Federal Diet of Germany Deutscher Bundestag
Type
Type	Lower house
Leadership
President of the Reichstag	Norbert Lammert, CDU since 18 October 2005
Vice Presidents of the Bundestag	Wolfgang Thierse, SPD Gerda Hasselfeldt, CSU Hermann Otto Solms, FDP Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Greens Petra Pau, The Left since 27 October 2009
Structure
Members	620
Political groups	Government (331)      CDU (195)      FDP (93)      CSU (43) Opposition Parties      SPD (146)      The Left (76)      The Greens (68)
Elections
Last election	27 September 2009
Meeting place
File:Bundestag Plenarsaal des Bundestags.jpg
Reichstag Mitte, Berlin Germany
Website
http://www.bundestag.de

Germany

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The Bundestag (Federal Diet; pronounced [ˈbʊndəstaːk]) is a legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag was established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier Reichstag. Norbert Lammert is the current President of the Bundestag.

History[link]

With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871, the Reichstag was established as the German parliament in Berlin. Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The Reichstag delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the Chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In March 1933, one month after the Reichstag fire, the then president, Paul von Hindenburg, a retired war hero, gave Hitler ultimate power through Enabling Act of 1933, he remained at the post of Federal Government Chancellor (though he called himself the Führer). After this the Reichstag met only rarely to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It last convened on 26 April 1942.

With the new constitution of 1949, the Bundestag was established as the new (West) German parliament. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Constitution and because of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former water works facility. In addition, owing to the city's legal status, citizens of West Berlin were unable to vote in elections to the Bundestag, and were instead represented by 20 non-voting delegates, indirectly elected by the city's House of Representatives.

The Bundeshaus in Bonn is the former Parliament Building of Germany. The sessions of the German Bundestag were held there from 1949 until its move to Berlin in 1999. Today it houses the International Congress Centre Bundeshaus Bonn and in the north areas the branch office of the Bundesrat (upper house). The southern areas became part of German offices for the United Nations in 2008.

The former Reichstag building housed a history exhibition (Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte) and served occasionally as a conference center. The Reichstag building was also occasionally used as a venue for sittings of the Bundestag and its committees and the Bundesversammlung, the body which elects the German Federal President. However the Soviets harshly protested against the use of the Reichstag building by institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and tried to disturb the sittings by flying supersonic jets close to the building.

Since 1999, the German parliament has again assembled in Berlin in its original Reichstag building, which dates from the 1890s and underwent a significant renovation under the lead of British architect Sir Norman Foster. Parliamentary committees and subcommittees, public hearings and faction meetings take place in three auxiliary buildings, which surround the Reichstag building: the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, Paul-Löbe-Haus and Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus.

In 2005, a small aircraft crashed close to the German parliament. It was then decided to ban private air traffic over Central Berlin.

Tasks[link]

Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag is the legislative branch of the German political system.

Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the Bundestag considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the government's legislative program. The committees (see below) play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered.

The Bundestag members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the Bundestag in turn elects the Chancellor and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the chancellor or cabinet officials. For example, the Bundestag can conduct a question hour (Fragestunde), in which a government representative responds to a previously submitted written question from a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituent's problem. Use of the question hour has increased markedly over the past forty years, with more than 20,000 questions being posed during the 1987-90 term. Understandably, the opposition parties are active in exercising the parliamentary right to scrutinize government actions.

One striking difference when comparing the Bundestag with the British Parliament is the lack of time spent on serving constituents in Germany. This is in part due to Germany's electoral system. A practical constraint on the expansion of constituent service is the limited personal staff of Bundestag deputies. Despite these constraints especially those deputies that are elected directly normally try to keep close contact with their constituents and to help them with their problems, particularly when they are related to federal policies or agencies.

Constituent service does also take place in the form of the Petition Committee. In 2004, the Petition Committee received over 18,000 complaints from citizens and was able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to more than half of them. In 2005, as a pilot of the potential of internet petitions, a version of e-Petitioner was produced for the Bundestag. This was a collaborative project involving The Scottish Parliament, International Teledemocracy Centre and the Bundestag ‘Online Services Department’. The system was formally launched on 1 September 2005, and in 2008 the Bundestag moved to a new system based on its evaluation.^[1]

Election[link]

Vladimir Putin addresses the Bundestag

Members serve four-year terms; elections are held every four years, or earlier in the relatively rare case that the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely by the president. The Bundestag can be dissolved by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor if the latter has lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag. This has happened three times: 1972 under Chancellor Willy Brandt, 1983 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and 2005 under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

All candidates must be at least eighteen years old; there are no term limits. The election uses the MMP electoral system. In addition, the Bundestag has a minimum threshold of either 5% of the national party vote or three (directly elected) constituency representatives for a party to gain additional representation through the system of proportional representation.

Thus, small minority parties cannot easily enter the Bundestag and prevent the formation of stable majority governments as they could under the Weimar constitution. Since 1961, only two new parties (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and PDS/Die Linke) have entered the Bundestag.

The most recent election, the German federal election, 2009, was held on September 27, 2009.^[2]

Distribution of seats in the Bundestag[link]

Bundestag ballot: constituency vote on left, party list (showing top five list candidates) vote on right

Half of the Members of the Bundestag are elected directly from 299 constituencies (first-past-the-post system), the other half are elected from the parties’ Land lists in such a way as to achieve proportional representation for the total Bundestag (if possible).

Accordingly, each voter has two votes in the elections to the Bundestag. The first vote, allowing voters to elect their local representatives to the Bundestag, decides which candidates are sent to Parliament from the constituencies.

The second vote is cast for a party list; it determines the relative strengths of the parties represented in the Bundestag.

At least 598 Members of the Bundestag are elected in this way. Parties that gain more than 5% of the second votes or win at least 3 direct mandates are allocated seats in the Bundestag in proportion to the number of votes it has received (d'Hondt method until 1987, largest remainder method until the 2005 election, now Sainte-Laguë method). When the total number of mandates gained by a party has been determined, they are distributed between the Land lists. The distribution of the seats of that party to the 16 Lands is proportional to that party's second vote results in the Lands. The first of the mandates allocated to each Land go to the candidates who have won direct mandates in that Land. The rest are assigned in order to the candidates on the Land list put forward before the election.

In addition to this, there are certain circumstances in which some candidates win what are known as overhang seats when the seats are being distributed. If a party has gained more direct mandates in a Land than it is entitled to according to the results of the second vote, it does not forfeit these mandates because all directly elected candidates are guaranteed a seat in the Bundestag.

Detail of the Land list seats won by each party in 2009

Election result[link]

Distribution of seats by party in the 17th Bundestag[link]

Initial distribution of seats in the 17th Bundestag.

See the List of Bundestag Members for lists of changes and current members.

List of Bundestag by session[link]

¹ 1983 to 1990 The Greens, 1990 to 1994 Alliance 90, since 1994 Alliance 90/The Greens
² 1990 to 2005 PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), 2005 to 2007 The Left Party.PDS, since 2007 The Left
³ BP 17, KPD 15, WAV 12, Centre Party 10, DKP-DRP 5, SSW 1, Independents 3
⁴ GB-BHE 27, Centre Party 3

Historic seat distribution in the German Bundestag (at the beginning of each session). The graph shows not the absolute number of seats, but rather the relation of the number of seats a party has to the overall number of seats in that session, in percent. The colours stand for the following parties: Black: CDU/CSU, red: SPD, yellow: FDP, green: Greens, pink: PDS/Left Party, brown: German Party, grey: others.

Presidents since 1949[link]

*resigned for medical reasons
**died in office
***resigned for political reasons
†first woman to hold the post
§ resigned when he became President of Germany

Organization[link]

The Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, one of the official buildings of the complex

Parliamentary groups[link]

The most important organizational structures within the Bundestag are parliamentary groups (Fraktionen; sing. Fraktion), which are formed by political parties represented in the chamber which incorporate more than 5% of the Bundestag legislators; CDU and CSU have always formed a single united Fraktion. The size of a party's Fraktion determines the extent of its representation on legislative committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The Fraktionen, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities.

The leadership of each Fraktion consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent the Fraktion, enforce party discipline, and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each Fraktion are distributed among working groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The Fraktion meets every Tuesday afternoon in the weeks in which the Bundestag is in session to consider legislation before the Bundestag and formulate the party's position on it.

Parties which do not fulfill the criterion for being a Fraktion but have at least three seats by direct elections (i.e. which have at least three MPs representing a certain electoral district) in the Bundestag can be granted the status of a group of the Bundestag. This applied to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) from 1990-1998. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a Fraktion. In the current Bundestag, there are no such groups (the PDS had only two MPs in parliament until 2005 and could thus not even considered a group anymore; the party has now returned to the Bundestag with full Fraktion status).

Executive bodies[link]

The Bundestag's executive bodies include the Council of Elders and the Presidium. The council consists of the Bundestag leadership, together with the most senior representatives of each fraktion, with the number of these representatives tied to the strength of the Parliamentary groups in the chamber. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on Parliamentary group representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Bundestag, including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chamber's president (usually elected from the largest fraktion) and vice presidents (one from each fraktion).

Committees[link]

Most of the legislative work in the Bundestag is the product of standing committees, which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). Between 1987 and 1990, the term of the eleventh Bundestag, there were twenty-one standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various Parliamentary groups in the chamber. In the eleventh Bundestag, the CDU/CSU chaired eleven committees, the SPD eight, the FDP one, and the environmentalist party, the Greens (Die Grünen), one. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees. These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all.

Principle of discontinuation[link]

As is the case with some other parliaments, the Bundestag is subject to the principle of discontinuation, meaning that a newly elected Bundestag is legally regarded to be a body and entity completely different from the previous Bundestag. This leads to the result, that any motion, application or action submitted to the previous Bundestag, e.g. a bill referred to the Bundestag by the Federal Government, is regarded as completed by non-decision (German terminology: “Die Sache fällt der Diskontinuität anheim”). Thus any bill that has not been decided upon by the beginning of the new electoral period must to be brought up by the government again, if it aims to uphold the motion, this procedure in effect delaying the passage of the bill. Furthermore, any newly elected Bundestag will have to freshly decide on the rules of procedure (Geschäftsordnung), which is done by a formal decision of taking over such rules from the preceding Bundestag by reference.

Any Bundestag is considered dissolved only once a newly elected Bundestag has actually gathered in order to constitute itself (Article 39 sec. 1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law), which has to happen within 30 days of its election (Article 39 sec. 2 of the Basic Law). Thus, it may happen (and has happened) that the old Bundestag gathers and makes decisions even after the election of a new Bundestag that has not gathered in order to constitute itself. For example, elections to the 16th Bundestag took place on 18 September 2005,^[3] but the 15th Bundestag still convened after election day to make some decisions on German military engagement abroad,^[4] and was entitled to do so, as the newly elected 16th Bundestag did not convene for the first time until 18 October 2005.^[5]

See also[link]

• Politics of Germany
• Bundesrat
• Parliamentwatch

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bundestag

• Official website
• 2009 elections
• German election database
• Map of constituencies
• distribution of power

Coordinates: 52°31′07″N 13°22′34″E / 52.51861°N 13.37611°E / 52.51861; 13.37611

Gregor Gysi
Member of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office 18th September 2005
Constituency	Berlin Treptow – Köpenick
Personal details
Born	January 16, 1948 East Berlin, Soviet Zone of Germany
Nationality	German
Political party	Die Linke

Dr. Gregor Gysi (German pronunciation: [ˈɡiːzi]; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney and key politician of the socialist left-wing political party The Left (Die Linke). He played an important role in the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1989^{[citation needed]}, and was a main figure in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). He is well known for his rhetoric talent and is considered one of the best German public speakers.^[1]

Family background[link]

Gysi was born in East Berlin, Soviet Zone of Germany. His father, Klaus Gysi, was a high-ranking official in East Germany, and had been Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973. His mother, Irene, was the sister of political activist Gottfried Lessing, who was married to the British writer Doris Lessing during his exile in Southern Rhodesia. The surname "Gysi" is of Swiss-German origin.^[2] Both of his parents were of part Jewish ancestry; his paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers.^[2][3] One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian.^[2]

His sister, Gabriele, is an actress, who left East Germany in 1985. Today, she is chief dramaturge at the Volksbühne in Berlin.

Career[link]

Gysi's political career started in the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) of East Germany, to which he was admitted in 1967. In 1971 he became a licensed attorney, and during the 1970s and 1980s defended several prominent dissidents, including Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann, Ulrike Poppe, and Bärbel Bohley.

Gregor Gysi (November 1989)

In addition to his legal work, Gysi emerged as one of East Germany's leading Gorbachev-inspired political reformists within the SED, especially towards the end of the 1980s. In 1989, he and a group of lawyers presented a counter-draft to the government's Travel Bill, which authorised mass public demonstrations. This led to a rally on 4 November in which he spoke and called for various reforms, including free elections. In December 1989, he became a member of a special SED party session investigating official corruption and abuse of power.

He led the transformation of the SED into a democratic socialist party which included the quick resignation of all hardliners from the party's leadership; initially renamed the Socialist Unity Party - Party of Democratic Socialism (SED-PDS), it later became simply the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Gysi served as its chairman starting in 1990, and in March 1990 was elected to the Volkskammer in the first free election of that body, serving there until it was dissolved upon German reunification on 3 October 1990. In the first post-reunification all-German elections, he was elected to the Bundestag, and served there until 2000. He remained chairman of the PDS through 1998, and then from 1998 to 2000 served as chairman of the party's parliamentary group.

In 1992 allegations were brought against him of having been an "unofficial collaborator" (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) or informant of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (the Stasi). He denied these allegations, and the matter was largely dropped due to his parliamentary immunity. In 1995 the Hamburg regional court ruled in Gysi's favour in a complaint against Bärbel Bohley, Gysi's former client, who had accused him of Stasi collaboration. However, the allegations were raised again in 1996, and this time the Bundestag voted to revoke his immunity and proceed with an investigation. In 1998 the Bundestag's immunity committee concluded that Gysi had been a collaborator with the Stasi from 1978 to 1989 under the name IM Notar, and fined him 8,000 Deutsche Marks. However, both the Free Democratic Party and his own PDS disputed the verdict, and Gysi appealed against the finding. Despite the affair, he retained his seat in the Bundestag in the 1998 elections.

In 2000 he resigned as chairman of the PDS's parliamentary group, but continued as an active member of the party. Following the victory in Berlin's 2001 municipal elections of a coalition of the PDS and the more moderate Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he was elected Senator for Economics, Labour, and Women's Issues and Deputy Mayor. He emphasised practical issues and advocated the reinstitution of some of what he sees as the better aspects of East Germany's system, such as extended child-care hours and a longer school day. After a scandal involving his use of airline "bonus miles" he had acquired on trips as a Bundestag member, he resigned on 31 July 2002 from the Berlin city government. The resignation was a blow to his public "can-do" image, but he has recovered from that to some extent in the wake of increasing public opposition to a number of new policies of the federal government, like the Hartz reforms lowering unemployment benefits to the levels of mere subsistence welfare, which he strongly opposes.

Oskar Lafontaine (left) and Gregor Gysi, election poster, Alexanderplatz, Berlin, 2005

In late 2004 he survived brain surgery and a heart attack. Formerly a heavy smoker, Gysi quit smoking after the crisis on his doctors' advice.

Gysi remained the PDS undisputed front man in many people's minds and continued to appear in public. In May 2005, when Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced plans to call an early election in September, many prominent PDS leaders including chair Lothar Bisky called on Gysi to front their campaign. He was a lead candidate of the PDS, winning direct election to the Bundestag for the Berlin Treptow – Köpenick constituency. The PDS fought the election in an alliance with the new western-based Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG), under the new name The Left Party.PDS, with Gysi at times sharing a platform with WASG leader Oskar Lafontaine, former finance minister and formerly party leader of the SPD. In June 2007, the PDS and WASG formally merged to form a united party called The Left.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gregor Gysi

• Will Germany Go Left of the Left? by Markus Deggerich, Der Spiegel, Sept 25 2009
• Portrait at the website of the parliamentary group of the Left Party
• Biography at Deutsches Historisches Museum

Norbert Lammert
Official Bundestag photo, 2011
President of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office 18 October 2005
Preceded by	Wolfgang Thierse
Personal details
Born	16 November 1948 Bochum, Allied-occupied Germany
Political party	CDU
Alma mater	Ruhr University Bochum, Oxford University
Profession	Sociologist
Religion	Catholic
Website	www.norbert-lammert.de

Norbert Lammert (born 16 November 1948 in Bochum) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has been the President of the Bundestag, the German parliament, since 2005.

Early life[link]

Lammert attended gymnasium in Bochum where he studied classics. He obtained his abitur in 1967. He carried out military service in the Bundeswehr from 1967 to 1969. Following his military service he went on to the University of Bochum, which included a period abroad at the University of Oxford, where he studied political science and modern history. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. soc.) from the University of Bochum.

Political career[link]

Having joined the CDU in 1966, he was deputy chairman of the Bochum branch of the CDU. After leading the North Rhine-Westphalia branch of the Junge Union (the youth organization of the CDU), he was elected to the Bundestag in 1980. During his tenure in the Bundestag he served on several committees.^[1]

Following the 2005 federal elections, Lammert was elected by the Bundestag on 18 October 2005 to replace Wolfgang Thierse of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as its President. Lammert received 564 of 607 votes cast, including most of the SPD's votes. He was reelected to this post by the 17th Bundestag after the 2009 federal election.

Lammert is a Catholic.^[2] He is married and has four children.

Literature[link]

• Michael F. Feldkamp, ed. (2007). Der Bundestagspräsident. Amt - Funktion - Person. 16. München: Wahlperiode. ISBN 978-3-7892-8201-0. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official biography at bundestag.de
• (German) Official website

v t e Presidents of the Bundestag Erich Köhler • Hermann Ehlers • Eugen Gerstenmaier • Kai-Uwe von Hassel • Annemarie Renger • Karl Carstens • Richard Stücklen • Rainer Barzel • Philipp Jenninger • Rita Süssmuth • Wolfgang Thierse • Norbert Lammert

This article about a German politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Peer Steinbrück (born January 10, 1947) is a German social democratic politician. From 2005 to 2009 he served as German Federal Minister of Finance in the cabinet of Angela Merkel.

Early political career, Minister President[link]

Steinbrück was born in Hamburg. After having been trained as an officer of the reserve of the Bundeswehr, Steinbrück studied economics in Kiel. He graduated in 1974.

After graduation Steinbrück worked for several German ministries and, from 1978 to 1981, in the office of German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. In the 1980s, Steinbrück was Chief of Staff to the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau.

In 1993, he became Minister of Economy and Infrastructure in the State of Schleswig-Holstein. He then returned to North Rhine-Westphalia, where he became Minister of Economy and Infrastructure in 1998 and Finance Minister in 2000.

From 2002 to 2005, Peer Steinbrück served as Minister President (Ministerpräsident) of North Rhine-Westphalia. He headed a coalition government between the SPD and the Green Party.

In the state election on May 22, 2005, Steinbrück's SPD lost to the Christian democratic (CDU) opposition. This loss also had consequences for federal politics: then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who already was enfeebled by weak opinion polls and criticism within his own party, announced to call for an early federal election for the Bundestag. This ultimately resulted in the 2005 federal election.

German Finance Minister[link]

After the 2005 Bundestag election, SPD and CDU formed a grand coalition under the leadership of new Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). Peer Steinbrück became finance minister of Germany. Since 2005, he also has been deputy chairman of the SPD. He is generally considered a member of the more conservative wing of the party.

In December 2008, Steinbrück controversially attacked the British Keynesian approach to economic policy in an interview with Newsweek.^[1] He raised scepticism about the effectiveness of large fiscal stimulus packages and criticised the resulting increase in public debt.

Steinbrück also was a sharp critic of the Swiss banking secrecy, which in 2009 caused some tensions between Germany and Switzerland.^[2]

In a 2010 interview on German television, it appeared that the former minister, who had adopted a very critical stance of the shadow banking system, attributed characteristics of the private equity industry to hedge funds.^[3]

MP and potential alternative to Angela Merkel[link]

Peer Steinbrück is a Member of Parliament (Bundestag) since 2009. He has been a prominent speaker for the SPD, especially on economic matters. He is considered to be the most probable opposition candidate for Bundeskanzler in the 2013 elections. As of August 2011, he is according to the opinion polls the most popular politician in Germany, ahead of Angela Merkel.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peer Steinbrück

• Peer Steinbrück's Homepage (German)
• Interview with Peer Steinbrück: "Kennen Sie denn Hawaii-Toast?" (German, sbznet.de)

v t e The First Merkel Cabinet, 22 November 2005 – 28 October 2009 Franz Müntefering/Olaf Scholz (since 22 Nov 2007) (SPD) | Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) | Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) | Brigitte Zypries (SPD) | Peer Steinbrück (SPD) | Michael Glos/Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (since 10 Feb 2009) (CSU) | Horst Seehofer/Ilse Aigner (since 31 Oct 2008) (CSU) | Franz Josef Jung (CDU) | Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) | Ulla Schmidt (SPD) | Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD) | Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) | Annette Schavan (CDU) | Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD) | Thomas de Maizière (CDU)

v t e Finance Ministers of Germany German Empire (1871–1918) Adolf von Scholz Franz Emil Emanuel von Burchard Karl Rudolf Jacobi Baron Helmuth von Maltzahn Arthur von Posadowsky-Wehner Max Franz Guido von Thielmann Baron Hermann von Stengel Reinhold Sydow Adolf Wermuth Hermann Kühn Karl Helfferich Count Siegfried von Roedern Weimar Republic (1918–1933) Eugen Schiffer Bernhard Dernburg Matthias Erzberger Joseph Wirth Andreas Hermes Rudolf Hilferding Hans Luther Otto von Schlieben Hans Luther Peter Reinhold Heinrich Köhler Rudolf Hilferding Paul Moldenhauer Heinrich Brüning Hermann R. Dietrich Third Reich (1933–1945) Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk East Germany (1949–1990) Hans Loch Willy Rumpf Siegfried Böhm Werner Schmieder Ernst Höfner Uta Nickel Walter Romberg Werner Skowron Federal Republic of Germany (1949–) Fritz Schäffer Franz Etzel Heinz Starke Rolf Dahlgrün Kurt Schmücker Franz Josef Strauss Alex Möller Karl Schiller Helmut Schmidt Hans Apel Hans Matthöfer Manfred Lahnstein Gerhard Stoltenberg Theodor Waigel Oskar Lafontaine Hans Eichel Peer Steinbrück Wolfgang Schäuble

v t e Ministers-President of North Rhine-Westphalia Rudolf Amelunxen Karl Arnold Fritz Steinhoff Franz Meyers Heinz Kühn Johannes Rau Wolfgang Clement Peer Steinbrück Jürgen Rüttgers Hannelore Kraft

In 2006, as a WTCC driver
Nationality	German
24 Hours of Le Mans career
Participating years	1999–2000, 2010 -
Teams	Champion Racing, Dick Barbour Racing, BMW Motorsport
Best finish	15th (2011)
Class wins	0

Dirk Müller (born 18 November 1975 in Burbach) is a German race driver, driving for BMW Team RLL in the 2012 American Le Mans Series. His former Schnitzer BMW team-mate Jörg Müller is unrelated, as is French driver Yvan Muller.

In 1996, Dirk Müller won a Formula 3 race at the Nürburgring. In 1998, after a win in the GT1 class of the 24 Hours of Daytona, he scored his first title, the German Porsche Cup, to be followed by the ALMS GT title in 2000.

From the 2002 to 2005 season, both Dirk and Jörg were driving BMW 3series model E46 touring cars for the Schnitzer-operated works squad Team Deutschland in the FIA European Touring Car Championship (now WTCC). Since 2006, the team uses the new BMW 3series model E90 which is based on the BMW 320si limited edition model that has a 4-cyl engine rather than the usual 6-cyl.

The 2004 24 Hours Nürburgring was won by both Müllers (and Hans-Joachim Stuck) with the BMW M3 GTR V8 that had been raced successfully in the 2001 ALMS. In 2005, the Müllers finished 2nd behind their sister car.

After touring cars he joined to Ferrari AF Corse with Toni Vilander and won the FIA GT Championship in GT2 class. In 2008 raced in the American Le Mans Series in Ferrari F430 GTC with Dominik Farnbacher in the GT2 class.

In 2009, Müller rejoined BMW to spearhead its factory program with Rahal Letterman Racing in the American Le Mans Series. He and Joey Hand won the 2011 American Le Mans Series GT driver's championship following wins at the Twelve Hours of Sebring, Grand Prix of Long Beach and Lime Rock Park.

24 Hours of Le Mans results[link]

Year	Class	No	Tyres	Car	Team	Co-Drivers	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1999	GT	80	P	Porsche 911 GT3-R Porsche 3.6L Flat-6	Champion Racing	Bob Wollek Bernd Mayländer	292	19th	2nd
2000	GT	83	M	Porsche 911 GT3-R Porsche 3.6L Flat-6	Dick Barbour Racing	Lucas Luhr Bob Wollek	319	DSQ	DSQ
2010	GT2	79	D	BMW M3 GT2 BMW 4.0L V8	BMW Motorsport	Andy Priaulx Dirk Werner	320	19th	6th
2011	GTE Pro	56	D	BMW M3 GT2 BMW 4.0L V8	BMW Motorsport	Andy Priaulx Joey Hand	313	15th	3rd

External links[link]

• Dirk Müller
• Profile - by FIA GT Championship official website

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