Sevim Çelebi-Gottschlich

Sevim Çelebi-Gottschlich is a former German politician, a member of Alliance '90/The Greens when it was still the Alternative Liste. She served from 1987 to 1989 in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, the state parliament of Berlin.

Life and work

Çelebi-Gottschlich migrated to Berlin from Turkey in 1970 at the age of 17. In 1987 she would cause a minor sensation when she became the first individual of Turkish origin to enter any West German Parliament when she joined the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin on the ticket of the Alternative Liste. When she began a parliamentary speech in Turkish in April 1987, members of the Christian Democratic Union drowned her out by pounding their fists on the table and she was forced to stop speaking.