Olaf Scholz
Olaf Scholz is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Social Democratic Party, 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 federal 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 oversaw Germany's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite giving a restrained and timid response compared to many other Western leaders, Scholz oversaw a significant increase in the German defence budget, weapons shipments to Ukraine, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was put on hold. Three days after the invasion, Scholz set out the principles of a new German defence policy in his Zeitenwende speech. In September 2022, three of the four Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed. During the Gaza war, he authorized substantial German military and medical aid to Israel, and denounced the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. In November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court demanded budget cuts totaling to ensure the government would not surpass debt limits as set in the constitution; this proved a significant challenge for Scholz's cabinet and contributed to the 2023–2024 protests. On 6 November 2024, his government majority collapsed as he dismissed Christian Lindner from the post of Federal Minister of Finance and broke up the coalition agreement. On 16 December 2024, Scholz lost a vote of confidence and in the following snap election on 23 February 2025, his SPD lost to Friedrich Merz's CDU, placing third for the lowest result in its post-war history.
Early life and education
Olaf Scholz was born on 14 June 1958, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, and 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.Scholz attended the Bekassinenau elementary school in Oldenfelde, and 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)
Olaf 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 later said that he "made almost all possible mistakes at some point".On 4 January 1984, Olaf 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 alongside FDJ head Eberhard Aurich.
Member of the Bundestag (1998–2001)
Scholz was elected to his first political office as a Deputy Member of the Bundestag representing the constituency of Hamburg-Altona in 1998, aged 40. During his tenure, Scholz served on the Committee for Labour and Social Matters. In the committee of inquiry into the visa affair of the Bundestag, he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Scholz resigned his mandate on 6 June 2001, to take office as Senator. Because his seat was an overhang seat, it was not filled until the 2002 German federal election.Senator for the Interior of Hamburg (2001)
On 30 May 2001, Scholz succeeded Hartmuth Wrocklage to become Senator for the Interior of Hamburg in the Senate led by Mayor Ortwin Runde. Wrocklage had resigned due to allegations of nepotism. He also succeeded Wrocklage as Deputy Member of the Bundesrat.During his brief time as Senator, Scholz approved the involuntary use of emetics to gather evidence from suspected drug dealers. The measure was controversial: the Hamburg Medical Chamber expressed disapproval of this practice due to potential health risks as did his then coalition partner GAL calling it “a serious violation of privacy and physical integrity” and the practice was ruled illegal in 2006 by the European Court of Human Rights.
Scholz left office in October 2001, after the defeat of his party at the 2001 Hamburg state election and the election of Ole von Beust as First Mayor. His successor was Ronald Schill, who had won on a Law and order platform, with an emphasis on harsh penalties for drug dealers.
Federal and state political career
Member of the Bundestag (2002–2011)
Scholz was elected again to the Bundestag in the 2002 German federal election. From 2002 to 2004, Scholz also served as General Secretary of the SPD; he resigned from that office when party leader and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, facing disaffection within his own party and hampered by persistently low public approval ratings, announced he would step down as Leader of the Social Democratic Party.Scholz was one of a series of politicians who sparked debate over the German journalistic norm of allowing interviewees to "authorize" and amend quotes before publication. This came after his press team insisted on extensively editing an interview with Die Tageszeitung in 2003. Die Tageszeitung editor Bascha Mika condemned the norm as a "betrayal of the claim to a free press", and the newspaper ultimately published the interview with Scholz's answers blacked out.
Scholz served as the SPD spokesperson on the inquiry committee investigating the 2005 German Visa Affair. Following the federal election later that year, he served as First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD Bundestag Group. He also became Chief Whip of the Social Democratic Party. In this capacity, he worked closely with the CDU Chief Whip Norbert Röttgen to manage and defend the grand coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag. Scholz also served as a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel, which provides parliamentary oversight of the German federal intelligence services; the BND, MAD and BfV.
Minister of Labour and Social Affairs (2007–2009)
In 2007, Scholz was appointed to serve as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the first Merkel Government, succeeding Franz Müntefering.Following the 2009 federal election, when the SPD left the Government, Scholz was elected as Deputy Leader of the SPD, replacing Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Between 2009 and 2011, he was also a member of the SPD group's Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force. In 2010, he participated in the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain.
First Mayor of Hamburg (2011–2018)
In 2011, Scholz was the lead SPD candidate at the Hamburg state election, which the SPD won with 48.3% of the votes, taking 62 of 121 seats in the Hamburg Parliament. Scholz resigned as a Member of the Bundestag on 11 March 2011, days after his formal election as First Mayor of Hamburg; Dorothee Stapelfeldt, also a Social Democrat, was appointed his Deputy First Mayor.In his capacity as First Mayor, Scholz represented Hamburg and Germany internationally. On 7 June 2011, Scholz attended the state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in honor of Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House. As host of Hamburg's annual St. Matthias' Day banquet for the city's civic and business leaders, he brought several notable guests of honour to the city, including Jean-Marc Ayrault, Prime Minister of France, in 2013; David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in 2016; and Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, in 2017. From 2015 until 2018, Scholz also served as Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for Cultural Affairs under the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation.
In 2013, Scholz opposed a public initiative aiming at a complete buyback of energy grids that the city of Hamburg had sold to utilities Vattenfall Europe AG and E.ON decades before; he argued this would overburden the city, whose debt stood at more than at the time.
Scholz was asked to participate in exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU and SPD parties to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal election. In the subsequent negotiations, he led the SPD delegation in the financial policy working group; his co-chair from the CDU/CSU was Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Alongside fellow Social Democrats Jörg Asmussen and Thomas Oppermann, Scholz was reported in the media to be a possible successor to Schäuble in the post of Finance Minister at the time; whilst Schäuble remained in post, the talks to form a coalition were ultimately successful.
In a paper compiled in late 2014, Scholz and Schäuble proposed redirecting revenue from the solidarity surcharge on income and corporate tax to subsidize the federal states' interest payments. Under Scholz's leadership, the Social Democrats won the 2015 state election in Hamburg, receiving around 47% of the vote. He formed a coalition government with the Green Party, with Green leader Katharina Fegebank being appointed to serve as Deputy First Mayor. In 2015, Scholz led Hamburg's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics with an estimated budget of , competing against Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, and Budapest. In a referendum, the citizens of Hamburg later rejected the city's candidacy, with more than half voting against the project. Later that year, Scholzalongside Minister-President Torsten Albig of Schleswig-Holsteinnegotiated a debt-restructuring deal with the European Commission. The deal allowed German regional lender HSH Nordbank to offload in problematic assets, primarily underperforming ship loans, onto its government majority owners and avoid being shut down, saving around 2,500 jobs. In 2017, Scholz was criticised for his handling of riots that took place during the G20 summit in Hamburg.
In late 2021, Scholz was widely criticised for his handling of the CumEx tax fraud at M. M. Warburg & Co. when he was the mayor of Hamburg.