Out Spotlight LXVI

"Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so."
"I am queer, and that’s how it should be"

Today's Out Spotlight is Klaus Wowereit. Born October 1 1953 in the Tempelhof borough of Berlin (formerly known as West Berlin) Wowereit is a German politician, member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), and has been the mayor of Berlin since the 2001 state elections, where he won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He is openly gay.

Wowereit served as President of the Bundesrat (the second highest office in Germany) in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections. He is also sometimes mentioned as a possible SPD candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany (Kanzlerkandidatur), though his chances diminished after his decision to enter into a coalition with the socialist Left Party for a second term.

He attended the Ulrich-von-Hutten-Oberschule in Berlin then studied law at the Free University Berlin

After 3 years as a civil servant in the Senate Office of the Interior Wowereit stood for election as municipal councilor in Tempelhof borough. At the age of 30, he was therefore the youngest councilor in the city of Berlin. After eleven years as a Borough Councillor he stood for the Berlin House of Deputies (Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin) which serves as the City's Landtag or state legislature in 1995. In December 1999, he was elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus. Since June 2001 he has served as Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) of Berlin. Previously, the SPD had left the Grand coalition with the CDU and initiated new elections. After this election and following long-time negotiations, Wowereit finally started a coalition with the PDS.

In the elections held on 17 September 2006, Wowereit's (SPD) finished as the strongest party. The 16th Abgeordnetenhaus re-elected Wowereit as Governing Mayor on 23 November 2006, in the second ballot with only a 75:74 majority. CDU, Free Democrats and the Green Party voted against him.

Wowereit is one of the most famous German politicians who is openly gay. In coming out, prior to the 2001 mayoral elections, he coined the now famous German phrase "Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so." ("I am queer, and that’s how it should be"). In his autobiography Wowereit states that his decision to come out in public was made because after his nomination as candidate to become the mayor of Berlin, he felt that the German tabloids were already "on the track". With his coming out, Wowereit wanted to beat the tabloids to it and prevent them from writing wild, sensational and made-up stories about his private life. Wowereit said those now famous words during a convention of the Berlin SPD. After he had ended, there was half a second of surprised silence, then spontaneous cheering and loud applause to support him.

His election as mayor made Berlin one of three major European cities with an openly gay mayor, along with Paris, whose mayor is Bertrand Delanoë, and Hamburg, whose mayor is Ole von Beust, who both also took office in 2001. Previously, the largest city with a gay mayor had been Winnipeg, Canada, with mayor Glen Murray. Berlin and Hamburg are not only the two largest cities in Germany, but both are also German states, making both Wowereit and von Beust also state premiers.

In September 2007, Wowereit published an autobiographical book titled "…und das ist auch gut so.", after his famous coming-out phrase

At the inauguration of the memorial for the gay victims of persecution by the Nazi regime, Klaus Wowereit said, "This memorial is important from two points of view—to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily."


Wowereit and his partner Jörn Kubicki attending an official event.

Klaus Wowereit - NY Times

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