Winfried Kretschmann

Winfried Kretschmann, born in 1948 in Spaichingen, Germany, is a German politician and a trained secondary-school teacher of biology, chemistry and ethics. While studying at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, he became politically active and later turned away from Maoism, which he described as a fundamental political error. In 1979, he helped found the Greens in Baden-Württemberg, and in 1980 he entered the state parliament for the first time. He chaired the Greens’ parliamentary group there from 2002 to 2011. In 2011, Kretschmann became the first Green minister-president of a German state. He served as president of the Bundesrat from 2012 to 2013.