Günter Nooke


Günter Nooke is a German CDU politician and a former civil rights activist.

Background

Nooke was born in Forst, Germany, a small town in Brandenburg. He grew up there only 150 km southeast of Berlin, in the communist German Democratic Republic, near the Polish border.
He was educated in Forst, Cottbus and at the University of Leipzig, where he studied physics from 1980 to 1985. After graduating Nooke worked as a research assistant, latterly as a head of section from 1985 to 1990 at the industrial hygiene inspectorate in Cottbus.
He is married to sociologist Maria Nooke. They have three children.

Political career

Since 1987, Nooke had been a member of a church opposition group and got involved in the growing democracy movement in 1989, which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Following the first democratic election in the GDR, he became Member of the People's Chamber for the opposition group named Alliance 90.
From 1990, to 1994 Nooke was a member of the parliament of the state of Brandenburg and was the chairman of the parliamentary group of Alliance 90. In 1996, he joined the CDU with other former civil rights activists.
From 1998 to 2005 Nooke was a member of the German Bundestag, deputy chairman and spokesperson for cultural and media affairs of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

Positions in the German government

On March 8, 2006, Nooke was appointed as the Federal Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. He was succeeded in this office by Markus Löning in 2010.
Since April 2010, Nooke has been serving as Personal Representative of the German Chancellor for Africa in the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, under the leadership of ministers Dirk Niebel and Gerd Müller.

Controversy

In a 2018 interview with German tabloid BZ, Nooke made a number of allegations that were later criticised as racist and neo-colonial, such as the suggestion that colonialism was beneficial for Africa and that the hot and humid climate was responsible for a lower work productivity amongst Africans; he also suggested African states should lease their land to a foreign entity such as the World Bank to "allow free development for 50 years" implying that it was solely the incompetence and corruption of African heads of state that were responsible for the death of jobs and opportunities in many African states. His suggestion was widely criticised as reeking of neo-colonialism by academics and journalists. In the ensuing controversy, Nooke allegedly threatened to dismiss a non-tenured faculty member of the University of Hamburg, Raja Kramer, who had served as the voluntary head of a German association of Africa scientists.

Other activities