From 1963 to 1968, Beck became an electrician. After military duty in 1968 and 1969, he graduated from an evening school in 1972. Since then, he served as an employee representative on works councils.
Political career
Angela Merkel and Beck in 2007
After joining the SPD in 1972, mainly because of the Party's programme as well as the personality of Willy Brandt, Beck became chairman of the SPD of Rhineland Palatinate in 1993 and deputy chairman of the federal party in 2003. He served in this function until 14 May 2006.
Beck has been active in local affairs since 1974, when he was first elected a member of the Kreistag. From 1989 to 1994, he was mayor of his hometown Steinfeld. From 1979, he was a directly elected member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, in which he served as the speaker for social affairs of the Parliamentary group of the SPD (from 1982 to 1985) and as a member of the governing body of the group from 1985 to 1991, when he was elected chairman.
Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, 1994–2013
On 26 October 1994 Kurt Beck was elected Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate, succeeding Rudolf Scharping. He was re-elected three times, in 1996, 2001 and 2006. As Minister President he was known for his centrist approach, which is also apparent from the choice of his coalition partner (the liberal FDP instead of the left-wing Green Party, with which the SPD has recently allied itself). In this respect, he follows the policy of Scharping. In March 2006, Beck's SPD gained an absolute majority in the state elections; Beck offered to continue the coalition but since the FDP declined, the SPD formed a government without a partner. After Edmund Stoiber resigned in 2007, Beck was the senior Minister President in Germany.
During his time in office, Beck's decisions in Rhineland-Palatinate to increase efficiency in the state government via administrative reorganisation, and to introduce full-day schooling and free kindergartens, drew national attention. The state also emerged as one of the country’s top economic performers.[5] When the United States Armed Forces closed dozens of camps and barracks with the loss of 100,000 jobs, Beck's government invested heavily in retraining schemes, creating 40,000 new jobs.[6]
In 2000 and 2001, Beck was President of the Bundesrat, one of his duties as Minister President.
In September 2012, Beck announced his resignation. He had been under pressure for weeks over the bankruptcy of the Nürburgring motorsports complex in Rhineland-Palatinate, one of the world's most famous race tracks.[7]
Chairman of the SPD, 2006–2008
When Matthias Platzeck had to resign for medical reasons in 2006, Beck was officially elected as chairman of the SPD with the approval of 95% of the delegates.[8] He became the party’s fourth chairman in seven years.[9]
Beck decided not to join the cabinet and succeed Vice-ChancellorFranz Müntefering because it would have prevented him from criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government.[10] According to public opinion polls during his time as party chairman, his possibilities of becoming Chancellor, if he had run for this office in the 2009 election, had been very limited. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung,[11] only 16% of Germans would have elected him in the hypothetical case of a direct vote against Angela Merkel.
During his time in office as party leader, Beck most notably negotiated an agreement with Merkel’s Christian Democrats in April 2017 on a partial privatization of national railway Deutsche Bahn's passenger and freight divisions.[12] Meanwhile, Beck's decision in early 2008 to allow regional cooperation with the left-wing populistLeft Party in western German state parliaments caused a rift within his party and triggered a slump in opinion poll ratings for the SPD and him personally.[13]
On 7 September 2008, Beck resigned as chairman at a party meeting in Werder, Brandenburg and Frank-Walter Steinmeier was chosen as the SPD candidate for Chancellor in the 2009 election, while Franz Müntefering replaced Beck as chairman after an interim of Steinmeier.[14] At the time, he said that he was a victim of intrigue inside the SPD.[15]
Near the end of 2006, Beck recommended to Henrico Frank, an unemployed construction worker from Wiesbaden, to wash himself and shave so he could get a job.[18] Following a media controversy about Beck's behaviour, Frank declined all jobs offered to him by the state chamber. Later, he was hired as a punk rock expert for iMusic TV.[19]
Afghanistan
In April 2007, Beck proposed a peace conference in Afghanistan with the inclusion of "moderate Taliban".[20] The Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, thus accused him of being naïve. He compared the idea of "moderate Taliban" to distinguishing between moderate and radical right-wing extremists in Rhineland-Palatinate.[21] The German public mostly ignored the affair.
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