Jürgen Schmieder

Jürgen Schmieder
East meets west: Jürgen Schmieder (left) greets Otto Graf Lambsdorff (right) at an inter-party meeting (1990).
Born	23 June 1952 Jahnishausen (now part of Riesa), Saxony, East Germany
Alma mater	Dresden University of Technology
Occupation	Politician
Political party	LDPD DFP FDP
Children	married with 2 children

Jürgen Schmieder (born Jahnishausen 23 June 1952) is a politician, originally from East Germany, who came to prominence during the months immediately preceding German reunification.

At the end of January in 1990 he became Chairman (leader) of the short lived German Forum Party (DFP / Deutsche Forumpartei) in East Germany where in 1990 he sat as a member of the country's first (and last) freely elected People's Chamber (Volkskammer).

Following the abolition of East Germany as a separate state, he became a member of the German National Assembly (Bundestag) between 1990 and 1994, his DFP (party) having merged with the German FDP in August 1990.

Schmieder was born during the early years of the German Democratic Republic in a small town roughly halfway between Leipzig and Dresden. His parents were in business. His secondary schooling was successfully concluded in 1971 with several years at a in Riesa and an apprenticeship as an electrician.

After his military service, in 1973 he enrolled as a student at the Technological University in Karl-Marx-Stadt. (The town has subsequently reverted to its earlier name, Chemnitz.) In 1978 he graduated with a degree in Thermal Engineering. He then worked for a year as a Project Leader with the operation before returning to the Technological University where he was employed, in the first instance, as a Research Assistant, and then from 1983 till 1984 as a Development Engineer.

In 1984 he received an engineering doctorate for work on "Vacuum Drying of Plastic Granules in a Rotating-drum Dryer in the presence of Inert Gas". He then became a senior employee with the Karl-Marx-Stadt district council for whom he worked till 1987. After that, till 1990, he was employed as a deputy team leader and patent engineer at the Karl-Marx-Stadt Research Centre. In parallel, in 1989 he started a correspondence course to become a patent attorney.