Gerhard Schröder: The Chancellor with the 'Steady Hand'

Legend has it that when Gerhard Schröder was a young member of the German parliament, he once rattled the gates of the Chancellery in Berlin and screamed: "I want in!"

In 1998, he got what he wanted when he defeated Helmut Kohl, who had led Germany for 16 years and shepherded it through reunification in 1990. Schröder's victory brought his party, the Social Democrats, back into power for the first time since Kohl's initial election. Despite his ambition and political talent, there was no evidence in his modest upbringing that he would become what he is today.

"Born a Social Democrat"

Born the son of a laborer killed during World War II in 1944, Schröder grew up poor and had to drop out of high school in order to make ends meet. Alluding to his modest background, he has often said he was "born a Social Democrat." Later, he attended night school and completed the intermediate high school level and eventually passed his Abitur, the obligatory school-closing exam students in Germany must take if they want to attend university. He then enrolled in law school. By the time he became a lawyer in the mid-'70s, he was already an established player on the political stage.

He first joined the Social Democrats in 1963 and deeply engaged himself with Jusos, the party's youth organization. He was elected national chairman of Jusos in 1978. But his ambitions didn't stop there.

In 1980, Schröder became too old to participate in Jusos and instead set his sights higher, running a successful campaign for a seat in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag. He remained in office for six years and then left to run as the SPD's chief candidate in state elections in Lower Saxony. Though defeated in his first run for office there, he and his party did succeed four years later, and in 1990 he became premier of the state – a role analogous to an American governor.

Too conservative for his party?

During his years in state politics, Schröder still played a major role at the national level. But he was also a divisive figure within the party. When it came to picking a chancellor candidate to run against Kohl in 1998, some senior party officials considered Schröder too conservative for the center-left Social Democrats – and many instead favored the policies of the party's then General-Secretary, Oskar Lafontaine.

In the public at large, however, Schröder enjoyed greater popularity and visibility than his opponent. He enjoyed a landslide victory in state elections that March, bringing large gains for the Social Democrats in Lower Saxony's state parliament. On the same night, Lafontaine dropped his own bid and announced that Schröder would be the party's official chancellor candidate.

A new home in Berlin

Months later, Schröder landed in the Chancellery, marking a humiliating defeat for Kohl and the center-right Christian Democratic Union. The victory was the second greatest ever for the Social Democrats at the national level, and it paved the way for the party to establish a coalition government with the Green Party. Then, following Lafontaine's unexpected retirement from politics in 1999, Schröder was elected chairman of the national party.

As chancellor, Schröder is known for achieving political goals through consensus. When it came to dealing with sensitive, hot-button issues like policies for immigration, bio- and genetic technologies and reform of the Federal Labor Office, Schröder appointed independent commissions to create proposals for the government. In some cases, he appointed conservatives from the opposition to these commissions. From his early days in office, Schröder got a crash coarse in foreign policy.

Historic firsts

During the early days of his term, Schröder made the crucial decision to send German troops into war for the first time since World War II. Germany participated in the bombing of Serbia after Slobodan Milosevic ordered the ethnic cleansing of the largely ethnic Albanian Kosovo province.

Schröder has no children of his own, but his fourth wife, the journalist Doris Schröder-Kopf, has a daughter from a previous relationship. They live together in a row house in Hanover's Zoo district.