Rita Süssmuth, former President of the Bundestag and Federal Minister, is dead. She died at the age of 88, as Bundestag President Julia Klöckner announced on Sunday. In June 2024 she made public that she had breast cancer. Klöckner praised her as “one of the most important politicians in the Federal Republic”.
Süssmuth was born in Wuppertal in 1937. At the age of 34 she became a professor of education. She was a professor at the University of Dortmund in the 1970s; At the same time, she served on various committees of the Family Ministry.
Second President of the Bundestag
From 1988 to 1998 she was the second woman to be President of the Bundestag after Annemarie Renger (SPD). In this role, she was involved in the wrapping of the Reichstag building by the artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the summer of 1995.
During her political career, the CDU politician campaigned, among other things, for the reform of abortion paragraph 218 and was committed to helping people with AIDS. After hard struggles, she managed to enforce the principle of “prevention instead of exclusion”.
The politician also set priorities in her party’s very controversial migration policy: back in the mid-1990s, she was the first prominent CDU politician to call for a commitment to Germany as an immigration country. From 2000 to 2001 she headed the immigration commission set up by the red-green federal government. From 2002 to 2004 she chaired the Expert Council for Immigration and Integration formed by Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD). From 2003 to 2005 she worked on the Global Commission on International Migration, which was set up by the UN.
Even after her political career, Süssmuth continued to hold numerous public offices. In 2003 she was appointed to the newly founded Advisory Commission in connection with the return of cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution, particularly from Jewish property (“Limbach Commission”). Since 2005 she has been president of the German Poland Institute, of which she was most recently honorary president. Rita Süssmuth was also the president of the German Adult Education Association for over 27 years and has been honorary president of the association since 2015.
Süssmuth was also active as a Catholic. She headed the “Marriage and Family” commission at the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) and served as vice president of the Catholic Family Association from 1980 to 1985.
