When she was still someone – and she was someone all her life, but not always the number one – one word was enough: Heide! The SPD in Schleswig-Holstein didn’t have to put up much more posters during Heide Simonis’ last election campaign, in 2005. She was the “you know me” woman in German politics long before Angela Merkel became one. Heide Simonis, a small woman with great radiance, one who was first in many things she tackled; youngest member of the Bundestag of her time (1977), first finance minister in Schleswig-Holstein. Above all, she was: the first female Prime Minister of a German federal state. She did in 1993, so it will be in the archives forever. Now she has died, a few days ago she was 80 years old.
Heide Simonis: Obituary for the first German Prime Minister – politics
