Johann WadePhul: Who is Germany’s designated Foreign Minister?

It is a gray November day in 2019 in Berlin. Johann WadePhul’s working day is actually over, but he still takes time for our group from Kiel students in the evening. We traveled to the capital as part of an excursion to media work in foreign and security policy- one of WadePhul’s specialist areas. The CDU politician welcomes us in a room in the Jakob-Kaiser house next to the Reichstag building. We sit down together at the large, light brown conference table. It has long since gotten dark outside, but WadePhul looks wide awake and faces the hail of questions: “How can the Bundeswehr be able to defend? How does Germany deal with Trump? And how does the Union react to the AfD?”

That was five and a half years ago. And even today WadePhul in political Berlin (again) deals with the same topics: Donald Trump is back as US president and jeopardizes the security of Ukraine and Europe. In the meantime, Germany continues to the right, the AfD lies on the same in individual surveys after the Bundestag election with the CDU.

WadePhul will soon have to answer how these situations can be dealt with. Because the CDU politician becomes Foreign Minister in the new federal government of the Union and SPD. He succeeds the Greens politician Annalena Baerbock.

Johann Walter David Rudolf WadePhul, as his name is called with a full name, was born in Husum on the North Sea in 1963 and joined the Junge Union and CDU in 1982. At the same time, he began to serve as a time soldier in the Bundeswehr. From 1986, law was followed by law at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, ten years later the doctorate, and since 2009 WadePhul has been a specialist lawyer for medical and social law.

His political career also picked up speed: from 1997 to 2000 WadePhul was general secretary of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein. He then took over the state chair of the party for two years. WADEPHUL has been district chairman of the CDU Rendsburg-Eckernförde since 2006, and since 2009 he has also represented the constituency as a member of the German Bundestag. The politician lives in Molfsee, a community near the state capital Kiel, is married and has three children.

After the 2017 Bundestag election, WadePhul became deputy chairman of the Union faction with a focus on defense, foreign and security policy. As Vice President of the NATO parliamentary assembly, he speaks for security -political cooperation in Europe and for the unrestricted support of Ukraine.

With the takeover of the Federal Foreign Office by the CDU, WadePhul expects a strengthening of German foreign policy. “In recent years it was the case that the Federal Foreign Office always understood a bit of a corrective organ,” said the Vice Chair of the Union Group on the sidelines of the presentation of the black and red coalition agreement in Berlin. “It no longer has to be that way, but you can go into coordination processes in advance” – a swipe towards his predecessor Baerbock. It was often accused of an instructive way compared to other countries. Means: Feminist foreign policy will probably not exist under WadePhul.

With regard to the USA, WadePhul said: “Almost only the president is important”. It is all the more important that “Germany also develops a voice there”. In it he sees a great opportunity for the Foreign Ministry and for the Chancellery. WadePhul also repeatedly emphasizes the importance of transatlantic relationships. When asked about Trump’s radical customs policy, the CDU politician told the broadcaster: “We should leave the hand stretched out, be ready to negotiate, offer something, but of course also say that we could also defend ourselves if negotiations are not going well.”

With Russia you also have to come to the negotiating table, WadePhul recently said at the NATO meeting in Brussels. As long as Germany is still affected by Russian cyber and hybrid attacks every day, it is not possible to normalize relationships with Moscow. The CDU politician speaks from experience: At the beginning of the year, WadePhul became a Wadefool when he fell on the fake call of a Russian comedian duo.

As a foreign minister, he needs a little more skill and less gullure in dealing with the USA and Russia. Because the man from Schleswig-Holstein will soon be dealing with the geopolitical heavyweights Trump and Putin. Not an easy one, but a task that was apparently trusted in the new federal government.

More sources:“”, “”, With material of the dpa