Eduard Oswald © DBT/Urban

Eduard Oswald is one of the Vice-Presidents of the German Bundestag in the 17th electoral term. He was nominated by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group to succeed Gerda Hasselfeldt, who stepped down as Vice-President on 16 March. Eduard Oswald is an experienced politician who has been a Member of the Bundestag since 1987. He was born in Augsburg in 1947, and is the directly elected Member representing the Augsburg-Land constituency in Bavaria.

Former federal building minister

Eduard Oswald studied business administration at a university of applied sciences, and is a former lower secondary school teacher. He is Catholic, married, and has two children. He joined the Christian Social Union (CSU) in 1966; he was a member of Augsburg county council from 1972 to 1998, and a Member of the Bavarian Land Parliament from 1978 to 1986.

He is a member of the executive committee of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag and served as its Parliamentary Secretary from May 1992 to January 1998.

Chair of three major committees

From 14 January to 26 October 1998, Eduard Oswald served as Federal Minister for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development under Dr Helmut Kohl in his final term as Federal Chancellor.

In the period since the 1998 Bundestag elections, he has chaired three major Bundestag committees: the Committee on Transport, Building and Housing from 1998 until the 2005 Bundestag elections, the Finance Committee from 2005 to 2009, and the Committee on Economics and Technology from November 2009 until his election as Vice-President.