Maria Böhmer (born 23 April 1950) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Under the leadership of successive ministers

Frank-Walter Steinmeier Frank-Walter Steinmeier (; born 5 January 1956) is a German politician who has served as President of Germany since 2017. He was previously Minister for Foreign Affairs (Germany), federal minister for foreign affairs from 2005 to 2009 and again f ...

(2013-2017) and Sigmar Gabriel (2017), she served as

Minister of State Minister of state is a designation for a government minister, with varying meanings in different jurisdictions. In a number of European countries, the title is given as an honorific conferring a higher rank, often bestowed upon senior minister ...

in the

Federal Foreign Office The Federal Foreign Office (, ; abbreviated AA) is the Foreign minister, foreign ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, a federal agency (Germany), federal agency responsible for both the country's foreign policy and its relationship with ...

, primarily responsible for cultural relations and education policy.

Early life and education

Born into a family of wine growers, and after graduating high school in 1968, Böhmer studied mathematics, physics, political science and education. In 1971 she passed the state examination, and received her doctorate Dr. phil. In 1974 from the Johannes Gutenberg University in

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

. Upon receiving her PhD, she conducted research at the universities of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

Augsburg Augsburg ( , ; ; ) is a city in the Bavaria, Bavarian part of Swabia, Germany, around west of the Bavarian capital Munich. It is a College town, university town and the regional seat of the Swabia (administrative region), Swabia with a well ...

and gained a post-doctoral qualification in education at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz () is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. It has been named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. it had approximately 32,000 students enrolled in around 100 a ...

in 1982. In 1993/94, Christian Baldauf was a research associate to her. Since 2001, she has held the title of Associate Professor of Education at Heidelberg University of Education, but does not currently teach there.

Political career

From 1982 to 1990, Böhmer served as State Commissioner for Women in

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 ...

. Böhmer joined the CDU in 1985. She is a member of the Women's Union, the Local Politics Association of the CDU and CSU of Germany, and the

Christian Democratic Employees' Association The Christian Democratic Workers Association (''Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft'') (CDA)Gerd-Rainer Horn, Emmanuel Gerard, ''Left Catholicism: Catholics and society in Western Europe at the point of liberation, 1943-1955'', Leuven Univer ...

. From 1990, she was a member of 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 ...

as well as of the Federal Executive Board of the CDU. Between 1994 and 1998, Böhmer served on the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs as well as on the Committee on Family Affairs. From 2000, she was part of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's leadership, first under chairman

Friedrich Merz Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz (; ; born 11November 1955) is a German politician serving as Chancellor of Germany since 6 May 2025. He has also served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since January 2022, leading the CDU/CSU ...

(2000–02) and later under chairwoman

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 ...

(2002–05). From 2001, she served as Chairwoman of the Frauenunion, the CDU's women's organisation. In this capacity, she later publicly endorsed Merkel as the party's candidate to challenge incumbent

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 ...

Gerhard Schröder Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder (; born 7 April 1944) is a German former politician and Lobbying, lobbyist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. From 1999 to 2004, he was also the Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (S ...

in the 2002 federal elections; instead, Edmund Stoiber ended up being the joint candidate of CDU and CSU. In 2003, Böhmer was part of a group assigned by then-opposition leader and CDU chairwoman

to draft alternative proposals for social welfare reform in response to Chancellor

's "

Agenda 2010 The Agenda 2010 is a series of reforms planned and executed by the German government in the early 2000s, a Social Democrats/ Greens coalition at that time, which aimed to reform the German welfare system and labour relations. The declared objectiv ...

". The so-called Herzog Commission – named after its chairman, former German President

Roman Herzog Roman Herzog (; 5 April 1934 – 10 January 2017) was a German politician, judge and legal scholar, who served as the president of Germany from 1994 to 1999. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the first president to be elec ...

– recommended a comprehensive package of reform proposals including, among other things, decoupling health and nursing care premiums from people's earnings and levying a lump monthly sum across the board instead.

Minister of State for Integration in the Federal Chancellery, 2005–13

Following the 2005 federal elections, Böhmer was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement. In November 2005, she joined the first cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and became Minister of State for Integration in the Federal Chancellery and German Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration. In the negotiations to form a

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

following the 2009 federal elections, she led the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on families, integration of immigrants and culture. In 2010, Böhmer proposed to introduce legally binding quotas to boost the low number of people with immigrant backgrounds in public sector jobs, saying it would ensure that the public service sector better mirrored the country's population; however, Germans politicians – both from Böhmer's own conservative Christian Democratic Party as well as from the centre-left opposition – opposed the measure. With a focus on improving the integration of the country's immigrant population, Böhmer later that year rejected the conservative MEP Markus Ferber's call for having immigrants undergo intelligence tests before they are granted residency or citizenship rights in the country. In tackling Germany's shortage of qualified workers, Böhmer favours targeting highly qualified foreign workers through measures such as lowering the minimum wage threshold for migrant workers. Since 2010, Böhmer has been the patron of the German version of anti-racism education charity Show Racism the Red Card. After the deaths of nine Turkish citizens in a fire at a

Ludwigshafen Ludwigshafen, officially Ludwigshafen am Rhein (; meaning "Ludwig I of Bavaria, Ludwig's Port upon the Rhine"; Palatine German dialects, Palatine German: ''Ludwichshafe''), is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in the German state of Rh ...

house on 3 February 2008, which media reports said may have been the result of arson involving neo-Nazis, Böhmer visited the fire site with Turkish prime minister

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister of Turkey, prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Jus ...

. In 2010, Böhmer accompanied Chancellor Merkel on a two-day state visit to Turkey. On the occasion of the German government's official celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of the German-Turkish recruitment agreement in 2011, Böhmer – together with Merkel and Erdoğan – thanked the first Turkish guest workers for their services to Germany. When Erdoğan in 2011 called on the large Turkish community living in Germany to teach their children the Turkish language first and then German, Böhmer countered that " ly those with good German have opportunities to advance in our country." In a controversy surrounding a neo-Nazi terrorist cell trial in 2013, she called on the Munich Higher Regional Court to give Turkish media access to the trial.

Minister of State in the Federal Foreign Office, 2014–2018

Following the 2013 federal elections, Böhmer was again part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement. As Minister of State in the Federal Foreign Office, Böhmer was primarily responsible for cultural relations and education policy as well as of the Asia and South America regions. In 2015, she served as chairwoman of the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage Committee The World Heritage Committee is a committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that selects the sites to be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the World Heritage List and the List of World Her ...

. When Böhmer’s term as chairwoman ended, Steinmeier appointed her as Special Representative of the Federal Foreign Office for UNESCO World Heritage, UNESCO Cultural Conventions and UNESCO Education and Science Programmes. During her time in office, Böhmer witnessed the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) between the

Government of the Philippines The government of the Philippines () has three interdependent branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The Philippines is Central government, governed as a unitary state under a presidential system, presidential representativ ...

and the

Moro Islamic Liberation Front The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF; ) is an Islamist group based in Mindanao, Philippines, which sought an autonomous region of the Moro people from the central government. The group has a presence in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, t ...

on 27 March 2014 at the

Malacañang Palace Malacañang Palace (, ), officially known as Malacañán Palace, is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the Philippines. It is located in the Manila district of San Miguel, Manila, San Miguel, along Jose Laurel S ...

Manila Manila, officially the City of Manila, is the Capital of the Philippines, capital and second-most populous city of the Philippines after Quezon City, with a population of 1,846,513 people in 2020. Located on the eastern shore of Manila Bay on ...

. As Germany's official representative, she took part in the inauguration ceremony for Chilean President

Michelle Bachelet Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (; born 29 September 1951) is a Chilean politician who served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018, becoming the first woman to hold the presidency. She was re-elected in December ...

on 11 March 2014. Since 2014, she has accompanied German 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 ...

on state visits to the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

(May 2014),

Luxembourg Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France on the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembour ...

(November 2014),

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

(February 2015),

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

(March 2015), and Ireland (July 2015). In September 2016, Böhmer announced that she would not stand in the 2017 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term. She is one of the 75 Union MPs - 68 from the CDU (26.9% of all CDU MPs) and 7 from the CSU (12.5% of all CSU MPs) - who voted in favor of same-sex marriage at the end of June 2017.

Life after politics

In June 2018, Böhmer was elected as President of the German Commission for UNESCO.

Other activities

Arte Arte (, , ; ' ('), sometimes stylised in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European Union, European public service Television channel, channel dedicated to culture. It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based Europea ...

, Member of the Programme Advisory Committee * Stiftung Hambacher Schloss, Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board (since 2020) * Hertie-Stiftung, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2016) * START-Stiftung, Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (since 2016) *

Central Committee of German Catholics The Central Committee of German Catholics (, ZdK) is a lay body comprising representatives of various Catholic organisations in Germany. They organise the Catholic Days in Germany. The organisation is headquartered in Berlin. Its predecessor, ...

, Member * Deutschlandstiftung Integration, Member of the Board of Trustees * European Foundation for the Speyer Cathedral, Member of the Board of Trustees * Federal Cultural Foundation, ex-officio Member of the Board of Trustees * International Journalists' Programmes, Member of the Board of Trustees *

Leibniz Association The Leibniz Association (German: ''Leibniz-Gemeinschaft'' or ''Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz'') is a union of German non-university research institutes from various disciplines. Funding and Structure As of 2020, 96 non-u ...

, Member of the Senate *

Stiftung Lesen Stiftung Lesen (Reading Foundation) is a non-profit organization based in Mainz, Germany under the patronage of Joachim Gauck. Stiftung Lesen acts as a stakeholder for reading promotion on a national and international level. It contributes to rea ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2015) * Tarabya Academy, Chairwoman of the Advisory Board * Turkey: Culture of Change Initiative (TCCI), Member of the Advisory Board *

ZDF ZDF (), short for (; ), is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. Launched on 1 April 1963, it is run as an independent nonprofit institution, and was founded by all federal states of Germany ( ...

Television Council, Member (1992–2016) and deputy chairwoman (2002–2016) *

2011 FIFA Women's World Cup The 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup was the sixth FIFA Women's World Cup competition, the world championship for List of women's national association football teams, women's national association football, football teams. It was held from 26 June to ...

, Member of the Board of TrusteesWM-Kuratorium unter Vorsitz von Dr. Thomas Bach

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

, press release of 30 September 2008.

References

External links

Official website

at the