• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

10/08/2009

He knows it's important to control his feelings now, not to smile too broadly. A subtle smile is all Guido Westerwelle allows to appear on his face as he emerges from the conference room. The parliamentary group of his party, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), has just unanimously voted him into office as its new floor leader. It is yet another triumph, but he is being careful not to flaunt it. Westerwelle knows that it's time to be a statesman.

He appears before the press, his hands folded together and his pale gold tie shimmering in the light. Two days earlier, on Sunday, Sept. 27, the FDP achieved its best result ever in a national parliamentary election. The previous day, Westerwelle met with Chancellor Angela Merkel, his future coalition partner. A journalist asks whether champagne was served at the meeting. Westerwelle, looking serious, replies: "There was tea."

He talks about how aware he is of his newfound responsibility. The FDP, he says, intends to put the words "calm and persistent" on its agenda during the coalition negotiations with Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

As he is preparing to leave, an FDP member of parliament brings him a bouquet of flowers he had apparently left in the room. "Oh, my little flowers," Westerwelle says as he breezes out of the room. A few minutes later, as Westerwelle and his staff are standing at the elevator, far away from the journalists present, they burst out laughing.

Calm and Serious

There is not a single German politician today who is more intent on making a calm and serious impression in public than Guido Westerwelle. He will be Germany's next vice-chancellor and, in all likelihood, its next foreign minister, and he is behaving as if no one were more qualified for both these jobs than he, Guido Westerwelle.

He is doing this partly because he knows that there could be doubts as to whether this is really the case. And because he knows that he was once decried as a politician with a penchant for over-the-top stunts and as someone who effortlessly shifted from one role to the next. All clichés, says Westerwelle today, and yet he is the one who triggered them in the first place.

In those moments when Westerwelle lets down his guard and speaks more spontaneously, the image that comes to mind is of a brightly decorated Christmas tree going up in flames -- hissing, crackling, smoldering and blazing.

This is the man on whom close to 15 percent of German voters are pinning their hopes. He will soon be one of the country's most important people, and his decisions will affect the lives of millions. The idea makes many Germans uncomfortable. Despite his newfound self-discipline, Westerwelle is still something of an oddball. What made him the way he is today? What sort of a life has he lived, to have become this way? And what does this say about what the country can expect of him?

Difficult Years

Guido Westerwelle was born on Dec. 27, 1961 in Bad Honnef, a town near Bonn. His parents separated when he was nine. "Those were difficult years," Westerwelle told his biographer Majid Sattar, explaining that such a separation "isn't nice when you're at that sensitive age." His parents fought over custody of their sons, and for a time the boys were dragged back and forth between the parents' two households. Eventually, all four sons decided to live with the father.

Guido became overweight and his performance in school suffered. In his first year in a university-track Gymnasium high school, his grades were so poor that he was sent to a Realschule, a type of high school that ranks in the middle in Germany's three-tier system. The atmosphere in the school was informal, says his former mathematics teacher, Eberhard Brennecke, "and quite liberal." Nevertheless, Guido still managed to antagonize people.

Brennecke was constantly placating fellow teachers who didn't like the new student because he was insolent and unwilling to back down from his opinions. He disputed his grades and the grades of other students. "He had a big mouth," says Brennecke, "which many found annoying."

His high school years are unlikely to figure prominently in politician Westerwelle's stories. Today, as a university graduate, he sees them as a flawed chapter in his life. In the end, however, he has managed to put a positive twist on that period. At least in the Realschule, says Westerwelle today, he was not exposed to the radical teachers of the late 1960s and the spoiled children of leftist academics typical of the university-track schools.

But he did encounter those children at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Gymnasium in Bonn, which he later attended. The seeds of his aversion for the leftist establishment were sown there, a dislike that later turned into his abhorrence for the Greens and the Social Democrats. Westerwelle had a rough time at the school where, coming as he did from a less-prestigious Realschule, he struggled to achieve good grades and the recognition of his fellow students. When he ran for class spokesman, he came last by a wide margin.

Annoying Statements

Many of the students despised Westerwelle, who was constantly trying to attract attention to himself with irreverent remarks. He was involved with the school theater and became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper Ventil. A booklet dubbed "Westerwelle's Black Book," a collection of his most annoying statements, was soon circulating among his fellow students.

He became a Popper, as the members of a 1980s West German youth subculture which favored designer labels were known, and started wearing wine-red jeans and shirts and carrying a pilot's briefcase. The other students, who carried their things around in burlap bags, made fun of him. At the University of Bonn, where he began studying law after finishing high school, he sought new friends. At 18, he felt that the Young Christian Democrats, the CDU's youth group, was too bourgeois. He had no use for the collectivist ideas of the Social Democrats, and he had always found the Greens strange.

Westerwelle, the son of self-employed attorneys, felt that it was unfair for people to be paid for doing nothing. "Work has to be worth it," was his mantra at the time, and it took him to the Young Liberals, the FDP's youth organization.

• 1
• | 2
• | 3
• Next

• Part 1: Guido Westerwelle's Struggle for Popularity
• Part 2: Ostracized for Being Gay
• Part 3: Breaking Taboos