Johanna Wanka

Johanna Wanka (2012)

Johanna Wanka (born Müller * 1. April 1951 in Rosenfeld , Torgau ) is a German mathematician and professor and politician of the CDU . She was Federal Minister for Education and Research from February 14, 2013 to October 24, 2017 and then executive until March 14, 2018 . From 2010 to 2013 she was Lower Saxony's Minister for Science and Culture , from 2000 to 2009 Minister for Science, Research and Culture in Brandenburg . Before that she was elected rector of the Merseburg University of Applied Sciences from 1994 until her appointment as minister .

Life

Johanna Wanka grew up in Rosenfeld, where her parents ran a farm. Her mother, who came from East Prussia , was a trained pharmacy assistant. She forbade her daughter to join the Young Pioneers . Before graduating from high school, Johanna Müller then joined the Free German Youth (FDJ) in order to be safely admitted to study.

From 1958 to 1966 she attended the Polytechnic Oberschule in Großtreben and then, up to the Abitur in 1970, the Extended Oberschule (EOS) in Torgau, where she also trained as an agricultural engineer .

She completed her mathematics studies at the University of Leipzig in 1974 with a diploma . Her diploma thesis bears the title spatial boundary value problems of potential theory with coupling conditions .

Johanna Wanka is Protestant and married to the mathematician Gert Wanka , with whom she has two children.

job

From 1974 Johanna Wanka worked as a research assistant at the Technical University Carl Schorlemmer Leuna-Merseburg , Mathematics Section. In 1980 she was solution of contact and control issues with potential theory means Dr. rer. nat. PhD . From 1985 to 1993 she was senior scientific assistant at the university. In 1993, Wanka was offered a professorship for engineering mathematics at the Merseburg University of Applied Sciences .

In March 1994 she succeeded the founding rector Lothar Teschke as the first elected rector of her university, which she expanded with six departments. Wanka held the office of rector until her short-term appointment as minister to Potsdam in October 2000. She was succeeded as rector by the chemist Heinz Zwanziger .

From 1994 to 1998 she was Vice President of the State Rectors' Conference of Saxony-Anhalt and from 1995 to 1998 Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board for Science and Research of the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

Political career

Wanka was a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ). She joined the GDR citizens' movement in 1989 and was a founding member of the New Forum in Merseburg , founded in September 1989 , for which she was also a member of the Merseburg district assembly from 1990 to 1994 .

In 2000, Wanka, at that time still independent, became Minister for Science, Research and Culture in Brandenburg for the CDU in the Stolpe III cabinet . She held this position until November 2009 and was President of the Conference of Ministers of Education in 2005 . During her term of office in this regard, the reform of the German spelling was introduced. Since in July 2005 it was still being discussed whether the introduction of the reform planned for August 1 should actually take place, Wanka appealed to the Prime Minister to introduce the new spelling as planned. In addition, she criticized the reluctance of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia and emphasized that such a short-term postponement would only grist on the mills of those who are against educational federalism in principle. Half a year later, shortly after the end of her term of office as President of the Conference of Ministers of Education, she admitted to the Spiegel : “The ministers of education have long known that the spelling reform was wrong. For reasons of state , it has not been withdrawn. "

Wanka has been a member of the CDU since March 2001. From May 2003 to June 2010 she was a member of the CDU state executive committee in Brandenburg. In December 2003 Wanka was elected district chairman of the CDU Dahme-Spreewald . At the party convention of the CDU Brandenburg in January 2007, she was elected deputy state chairman. After the resignation of the previous state chairman, Ulrich Junghann , she took up this post on October 29, 2008 and was elected as state chairperson at a party conference on January 17, 2009 in Potsdam.

Johanna Wanka (2011)

From 2004 to 2010, Wanka was a member of the Brandenburg state parliament after moving in via the CDU state list, as she was unable to assert herself as a direct candidate in the Dahme-Spreewald III constituency (constituency 28). In the state elections on September 27, 2009 , she ran as the top candidate of the CDU. In this election, the CDU gained 0.4 percentage points, but with a result of 19.8 percent it remained clearly third behind the SPD (33 percent) and the Left Party (27.2 percent).

After the SPD decided against a new coalition with the CDU in 2009 and entered into a coalition with the Left , Johanna Wanka was elected CDU parliamentary leader on October 20, 2009. She held this office until April 2010 when she resigned from the state parliament in Brandenburg due to her surprising appointment to Lower Saxony. Saskia Ludwig , who also succeeded as CDU state chairwoman on June 26, 2010, was her successor in the parliamentary group chairmanship.

Wanka was appointed Minister for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony in his cabinet on April 27, 2010 by the then Minister-President of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff (CDU) ; she replaced Lutz Stratmann in this office. Wanka also retained this office in the McAllister cabinet . The 2013 state elections resulted in a majority in favor of a red-green coalition, which made it possible to foresee the loss of this post held by a CDU politician in Lower Saxony. After the resignation of Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan , Wanka was proposed as her successor and therefore resigned prematurely as Lower Saxony's Minister on February 13, 2013. One day later she was appointed Federal Minister and sworn in on February 21 in the Bundestag.

Controversy about the "red card"

During the refugee crisis in Germany from 2015 onwards , Wanka published an appeal on the homepage of her ministry in November 2015 to show the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the “Red Card” after it had participated in a demonstration under the motto “Red Card for Merkel - Asylum needs limits ”. The Federal Constitutional Court declared this practice unconstitutional in 2018 . State organs do not have the right to call on citizens to participate or not participate in demonstrations by political parties. Such a call would interfere inadmissibly with the right to equal opportunities; the federal government was not allowed to use its state resources for the benefit or at the expense of individual parties.

Cabinets

Brandenburg

• Cabinet Stolpe III
• Cabinet Platzeck I
• Cabinet Platzeck II

Lower Saxony

• Cabinet Wulff II
• McAllister Cabinet

Federation

• Merkel II cabinet
• Merkel III cabinet

Awards

In September 2010 Johanna Wanka was awarded the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Medal for Sciences and Arts. The Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk , a Jewish organization for the promotion of talented students, honored Wanka's commitment to Jewish educational work with the award.

In 2017 she became an honorary senator at the University of Merseburg .

Fonts

• Solution of contact and control problems with potential theoretical means . Dissertation at the Faculty for Technical Science and Mathematics at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg 1980, DNB 820370274 .
• Johanna Wanka (Ed.): Proceedings of the 1st conference of young scientists at the University of Applied Sciences Merseburg . Applied Science Conference. Shaker, Aachen 2001, ISBN 3-8265-8356-6 .

Web links

Commons : Johanna Wanka  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

 Wikinews: Johanna Wanka  - in the news

• Literature by and about Johanna Wanka in the catalog of the German National Library
• CV at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ESDES.Pictures - certificate of discharge for Johanna Wanka. Retrieved on March 14, 2018 (German). 
2. ↑ "Johanna Wanka has learned to assert herself" in Zeit-Magazin 38/2015, October 3, 2015, accessed May 21, 2017
3. ↑ Johanna Wanka (née Müller) , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, accessed May 21, 2017
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka. Biography. (No longer available online.) Brandenburg State Center for Political Education, archived from the original on December 19, 2014 ; Retrieved February 10, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ On the person. Potsdam Latest News , April 20, 2010, accessed February 10, 2013 . 
6. ↑ Johanna Wanka. Munzinger: Personen - Internationales Biographisches Archiv, accessed on February 10, 2013 . 
7. ↑ http://www.katholisch.de/aktuelles/aktuelle-artikel/kabinett-ohne-konfessionslose
8. ↑ Andrea Beyerlein: The new perspective. Berliner Zeitung , January 27, 2009, accessed on February 10, 2013 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka ( Memento from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
10. ↑ Ludger Fertmann: Johanna Wanka had the courage to turn . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . October 2, 2012.
11. ↑ Johanna Wanka in portrait ( memento from June 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on Tagesschau.de; accessed: February 11, 2013.
12. ↑ Spelling debate: countries discuss reform postponement. In: Spiegel Online . July 19, 2005.
13. ↑ Jan Fleischhauer, Christoph Schmitz: Hit and Top, Tip and Stop . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 2006, p. 124-132 ( Online - Jan. 2, 2006 ).
14. ↑ Thorsten Metzner: Johanna Wanka wants a new beginning. Tagesspiegel, January 18, 2009, accessed February 10, 2013 . 
15. ↑ In 2004 it came third with 23.7 percent (see results of the state elections on September 19, 2004. Constituency 28 - Dahme-Spreewald III. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 18, 2010 ; retrieved on 10 . February 2013 . information: the archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested Please review the original and archive link under. instructions and then remove this notice. ), 2009 with 27.1 percent ranked second (see results of the state elections 2009. constituency 28 -. Dahme-Spreewald III Retrieved on February 10, 2013 . )   
16. ↑ Lower Saxony State Chancellery: Lower Saxony sets the course for 2020 - changes in four ministries ( memento of the original from June 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 19, 2010.
17. ↑ Wanka's AfD scolding violates the Basic Law , WeltN24, February 27, 2018.
18. ↑ The principle of neutrality violated: Federal Constitutional Court approves AfD , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 27, 2018.
19. ↑ Judgment of the Constitutional Court Federal ministers have to hold back on party politics , Spiegel online, February 27, 2018.
20. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: Judgment 2 BvE 1/16 of February 27, 2018
21. ↑ Johannes Frank: Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Medal becomes Professor Dr. Johanna Wanka awarded. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk, 2010, accessed on February 10, 2013 . 
22. ^ Ines Wahl MA: Federal Minister becomes Honorary Senator of the University of Merseburg. Hochschule Merseburg, press release from April 5, 2017 at the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw-online.de), accessed on April 5, 2017.