Annemarie Renger — born Annemarie Wildung — was the first woman to hold the position of President of the Bundestag.

 

She attended an all-female high school before her scholarship was withdrawn in 1934 due to her parents' anti-Nazi stance. Instead, she entered vocational training as a bookseller and publisher, going on to work in this area.

 

In 1938, she married Emil Ernst Renger, and gave birth to a son, Rolf, in the same year (who died in 1998). Emil died in 1944 in the war, as did three of Annemarie's four brothers. In 1945, Renger joined the SPD, and her political career started as leader Kurt Schumacher's private secretary. They later began a relationship, staying together until his death in 1952. She married Yugoslavian economist Aleksandar Lončarević in 1965, who died in 1973.

 

In 1953, she gained a seat in the Bundestag, among other roles serving as a member of the Advisory Conference of the European Council and the Western European Union. In 1972's federal election, the SPD won the majority of seats for the first time in German history, and Renger was elected President of the Bundestag. In 1979, she was nominated by her party to run as Federal President, but lost to the CDU/CSU.

 

Renger was committed to numerous social organisations, taking presidential and board roles at the following:

• a German chapter of Samaritans International
• McDonald’s Kinderhilfe
• Association of Former Members of the German Bundestag and the European Parliament
• Central Association of Organisations of Democratic Resistance Fighters and the Persecuted
• Kurt Schumacher Society
• European Movement International

 

She also received numerous distinctions, including the German Federal Cross of Merit, for her cultivation of German-Israeli relations.

 

Sources:

Wikipedia

Deutscher Bundestag