Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel
| Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel | |
|---|---|
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
October 1, 1969 Oberstdorf, West Germany |
| Political party | SPD |
Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel (né Schäfer, born 1 October 1969) is a German politician of the SPD.
He is currently the leader of the opposition SPD party bloc in the Hessian state parliament. He lost his bid for the office of minister-president of Hesse in the January 2009 Hessian state election, where he had challenged incumbent Roland Koch (CDU). Schäfer-Gümbel has been deputy leader of the SPD since December 2013.
Schäfer-Gümbel was born to a West German soldier stationed in the far south of Bavaria in Oberstdorf. However, he grew up in Hesse in the city of Gießen. He briefly studied Agrarian Science at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, after which he changed to Political Science. Supported by a scholarship of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, he graduated with a Master's degree in 1997, he took various minor political positions. He is married and has three children.
Schäfer-Gümbel was involved with the Social and Youth department of Gießen from the late 1990s. He became a local adviser to the SPD, a party which he had joined at the age of 17, and was also a local delegate of the SPD in the local government (Kreistag) in Gießen. He quickly moved up the ranks in the Hessian SPD party machine, and was a candidate on the SPD party list during the 2003 Landtag election. He gained a seat in 2003, and has been a member of the Hessian Landtag ever since. He was re-elected in the 2008 Landtag election and in the 2009 special election; however he was elected as part of the party list and not on a direct mandate, as he lost his local race to the CDU candidate.
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