Wolfgang Thierse

Wolfgang Thierse (; born 22 October 1943) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as the 11th President of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2005. Early life and career Thierse was born in Breslau (Wrocław in present-day Poland). He is a Roman Catholic and grew up in East Germany. After his A-levels he first worked as a typesetter in Weimar. Then he studied German language and literature at Humboldt University in Berlin, where he was an active member of the Catholic Student Community. He also became a research assistant in the university's Department of Cultural Theory / Aesthetics. In 1975–76 he was employed by the Ministry of Culture of the German Democratic Republic. But when he joined the protests against the expulsion of singer-songwriter and dissident Wolf Biermann from the GDR he lost his job. From 1977 to 1990 Thierse worked as a research assistant at the Central Institute of the History of Literature in the Academy of Arts and Sciences of the GDR. He was one of the editors of the "Historical Dictionary of Aesthetic Concepts". Early political career Although his father had been a member of the Centre Party in the Weimar Republic and later of the Christian Democratic Union (East Germany), Wolfgang Thierse did not belong to any political party before 1990. That did not mean that he was not interested in politics. His father regularly listened to the West Berlin radio station RIAS, so Wolfgang had a chance to hear speeches from debates in the West German parliament. He was particularly impressed by Carlo Schmid, Herbert Wehner, and later Willy Brandt.