Dirk Niebel
Dirk Niebel, a German Politician, was born in Hamburg on March 29, 1963. After his Fachhochschulreife (college entrance qualification) in 1983, Niebel lived for one year in a Kibbutz in Israel. Later, he served for eight years as an airborne infantry officer in the Bundeswehr in Calw. From 2009 to 2013, he served as Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development.
Biography
In 1997, he joined the FDP and he co-founded the Heidelberg division of the Junge Liberale. He has been member of the Bundestag since 1998. In 1998, he also became member of the group of German-Israeli parliament and speaker of the parliamentary group on Labour Policy. In 2000, he served as the vice-president of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (German Israeli Society) till 2010. From 2002 to 2005, he was chairman of the State group of Baden-Württemberg in the parliamentary group of the FDP. Since 2003, he has been member of the Federal Board of the FDP and curator-ship of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. On May 5, 2005, he was elected as a secretary general of the FDP. At the 2009 election, he stood unsuccessfully in the single member constituency of Heidelberg, but was elected from the land list. In January 2011, Dirk Niebel signed a joint Declaration of Intent with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, which aimed to increase bilateral cooperation in effort to assist developing nations agreeing to work towards the rehabilitation of the contaminated Lake Victoria in Kenya, which is the main source of water for several states and one of the sources of the Nile River. A month later, he had a meeting with Ayalon to examine aid to the new Republic of South Sudan.
Education
Dirk Niebel graduated from the German College of Public Administration in Mannheim as Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (similar to a Master of Public Administration degree) in 1993. In 1990, he joined the FDP and was co-founder of the Heidelberg division of the Junge Liberale. Niebel has been a member of the Bundestag within the Parliamentary Group on Labour Policy and in addition a member of the group of German-Israeli Parliament. From 1993 to 1998, he worked at an employment bureau in Sinsheim, a part of the Federal Employment Office of Heidelberg. In 2005, he became secretary general of the FDP.
Learn More
GERMAN POLICY Urgent action 03/07/2012 – by Dirk Niebel
External Links and References
• Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Dirk Niebel Biography. http://www.kulturbruecken.de/index.php?the-hon-dirk-niebel • The Federal Government. http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/EN/FederalGovernment/Cabinet/DirkNiebel/_node.html • Eichner, Itamar (1 February 2011). "Israel, Germany to save Lake Victoria” (online sources) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4021168,00.html
