Irmgard Schwaetzer


Irmgard Schwaetzer is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party and a Protestant church official. Since 2013, she has been chairing the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Early life and education

In 1971, Schwaetzer received a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Bonn.

Career

From 1980 to 2002, Irmgard Schwaetzer served as a member of the Bundestag. Under the leadership of chairman Hans-Dietrich Genscher, she was the Secretary General of the FDP between 1982 and 1984.
Following the 1987 West German federal election, Schwaetzer was appointed as Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office in the government led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In that capacity, she oversaw the ministry's activities on European policy and cultural affairs. At a party convention in 1988, she narrowly lost against Otto Graf Lambsdorff in a vote on the FDP leadership.
In January 1991 Schwaetzer was appointed Federal Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction and Urbanism, succeeding Gerda Hasselfeldt. During her time in office, she oversaw various architectural design competitions on construction projects that eventually permitted Germany’s Parliament and government to move from Bonn to Berlin after German reunification.
Following the resignation of Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1992, Kohl and Lambsdorff nominated Schwaetzer to be the new Foreign Minister. In a surprise decision, her own FDP parliamentary group rejected her nomination shortly after and voted instead to name Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel to head the Foreign Office. Schwaetzer would have been the first woman to hold a senior cabinet post in Germany. She retired on 17 November 1994 from the Federal Government.
From 1998 to 2002, Schwaetzer chaired the working group for labor and social policy, health policy, family, women's and youth policy of the FDP parliamentary group.

Other activities