Klaus Wowereit

Klaus Wowereit, born on 1 October 1953, is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party who served as Governing Mayor of Berlin from 21 October 2001 to 11 December 2014. Born in West Berlin, he studied law at the Free University and started his career as a civil servant in the Senate interior office before becoming a district councillor in Tempelhof at the age of 30. He entered the Berlin House of Representatives in 1995 and chaired the SPD group there from December 1999. After the SPD left the grand coalition with the CDU in 2001, new elections made his party the strongest, and he formed a coalition with the PDS, later renewed with Die Linke and then the CDU. He also held the rotating presidency of the Bundesrat in 2001 and 2002. His 2003 remark that Berlin is poor but sexy became a slogan for the city, and his public statement that he is gay was widely remembered. He announced his resignation in August 2014, citing the delays of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport as his biggest failure.