Boris Palmer

Boris Palmer (born May 28, 1972 in Waiblingen, Baden-Württemberg) is a German politician and member of the Green Party. He has been mayor of Tübingen since January 2007. From March 2001 to May 2007 he was a member of the Baden-Württemberg Landtag, the State parliament in Stuttgart. He graduated from high school (A-Level) at the Steiner School in Winterbach-Engelberg in 1992. From 1993, Palmer studied history and mathematics at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and in Sydney. In 1996 he joined the Green Party.

After graduating from Tübingen in 1999 he worked as a scientific assistant for the fraction of the Green Party in the Bundestag, the German Federal Diet, in Berlin.

In 2001 he won a seat in the Baden-Württemberg Landtag and was appointed party spokesman for environmental and transportation issues. In 2004 he ran for the office of mayor of Stuttgart. He withdrew his candidacy before the second round ballot with an indirect recommendation that his followers should vote for the incumbent mayor Wolfgang Schuster although he had already gained more votes than any other candidate from his party in the State capital ever before (21.5%).

After being re-elected to the Landtag in early 2006, in July Palmer decided to run as mayor of Tübingen and won the election on October 22 with 50.4% of the vote. He subsequently abandoned his Landtag mandate after taking office in January 2007.

His eight-year term as mayor ends in 2014.