Olaf Scholz (; born ) is a German politician who has been serving as the chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor in the fourth Merkel cabinet and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019, and Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2007 to 2009.
Scholz began his career as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law. He became a member of the SPD in the 1970s and was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2011. Scholz served in the Hamburg Government under First Mayor Ortwin Runde in 2001 and became General Secretary of the SPD in 2002, where he served alongside SPD leader and then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He became his party's Chief Whip in the Bundestag, later entering the First Merkel Government in 2007 as Federal Minister for Labour and Social Affairs. After the SPD moved into the opposition following the 2009 election, Scholz returned to lead the SPD in Hamburg. He was then elected Deputy Leader of the SPD. He led his party to victory in the 2011 Hamburg state election and became First Mayor, a position he held until 2018.
After the Social Democratic Party entered the fourth Merkel government in 2018, Scholz was appointed as both Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor of Germany. In 2020, he was nominated as the SPD's candidate for Chancellor of Germany for the 2021 federal election. The party won a plurality of seats in the Bundestag and formed a "traffic light coalition" with Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party. On 8 December 2021, Scholz was elected and sworn in as Chancellor by the Bundestag, succeeding Angela Merkel.
As Chancellor, Scholz has overseen Germany's response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite taking a more restrained and cautious response than many other Western leaders, Scholz oversaw a significant increase in the German defence budget, weapons shipments to Ukraine, and the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Three days after the invasion, Scholz set out the principles of a new German defence policy in his Zeitenwende speech.
Early life and education
Scholz was born on 14 June 1958, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, but grew up in Hamburg's Rahlstedt district. His parents worked in the textile industry. He has two younger brothers, Jens Scholz, an anesthesiologist and CEO of the University Medical Center Schleswig Holstein; and Ingo Scholz, a tech entrepreneur. Olaf Scholz attended the Bekassinenau elementary school in Oldenfelde but then switched to the Großlohering elementary school in Großlohe. After graduating from high school in 1977, he began studying law at the University of Hamburg in 1978 as part of a one-stage legal training course. He later found employment as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law, working at the law firm Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner. Scholz joined the Social Democratic Party at the age of 17.
Scholz's family is traditionally Lutheran and he was baptized in the Protestant Church in Germany; he holds largely secular political views and left the Church in adulthood, but has emphasised a need for appreciation of Germany's Christian heritage and culture.
Political career
Early political career
Young socialist, 1975–1989
Scholz joined the SPD in 1975 as a student, where he came into contact with the Jusos, the youth organization of the SPD. From 1982 to 1988, he was Deputy Federal Chairman of the Jusos. Scholz was also Vice President of the International Union of Socialist Youth from 1987 to 1989. He supported the Freudenberger Kreis, a Marxist wing of the Jusos' university groups, arguing that society should "overcome the capitalist economy" in one of his publications. In it, Scholz criticized the "aggressive-imperialist NATO", the Federal Republic as the "European stronghold of big business" and the social-liberal coalition, which puts the "bare maintenance of power above any form of substantive dispute". Referring to this period in his life, Scholz has later said that he "made almost all possible mistakes at some point."
On 4 January 1984, Scholz and other Juso leaders attended a meeting in East Germany with Egon Krenz, then secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, and Herbert Häber, member of the Politburo of the SED-Central Committee. In 1987, Scholz crossed the inner-German border again and stood up for disarmament agreements as Juso-Vice at an FDJ peace rally in Wittenberg.