chancellor website predecessor successor birth_place imagesize nationality party office profession birth_date term_start image article_title term_end name alma_mater
angela merkel -lsb- http://www.ronald-pofalla.de/ www.ronald-pofalla.de -rsb- thomas de maizière peter altmaier weeze , northrhine-westphalia 200px german cdu federal member of the bundestag minister of special affairs chief of the chancellery lawyer 15 may 1959 28 october 2009 1990 ronald pofalla 2007.jpg ronald pofalla
 17 december 2013 ronald pofalla university of cologne
ronald pofalla

ronald pofalla -lrb- born may 15 , 1959 in weeze -rrb- is a german politician .
he was the chief of staff of the german chancellery and a federal minister for special affairs from 2009 to 2013 as part of the second merkel cabinet .
from 2004 to 2005 he was deputy chairman of the cdu/csu 's parliamentary group in the bundestag , and served as the secretary general of the cdu from 2005 to 2009 , when he was appointed to cabinet , succeeding thomas de maizière as chief of staff .
pofalla studied social pedagogy at the fachhochschule in kleve .
after finishing with a diplom in 1981 he studied law at the university of cologne .
in 1991 he passed the second staatsexamen .
since that time pofalla has been licensed to work as a lawyer .
pofalla has been a member of the cdu since 1975 .
at first he was engaged in the junge union .
he was chairman of the ju in the state of north rhine-westphalia from 1986 to 1992 .
ronald pofalla has been repeatedly criticized for being rude towards other representatives of the bundestag and other secretaries of the german government .
in september 2011 he seriously insulted wolfgang bosbach , senior group leader of the cdu/csu-group in the bundestag after an in-house discussion about the enhancement of the european financial stability facility .
in january , 2014 it was reported that pofalla would be joining the supervisory board of deutsche bahn , the partly state-owned national rail network .
according to news reports he was taking up a `` specially created lobbying post '' said to carry compensation of more than a million euros a year .
his successor in the bundestag is thorsten hoffmann .
