Dr h.c. Gernot Erler
 
Gernot Erler is Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office, a position he has occupied since November 2005. Within the Federal Foreign Office, he is concerned in particular with Germany’s relations with Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Africa.
Erler was born 1944 in Meissen, Germany, and studied history, Slavic languages and politics in Berlin and Freiburg from 1963-1967. He was editor for a publishing firm, academic assistant at Freiburg University and head of a publishing house from 1967-1987.
Erler has been a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) since 1970. From 1983-1998 Erler was a member of the Executive Committee of the Baden-Württemberg SPD. He has been a member of the German Bundestag for Freiburg since 1987 and the directly elected representative of that constituency since 1998. From 1998 to 2005, he was the Deputy Chairman of the SPD Parliamentary Group with responsibility for International Affairs, exercising a major influence on his party’s foreign and security policy. As coordinator of German-Russian intersocietal co-operation from 2003-2006, he helped to intensify civil-society dialogue between the two countries.
Gernot Erler’s major political interests are the development of Russia, the CIS and Eastern European countries, South East Europe and the problems on the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caspian region, as his many interviews and publications demonstrate. He is the author of both Global Monopoly. Weltpolitik nach dem Ende der Sowjetunion (Global Monopoly: Geopolitics following the Demise of the Soviet Union) and in 2005 Russland Kommt: Putins Staat - Der Kampf um Macht und Modernisierung (Russia is Coming: Putin’s State – The Struggle for Power and Modernization), in which he critically analyses current developments in Russia.
Erler, who speaks fluent Russian and English, is also the President of the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft (South-East European Association), member of the German steering committee of the “St. Petersburg Dialogue”, Chairman of the German-Bulgarian Forum and the West–Ost–Gesellschaft Südbaden (West-East Society of South Baden).