Norbert Lammert (born 16 November 1948) is a German

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as the 12th

president of the Bundestag The president of the Bundestag ( or ; Grammatical gender in German#Professions, when the office is held by a man) presides over the sessions of the Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany, with functions similar to that of a speaker (poli ...

from 2005 to 2017.

Early life and education

The son of a baker, Lammert attended gymnasium in

Bochum Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...

where he studied classics. He obtained his

abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...

in 1967. He carried out military service in the

Bundeswehr The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...

from 1967 to 1969. Following his military service he went on to the Ruhr University Bochum, which included a period abroad at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, where he studied

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

and

modern history The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500, ...

. He went on and obtained his doctorate ( Dr. rer. soc.) from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1975.

Political career

Having joined the CDU in 1966, he was deputy chairman of the Bochum branch of the CDU. From 1978–1984, he was deputy leader of a part (Westfalen-Lippe) of the

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...

n branch of the Junge Union, the CDU youth organization. In the 1980 national elections, he was elected to the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

and had kept his mandate continuously until stepping down in 2017. During his tenure in the Bundestag he served (as usual for all MPs) on several committees. Following the 2005 federal elections in which the CDU became the strongest party and formed a

grand coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political party, political parties of opposing political spectrum, political ideologies unite in a coalition government. Causes of a grand coali ...

with the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

(SPD), Lammert was elected by the Bundestag on 18 October 2005 to replace Wolfgang Thierse of the SPD as its

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

. Lammert received 564 of 607 votes cast, including most of the SPD's votes. He was reelected to this post by the 17th Bundestag after the 2009 federal election with a similarly good result. In his capacity as president, he chairs the parliament’s Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation. Lammert's tenure in office gained him recognition across party lines as he was determined to uphold the honor and importance of the federal parliament while at the same time displaying a dry, sophisticated sense of humor most notably in exchanges with then-chairmen of

Die Linke Die Linke (; ), also known as the Left Party ( ), is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – The ...

Gregor Gysi Gregor Florian Gysi (; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney, former president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left () political party. He belonged to the reformist wing of the governing Socialist Unity ...

. In the negotiations to form a ''

Grand Coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political party, political parties of opposing political spectrum, political ideologies unite in a coalition government. Causes of a grand coali ...

'' of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Lammert was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on cultural and media affairs, led by Michael Kretschmer and Klaus Wowereit. When Federal President

Joachim Gauck Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany. During the P ...

announced in June 2016 that he would not stand for reelection, Lammert was soon mentioned by German and international media as likely successor. In October 2016, Lammert announced that he would not stand in the 2017 federal elections and resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.

Later career

In 2018, Lammert took on the role of chairman of the

Konrad Adenauer Foundation The Konrad Adenauer Foundation ('' German: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.; Abbreviation: KAS'') is a German political party foundation associated with but independent of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The foundation's head ...

(KAS). Since 2022, following an appointment by

Chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

Olaf Scholz Olaf Scholz (; born 14 June 1958) is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice-Chancellor of Ge ...

, Lammert has been serving on a three-member panel (alongside Krista Sager and Andreas Voßkuhle) to assess potential conflicts of interest, requiring senior German officials from the chancellor to deputy ministers to observe a cooling-off period if they want to quit the government for a job in business.

Political positions

Role of the parliament

Throughout his tenure, Lammert has not shied from speaking out against the government about potential threats to parliament's role. He became widely respected for upholding parliamentarians' rights, including leading the way in condemning the 1915 Armenian massacres as a Turkish genocide in 2016. In 2011, he questioned why the Bundestag had not been consulted on Chancellor

Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...

's decision to close all nuclear plants following

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which r ...

. He has insisted that members of parliament be consulted fully on the bailout schemes for the euro zone debt crisis.

European integration

In 2012, Lammert said he wants a financial transaction tax to be introduced in as many countries as possible, “at least” in the

Eurozone The euro area, commonly called the eurozone (EZ), is a Monetary union, currency union of 20 Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (Euro sign, €) as their primary currency ...

. Later that year, he demanded that the EU not take in new members for the time being because of the

European debt crisis The euro area crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis, European debt crisis, or European sovereign debt crisis, was a multi-year debt crisis and financial crisis in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until, in Greece, 2018. The e ...

and also expressed doubts that

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

was ready to join; Croatia eventually joined the EU in 2013.

Human rights

Following the

Charlie Hebdo shooting On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, Paris, France, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine ''Charlie Hebdo'' were targeted in a terrorist shooting attack by two French-born Islam in Algeria, Algerian Muslim bro ...

in 2015, Lammert criticized

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

for condemning the Paris attacks as a violation of Islam, "then two days later letting the blogger Raif Badawi be flogged in public in Jeddah for insulting Islam". Ahead of Egyptian president

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and 201 ...

's first official visit to Germany in June 2015, Lammert announced that he would not meet the former army chief, citing "an unbelievable number of death sentences". In February 2016, Lammert visited the Zaatari refugee camp in

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

to learn more about the plight of

Syrians Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine Arabic, Levantine and Mesopotamian Arabic, Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The culture of Syria, cultural ...

fleeing the violence in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011. In June 2017, Lammert voted against Germany’s introduction of

same-sex marriage Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same legal Legal sex and gender, sex. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 38 countries, with a total population of 1.5 ...

Controversy

Party financing

In December 2010, Lammert imposed on the CDU a fine of 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) for breaching party donation rules, for party funding violations in the western state of

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

at the time of the regional election in 2006.

Plagiarism allegations

In July 2013, an anonymous internet blogger, using the name of Robert Schmidt, accused Lammert of having plagiarized other works when writing his dissertation. Lammert rejected this reproach and asked the University of Bochum to check his dissertation; he also published it via internet. High-ranking politicians of the

(SPD) and of the German Green Party underlined that there should be no condemnation(s) in advance. In November 2013 the university finished a thorough investigation and came to the conclusion that, although the dissertation contained "avoidable shortcomings in the citations", those did not constitute plagiarism.

Other activities

Corporate boards

* RAG AG, Member of the Supervisory Board * RAG-Stiftung, Member of the Board of Trustees (2017–2022) * Evonik Industries, Member of the Supervisory Board (2005-2007) * RTL Television, Member of the Program Committee (1998-2007)

Non-profit organizations

* Deutsche Nationalstiftung, Member of the Senate * Konrad Adenauer Prize, Member of the Advisory Board *

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (KHI) is one of the oldest research institutions dedicated to the history of art and architecture in Italy, where facets of European, Mediterranean and global history are investigated. Founded in 1897 b ...

(KHI), Member of the Board of Trustees * Federal Cultural Foundation, ex-officio Member of the Board of Trustees *

Goethe-Institut The Goethe-Institut (; GI, ''Goethe Institute'') is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit German culture, cultural organization operational worldwide with more than 150 cultural centres, promoting the study of the German language abroad and en ...

, Member of the General Meeting *

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees (2009-2013) *

, Chairman of the Board of Directors *

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (, also known as the Holocaust Memorial German: ''Holocaust-Mahnmal''), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany, designed by architect Peter Eisenman an ...

, Chairman of the Board of Trustees * musikFabrik, Member of the Board of Trustees * Norbert Lammert Foundation, Chairman of the Board of Trustees * Ruhrfestspiele, Member of the Supervisory Board * Ruhr University Bochum, Member of the Board of Trustees (2002-2008)

Recognition

* 2019 – Hans Ehrenberg Prize

Personal life

Lammert is member of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. He is married to Gertrud and has four children.

Literature

References

External links