54 Facts About Joschka Fischer

Joschka Fischer served as the foreign minister and as the vice chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schroder from 1998 to 2005.

Joschka Fischer was born in Gerabronn in Wurttemberg-Baden, the third child of a butcher, whose family had lived in Budakeszi, Hungary, for several generations.

Joschka Fischer's family had to leave Hungary in 1946 after it was occupied by the Soviet Union, and ethnic Germans were persecuted and expelled by the authorities.

Joschka Fischer was brought up Catholic and served in his childhood as an altar boy in his parish in Oeffingen.

Joschka Fischer dropped out of high school in 1965, and started an apprenticeship as a photographer, which he quit in 1966.

Joschka Fischer neither did compulsory military service nor the alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors, because he failed his physical examination due to poor eyesight.

Joschka Fischer studied the works of Marx, Mao and Hegel and became a member of the militant group, Revolutionarer Kampf.

Joschka Fischer was a leader in several street battles involving the radical Putzgruppe, which attacked a number of police officers.

Joschka Fischer is a close friend of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, whom he met during that time.

In 1969, Joschka Fischer was photographed in Algeria at a meeting of the PLO, which remained a terrorist organization until 1988.

Joschka Fischer then continued making a living with unskilled work while continuing his activism.

Joschka Fischer worked as a taxi driver from 1976 to 1981 and later in a bookstore in Frankfurt.

Joschka Fischer maintained he had given the car to the later terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein solely for the purpose of having Klein fit it with a new engine.

Only later had Joschka Fischer learned that his car had been used to transport stolen weapons.

Some critics continue to charge that Joschka Fischer was the leading figure of a 1976 discussion that led to the use of Molotov cocktails in an upcoming demonstration in support of RAF member Ulrike Meinhof.

Joschka Fischer was arrested on 14 May 1976 as a suspect in the Molotov cocktail attacks on police, but was released after two days.

Joschka Fischer stated that he never used Molotov cocktails against the police.

From 1983 to 1985, Joschka Fischer was a member of the Bundestag for the Green party.

In 1985, Joschka Fischer became Minister for the Environment in the Landtag of Hesse in the first governmental Red-Green coalition between the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Greens.

Joschka Fischer caused a stir when he appeared at his oath of office ceremony wearing trainers.

Joschka Fischer expressed his thoughts very frankly in the periodical of the Hessian Green party "Stichwort Grun".

Joschka Fischer was again environment minister in Hessen from 1991 to 1994 and then became co-chairman of the Greens' parliamentary faction in the Bundestag.

Joschka Fischer was respected for his oratory skills, as well as for his charisma on the political stage.

Joschka Fischer parlayed his clout into political success, as he moved the Greens to the centre ground of German politics, paving the way for their first participation in the nation's federal government.

In mid-April 1999, Germany came up with the first peace plan for the war in Kosovo, when Joschka Fischer produced a proposal, notably including Russia, that would have rewarded the beginning of a Yugoslav pullout from Kosovo with a bombing pause.

In 2005, critics charged that Joschka Fischer's relaxing of controls on visa regulations for Ukraine, would allow illegal immigrants to enter Germany with fake identities.

Joschka Fischer represented the German government at the funeral services for Foreign Minister Anna Lindh of Sweden on 19 September 2003 in Stockholm; Pope John Paul II on 8 April 2005 in Rome; and former UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on 12 August 2005 in Edinburgh.

In 1999, Joschka Fischer supported German military participation in the Kosovo War.

Joschka Fischer justified this military involvement with allegations that Serbia was planning to commit genocide against the Kosovo Albanians.

On fundamental issues like the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, and the crisis in the Middle East, Joschka Fischer was openly differing with the Bush administration.

Joschka Fischer famously confronted United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the 39th Munich Security Conference in 2003 on the secretary's purported evidence for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Joschka Fischer has been criticized for attending a 1969 conference of the Palestine Liberation Organization, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called for an all-out war on Israel "until the end".

In 1999, Joschka Fischer led a delegation including European Commissioner Manuel Marin and the European Union's Special Envoy to the Middle East Miguel Angel Moratinos on a visit to Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, but to a range of other countries which have a crucial role in the peace process, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Joschka Fischer's intervention led to an announced cease-fire arranged by George Tenet, the United States Director of Central Intelligence; Fischer had been in Tel Aviv at the time of the blast.

Joschka Fischer later brokered a meeting between Arafat and the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to discuss how to implement the cease-fire.

In July 2002, Joschka Fischer presented a proposal that called for Arafat to appoint an interim prime minister.

Joschka Fischer represented the German government at the funeral services for Arafat on 12 November 2004 in Cairo and at the inauguration of the new Holocaust Memorial Museum at Yad Vashem in March 2005.

In May 2000, Joschka Fischer proposed the creation of a European federation with a directly elected president and parliament sharing real executive and legislative powers.

Joschka Fischer proposed the eventual enactment of a constitutional treaty that would set out which powers were to be shifted to the new European executive and parliament, and those that remained at national level.

In October 2002, Joschka Fischer was appointed by the German government to the Convention on the Future of Europe, replacing Peter Glotz.

Joschka Fischer had expressed a keen interest in taking part in the convention during the coalition talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroder following the 2002 elections.

Joschka Fischer has long been critical of Russia, especially on human rights.

In 2004, Joschka Fischer called on Ukraine to hold a recount of the presidential elections after Putin-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovich was the first to declare his victory despite mass protests in Kyiv.

From September 2006 until 2007, Fischer was a senior fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, and as a visiting professor co-taught with Wolfgang F Danspeckgruber at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, both at Princeton University.

Joschka Fischer has spoken at other American universities on various topics in foreign affairs and international relations.

On 15 September 2010 Joschka Fischer supported the new initiative Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate efforts towards federalisation of the European Union.

Since 2008, Joschka Fischer has been Senior Strategic Counsel at Albright Stonebridge Group, Washington, DC, consulting firm led by Madeleine Albright.

In 2009, Joschka Fischer took a post as adviser to the Nabucco pipeline project, which involved the German RWE company.

Indeed, Joschka Fischer was so popular in 2002 that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder largely based his early election campaign on the fact that Joschka Fischer would remain at his side at the helm of Germany's political leadership.

Up until 1996, Joschka Fischer was a bon vivant, and often spoke openly about his love for good wines and food despite his "chunky" figure.

Joschka Fischer was married to German-Iranian film producer and screenwriter Minu Barati in 2005.

Joschka Fischer's two children with his previous partner and eventual wife, Inge Vogel, were born in 1979 and 1983, respectively.

At the time of his wedding with Barati in 2005, she was mother to a six-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, while Joschka Fischer's children were 23 and 26 of age at the time.

Joschka Fischer describes himself as Catholic, but not very religious.