Photo Gallery 'Black Peter' with Ambitions
Peter Ramsauer is the top candidate of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian party aligned with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in national politics. He first entered the Bundestag in 1990, directly elected in the district of Traunstein, which he claimed was Germany's most beautiful constituency. In the parliament, he set to work on labor, social and economic policy.
"I know both sides, I'm neither left-wing nor right-wing," Ramsauer once said of himself. In 1998 he became parliamentary chairman of the CSU state group under Eduard Oswald, who was named federal building minister in the government of Helmut Kohl.
Born in 1954, Ramsauer was a mill foreman, earned a degree in business administration and became a passionate politician.
At the age of 15, Ramsauer founded the group "Schwarzer Peter" ("Black Peter," for the color of the CDU/CSU) at his school. In 1973 he joined the CSU, a step which eventually landed him a place next to Angela Merkel. He is pictured here swapping phone numbers with the then-CDU/CSU party chairwoman in 2001.
In 2005 Ramsauer replaced Michael Glos as CSU state party head. Like Glos, Ramsauer is a competent orator and known to be a bit of a political heckler.
With one of his interjections, Ramsauer went down in political history: In February 1999 he described Green Party member Kristin Heyne as a "cheeky hussy." After Edmund Stoiber's resignation and the brief party leadership of Erwin Huber and Günther Beckstein, Ramsauer became deputy leader of the party.
Ramsauer has repeatedly been mentioned as a possible candidate for a ministerial position, most recently after the resignation of the CSU's Michael Glos as federal economics minister. But Ramsauer has always rejected the notion, opting to remain state leader of the CSU.
