Horst Seehofer

Horst Seehofer
Seehofer in 2012
Minister for the Interior, Building and Community
In office 14 March 2018 – 8 December 2021
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Thomas de Maizière (Interior)
Succeeded by	Nancy Faeser (Interior and Community) Klara Geywitz (Housing, Urban Development and Building)
Leader of the Christian Social Union
In office 25 October 2008 – 19 January 2019
General Secretary	Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg Alexander Dobrindt Andreas Scheuer Markus Blume
Preceded by	Erwin Huber
Succeeded by	Markus Söder
President of Germany
Acting
In office 17 February 2012 – 18 March 2012
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Christian Wulff
Succeeded by	Joachim Gauck
President of the Bundesrat
In office 1 November 2011 – 31 October 2012
First Vice President	Hannelore Kraft
Preceded by	Hannelore Kraft
Succeeded by	Winfried Kretschmann
Minister-president of Bavaria
In office 27 October 2008 – 13 March 2018
Deputy	Martin Zeil Ilse Aigner
Preceded by	Günther Beckstein
Succeeded by	Markus Söder
Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection
In office 22 November 2005 – 27 October 2008
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Renate Künast
Succeeded by	Ilse Aigner
Minister for Health
In office 6 May 1992 – 26 October 1998
Chancellor	Helmut Kohl
Preceded by	Gerda Hasselfeldt
Succeeded by	Andrea Fischer
Member of the Bundestag for Ingolstadt
In office 4 November 1980 – 27 October 2008
Preceded by	Karl Heinz Gierenstein
Succeeded by	Reinhard Brandl
Member of the Landtag of Bavaria for Neuburg-Schrobenhausen
In office 7 October 2013 – 30 April 2018
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Matthias Enghuber
Personal details
Born	Horst Lorenz Seehofer (1949-07-04) 4 July 1949 (age 74) Ingolstadt, Bavaria, West Germany (current-day Germany)
Political party	Christian Social Union
Spouse	Karin Starck
Children	4
Signature
Website	Official website

Horst Lorenz Seehofer (born 4 July 1949) is a German politician who served as Minister for the Interior, Building and Community under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. A member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), he served as the 18th minister-president of Bavaria from 2008 to 2018 and Leader of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria from 2008 to 2019.

First elected to the Bundestag in 1980, he served as Minister for Health and Social Security in the Christian-liberal cabinets of Helmut Kohl from 1992 to 1998, going to the opposition afterwards and returning to the government as Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the grand coalition cabinet of Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2008. Following a disastrous result for his party in the 2008 Bavarian state election, he became both Leader of the CSU and Minister-president of Bavaria, an office he had never sought, after forming a coalition government with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), the first coalition on state level in five decades. In 2013 he returned his party to an absolute majority on state level. He served as President of the Bundesrat from 2011 to 2012. As such he was acting head of state of Germany from the resignation of President Christian Wulff on 17 February 2012 until the election of Joachim Gauck as Wulff's successor on 18 March 2012.^[1]

A staunch opponent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's response to the 2010s migrant crisis,^[2] Seehofer threatened to file a formal complaint with the Constitutional Court,^[3] with the historic CDU/CSU alliance in danger of splitting and running against each other in the whole of Germany for the first time, but neither happened. He is a proponent of a federal cap on the number of refugees the German government is to take in.^[4] After faring historically badly in the 2017 federal election, the party receiving its worst result since 1949, and unsuccessfully trying to run for a third term as minister-president in 2018, he was pressured by his party to resign and instead accepted the office of Minister for the Interior, Building and Community (originally intended for Joachim Herrmann) in Merkel's fourth government, in order to shape the migrant policy after his views. In July 2018, a week-long dissent between Seehofer and Merkel nearly brought down the government and again seriously threatened a CDU/CSU split, but they ultimately found a compromise.