Joachim Gauck

Joachim Gauck (born 24 January 1940) is a German politician, Protestant pastor, and former anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany. On 19 February 2012, he was agreed on as a nonpartisan consensus candidate for President of Germany in the 2012 election by the government parties CDU, CSU and FDP, and the opposition SPD and the Alliance '90/The Greens.

During the Revolutions of 1989, he was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Soviet-backed dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1990 he served as a member of the only freely elected People's Chamber for the Alliance 90. Following the Reunification of Germany, he was elected by the Bundestag as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives, serving from 1990 to 2000. As Federal Commissioner, he earned recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate," exposing the crimes of the former communist political police.

He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election, but narrowly lost to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition. However, his candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President" and Bild called him "the president of hearts."

A son of a survivor of a Soviet Gulag concentration camp, Gauck's political life was heavily influenced by the suffering of his own family and his upbringing in the totalitarian communist regime of East Germany, where his family faced discrimination. A founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, together with Václav Havel and other statesmen, and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism, Gauck has called for increased awareness of communist crimes in Europe, the prosecution of communist criminals, and for the necessity of delegitimizing the communist era. He has written on Soviet-era concentration camps such as the NKVD Special Camp No. 1, the crimes of communism, and political oppression in East Germany, and contributed to The Black Book of Communism. Gauck has criticized the political left of ignoring communist crimes. His 2012 book Freedom. A Plea calls for the defense of freedom and human rights around the globe. The Independent has described him as "Germany's answer to Nelson Mandela." He has been described by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy, and justice."

Since 2003, he has been chairman of the association Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie, and he served on the Management Board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2001–2004.

Early Life

Joachim Gauck was born into a family of sailors in Rostock, the son of Joachim Gauck, Sr. (born 1907), and Olga Gauck (née Warremann, born 1910). His father was an experienced ship's captain and distinguished naval officer (Captain at Sea), who after World War II worked as an inspector at the Neptun Werft shipbuilding company. Following the Soviet occupation at the end of World War II, a communist regime was established in what became East Germany, backed by the Soviet Union. The family was a victim of Soviet persecution. When Joachim Gauck was eleven years old, in 1951, his father "disappeared" after being arrested by Soviet occupation forces. He was accused of espionage for receiving a letter from the West and also of "anti-Soviet demagogy" for being in the possession of a western journal on naval affairs (such accusations were common against people who were persecuted for being non-communists in all countries of eastern Europe under Soviet occupation) and deported to a Gulag in Siberia, where he was severely mistreated. For nearly three years, the family knew nothing about what had happened to him and whether he was still alive. Only in 1955, he was freed, following a state visit of Konrad Adenauer to Moscow, who negotiated the release of political prisoners (the Soviet Union released many political prisoners in the years following the death of Joseph Stalin).

He graduated with an Abitur from Innerstädtisches Gymnasium in Rostock. According to Joachim Gauck, his political activities were inspired by the ordeal of his father, and he stated that he grew up with a "well-founded anti-communism". Already in school in East Germany, he made no secret of his anti-communist position, and he steadfastly refused to join the communist youth movement, the Free German Youth. He wanted to study German and become a journalist, but because he wasn't a communist, he wasn't allowed to do so. Instead he chose to study theology and become a pastor in the Protestant church in Mecklenburg; he has stated that his primary intention was not to become a pastor, but the theology studies offered an opportunity to study philosophy and the church was one of the few institutions in East Germany where the communist ideology was not dominating. Nevertheless, he would eventually become a pastor; his work as a pastor in East Germany was very difficult due to the hostility of the communist regime towards the church, and for many years, he was under constant observation and was harassed by the Stasi secret police. The Stasi described Gauck in their file on him as an "incorrigible anti-communist" ("unverbesserlicher Antikommunist"). He has said that "at the age of nine, I knew socialism was an unjust system."

Personal Life

Gauck is legally married to Gerhild "Hansi" Gauck (née Radtke), his childhood sweetheart whom he met at ten, but the couple has been separated since 1991. They were married in 1959, at 19, despite his father's opposition, and have four children: sons Christian (born 1960) and Martin (born 1962), and daughters Gesine (born 1966) and Katharina (born 1979). Christian, Martin and Gesine were able to leave East Germany and emigrate to West Germany in the late 1980s, while Katharina, still a child, remained with her parents. His children were discriminated against and denied the right to education by the communist regime because their father was a pastor.

Since 2000, his domestic partner has been Daniela Schadt, a journalist.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Alexandra Maria Lara

Alexandra Maria Lara (born Alexandra Plătăreanu; November 12, 1978) is a Romanian-born German actress. She performs predominantly in leading roles in a variety of historical and crime films. Lara is best known for her roles in Control (2007), Youth Without Youth (2007), Nackt (2002), Downfall (2004), About the Looking for and the Finding of Love (2005), and The Reader (2008).

Early Life

Born in Bucharest, Lara is the only child of Valentin Plătăreanu, a Bucharest actor, and his wife, Doina, a homemaker. When she was four (in 1983) her family decided to flee to West Germany to escape Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime in Communist Romania. Although the family had originally planned to emigrate to Canada, they settled down in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, before eventually moving to Berlin.

After graduating at the Französisches Gymnasium Berlin in 1997, Lara went on studying acting under the management of her father, co-founder of the Theaterwerkstatt Charlottenburg, until 2000.

Personal Life

In August 2009 she married English actor Sam Riley with whom she acted in the movie Control.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Christian Wulff

Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (born 19 June 1959) is the President of Germany and a politician of the Christian Democratic Union. He was elected President on 30 June 2010 and publicly swore the oath of office on 2 July. A lawyer by profession, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2010.

Early Life and Education

Wulff was born in Osnabrück and is Roman Catholic. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the post of President of Germany in more than 40 years. His father left the family, and he grew up with his mother. As a teenager, he took responsibility for the care of his younger sister, after his mother developed multiple sclerosis. After completing his Abitur at the Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Osnabrück, Wulff studied law with a specialisation in economics at the University of Osnabrück. He joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1975. In 1987 and 1990, he passed the first and second state examinations in law, and has since worked as an attorney.

Family

Christian Wulff met his first wife, lawyer Christiane Wulff (born 1959), when they were both law students in Osnabrück in 1983. They married in March 1988, and have a daughter, Annalena (born 1993). In June 2006, Wulff announced that he would divorce his wife. Wulff subsequently married an aide from the PM's Office, Bettina Körner (born 1973 in Hanover), on 21 March 2008 in a low-key ceremony. She has a son from a previous relationship, and on 12 May 2008, she gave birth to their first child together, also a boy.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Susanne Klatten

Susanne Klatten (born Susanne Hanna Ursula Quandt on 28 April 1962 in Bad Homburg, Germany) is the daughter of Herbert and Johanna Quandt. As of 2011, she is worth $14.6 billion, and is the richest woman in Germany and the 44th richest person in the world.

Education

After gaining a degree in business finance, Susanne Klatten worked for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in Frankfurt from 1981 to 1983. This was followed by a course in marketing and management at the University of Buckingham, and an MBA from IMD in Lausanne specialising in advertising.

She gained further business experience in London with Dresdner Bank, the Munich branch of management consultants McKinsey and the bank Reuschel & Co.

Recognising that her wealth is sometimes a problem, she often worked incognito under the name Susanne Kant. Police prevented an attempt to kidnap her in 1978.

Investments

On her father's death she inherited his 50.1% stake in pharmaceutical and chemicals manufacturer Altana. She sits on Altana's supervisory board and helped transform it into a world-class corporation in the German DAX list of 30 top companies. In 2006 Altana AG sold its pharmaceutical activities to Nycomed for €4.5 billion, leaving only its specialty chemicals business. The €4.5 billion was distributed to shareholders as a dividend. Altana maintained its stock exchange listing and Susanne Klatten remained its majority shareholder. In 2009 she bought almost all shares she did not already own in Altana.

Her father also left her a 12.50% stake in BMW. She was appointed to the supervisory board of BMW with her brother Stefan Quandt in 1997.

German graphite maker SGL Group said on 16 March 2009 that Susanne Klatten owns options to raise her stake in SGL from 8% to almost a quarter of the shares but no more than that.

Personal Life

Susanne met Jan Klatten while she was doing an apprenticeship with BMW in Regensburg, where he worked as an engineer. During this time she called herself Kant and did not tell him who she was until they were sure about each other. They married in 1990 in Kitzbühel and live in Munich. They have three children. She also plays golf and skis in Austria. Like the other members of the Quandt family, they live quietly. She has been a member of the University Council of the Technical University of Munich since 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Bayerischer Verdienstorden, the Bavarian Order of Merit. She is one of the biggest donors of the centre-right political party the Christian Democratic Union.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Stefan Quandt

Stefan Quandt (born 9 May 1966) is a German engineer and industrialist. He is ranked as the 72nd richest person in the world in the Forbes list of billionaires, who put his personal wealth at $10.7 billion.

He was born in Bad Homburg to Herbert Quandt and Johanna Quandt. He attended the University of Karlsruhe where he studied engineering from 1987 to 1993. From 1993-1994, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group in Munich. From 1994 to 1996 he worked for Datacard Group of Minneapolis as a marketing manager in Hong Kong.

On his father's death in 1982 he acquired 17.4% of BMW, the company his father had saved from bankruptcy in 1959. Quandt also inherited from his father substantial holdings in other companies, many of which he runs through his holding company, Delton AG. These include:

    * 76.8% of CEAG, (small power supplies and recharging devices for mobile phones)

    * 50.3% of Thiel Logistik AG, a logistics company

    * 100% of Heel GmbH, which makes homeopathic medicines

    * 100% of CeDo Household Products, which makes freezer bags, plastic and aluminium wraps and foils, bin liners, and coffee filters.

With his mother, he owned 18.3% of Gemplus International, a large digital security company, before its merger to form Gemalto in 2006. Currently he serves BMW as a deputy chairman of the supervisory board. He also has held seats on the supervisory boards of Dresdner Bank AG and of the Gerling Konzern Allgemeine Versicherungs AG. Rumours predict he will eventually become head of BMW's supervisory board. His mother Johanna Quandt and sister Susanne Klatten are also substantial shareholders in BMW and other large German companies making them one of the wealthiest families in the world.

In autumn 2005, he married Katharina, a software engineer. They have a daughter, born on New Year's Eve that same year. He has been sighted watching football matches but otherwise keeps a low profile.

A programme by the German public broadcaster, ARD, in October 2007 described in detail the role of the Quandt family businesses during the Second World War. As a result, four family members announced, on behalf of the entire Quandt family, their intention to fund a research project in which a historian will examine the family's activities during Hitler's dictatorship.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher (born 3 January 1969) is a German Formula One racing driver for the Mercedes GP team. Famous for his eleven-year spell with Ferrari, Schumacher is a seven-time World Champion and is widely regarded as the greatest F1 driver of all time.  He holds many of the formula's driver records, including most championships, race victories, fastest laps, pole positions, points scored and most races won in a single season – 13 in 2004. In 2002 he became the only driver in Formula One history to finish in the top three in every race of a season and then also broke the record for most consecutive podium finishes. According to the official Formula One website he is "statistically the greatest driver the sport has ever seen".

After beginning with karting, Schumacher won German drivers' championships in Formula König and Formula Three before joining Mercedes in the World Sportscar Championship. After one Mercedes-funded race for the Jordan Formula One team Schumacher signed as a driver for the Benetton Formula One team in 1991. After winning consecutive championships with Benetton in 1994/5, Schumacher moved to Ferrari in 1996 and won another five consecutive drivers' titles with them from 2000–2004. Schumacher retired from Formula One driving in 2006 staying with Ferrari as an advisor. Schumacher agreed to return for Ferrari part-way through 2009, as cover for the badly injured Felipe Massa, but was prevented by a neck injury. He later signed a 3-year contract to drive for the new Mercedes GP team starting in 2010.

His career has not been without controversy, including being twice involved in collisions in the final race of a season that determined the outcome of the world championship, with Damon Hill in 1994 in Adelaide, and with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 in Jerez.

Off the track Schumacher is an ambassador for UNESCO and a spokesman for driver safety. He has been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts throughout his life and donated tens of millions of dollars to charity. Michael and his younger brother Ralf Schumacher are the only brothers to win races in Formula One, and they were the first brothers to finish 1st and 2nd in the same race, in Montreal in 2001, and there again (in switched order) in 2003.

Early years

Schumacher was born in Hürth, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany,[13] to Rolf Schumacher, a bricklayer, and his wife Elisabeth. When Schumacher was four, his father modified his pedal kart by adding a small motorcycle engine. When Schumacher crashed it into a lamp post in Kerpen, his parents took him to the karting track at Kerpen-Horrem, where he became the youngest member of the karting club. His father soon built him a kart from discarded parts and at the age of six Schumacher won his first club championship. To support his son's racing, Rolf Schumacher took on a second job renting and repairing karts, while his wife worked at the track's canteen. Nevertheless, when Schumacher needed a new engine costing 800 DM, his parents were unable to afford it; Michael was able to continue racing with support from local businessmen.

Regulations in Germany require a driver to be at least 14 years old to obtain a kart license. To get around this, Schumacher obtained a license in Luxembourg at the age of 12.

In 1983, he obtained his German license, a year after he won the German Junior Kart Championship. From 1984 on, Schumacher won many German and European kart championships. He joined Eurokart dealer Adolf Neubert in 1985 and by 1987 he was the German and European kart champion, then he quit school and began working as a mechanic. In 1988 he made his first step into single-seat car racing by participating in the German Formula Ford and Formula König series, winning the latter.

In 1989, Schumacher signed with Willi Weber's WTS Formula Three team. Funded by Weber, he competed in the German Formula 3 series, winning the title in 1990. He won also the Macau Grand Prix. At the end of 1990, along with his Formula 3 rivals Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Karl Wendlinger, he joined the Mercedes junior racing programme in the World Sports-Prototype Championship. This was unusual for a young driver: most of Schumacher's contemporaries would compete in Formula 3000 on the way to Formula One. However, Weber advised Schumacher that being exposed to professional press conferences and driving powerful cars in long distance races would help his career. In the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season, Schumacher won the season finale at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in a Sauber–Mercedes C11, and finished fifth in the drivers' championship despite only driving in 3 of the 9 races. He continued with the team in the 1991 World Sportscar Championship season, winning again at the final race of the season at Autopolis in Japan with a Sauber–Mercedes-Benz C291, leading to a ninth place finish in the drivers championship. He also competed at Le Mans during that season, finishing 5th in a car shared with Karl Wendlinger and Fritz Kreutzpointner. In 1991, he competed in one race in the Japanese Formula 3000 Championship, finishing second.

Honours

Schumacher has been honoured many times during his career. In April 2002, for his contributions to sport and his contributions in raising awareness of child education, he was named as one of the UNESCO Champions for sport, joining the other eight which include Pelé, Sergey Bubka and Justine Henin. He won the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award twice, in 2002 and 2004 for his performances in the 2001 and 2003 seasons respectively. He has also received nominations for the 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007 awards. No-one has been nominated more times than Schumacher in the award's seven-year history.

In honour of Schumacher's racing career and his efforts to improve safety and the sport, he was awarded an FIA Gold Medal for Motor Sport in 2006. In 2007, in recognition of his contribution to Formula One racing, the Nürburgring racing track renamed turns 8 and 9 (the Audi and Shell Kurves) as the Schumacher S, and a month later he presented A1 Team Germany with the A1 World Cup at the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport 2007 awards ceremony. He was nominated for the Prince of Asturias Award for Sport for 2007, which he won both for sporting prowess and for his humanitarian record.

In 2008 the Swiss Football Association appointed Schumacher as the Swiss ambassador for the 2008 European football championship.

On 30 April 2010, Schumacher was honored with the Officier of Légion d'honneur title from French prime minister François Fillon.

Family and off-track life

Schumacher's younger brother Ralf was a Formula One driver until the end of 2007. Their stepbrother Sebastian Stahl has also been competing as a race car driver. In August 1995, Michael married Corinna Betsch. They have two children, Gina-Maria (born in 1997) and Mick (born in 1999). He has always been very protective of his private life and is known to dislike the celebrity spotlight, preferring a simple life. The family moved to a house near Gland, Switzerland in 2007, a 650 m2 mansion with its own underground garage and petrol station, situated on a private beach on Lake Geneva. The family has two dogs – one stray that Corinna fell in love with in Brazil, and an Australian Shepherd named "Ed" whose entrance to the family made headlines. Schumacher personally drove a taxi through the Bavarian town of Coburg after collecting the dog, enabling the family to catch their return flight to Switzerland. Both Schumacher and the taxi driver were reprimanded by local police.

One of his main hobbies is horse riding, and he plays football for his local team FC Echichens. He has appeared in several football charity games and organised games between Formula One drivers.

On 23 June 2003, Schumacher was appointed as an Ambassador at Large for the Most Serene Republic of San Marino.

In 2004, Forbes magazine listed him as the 2nd highest paid athlete in the world. In 2005 Eurobusiness magazine identified Schumacher as the world's first billionaire athlete. His 2004 salary was reported to be around US $80 million. Forbes magazine ranked him 17th in their "The World's Most Powerful Celebrities" list. A significant share of his income came from advertising. For example, Deutsche Vermögensberatung paid him $8 million over three years from 1999 for wearing a 10 by 8 centimetre advertisement on his post-race cap. The deal was extended until 2010. He donated $10 million for aid after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. His donation surpassed that of any other sports person, most sports leagues, many worldwide corporations and even some countries. Schumacher's bodyguard Burkhard Cramer was killed in the tsunami along with his two sons.

Schumacher is a special ambassador to UNESCO and has donated 1.5 million Euros to the organization. Additionally, he paid for the construction of a school for poor children and for area improvements in Dakar, Senegal. He supports a hospital for child victims of war in Sarajevo, which specialises in caring for amputees. In Lima, Peru he funded the "Palace for the Poor", a centre for helping homeless street children obtain an education, clothing, food, medical attention, and shelter. He stated his interest in these various efforts was piqued both by his love for children and the fact that these causes had received little attention. While an exact figure for the amount of money he has donated throughout his life is unknown, it is known that in his last four years as a driver, he donated at least $50 million. In 2008 it was revealed that he had donated between $5M and $10M to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park of Bill Clinton.

Since his participation in an FIA European road safety campaign, as part of his punishment after the collision at the 1997 European Grand Prix, Schumacher has continued to support other campaigns, such as Make Roads Safe, which is led by the FIA Foundation and calls on G8 countries and the UN to recognise global road deaths as a major global health issue. In 2008, Schumacher was the figurehead of an advertising campaign by Bacardi to raise awareness about responsible drinking, with a focus on communicating an international message 'drinking and driving don't mix'. He featured in an advertising campaign for television, cinema and online media, supported by consumer engagements, public relations and digital media across the world.

On the eve of the 2002 British Grand Prix, on behalf of Fiat, Schumacher presented a Ferrari 360 Modena to legendary Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar at Silverstone.

On 21 June 2009, Schumacher appeared on the BBC's motoring programme Top Gear as The Stig. Presenter Jeremy Clarkson hinted later in the programme that Schumacher was not the regular Stig. The BBC has since confirmed that this is the case; Schumacher was there on that occasion because Ferrari would not allow anyone else to drive the one-of-a-kind black Ferrari FXX which was featured in the show. The FXX was presented to Schumacher upon his retirement at Monza in 2006.

When Schumacher appeared on Top Gear in 2009, he told Jeremy Clarkson during his interview that the road cars that he drives are a Fiat 500 Abarth, and a Fiat Croma which is his family car.

From : www.wikipedia.org