New German government to include first-ever Jewish woman minister Karin Prien, currently an education minister at the state level and spokesperson for her party’s Jewish Forum, is only second Jewish federal minister appointed since end of WWII
https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-german-government-to-include-first-ever-jewish-woman-minister/
Incoming German prime minister Friedrich Merz has named Karin Prien as education minister, the first Jewish woman appointed as a minister in the country, and only the second Jewish minister overall, since the Holocaust.
Prien, a lawyer who currently serves as education minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, is a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party, whose National Board she co-chairs. Prien serves as spokeswoman for the CDU’s Jewish Forum.
The cabinet named Monday is expected to enter office on May 6.
Born in Amsterdam, where her maternal grandparents moved from Germany before Hitler’s rise to power, Prien moved to Germany when she was young and took citizenship there at 26.
Though she was not raised religious, she grew up conscious that members of her father’s family had been killed in the Holocaust. When Prien became a German citizen, she said, it was for her mother “a big to-do, and she didn’t really like it.”
In 2016, after a visit to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem at age fifty, Prien began to speak openly about her Jewish heritage.
Three years later, when a German satirical party fielded candidates bearing the last names of key figures in the Nazi regime, Prien criticized the gag, saying, “To claim that one wants to fight right-wing populists in this way is either naive, a lie or at least not very intelligent.”
The incoming education minister has returned on several occasions to the theme of antisemitism following the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which started the ongoing war.
In November 2023, weeks after the attack, Prien posted to X a photo of a Star of David necklace she was wearing over her dress, writing: “Mom, today I’m wearing your little Star of David over my dress. For decades, you only wore it hidden beneath your clothing. You were afraid to admit you were Jewish in Germany. I thought that was an exaggeration, and I was wrong. You were right.”
Last May, Prien signed a petition opposing the movement for an academic boycott of Israel. She has also said that characterizing Israel as an “apartheid state” is antisemitic, according to the Ynet news site.
Prien has come under criticism in the past for her calls to limit immigration to Germany, saying in 2023 that Germany should welcome asylum seekers and refugees but must strike a “delicate balance” to reduce the number of economic migrants.
Last year, she said Germans should maintain a “civilized disdain” for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose popularity has surged in recent years.
From 1969 to 1974, Gerhard Jahn, whose Jewish mother was killed in Auschwitz, served as justice minister.
In 1922, before the Holocaust, the Jewish Walther Rathenau was appointed foreign minister. He only served some six months before he was assassinated by a far-right militia.
Comments are closed.
