Klaus Iohannis

Consequently, he became the third ethnic German mayor of a Romanian city since Albert Dörr and Hans Jung (who briefly served in 1941 in Timișoara), the former who had also served in Sibiu from 1906/07 to 1918 (the first was Otto Helmut Mayerhoffer, who served as elected mayor of the town of Roman in Neamț County, between 1992 and 1996).

Throughout his tenure as mayor, he has worked to restore the town's infrastructure and to tighten the local administration.

Iohannis is also widely credited with turning his hometown into one of Romania's most popular tourist destinations thanks to the extensive renovation of the old downtown.

Klaus Werner Iohannis (, ; also spelled Johannis; born 13 June 1959), sometimes referred to by his initials KWI in the Romanian press, is a Romanian politician, physicist, and former physics teacher who has been serving as the president of Romania since 2014.

He has a younger sister, Krista Johannis (born 1964).

His father worked as a technician at a state-own company, while his mother was a nurse.

After graduating from the Faculty of Physics of the Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB) in Cluj-Napoca in 1983, Iohannis worked as a high school physics teacher at various schools and colleges in his native Sibiu, including, from 1989 to 1997, at the Samuel von Brukenthal National College, the oldest German-speaking school in Romania.

Various polls and political commentators have ranked Iohannis as the worst president of Romania since the 1989 Romanian Revolution.

Born in the old city centre of Sibiu (Hermannstadt) to a Transylvanian Saxon family, Klaus Iohannis is the eldest child of Gustav Heinz and Susanne Johannis.

In 1989, he married ethnic Romanian Carmen Lăzurcă, an English teacher at the Gheorghe Lazăr National College in Sibiu.

They have no children.

Iohannis is a member of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania, the German-speaking Lutheran church, mainly of the Transylvanian Saxons, with a lesser presence in other parts of Romania.

He joined the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR/DFDR) in 1990, and served as a member of its board of education in Transylvania from 1997, and a member of the local party board in Sibiu from 1998.

Both his parents as well as his sister emigrated from their native Sibiu/Hermmanstadt to Würzburg, Bavaria in Germany in 1992, acquiring citizenship there under the right of return granted by the German nationality law, as most other Transylvanian Saxons after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

However, he chose to live and work in Romania.

From 1997 to 1999, he was Deputy General School Inspector of Sibiu County, and from 1999 until his election as mayor in 2000, he was the General School Inspector, head of public schools in the county.

Alongside his mother tongue, German, and the language of the majority, Romanian, Iohannis also speaks English fluently and can master French to a certain degree.

The original German spelling of his name is Johannis, but the name was registered by a Romanian official as Iohannis on his birth certificate and he has used both spellings interchangeably ever since.

He was first elected the mayor of the Romanian town of Sibiu, Transylvania in 2000, on behalf of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR/DFDR).

Although the German (more specifically Transylvanian Saxon) population of the once predominantly German/Transylvanian Saxon-speaking town of Sibiu had declined to a tiny minority by the early 2000s, he won a surprise victory and was re-elected by landslides in 2004, 2008, and 2012.

In 2000, the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania in Sibiu (FDGS), the local chapter of the Democratic Forum of Germans (FDGR/DFDR), decided to back him as a candidate for mayor.

While initially not wanting anything else than to represent the forum through a local candidate and to obtain a certain degree of local political visibility at that time, the leadership of FDGR/DFDR was surprised for his subsequent victory.

In 2001, he was elected President of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR/DFDR), succeeding former president Eberhard Wolfgang Wittstock.

Despite the fact that Sibiu's German minority (represented, more specifically, by Transylvanian Saxons) had shrunken to a mere 1.6%, Iohannis was elected with 69.18% of the votes and has won three re-elections in a row, getting some of the largest electoral scores in the country: 88.69% of the vote in 2004, and 83.26% in 2008.

He is credited with turning his home town into one of Romania's most popular tourist destinations, Sibiu subsequently obtaining the title of European Capital of Culture in 2007 alongside Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg.

In October 2009, four of the five political groups in the Parliament, excluding the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) of then President Traian Băsescu, proposed him as a candidate for the office of Prime Minister of Romania; however, Băsescu refused to nominate him despite the Parliament's adoption of a declaration supporting his candidacy.

He was again the candidate for Prime Minister of the PNL and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in the elections in the same year.

Ideologically a conservative, he is the first Romanian president belonging to an ethnic minority, as he is a Transylvanian Saxon, part of Romania's German minority, which settled in Transylvania beginning in the 12th century (as part of the Ostsiedlung process which took place during the High Middle Ages).

In February 2013, He became a member of the National Liberal Party (PNL), accepting an invitation from then liberal leader Crin Antonescu, and was immediately elected the party's first vice-president, eventually becoming the PNL president during the following year.

He became the president of the National Liberal Party (PNL) in 2014, after previously serving as the leader of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR/DFDR) between 2002 and 2013.

Prior to entering national politics, he was a physics teacher at the Samuel von Brukenthal National College in his native Sibiu.

He was initially elected in 2014 and then subsequently re-elected by a landslide in 2019.

His late presidency (i.e. his second term) has been marked by democratic backsliding as well as a slight shift towards illiberalism and a more authoritarian style of government, especially after the 2021 political crisis and the formation of the National Coalition for Romania (CNR).

It has faced allegations of suppression of freedom of speech and also suppression of press freedom.

Furthermore, his approval ratings have been drastically decreasing since April 2021 onwards as his electorate's trust in him declined tremendously based on his negative political behaviour, favouring the PSD and betraying both his voters as well as his former political allies (albeit several of them being solely conjunctural in the past) in the process (as well as making a long series of political errors).

In 2023, The Economist ranked Romania the last country in the European Union (EU) in the world terms of democracy, even behind Viktor Orbán's Hungary.

Moreover, as of 2022, Romania ranks 61st globally according to The Economist Democracy Index (on par with Montenegro), 5 positions behind Hungary and still lagging behind Botswana since at least 2021 onwards.

A survey from June 2023 shows that over 90% of Romanians do not trust Iohannis, with only 8% having a positive opinion on him.

As of 2014, his parents, sister and a niece live in Würzburg.

Iohannis has stated that his family settled in Transylvania in present-day Romania 850 years ago, more specifically around 1500 in the small town of Cisnădie (Heltau), Sibiu County.