Rolf Schwanitz

Rolf Schwanitz (born 2 April 1959) is a German politician. From 1998 till 2005, he served under Federal Chancellor Schröder as a Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery. He was then, from 2005 till 2009, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Health ministry under Federal Chancellor Merkel. a political movement originating in Zwickau and associated with the Peaceful Revolution that soon afterwards put an end to the German Democratic Republic as a stand-alone one-party state. In November 1989, in the same month that the Berlin Wall was breached, he switched to the (in East Germany newly refounded) SDP (party). Following German reunification in August 1990 the new party quickly merged with its (till now, and since 1946, purely West German) counterpart, which made Schwanitz a member of the SPD (party). Between 1993 and 2010 he served as the party's deputy regional chairman in Saxony. Since 2010 he has supported the creation of a working group on "Secularism and secularists in the SPD". The objective of such a group should be that "Religious and non-religious communities must rank equally, and enjoy the same level of respect from the state, acting on behalf of society, with no privileges allowed to one side." He wants to end "gender based discrimination involving those working with the church. The churches enjoy exemptions involving decisions on promotions and pay levels". He goes on, "If a third of the German population, sharing the non-religious perspective, also recognise the issue, then we need to raise it up the public agenda with an SPD working group".

Schwanitz was very sharply critical of the public representation of the papal visit to Germany in September 2011, when he was one the members of parliament who refused to attend Pope Benedict's high-profile speech to the Bundestag.

National politics Following the East German national election on 18 March 1990, between March and October 1990, Rolf Schwanitz was a member of the country's first (and last) freely elected People's Chamber (Volkskammer), by now a member of the SDP

In the 2005 election he attracted nationwide criticism with an election poster showing the coffins of US soldiers, inside a cargo plane, being returned from the Iraq War. The headline on the poster stated, "She would have sent [German] soldiers" ("Sie hätte Soldaten geschickt"). The "She" in question was the (then) opposition leader Angela Merkel. The poster was accompanied by a recommendation for the voters in Saxony to vote for the SPD candidate, Rolf Schwanitz. Although Schwanitz subsequently served in a coalition government under Merkel, the context of the 2005 election was one in which their respective parties were competing nationally for votes, and the issue of whether Germany should send troops to Iraq in defiance of a pacifist tradition established since 1945, and in support of the US army, was one seriously divisive issue between mainstream parties of the moderate left (SPD) and the moderate right (CDU). The poster, intended to highlight Angela Merkel's position on the Iraq War, instead attracted national media criticism of Schwanitz. The hard hitting image of American coffins was considered tasteless: use of the image by the (originally East German) socialist atheist Schwanitz for electoral purposes had overstepped the boundaries of acceptability.

Ministerial Office During 1990, Rolf Schwanitz served in East Germany's last government under Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière. Schwanitz was appointed a Parliamentary Secretary of State, working in the department of the Justice Minister Kurt Wünsche. Giordano Bruno Foundation, member of the advisory board. Institute for Secular Law, member of the advisory board.