Chancellor Candidate, Edmund Stoiber
by Paul A. Schons

Originally published by the Germanic-American Institute in September, 2002

At the last federal elections in Germany the current chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, defeated the incumbent at that time, Helmut Kohl. On September 22 of this year Germans will go to the polls once again. Gerhard Schröder is seeking a second term. He is being challenged by Edmund Stoiber. Stoiber is currently the Ministerpräsident (governor) of the state of Bavaria, the largest of the German states, capital city Munich. Schröder’s party is the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Stoiber represents the Christian Social Union (the conservative party of his home state) and its partner national party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). A biographical sketch of Gerhard Schröder was featured in the Kulturecke of March, 1999. It is archived online at: ../essays/schroder.html

Edmund Stoiber was born on September 28, 1941 in Oberaudorf in the deep south of Bavaria on the edge of the Alps. He was the youngest of three children born to Edmund Georg and Elisabeth Stoiber. As is the case with most Bavarians, the family was Roman Catholic. The children were baptized in that faith and Edmund continues today in the Roman Catholic faith.

Stoiber’s father was a prisoner of war at the end of the hostilities of World War II. He did not return home until 1948. Edmund attended kindergarten and elementary school in Oberaudorf. He attended the Gymnasium (grades 5-13) in the larger city of Rosenheim. He was neither a very enthused nor outstanding pupil in school. In fact, he had to repeat one year due to failure in Latin. In those years soccer was of much more interest than academics. He did do well enough, however, to complete the Abitur (high school diploma). From 1961-1962 Stoiber undertook his mandatory military training. In 1962 he entered into the study of law at the university of Munich. During his university years his interest in academics developed as he pursued law studies with enthusiasm and took on a second area of studies, political science. From 1967-1968 he was a research associate (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the University of Regensburg.

In 1968 Edmund Stoiber married a bank employee, Karin Rudolf. She had been born in the Sudetenland during the war. Her family was one of those driven out of their homes at the end of the war. (The matter of the Germans driven out of the territory which is now the Czech Republic remains an unsettled matter of some controversy in Germany.) Karin Stoiber gave up her bank career and took on the role of the traditional political wife and mother. The couple had three children, Constanze, Veronica and Dominick. At this point they have two grandchildren, Johannes and Benedict. Mrs. Stoiber was quite reluctant to see her husband enter into the race for the chancellorship, but since the decision has been taken she has been fully supportive. In her words, “In einer gut funktionierenden Ehe ist es selbstverständlich, sich gegenseitig zu unterstuetzen.” (“In a well functioning marriage, mutual support is a matter of course.”)Stoiber completed his doctorate in law in 1971. His first work in the public sector was in the office of the Bavarian ministry of the environment (1971). From his youth he had admired the CDU chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. He was also very much taken with the Bavarian politician Franz Josef Strauß. He joined the CSU party in 1971. In his work in the Bavarian ministry for the environment he gained the attention of political leaders as he established a reputation for hard work, efficiency and effectiveness. He caught the attention of Franz Josef Strauß at that time and became a protégé of the man who would become the most powerful political figure in Bavaria and a national leader.

Stoiber became a member of the Bavarian parliament in 1974 at age 33. In 1978 at the urging of Strauß, Stoiber was made the general secretary of the CSU party. In that role he was the spokesman of the party and his powerful verbal attacks on the opposition earned him the nickname of the “blond guillotine”.

In 1993 Stoiber succeeded Max Steibel as the governor (Ministerpräsident) of Bavaria. (Strauß had died in 1988.) In 1999 Stoiber succeeded Theo Waigel as the head of the CSU party. Waigel, who had been the finance minister in the cabinet of Helmut Kohl, resigned after the loss in the last federal election.

In the months leading up to the decisions as to the candidate for chancellor, Stoiber was locked in a struggle for that designation with Angele Merkel, the first woman to head the CDU party. (The CSU and CDU are sister parties. It is, thus, not unprecedented that a member of the CSU party would become the candidate of the CDU and CSU parities working in partnership.) As a protégé of the former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, Merkel was weakened somewhat by Kohl’s loss in the last election and abiding questions as to possible illegal financial maneuvers of the CDU under the leadership of Kohl.

Stoiber is 60 years old as he enters into the final stages of the campaign for the position of chancellor. At one point he was asked by a reporter if his age would not limit the energy he might give to politics. Stoiber answered that he did not feel at all burned out, and in fact, for him, politics is not work but rather, simply a part of his life. (Schröder is only three years younger but his often noted, unchanged brown hair gives him a much younger image than the pure white of Stoiber’s hair.)