Michael Mertes

Michael Mertes (born March 26, 1953 in Bonn) is a German chief officer and author. He was a political advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1987 to 1998, and he served in the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) as the state’s representative to the German federal institutions and to the European Union from 2006 to 2010. From June 2011 to July 2014, he was Resident Representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) to Israel in Jerusalem.

Mertes is married and has four children.

As a son of a diplomat, Mertes spent most of his childhood and youth abroad (Marseille, Paris, Moscow). In 1972 he graduated from high school where he had majored in classical languages. After a two-year military service from 1972 to 1974 he studied law at Bonn and Tübingen universities as well as at the London School of Economics (with a focus on Public international law, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of science). He completed his law degree at the beginning of 1981 and passed his bar exam in 1983.

In 1981 Mertes worked for Carl Otto Lenz MP as a parliamentary assistant. From 1984 to 1987, he held various positions in the federal administration (Federal Ministry of Defense, Federal Chancellery, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety). In 1987 Chancellor Kohl appointed him as his chief speechwriter. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Mertes co-authored the „Ten Point Program for German and European Unity” which Kohl presented on November 28, 1989. In 1993 he became Director, Policy Planning, and in 1995 he was appointed Director-General, Policy Planning and Cultural Affairs at the Federal Chancellery.

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