Hannelore Kraft (née Külzhammer, 12 June 1961) is a German politician. She served as the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 until 2017. Kraft was the first woman to serve as head of government of this state and was the third woman to become head of a state government in Germany. Between 1 November 2010 and 31 October 2011, she was the President of the Bundesrat, again the first woman to hold the office. She is the former leader of the SPD North Rhine-Westphalia and served on the SPD's federal executive from November 2009 until May 2017, and was one of the four federal deputy chairs.
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Early life and education
The daughter of a streetcar driver and a ticket collector, Kraft graduated in 1980, and first trained as a bank clerk with Dresdner Bank. She commenced her studies in economics at Comprehensive University of Duisburg in 1982, and studied at King's College London in 1986 and 1987. She completed her studies in Duisburg in 1989.
Career
Early career
From 1989 until 2001, Kraft was a consultant and project manager at ZENIT GmbH ('Centre for Innovation and Technology') in Mülheim an der Ruhr, and was head of the local European Info Centre.
Political career
Kraft joined the SPD in 1994. She was drawn to politics after becoming head of a works council and struggling to find a place for her son in a nursery. At the 2000 North Rhine-Westphalia state election, she was elected to the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. Initially representing electoral district 74 (Mülheim II-Essen VII), she switched to electoral district 64 (Mülheim I) for the election in 2005.
On 24 April 2001, she replaced Detlev Samland as Minister for Federal and European Affairs, and then under Minister-President Peer Steinbrück, served from 12 November 2002 until 31 May 2005 as Minister for Science and Research.
Kraft was a SPD delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
After the SPD lost the 2005 state election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Kraft was elected leader of the SPD's parliamentary group with 95.7% of the votes, hence becoming the Opposition Leader in the state. In 2007, she was elected chairperson of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia.
On 13 November 2009, Kraft was elected as one of the four vice chairs of the federal SPD under chairman Sigmar Gabriel, receiving the highest overall vote. A party congress in February 2010 affirmed that she was the SPD's candidate for Minister-President at the May 2010 state election.
The state election on 9 May 2010 resulted in a near-tie with the governing CDU at 67 seats, and with Kraft's preferred red-green coalition one seat short of an overall majority; at the time, the federal government under Chancellor Angela Merkel blamed the result on voter anger at the first aid package for Greece.
After many parallel negotiations and various coalitions, Kraft was elected Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia on 14 July 2010 on the second ballot with a sufficient majority of votes, coming from the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens, while the Left Party abstained. Kraft formed a minority government with ministers of Social Democrats and Greens. It was the first time in Germany that a coalition has attempted to rule one of the 16 federal states without a proper majority, with the only exception being a red–green alliance governing Berlin for some months in 2001–2002 without a majority. For nearly two years, Kraft ruled the state without a regular majority, pulling votes for each initiative from opposition parties on the right or the left. Together with the deputy governor, Sylvia Löhrmann from the Green Party, Kraft dubbed her government the "invitation coalition".
Political positions
Energy
In 2012, Kraft placed investment in renewable energy at the center of her second term's agenda, stating that more than 30 per cent of electricity in NRW should be coming from renewable sources by 2025. In 2013, Kraft called on Angela Merkel to use tax revenue to cut electricity costs for consumers by 25 percent. On energy companies extracting oil and natural gas by the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Kraft stated in 2014 that "[a]s long as I am governor in North Rhine-Westphalia, there will be no fracking for unconventional natural gas." She also helped get a resolution through the Bundesrat on tighter rules for fracking, after visiting Canada to get a first-hand look at shale oil extraction there.
Tax evasion
Early in her time in office, Kraft focused on tax evasion, which is a policy that is not exclusively the reserve of the federal government and thus allowed to her to both exercise her power in her state as well as in the Bundesrat, the upper house of the federal parliament, where the states are presented and the opposition had a majority at the time. In 2013, Kraft led the Bundesrat opposition to a tax agreement with Switzerland, eventually blocking it as too easy on tax dodgers. Under the proposed law, Germans with untaxed wealth in Switzerland would have been able to legitimize their holdings and retain their anonymity in exchange for paying a one-off penalty charge and submitting to a future withholding tax.
Art
In 2013, the heir of a prominent Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, who fled Nazi Germany, urged the state of North Rhine-Westphalia to relinquish paintings by Paul Klee and Juan Gris that he says were lost due to Nazi persecution; Kraft declined to comment. In 2014, Kraft rejected demands made by museum directors in North Rhine-Westphalia who sought to prevent the sale of two Andy Warhol paintings, Triple Elvis (1963) and Four Marlons (1966), by the former West LB at Christie's New York; in a letter in response to the museum directors, she held that she could not stop the sale because the paintings were not considered items of national cultural importance.
Immigration
In summer 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed tens of thousands of asylum seekers camped out in Hungary to travel to Germany, Kraft asserted that this had sent a signal to thousands of migrants to head straight for Germany; at the time, North Rhine-Westphalia was taking in around a fifth of the new arrivals.
Relations with France
Alongside Senator Catherine Troendle, Kraft served as co-chairwoman of the German-French Friendship Group set up by the German Bundesrat and the French Senate.
With 2014 marking the centenary of the start of World War I, Kraft inaugurated a memorial for the Armistice Day in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire alongside French President François Hollande and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, as well as British and Belgian officials.
On 26 March 2015, Kraft joined Merkel, Hollande and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain at the crash site of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Massif des Trois-Évêchés for a memorial; North Rhine-Westphalia was the state where the plane was headed and many of the 144 passengers lived. One day later, she and Germany's President Joachim Gauck attended a memorial service in the western town of Haltern for 16 students and two teachers from the local high school who were killed in the crash.
Additional affiliations and memberships
Corporate boards
RAG AG, Member of the supervisory board (since 2017)
Non-profit organizations
Stiftung Duisburg 24.7.2017, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2018)
Heinz Kühn Foundation, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees
Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, Member of the Board
Deutsches Museum, Member of the Board
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Member of the Board
German Children and Youth Foundation (DKJS), Member of the Board
North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, Member of the Board
IG Metall, Member (since 1995)
Charlemagne Prize Foundation, Member of the Board (2010–2017)
North Rhine-Westphalian Foundation for the Environment and Development, chairwoman of the Board (2010–2017)
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (2010–2017)
Kunststiftung NRW, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (2010–2017)
Development and Peace Foundation (SEF), chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (2010–2017)
Awards
Throughout her political career, Hannelore Kraft has received several distinctions in recognition of her public service and contributions to social welfare. In 2007, she was awarded the Ehrenring des Rheinlandes (Rhineland Ring of Honor), followed in 2010 by the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia, the highest award granted by her home state. Her commitment to social justice and the welfare state was further acknowledged in 2012 when she received the Marie-Juchacz-Plakette, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the Arbeiterwohlfahrt for social engagement. In 2018, following her tenure as Minister-President, Hannelore Kraft was decorated with the Great Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, marking a significant recognition of her service at the federal level.
Personal life
Kraft is married and has one son. The couple celebrated their church wedding in Namibia in October 2012. Kraft was formerly a Catholic but later converted to Protestantism, joining the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, a member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany.