Harald Wolf

The title of this article is ambiguous. For other people see Harald Wolf (disambiguation) .

Harald Wolf (2008)

Harald Wolf (born August 25, 1956 in Offenbach am Main ) is a German politician ( Die Linke ). The political scientist was Mayor of Berlin from 2002 to 2011 (i.e. one of the two deputies of the Governing Mayor ) and Senator for Economics, Technology and Women . From November 2017 he was acting federal manager of the party Die Linke until the electoral congress in June 2018. He was appointed by the federal executive after the resignation of Matthias Höhn . He has been the federal treasurer of his party since June 2018.

Life

Youth and job

In 1975 he graduated from high school in Hanau . From 1975 to 1977 he studied philosophy and social sciences at the Ruhr University Bochum , from 1977 to 1981 at the Free University of Berlin , graduating with a diploma in political science . Wolf was a member of the International Marxists Group (GIM), the then German section of the Fourth International. He initially worked as a typist in Berlin companies, in 1983 he became a research assistant at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research , and since 1988 has worked as a freelance journalist.

Party politician

In 1978 he belonged to the circle around the Trotskyist magazine Commune! Revue of Revolutionary Marxism , participated in the founding of the party project Democratic Socialists and was a member of its first federal executive from November 28, 1982 to January 14, 1984. In 1986 he became a member of the Alternative List (AL). In 1987 and 1988 he was a member of the federal main committee of the Greens , from 1988 to 1990 he was a member of the executive committee of the AL. In this function he was a member of the negotiating committee for the formation of the red-green coalition of the SPD and AL in 1989. In September 1990 he left the party. Harald Wolf is a member of the Left Party, his constituency is Berlin-Lichtenberg . Since May 2014 he has been a member of the executive committee of Die Linke. Since December 2016 he has also been a member of the regional board of the regional association of DIE LINKE Berlin. After the resignation of the Federal Managing Director of the Left, Matthias Höhn, in November 2017, Wolf was appointed by the Board of Directors as the new Federal Managing Director. In June 2018 he was elected Federal Treasurer of the Left.

MP and Mayor

In 1988 he was a district councilor in the then Kreuzberg district . In 1991 he was elected to the Berlin House of Representatives. From 1995 to 2002 he was chairman of the PDS parliamentary group.

On August 29, 2002, he succeeded Gregor Gysi as Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Economy, Labor and Women. On December 31, 2002, he had resigned from the House of Representatives to comply with the party’s demand for the separation of senatorial posts and members of parliament. Wolf was re-elected to the House of Representatives (16th electoral term) as the top candidate of the Berlin Left in September 2006, but gave up his mandate again as he was again the Senator for Economics, Technology and Women and a Mayor in the new Senate .

For the Berlin election on September 18, 2011 , Wolf ran again as the top candidate of his party. After the left got 11.7 percent of the vote and the SPD 28.3 percent, it was no longer enough for a new edition of the red-red coalition, so the SPD decided to enter into a coalition with the CDU as a junior partner of the SPD . Wolf resigned from his office with the re-election of Klaus Wowereit as Governing Mayor on November 24, 2011.

Wolf accepted his mandate in the House of Representatives. Wolf is the transport and energy policy spokesman for his group. One focus of his work is the remunicipalisation of the energy supply. He supported the narrowly failed referendum for the construction of a municipal utility and the repurchase of the power grid by the state of Berlin. He is one of the initiators of the survey commission of the House of Representatives "New Energy for Berlin" set up in 2014. In the elections for the House of Representatives in September 2016 , he won his constituency in Lichtenberg for the third time in a row . Wolf was a member of the negotiating commission for a coalition of the SPD, LEFT and Greens. He is the spokesman for the energy industry, investments and transport and is a member of the committee for economics and transport, the main committee responsible for finance and the subcommittee for investment management and controlling.

Wolf has also been a member of the board of the German section of Eurosolar , the European association for renewable energies, and a member of the presidium of the Arbeiteramariterbund (ASB), Landesverband Berlin, since November 2015 .

In 2016 he published the book Rot-Rot in Berlin. 2002 to 2011: a (self-) critical balance sheet , published by VSA-Verlag . In 2016, together with Klaus Busch, Axel Troost , Gesine Schwan , Frank Bsirske , Joachim Bischoff and Mechthild Schrooten, he published a “pamphlet for another EU” under the title “Europe goes in solidarity”, also published by VSA-Verlag. The pamphlet is directed against left and right critics of the EU, who see a solution to the crisis in Europe in a return to the nation state or in the dissolution or dismantling of the euro. Instead, the authors call for an alternative economic policy, a compensation union, a common debt policy, a European social union and a democratically elected and controlled European economic government.

At the beginning of February 2020, Wolf resigned from the Berlin House of Representatives. He announced that he was moving to Hamburg, but did not give any further reasons. Franziska Leschewitz moved up for him .

family

Harald Wolf has lived in Hamburg with his wife Claudia Falk since February 2020 , before he lived in Berlin-Friedrichshain . His brother Udo Wolf has been the parliamentary group leader of the Left in the Berlin House of Representatives since October 2009 .

literature

• Werner Breunig, Andreas Herbst (ed.): Biographical handbook of the Berlin parliamentarians 1963–1995 and city councilors 1990/1991 (= series of publications of the Berlin State Archives. Volume 19). Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-9803303-5-0 , p. 398.

Web links

Commons : Harald Wolf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Harald Wolf's website
• Biography on the website of the Berlin House of Representatives for the 18th electoral term
• Biography at the Senate of Berlin ( Memento from November 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Commune! No. 2/3, summer 1978, p. 2
2. ↑ Wolf tries to build bridges in New Germany , November 14, 2017
3. ↑ Harald Wolf: Rot-Rot in Berlin. 2002-2011: A self-critical balance . VSA, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-671-8 , p. 328 .
4. ↑ Klaus Busch, Axel Troost, Gesine Schwan, Frank Bsirske, Joachim Bischoff, Mechthild Schrooten, Harald Wolf: Europe also works in solidarity! VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-745-6 , p. 88 .
5. ^ Robert Kiesel, Werner van Bebber: Departure in the Berlin left-wing faction: Ex-Senator Harald Wolf moves to Hamburg . Message from: Der Tagesspiegel (online edition) from January 15, 2020
6. ^ André Görke: Female, young, left - and from Spandau . Message from: Der Tagesspiegel (online edition) from February 21, 2020.