lit a candle 3h agoCalled my dad, he remembered her on the news in 89 when the Wall came down. Never knew the name till today.
Their story
Rita Süssmuth (born Rita Kickuth; 17 February 1937, Wuppertal; died 1 February 2026, Neuss) was a German educationalist, university professor and Christian Democratic (CDU) politician. She served as Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health under Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1985 to 1988, with women's affairs added to her portfolio…
Rita Süssmuth (born Rita Kickuth; 17 February 1937, Wuppertal; died 1 February 2026, Neuss) was a German educationalist, university professor and Christian Democratic (CDU) politician. She served as Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health under Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1985 to 1988, with women's affairs added to her portfolio in 1986, and then as President of the German Bundestag from 25 November 1988 to 26 October 1998. She was only the second woman to hold the office, after Annemarie Renger, and her almost ten years in the chair make her the third-longest-serving Bundestag President, behind Eugen Gerstenmaier and Norbert Lammert.
She grew up the daughter of a school inspector, Karl Kickuth, and his wife Hedwig, née Bischoff, spending her childhood in Wadersloh in Westphalia. After schools in Lippstadt and Emsdetten she passed her Abitur at the Emsland-Gymnasium in Rheine in 1956, then studied Romance languages, history and education in Münster, Tübingen and Paris. She took her first state teaching examination in 1961 and in 1964 earned a doctorate at the University of Münster with a dissertation on the image of the child in contemporary French literature. The same year she married the university professor Hans Süssmuth, with whom she had a daughter, Claudia.
Süssmuth built an academic career before entering politics. She worked as an assistant at the teacher training college in Osnabrück, became a lecturer at the Pädagogische Hochschule Ruhr in Dortmund in 1966 and a professor there in 1971, taught at the Ruhr University Bochum from 1969 to 1982, and moved to the University of Dortmund in 1973. From 1982 to 1985 she directed the Institute "Frau und Gesellschaft" (Women and Society) in Hanover. She was also active in lay Catholic bodies, including the Central Committee of German Catholics.
She joined the CDU only in 1981, aged 44. In September 1985 Kohl appointed her to succeed Heiner Geißler as federal minister. Her defining task became the response to AIDS. Against hard-liners in her own camp who wanted compulsory testing and isolation, she insisted on education, prevention and condoms, and rejected the exclusion of people living with HIV. In 1987 she launched the National AIDS Foundation, and she later served as honorary chair of the Deutsche AIDS-Stiftung. Her approach is widely credited with laying the foundations of Germany's successful HIV prevention. She chaired the CDU women's organisation, the Frauen Union, from 1986 to 2001 and sat on the party presidium from 1987 to 1998.
After Philipp Jenninger resigned in November 1988, Süssmuth was elected President of the Bundestag. She held the post through the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, which she and Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, President of the freely elected East German Volkskammer, called the "hour of the parliaments". In December 1989 she backed a joint declaration recognising Poland's western border. Her term also took in the decision to make Berlin the capital, the 1994 vote on Christo and Jeanne-Claude's wrapping of the Reichstag and the 1997 debate on the Wehrmacht exhibition. She proposed a reform of the abortion law in 1990 under the slogan that the final decision must lie with the woman, pushed to shrink the Bundestag, and argued for a women's quota in her party. In 1989 she was among the senior Christian Democrats, with Lothar Späth, Heiner Geißler and Kurt Biedenkopf, associated with a failed attempt to unseat Kohl as party leader. She sat in the Bundestag from 1987 to 2002, representing the Göttingen constituency. Two controversies, over the use of official cars in 1991 and of government aircraft for private visits, dented her popularity; in 1997 the Bundestag's Council of Elders cleared her of the aircraft allegation. After the 1998 election she was succeeded by the Social Democrat Wolfgang Thierse.
Out of office she remained a prominent public voice. From 2000 to 2001 she chaired the Independent Commission on Immigration set up by Interior Minister Otto Schily, whose report "Zuwanderung gestalten, Integration fördern" set out a comprehensive concept for immigration and integration. She served on the Limbach Commission on Nazi-looted art, on the Global Commission on International Migration, and from 2010 co-chaired the UNAIDS High Level Commission on HIV Prevention. She was president of the German Adult Education Association (Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband) from 1988 to 2015, president of the European Movement Germany, president of the German Poland Institute, chair of the German-Polish Science Foundation, president of the SRH Hochschule Berlin and of the consortium supporting the Turkish-German University in Istanbul. Until her final years she campaigned for parity of women and men in parliaments.
Her husband Hans died in 2020. She lived in Neuss, which made her an honorary citizen, and in June 2024 she disclosed that she had breast cancer that had spread. She died at home in Neuss on 1 February 2026, sixteen days before her 89th birthday, with her sister and daughter at her side, according to Bild. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered a state ceremony. She was buried beside her husband in the Neuss main cemetery on 17 February 2026, and on 24 February 2026 an ecumenical memorial service in St. Hedwig's Cathedral was followed by a state memorial ceremony in the Bundestag's plenary chamber, with addresses by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, the journalist Heribert Prantl and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Klöckner called her "one of the most important women politicians of the Federal Republic". Merz described her as an exceptional politician who was ahead of her time, sometimes uncomfortable for her own party, yet a Christian Democrat with heart and soul.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (EN, DE), CC BY-SA 4.0; Deutscher Bundestag; dpa; Bild. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“Die letzte Entscheidung muss bei der Frau liegen.”
Title of her 1990 initiative to reform Germany's abortion law, paragraph 218 ("The final decision must lie with the woman").
“Unterschätzen Sie uns nicht.”
Speech at the Bundestag ceremony marking 100 years of women's suffrage, 2019 ("Do not underestimate us").
“Demokratische Traditionen verpflichten, aber nichts ist stabil, ohne dass wir uns immer wieder selbst fordern und gefordert wissen.”
Her words, quoted by Chancellor Friedrich Merz on the day of her state memorial ceremony, 24 February 2026.
“Es geht mir nicht gut. Aber ich denke positiv und lasse mich nicht unterkriegen.”
To Bild in 2024, on her breast cancer ("I am not well. But I think positively and will not let it get me down").
“Ich weiß nicht, was der liebe Gott mit mir vorhat. Klar ist, ich will noch nicht sterben. Ich habe noch viel vor.”
To Bild in 2024, during her cancer illness.
“Gott ist für mich wichtig. Er trägt mich seit vielen Jahren durchs Leben.”
To Bild in 2024, on her Catholic faith.
Photos
3Rita Süssmuth in 2014
Apr 2014 · by People Forever
Rita Süssmuth in the Bundestag, 2021
Nov 2021 · by People Forever
Rita Süssmuth in 1997, during her Bundestag presidency
by People Forever
Same, my mother kept a newspaper clipping of her from that year.