Klaus Wowereit, known to supporters as "Wowi", has been comfortably re-elected as Mayor of Berlin. He and his party, the SPD, won the city elections that were held on Sunday (17.Sep.2006).

Bild Zeitung, Die Zeit, and various other German newspapers are now asking whether he could become Gemany's first ever gay chancellor.

Klaus himself has ruled out ever making such a move, saying he would instead support Kurt Beck as chancellor. The next national elections would be due in 2009.

See also:

• Klaus Wowereit - Wikipedia
• Berlin elections and graffiti'ed election posters - previous TT posting

When I read about that I said to my husband that at least in Berlin they must be really tolerant and not prejudiced at all - imagine a gay politician in the south of Germany, he or she wouldn't stand a chance!

imagine a gay politian in mekernburg-vorpommern.

I'm sure a "gay" politician stands a chance in munich, as they would in any metropolitain area. but considering one of the ex-nazi (npd or whatever it was then) leaders in the nineties was also gay, i'm not sure whether or not gay automaticaly equals tolerant. nor good. and that should be the main reason why someone is voted for, their ability to do the job well. considering nobody really wants to work in berlin, the DB had to be basically told to stay there, and no big companies are moving that direction if they can avoid it im sure mr w is doing a splendid job. tolerant yes but bankrupt too. but as he would say, that's good so.

(maybe I've been in bayern too long. i feel you've unjustifiably stereotyoed the 8 million people down here as intolerant)

where is Guido Westerwelle's constituency? *

*leader of the FDP who also came out as gay

Guido will have to do a lot better than coming out as gay to wipe away the shame of being a member of the FDP, not to mind actually leading that bunch.

Wahlkreis Bonn

dont you get free parachute lessons when you join the fdp?

(runs of to lunch before rightly being accused of being mean)

oh and mr w as chancellor, forget it, hes not good enough and is percieved by alot of people to play his gay card to cover up for the fact that he‘s shite. in fact him and westerwelle are doing the reputation of gay polititians more harm than good.

Yes Gideon, you get a free commemorative altimeter when you join, I think it's only off by 20 or 30 meters or so.

Nobody is sure in which direction , but hey, that's politics for you.

I don't have an issue with this left burk being gay. I do however have an issue with the fact that he based his entire election campaign in 2001 on saying: "Ich bin schwul, und das ist gut so.", i.e. elect me, b/c I'm gay. And so they did. Poor Berliners. They can keep him.

to be fair to him, that was his catch phrase and not his election platform. And he said it to defy the potent homophobia of some of his opponents and the right wing press. I say well done to him for doing so.

For the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand the parachute jokes above, these are referring to Jürgen Möllemann. He was an FDP politician who died in a parachute accident, or possible suicide, in 2003.

He used this "catch phrase" to kick off his election campaign, knowing he'll get utmost media attention throughout the country for saying it, which he did.


No, he said it for the sole purpose of winning the election, knowing he'd be the city's darling for saying it at the time.

I must say that I respect the man. However I do think it is really early for this type of speculation.

as it says in the Spiegel: "Wowereit would get his chance in 2014 at the earliest," .

An awful lot can happen both in politics and peoples attitudes (pro-gay, anti gay, whatever) in 8 years.

full article under: Is Germany Ready for a Gay Chancellor?

Is that a fact or your opinion?

You can certainly call it my opinion, I call it common sense. Who was he in 2001? A person with feeble if any political qualities, so why not use that little catch phrase to perfectly distract people's attention from the actual purpose of the election, i.e. politics concerning the city.

I beg to differ he was the youngest city councillor in 1984 at the tender age of 30. He became chairman of the SPD group in the berlin city parliment in 1999. So i do not think he would have been regarded as a person with feeble politcal qualities as you put in two years later in 2001.

Yes, he was chairman of his own party group in his own city. Wow. Compared to Diepgen he certainly was a political nobody at the time.

there is an age difference of more than 10 years between Diepgen and Wowereit.

Also different parties: Diepgen CDU, Wowereit SPD. Is your argument that you do not like SPD or you do not like Wowereit?

The only point I wanted to make can be found in post#8. But whatever, you have to put up with Wowereit, not me...