Photo Gallery 'Black Peter' with Ambitions
Peter Ramsauer was the leading 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 having been directly elected in the district of Traunstein --the German constituency he claimed was most beautiful. He is set to work on labor, social and economic policy in parliament.
"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 (right), who was named federal building minister in Helmut Kohl's government.
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 mobile phone numbers with the then-CDU/CSU party chairwoman in 2001.
In 2005 Ramsauer replaced Michael Glos as CSU state party head after the creation of the grand coalition government between Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats in 2005. Like Glos, who left his state office to become Germany's economics and technology minister, Ramsauer is a competent orator and has developed a reputation in parliament for being an ambitious political heckler.
Ramsauer went down in political history for a political faux-pas: 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 economics minister. But Ramsauer has always rejected the notion, opting to remain state leader of the CSU. But now he will be taking a place at Merkel's cabinet table, as Germany's new transportation minister.
