[25]
WhenBavaria filed a lawsuit in theFederal Constitutional Court in 2012, asking the judges to back their call for an overhaul of the German system of financial transfers from wealthier states (such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) to the country's weaker economies, Kretschmann decided that his state would not back the lawsuit and instead urged reform via negotiations between all the states.[26]
Kretschmann has in the past been vocal about climate change policies. In May 2015, he joinedGovernorJerry Brown ofCalifornia and other international leaders from various states and provinces in signing theUnder2 MOU, a non-binding climate change agreement inSacramento, California. At the2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Kretschmann and Brown convened in Paris during the talks to attract more supporters among governors, mayors and other leaders of “subnational” governments for stronger commitments to reducing emissions.[27] During theCOVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Kretschmann clashed with environmentalists, as he supported stimulus subsidies for the purchase of cars with relatively efficient combustion engines.[28]
Kretschmann stated that he wants to keep refugees who commit crimes in groups away from major cities and distribute them in the country, saying that the idea of sending some of them "into the pampas" was "not wrong", and adding, "To put it bluntly, the most dangerous thing that human evolution has produced is hordes of young men." He claimed that the2018 Freiburg gang rape was a "terrible example" of this.[29]
2023 Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany[31]Kretschmann is aCatholic. He is married with Gerlinde, has three children (includingJohannes) and lives inSigmaringen.
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