Henriette Reker
| Henriette Reker | |
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| Mayor of Cologne | |
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Assumed office 2015 |
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| Born | December 9, 1956 |
Henriette Reker (born 9 December 1956) is a German lawyer and independent politician. She is known for her pro-immigration stance and for being the victim of an assassination attempt in 2015. A day after the attack, Reker was elected mayor of Cologne after gaining 52.66% of the votes. She is the first female mayor elected in Cologne's history.
Born in Cologne, Reker has been mayoral deputy of Gelsenkirchen since 2000, when in 2010 she was appointed a mayoral deputy for social affairs, integration and the environment of the city of Cologne. Supported by the CDU, FDP, and The Greens she ran for Mayor of Cologne in October 2015.
At a public event on 17 October 2015, the day before the mayoral election, Reker was seriously wounded when a 44-year-old man stabbed her in the neck with a knife, while shouting about an "influx of refugees". State prosecutors confirmed the attack to be politically motivated, after the perpetrator “confessed to having xenophobic motives.” As a member of Cologne's municipal administration, Reker had been responsible for the housing and integration of refugees. Her aide was also hurt in the attack, as were three other people who had tried to subdue her attacker. Reker's main rival in the mayoral election, Social Democrat Jochen Ott, suspended his campaign after the attack. Reker won the election while remaining in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.
Federal prosecutors soon took over the case from state prosecutors in Cologne on grounds of the particularly dangerous nature of the stabbing, which came against the backdrop of a rising tide of attacks on accommodation for refugees in Germany. By late October, they charged a 44-year-old German man with attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm. At the time, the authorities said the perpetrator was driven by his anger over Reker’s work on the refugee issue.
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