Ludwig Stiegler

Ludwig Stiegler (born April 9 1944 in Parsberg) is a German politician.He has been deputy chairman of the SPD's group in the Bundestag since 2002.

Stiegler studied law,sociology and political science in Bonn and Munich. He finished in 1976 with the second juridical "Staatsexamen" (Bar examination). Since that he has worked as a lawyer.

In 1964 Stiegler joined the SPD. Since 1999 he has been a member of the federal executive board and in 2005 he became a member of the SPD-Presidium. For a short period he was chairman of the party's parliamentary group (July-October 2002), afterwards he became deputy chairman. Stiegler has been a member of the Bundestag since 1980. In 2004 he was elected chairman of the SPD in the state of Bavaria.

Stiegler has been criticized several times for controversial statements. In July 2002 he said that the CDU and FDP didn't have the right to criticize then Federal Minister of the Interior and former RAF-lawyer Otto Schily in relation to the attempt to ban the far-right NPD, because "the forerunners of CDU and FDP helped bring Adolf Hitler to power."

In July 2005 he said that the only thing that came to his mind in relation to the CDU/CSU's slogan during the election campaign "Sozial ist, was Arbeit schafft!" ("Social is that which creates work") was the line at the door to Nazi Germany's death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau: "Arbeit macht frei"("Work makes free").

External links

* [http://www.bundestag.de/mdb/bio/S/stieglu0.html Ludwig Stiegler at www.bundestag.de]