Rainer Brüderle joined Germany’s Free Democratic Party (FDP) in 1973. He has been a member of the party’s federal executive since 1983 and acted as its Deputy Federal Chairman between 1995 and 2011.
After obtaining his university-entrance qualification in Landau in 1966, Brüderle, who was born in 1945, studied Journalism, Law, Economics and Political Sciences at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, where he graduated in Economics in 1971. After various teaching positions in the field of economic policy he held numerous senior posts with the city of Mainz, most recently that of Head of the Economic Affairs department.
He was elected to the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag in 1987, where he remained until 1998. He held the posts of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Economic Affairs, Transport, Agriculture and Viticulture in changing government coalitions.
Rainer Brüderle was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2013.
Between 2009 and 2011, he held the post of Federal Minister for the Economy and Technology. He was appointed chairman of his party’s parliamentary faction in 2011, a position he held until October 2013. Brüderle exited the Bundestag after the FDP failed to reach the five percent threshold in the 2013 general election.
After retiring from the Bundestag, Rainer Brüderle wrote a book that deals with the 2013 election year and the struggle for power within his party. The book “Jetzt rede ich” has been published in April 2014..