Bärbel Bas comes from a humble background. Her father was a bus driver, her mother was a housewife.
Bass was born in 1968 in Duisburg, characterized by coal mining and iron and steel production in the industrial city in the Ruhar region. As a working class child with five siblings, secondary schools and an educational education were not a possible route.
He attended the secondary school, which made young people eligible for basic vocational training, and then became an office assistant. But when she was not enough for her, she made a second training, joined as a member of a Works Council and continued her education while working to complete the Dayer Evening Course Academy.
Get up
Bass starts a political career at the same time. In 1988, she joined Germany’s Center-Leam Social Democratic Party (SPD), became a city councilor and made her way to the country’s Parliament, Bundestag.
In 2009, she won her first direct parliamentary mandate in Duisburg and became the Parliamentary Secretary and Deputy Leader of the SPD Parliamentary Group. From 2021 to 2025, she was the chairman of Bundestag, the second largest state office in Germany. And now, she leads SPD with Lars Clingbeil.
At the SPD party conference in Berlin on Friday, Bass reported that she was not born in her political and professional career. “But I got a chance to step step by step,” he said. “I have continued to educate myself and do my work.”
BAS wants to ensure that this child of professional advancement is possible for many more people in Germany. “So why I joined SPD,” he said.
Mass rebuke for Lars Klingbil
The base belongs to the leftist wing of SPD. As the party’s co-leader, his role will be to act as Lars Clingbile’s counterweight, which belongs to the conservative wing of the party.
Now in his third term, the 47-year-old has co-headed the party since 2021. This makes it partly responsible for the disastrous electoral defeat of SPD in February, when it receives only 16.4% of the vote-the worst research at the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end.
Along with the clingbill, the bass will now have the work of reconstructing and moving the SPD. This would be a difficult task for a deep injured party, and it was shown at the party conference. The Klingbill was only built under the 65% of the party’s representatives – a poor result load with frustrations.
Solidarity
Immediately after the election defeat, Klingbeel deployed Himala to the new governing alliance with the leading orthodox Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian Sister Party, Christian Social Union (CSU), which was expanding the power of both the Finance Minister and the Vice Chancellor.
Saskia Escain, at the time her SPD co-chairman, until she finally gives up.
He said, “I found what comes within my own ranks, but as comments from outside, to be inappropriate,” she said in an interview. Stutgator ZitungIn which he accepted making mistakes. “But the way I was fatal, what dislikes and unpublished.”
Speaking on Friday, Bass agreed with Escain’s assessment. “You, Dear Sanskia, have had to feel that it can sometimes be alone in politics – even at a party with more than 350,000 members,” he said at the party conference. “You have to feel that solidarity is not always given – not even in social democracy.”
Embrace
For example, Bass said that she would consider whether she should be taken under the chairmanship of the party. But his decision was clear: “It is not acceptable for women to avoid responsibility for us. This is about visibility, respect – and yes, it’s about power!”
The BAS now not only in SPD, but also as the new Labor Minister of Germany. In that role, he has taken huge tasks to improve irregular benefits and patch the collapse pension system, of which the latter is suffering from demographic changes that will be sufficient to support the aging population.
Conservative social benefits are pushed to cut, something that the base has dismissed outright. He allegedly criticized the lazy Germans and tried to convert the word “welfare state” into a dirty word. It is “shamelessly punching down” he said, saying that a society should be in the heart of politics based on solidarity with dignified work.
Delegates celebrated their stand on Friday, elected as the new co-chairman of the party with 95% of the vote. Bass knows that he has a historically difficult task to protect SPD from further dissolution.
“But I always say: if it was easy, others could also do it,” he said.
This article was original in German.
