- Friedbert Pflüger
Friedbert Pflüger (born
March 6 ,1955 ) is a member of the CDU Parliamentary Group in the Berlin House of Representatives. He is also Member of the National Executive Board of the CDU. Before assuming these responsibilities, Friedbert Pflüger has been a Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Defence (November 2005 to Oct. 2006) and the Foreign Policy Spokesman of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group (2002-2005). He is married and has two children (one son and one daughter).Biography
Friedbert Pflüger received his "Abitur" (university entrance qualification) at Schiller School in Hanover in 1973. He studied
political science , public and constitutional law and economics in Göttingen, Bonn and Harvard. He received his Master of Arts degree in 1980 and in 1982 his Ph.D. degree (Dr. phil.). His doctoral thesis was directed byKarl Dietrich Bracher and examined US human rights policy in the 1970's.Since 1971, Friedbert Pflüger is a member of the Christian Democrat Union of Germany (CDU). His first political offices, Pflüger held as deputy chairman of the European Democrat Students (EDS) from 1976 to 1978 and as federal chairman of the Association of Christian Democrat Students (RCDS) from 1977 to 1978.
From 1977 to 1985, Pflüger was also member of the federal executive committee of the Junge Union (youth section of the CDU/CSU) and is since 2000 member of the federal executive committee of the CDU.
From
1981 to1984 , he worked for the ruling mayor ofBerlin , Richard von Weizsäcker. When Weizsäcker became the Federal President of Germany in 1984, Pflüger became his spokesman until, a job he kept during all the presidency until 1989. Until today, Pflüger sees von Weizsäcker as a "father figure".Between 1989 and 1991, Pflüger became the manager of the Matuschka Group in Munich.
In 1990 he became elected as a member of German Parliament (Bundestag), a position in which he remained until 2006. As such, he was from 1994 to 1998 disarmament policy spokesman of theCDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. From 1998 to 2002, Pflüger was chairman of theBundestag Committee on the Affairs of the European Union. In the years from 2002 to 2005, he served as Foreign Policy Spokesman of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group. In November, 2006 Pflüger was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Defence, a position in which he remained until October 2007.
In March
2006 , Pflüger was elected the top candidate of the CDU for the elections in the State ofBerlin in September. After almost no time for preparing his election campaign, he lost against Klaus Wowereit from the Social Democrat Party (SPD), as all the polls had indicated. Keeping his promise to remain active in Berlin politics even in case of an electoral defeat, Pflüger assumed the responsibility as the chairman of the CDU Parliamentary Group in the Berlin House of Representatives and gave up his position as a Parliamentary State Secretary. As an opposition leader, he has since then fought against the closure of the Tempelhof airport. Another aim of his work is to create a more business-friendly environment in Berlin, in order to reduce the high unemployment rate. Pflüger is also concerned about ecologic ways of city-development.During his political career, Pflüger has released a couple of books, especially on Foreign and Security Policy. His last book was "A New World War?: the Islamist Challenge to the West" ("Ein neuer Weltkrieg? Die islamistische Herausforderung des Westens"), which he released in 2004.
External links
* [http://www.friedbert-pflueger.de/ Website from Dr. Friedbert Pflüger]
* [http://www.bundestag.de/mdb/bio/P/pfluefr0.html Biography from German Bundestag]
* [http://www.bmvg.de/C1256F1200608B1B/CurrentBaseLink/W26JFHH7794INFODE Biography]
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