Dead Celebrity Alert

Annemarie Renger was the first woman to become president (Speaker) of the Bundestag (lower house of the German parliament). She won wide acclaim during her four years in the post. She had a dominant grasp of procedure, was crisp and clear in her rulings and utterly unyielding in her imposition of discipline. Behind her usually unfailing courtesy lay an iron determination. As Norbert Lammert, the present Speaker, put it: “She acted with as much dignity as decisiveness in the chair.”

When her party, the Social Democrats, lost its tenuous majority again in the Bundestag and the speakership reverted to the Christian Democrats in 1976, Renger remained a deputy Speaker until she gave up her seat in 1990 at the age of 70. …

Annemarie Renger, parliamentarian and Speaker of the Bundestag, was born on October 7, 1919. She died on March 3, 2008, aged 88 … Read full obituary

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