Experienced politician from Thuringia: Bodo Ramelow

Bodo Ramelow (The Left Party) was elected as Vice-President of the German Bundestag on 25 March 2025. He had already sat in the Bundestag as an elected representative for Thuringia from 2005 until 2009, and was elected with a 36.8 percent first-vote majority in the elections of 23 February 2025. He represents the Erfurt – Weimar – Weimarer Land II constituency.

Bodo Ramelow was born on 16 February 1956 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck. From 1970 to 1973 he completed vocational training to become a retail clerk in Gießen, obtained his entrance qualification for universities of applied sciences in 1977 and was a branch manager in Marburg from 1978 to 1980. In the 1980s he was a trade union secretary in Middle Hesse, and chairman of the Thuringian branch of the Union of Workers in Commerce, Banking and Insurance (HBV) from 1990 to 1999. In 1999 Ramelow joined the PDS, which would later be renamed The Left Party. 

From 2005 until 2009, Ramelow was deputy chairman of The Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Prior to this, from 1999 until 2005, he was a Member of the Thuringian Land Parliament, to which he returned from 2009 until 2015. In 2014 Ramelow became Minister-President of the Free State of Thuringia, and remained in office until 2024. During this period Ramelow was President of the Bundesrat, the chamber representing Germany's Länder at federal level, from November 2021 to October 2022.