Rainer Ortleb

Rainer Ortleb (born 5 June 1944) is a German academic and politician.

From October 1990 he served under Helmut Kohl as a Federal Minister for Special Affairs in Germany's first post-reunification government. In the next government, between 1991 and 1994, he served as Federal Minister of Education and Research.

Life Early years Ortleb was born directly after the war in the eastern part of Thuringia, then a part of the Soviet occupation zone in what had until recently been central southern Germany. During his early years the zone became the newly created German Democratic Republic. Ortleb successfully completed his schooling in 1962 and undertook military service with the National People's Army until 1964, then signing up as an army reserve officer. Further academic promotion (Habilitation) to the status of "Dr.-Ing. (engineering)" followed in 1983, on the basis of a paper entitled "Baustein-Terminal in Dialogsystemen", after which his academic work focused on Information Systems. He moved north in 1984, to Rostock University where he lectured on information systems processing, was appointed an associate professor in 1989, and where he worked from 1992 to 1998 as Professor for Technical Systems Applications Software. He spoke with eloquence and some passion: "My first argument is visible to you all, this uniform ... the result, the exercise in the art of war, is forced on us daily by the actions of the imperialists" Western observers subsequently identified more than a trace of irony in his performance.

The Berlin Wall was breached in November, ushering in a period of rapid transition which by August 1990 had led to German reunification. On 10 February 1990 the LDPD held a Special Party Conference at Dresden, the outcome of which was a new name and a new Party Chairman. The new name was actually the old name which the party had been required to abandon in 1951. The Liberal Democratic Party (LPD / Liberal-Demokratische Partei ) elected Rainer Ortleb as its new chairman - effectively the party leader - in succession to Manfred Gerlach. East Germany's first and last national free election took place in March 1990 with the party (in alliance with a couple of recently emerged like minded and short-lived groupings) won 21 seats under Ortleb's leadership, and a junior role in East Germany's governing coalition under Lothar de Maizière. Ortleb's career as a party leader was cut short in August 1990, however, when his LDP merged with its West German counterpart, the FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei).

Following the merger of the LDP with the FDP Rainer Ortleb became regional party chairman in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 1991 and 1994. In 1997 he became the FDP regional party chairman in Saxony, becoming in the process the only FDP politician to be a regional party chairman successively in two different regions.

In 1999 Ortleb resigned from his party chairmanship in Saxony following poor performance in a regional election for which his name had been at the top of the FDP candidate list. Two years later, following differences within the party over support for Ingolf Roßberg as the party's (successful) candidate as mayor of Dresden, Ortleb resigned from the party in 2001.

In the 2009 election Ortleb gave his support to "Die Linke", the successor to East Germany's old ruling SED (party).

National Parliament The East German election in March 1990 saw the liberal alliance led by Ortleb gaining more than 5% of the national vote. Ortleb, representing the Dresden constituency, was one of 21 Liberal Democrats who now entered the National Assembly (Volkskammer) where he led the Liberal group. He was one of the 144 deputies in the chamber who on 3 October 1990, as part of the German reunification process, became members of the Bundestag (National Assembly) of the reunited Germany. In the following two national elections, in December 1990 and in October 1994, he was elected to the Bundestag as a deputy for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Ortleb remained a member of the Bundestag until 1998.