17 Facts About Henriette Reker

Henriette Reker was born on 9 December 1956 and is a German lawyer and independent politician.

Henriette Reker is known for her pro-immigration stance and for being the victim of an assassination attempt in 2015.

Henriette Reker was born to Josef Henriette Reker and Gretel Martini and raised in the Cologne district of Bickendorf.

Henriette Reker's mother was a life-long member of the SPD and moved to Cologne from Lower Silesia after World War II, while her father was a pastry chef who lived in Vogelsang district his whole life.

Henriette Reker attended Liebfrauenschule, where she finished her Abitur in 1976.

Henriette Reker studied law at the Universities of Cologne, Regensburg, and Gottingen, completing her second state law examination in 1986 at District Court Munster.

Between 1990 and 1992, Henriette Reker worked as a clerk for an employers' liability insurance association in Bielefeld, then as legal counsel for the State Association of Guild Health Insurance Funds in Munster from until 2000.

Henriette Reker gained her admission to practice law in 1996.

From 2000 until 2010, Henriette Reker served as deputy mayor for Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection of Gelsenkirchen.

At a public event on 17 October 2015, the day before the mayoral election, Henriette Reker was seriously wounded when a 44-year-old German man stabbed her in the neck with a knife, while shouting about an "influx of refugees".

Henriette Reker's aide was hurt in the attack, as were three other people who had tried to subdue her attacker.

Henriette Reker was found to have been a former associate of the Free German Workers' Party in the 1990s and attempted to contact the National Democratic Party of Germany in 2008.

Henriette Reker won the election while remaining in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.

The attacker was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, with Henriette Reker recovering to testify at the trial.

Henriette Reker was accused of victim blaming following the attacks at Cologne's 2016 New Year's Eve celebrations.

Henriette Reker was condemned by Lodewijk Asscher, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands, for implying that women could have prevented the attacks against themselves.

Henriette Reker accused the media of taking her comments out of context: she claimed that she had only reacted to a reporter's question by quoting an existing communal guideline for safety during partying in a speech.