17 Facts About Bodo Ramelow

Bodo Ramelow has been its Vice President as of March 2025.

Bodo Ramelow served as Minister-President of Thuringia from December 2014 to 5 February 2020 and from 4 March 2020 to December 2024.

Bodo Ramelow's term lasted from 1 November 2021 until 31 October 2022.

Bodo Ramelow is a trained retail salesman and became an official in Gewerkschaft Handel, Banken und Versicherungen, the union for trade, bank and insurance employees during the 1980s.

Bodo Ramelow moved to Thuringia, in former East Germany, after the unification of Germany in 1990.

Bodo Ramelow became deputy chairman and in 2001 chairman of the party's parliamentary group in the Landtag.

In February 2004, Ramelow was elected top candidate of the PDS in the Thuringian state elections.

Bodo Ramelow narrowly missed the direct mandate by two percentage points, but was elected to a party-list seat.

In 2003, it became publicly known that Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz, had been observing Bodo Ramelow and had opened a file on him because of his alleged contacts with the German Communist Party during the 1980s.

Bodo Ramelow sued the authorities, but in 2010 the Federal Administrative Court of Germany ruled that the Verfassungsschutz is entitled to observe politicians of the Left Party due to "reasonable suspicion of anti-constitutional activity".

Bodo Ramelow's government lost its majority in the 2019 state election, though his party moved into first place for the first time in any German state.

On 5 February 2020, Bodo Ramelow was defeated in the Landtag election for Minister President after AfD voted with the FDP and CDU to elect FDP leader Thomas Kemmerich.

Under Bodo Ramelow, Thuringia was the first state to lift restrictions following the first wave, and Bodo Ramelow resisted lockdown measures requested by Angela Merkel during the second wave in late Autumn and the run-up to Christmas.

In January 2021, as Thuringia became Germany's worst affected state, Bodo Ramelow announced that he regretted this decision and now supported a hard lockdown.

Bodo Ramelow was voted out of office following the 2024 Thuringian state election, in which the red-red-green minority coalition lost more seats and The Left was overtaken by the AfD as the largest party.

Bodo Ramelow remained acting Minister-President until a new government was formed.

Bodo Ramelow was succeeded as Minister-President in December 2024 by Mario Voigt.