Olaf Scholz

June 14, 1958

German Social Democratic politician who was Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. He was earlier First Mayor of Hamburg and, under Angela Merkel, finance minister and vice chancellor.

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Biography

Olaf Scholz was born in Osnabrück in 1958 and grew up in Hamburg. He joined the Social Democratic Party at 17 and was deputy chairman of its youth wing, the Jusos, in the 1980s. After studying law at the University of Hamburg he worked as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law.

He was elected to the Bundestag in 1998, served briefly as Hamburg's interior senator in 2001, and was SPD general secretary under Gerhard Schröder from 2002 to 2004 and then the party's chief whip in the Bundestag. He was federal minister of labour and social affairs in Angela Merkel's first grand coalition from 2007 to 2009. In 2011 he led the SPD to victory in Hamburg and governed the city as First Mayor until 2018.

Scholz returned to federal government in 2018 as finance minister and vice chancellor and oversaw large economic rescue packages during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the SPD came first in the 2021 election, he became chancellor at the head of a coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. Three days after Russia invaded Ukraine he announced a turn in German defence policy in his Zeitenwende speech.

His coalition broke up in late 2024. He lost a confidence vote in December, the SPD came third in the February 2025 election, and Friedrich Merz succeeded him in May 2025.