Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer ( Kramp; born 9 August 1962), sometimes referred to by her initials of AKK, is a retired German politician who served as Minister of Defence from 2019 to 2021 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 2018 to 2021.

Annegret Kramp was born on 9 August 1962 in Völklingen, located on the Saar River midway between Saarlouis and Saarbrücken, around 40 kilometres from Luxembourg and close to the border with France.

She grew up in the neighbouring town of Püttlingen.

Her father was a special education teacher and a headmaster.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer joined the CDU while still in high school in 1981.

She graduated from high school in 1982 and considered becoming a school teacher, but decided to study politics and law at the University of Trier and at Saarland University, where she earned a master's degree in 1990.

In 1984 she was elected to the district council of Püttlingen, and in 1985 became chairwoman of the city's CDU association.

From 1985 to 1988 she was also a member of the regional board of the Young Union in Saarland.

From 1991 to 1998 she served as a policy and planning officer for the CDU in Saarland under environment minister Klaus Töpfer.

In 1998, Kramp-Karrenbauer replaced Töpfer in the federal Bundestag, serving seven months before losing re-election in the SPD landslide the same year.

In 1999, she was an advisor to Peter Müller, then chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Landtag of Saarland and later Minister-President.

That same year she became a chairwoman of the Women's Union.

Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected to the Landtag of Saarland in 1999.

She served as Minister of the Interior in the government of Peter Müller; the first woman to hold that office in Germany.

She took on more responsibilities in 2004, and changed roles in 2007 following a cabinet reshuffle, becoming Minister of Education and again in 2009, becoming Minister of Labor in the so-called Jamaica coalition government.

In 2008, she was elected chairwoman of the Kultusministerkonferenz.

Throughout her time in state government, she also served at various times as minister responsible for women, sports, family, and culture.

In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2009 federal election, Kramp-Karrenbauer was part of the CDU–CSU delegation in the working group on education and research policy, led by Annette Schavan and Andreas Pinkwart.

Kramp-Karrenbauer previously served as secretary general of the party and as Minister President of Saarland from 2011 to 2018, the first woman to lead the Government of Saarland and fourth woman to head a German state government.

Kramp-Karrenbauer is regarded as socially conservative, but on the CDU's left wing in economic policy and has been described as a centrist.

She is an active Catholic and has served on the Central Committee of German Catholics.

She is the second woman to hold the office of German defence minister.

She was succeeded by Christine Lambrecht.

In October 2021 she proposed for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia via a First-Strike capability as a deterrence against any "provocation" or aggression.

She renounced her Bundestag mandate and retired from politics after the 2021 federal election.

In 2011, after months of difficult negotiations with the coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party and The Greens, Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected Minister-President of the Saarland in a special session of parliament, replacing Müller, who resigned to become a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court.

Shortly afterwards, she ended the coalition and triggered an election, blaming the party for "dismantling itself" and arguing that the three-party coalition had lost the necessary "trust, stability, and capacity to act".

Kramp-Karrenbauer and the CDU won the state election soon afterwards, in what was widely regarded as the first electoral test of Chancellor Angela Merkel's crisis-fighting policy since the beginning of the European debt crisis; meanwhile, the FDP was ejected from the state parliament after taking just 1.2% of the vote.

While serving as Minister-President, Kramp-Karrenbauer, who speaks French, was also Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for Cultural Affairs under the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation between 2011 and 2014.

She continued to be a member of the German-French Friendship Group that was set up by the upper chambers of the German and French national parliaments, respectively the Bundesrat and the Senate.

Furthermore, as one of the state's representatives at the federal Bundesrat, she served on the Committee on Cultural Affairs, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Committee on Defence.

Kramp-Karrenbauer was a CDU delegate to the Federal Convention to elect the president of Germany in 2012 and in 2017.

She was also for a short time part of the CDU–CSU delegation's leadership team in the negotiations to form a "grand coalition" following the 2013 federal elections.

Under Kramp-Karrenbauer's leadership, the CDU won 40.7% of the vote in the 2017 state elections, up from 35.2% in 2012.

She again played a role in the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2018, leading a working group on education policy alongside Stefan Müller, Manuela Schwesig and Hubertus Heil.

As Minister-President of Saarland, Kramp-Karrenbauer promoted the French language, aiming to make the state fully bilingual in German and French and thus promote Saarland as a bicultural European region similar to neighbouring Luxembourg.

While Saarland had rejoined Germany five years before Kramp-Karrenbauer's birth when a majority voted against becoming an independent state, it has a long history of association with France dating back to the late 18th century.

In February 2018, Merkel nominated Kramp-Karrenbauer as the new secretary general of the CDU.

In February 2020, Kramp-Karrenbauer announced that she would resign her position as CDU leader later in the year and would not put herself forward as a candidate for chancellor for the 2021 federal election.

She was succeeded by Armin Laschet at the January 2021 CDU leadership election.