Antje Vollmer
Antje Vollmer (born 31 May 1943) is a German politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens. From 1994 to 2005, she was one of the vice presidents of the German parliament, the "Bundestag". Education and early career. Vollmer was born in Lübbecke (Westphalia). After graduating from Wittekind-Gymnasium Lübbecke in 1962, she studied Protestant theology in Berlin, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Paris, completing her first theological exam in 1968, her second in 1971 and received her doctorate in 1973. From 1969 to 1971, she was a research assistant at the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin. In 1971 she started a postgraduate  course in adult education, which she completed in 1975. From 1971 to 1974 she worked as a pastor in Berlin-Wedding, later as a teacher in an adult education center from 1976 to 1982. Political career. In the 1970s, she was politically active in the Maoist Anti-imperialist League ("Liga gegen den Imperialismus") but did not join the party. In 1985 Vollmer joined the Green Party, even though she already had been in the Bundestag since 1983 for that party. Due to the party principle of "rotation" she had to give up the parliamentary seat in 1985, but was reelected  in 1987 and again in 1994, 1998 and 2002. Vollmer was the first politician of the Green Party to be elected into the Presidium of the Bundestag, in November 1994. She remained vice president of the Bundestag until the 2005 elections, when she did not run for re-election. Life after politics. In 2009 Vollmer was awarded the Mercator Visiting Professorship for Political Management at the Universität Essen-Duisburg's NRW School of Governance. She gave both seminars and lectures at the university.