Christa Schmidt

Christa Schmidt (born Christa Weigel; 3 April 1941 – 10 June 2026) was a German politician (CDU). She served as a minister in the last government of East Germany. She had built an earlier career as a teacher and educationalist.

Life and career Christa Weigel was born in Leipzig during the first half of the Second World War. Between 1955 and 1959 she studied at a Teacher Training Institute for non-graduate teachers: between 1959 and 1964 she taught at the Goethe-School in Mügeln, a small town located a short distance to the east of Leipzig. She then switched to the Pestalozzi School for children with special needs in Leipzig, where she taught from 1964 till 1990.

In parallel with her teaching job, between 1972 and 1974 Schmidt studied successfully for a degree in Special School Pedagogy ("Sonderschulpädagogik") at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Further study at the same institution led to her Doctorate of Pedagogy in 1980: her doctoral dissertation concerned handicapped school children.

In November 1989, following months of mounting street protests, the Berlin Wall was breached by demonstrators. Back in 1953 street protests had been brutally suppressed: in 1989 the realisation that Soviet occupation forces no longer had orders to suppress the protests using violence opened the way for a series of events which would lead to German reunification, formally in October 1990. In March 1990 the country held its first (and as matters turned out last) free parliamentary election. Based on the popular vote, the CDU now received not 50 seats but 163 of the 400 in the Volkskammer. Following a change in the law that had been voted through in February 1990, voters had no longer been restricted to a single party list, and Christa Schmidt's name had been on the CDU party list for the Leipzig electoral district, positioned high enough up on the list for her now to be elected to the assembly. The powerful performance of the CDU meant that the task of forming a new East German government fell to the party chairman, Lothar de Maizière. In April Christa Schmidt was appointed a minister, mandated to head up the newly formed Ministry for Family and Women ("Ministerium für Familie und Frauen"). Schmidt again remained a Bundestag member only till the next general election, which this time took place in October 1994, with the resulting change-over taking place two months later, in December.