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Theresia Bauer
Theresia Bauer in Heidelberg in 2022
Member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg
In office June 2001 – June 2024
State Minister for Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg
In office May 2011 – September 2022
Personal details
Born	(1965-04-06) April 6, 1965 (age 59) Zweibrücken, West Germany
Political party	Alliance 90/The Greens
Alma mater	University of Mannheim University of Heidelberg

Theresia Bauer (born 6 April 1965) is a German politician from the Alliance 90/The Greens. She was a member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg from June 2001 to June 2024, representing the constituency of Heidelberg [de]. From May 2011 to September 2022, she was State Minister for Science, Research and the Arts [de]. Since June 2024, she has been Managing Director of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation [de].

Biography

Bauer was born on 6 April 1965 in Zweibrücken. She and her three siblings grew up in a Catholic home. She attended primary school in Kübelberg and then high school in Homburg, Saarland. After graduating from high school in 1984, she studied political science, economics and German studies at the University of Mannheim and the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg from 1985 to 1993 and graduated with a master of arts in 1993.

From 1992 to 1993, she worked in the Office for Women's Issues in the City of Heidelberg and then from 1993 to 1995 as a speaker for political education in the Society for Political Ecology. From 1995 until her election to the state parliament in 2001, she was managing director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Baden-Württemberg. From 2011 to 2022, she was also chairwoman of the Carl Zeiss Foundation. On 15 June 2024, she became managing director of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation [de]. She had previously resigned her mandate from the state parliament.

Theresia Bauer has two grown-up sons and lives in Heidelberg.

Political activities

As a member of the Greens

Bauer has been a member of the Green Party since 1987. Since 1999, Theresia Bauer has been a member of the Green Party's Heidelberg district executive committee, and from 2003 to 2011 she was chairwoman of the Heidelberg district association. Between 2001 and 2011 she was a member of the state executive committee of Alliance 90/The Greens Baden-Württemberg [de].

As a member of the state parliament

From June 2001, she was a member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg and, as in 2006, entered the state parliament via the state list. She was deputy chairwoman of her parliamentary group from May 2002 to 2011. Until 2011, she was a member of the Committee for Science, Research and the Arts and a member of the supervisory board of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation [de].

In the 2011 state election, Theresia Bauer won the direct mandate in the Heidelberg [de] constituency for the first time with 36.7 percent of the vote, which she was able to defend in 2016 with 41.0 percent and in 2021 with 41.7 percent.

On 14 June 2024, Bauer resigned from her state parliament mandate when she was appointed managing director of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. Marilena Geugjes [de] took her vacated seat.

As State Minister for Science, Research and the Arts

On 12 May 2011, she was sworn in for the first time as State Minister for Science, Research and the Arts [de] in the first Kretschmann cabinet in the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg and held this post in the successor governments Kretschmann II and Kretschmann III until September 2022 .

As minister, she abolished tuition fees, increased the number of places in the Bachelor's and Master's programmes (expansion of the "Higher Education Pact 2020 [de] 2012 " program, "Master 2016" programme) and reintroduced the organized student body [de] in Baden-Württemberg (after its abolition in 1977). Unlike some other federal states, Baden-Württemberg fully compensates for the universities' lost income due to the abolition of tuition fees. The amendment to the State University Act [de] that she initiated was developed in constant exchange with the universities and was therefore able to have it passed quietly. Bauer has set up commissions to deal with the reform of teacher training and with strengthening sustainability in science.

In autumn 2012, a state party conference of the Baden-Württemberg Greens decided to follow Bauer's line of not including a civil clause in the state university law, in consideration of the historical importance of academic freedom, and instead to significantly increase transparency in the area of ​​third-party funding . On 17 July 2013, Bauer presented a concept according to which music universities in Baden-Württemberg would save 4 million euros per year. This would have meant the elimination of hundreds of study places and numerous study courses and was therefore met with widespread criticism, whereupon Bauer abandoned her plans, but urged the music universities to develop a stronger profile and focus on the needs of the labour market.

University Financing Agreement, "Perspective 2020"

In January 2015, the new university funding agreement, "Perspective 2020", which Bauer played a key role in negotiating, was signed. This meant that the universities in Baden-Württemberg received 1.7 billion euros in additional funding from the state until 2020, some of which had been released because the federal government had completely taken over the BAföG funding. Of this, 1.1 billion euros went directly into basic funding. 600 million euros were made available to increase the university construction program. The new agreement gave the universities significantly more planning security. Baden-Württemberg was thus the first federal state to follow the recommendation of the German Science and Humanities Council to increase the basic funding of universities by 3 percent per year.

Reintroduction of tuition fees for non-EU citizens

In October 2016, in view of the enormous increase in student numbers, she proposed the reintroduction of tuition fees for non-EU citizens and second-year students as a measure to consolidate the Baden-Württemberg budget. The fees were approved in May 2017. The proposal included tuition fees of 1,500 euros per semester for non-EU citizens, 650 euros for second-year students and an increase in the administrative contribution for all students by 10 euros for the winter semester 2017-2018.

Innovationscampus Cyber Valley

In 2016, Bauer launched the Cyber ​​Valley initiative with partners from science and industry. It is one of the largest research collaborations for artificial intelligence in Europe, based in Tübingen. In addition to the universities of Tübingen and Stuttgart, partners include companies such as Daimler and Amazon. In a first step, the state and its partners invested around 165 million euros in the development of Cyber ​​Valley.

Innovationscampus "Heidelberg 4 Life"

In spring 2018, Bauer advocated the construction of two research buildings on the innovation campus in Heidelberg. At the campus of the research network between the Heidelberg University and the Max Planck Society, research is carried out on cells at the nano level. The campus was created on the initiative of Nobel Prize winner Stefan Hell and is supported by the state of Baden-Württemberg with 25 million euros.

Wind music academies in Plochingen and Staufen

Under Bauer's aegis, the state government provided 18 million euros for the Baden and Württemberg wind music academies by 2020. The funds will be used for the new building project of the Baden-Württemberg Music Center in Plochingen and the Music Academy of the German Wind Music Association in Staufen im Breisgau.

Mobility concepts for emission-free campuses (Mobility Lab)

In September 2018, Bauer launched the ideas competition "Mobility concepts for an emission-free campus" for the universities in Baden-Württemberg. The aim is to make emission-free mobility concepts an integral part of the universities in the future. The initiative is embedded in the BW Automotive Industry Strategy Dialogue, in which innovation potential for the automotive industry is to be researched across industry boundaries. The state's Ministry of Science is providing a total of 3.15 million euros for this purpose. The concepts of the Universities of Stuttgart and Hohenheim, the Biberach University of Applied Sciences, the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart [de] and the Stuttgart Technology University of Applied Sciences were awarded prizes.

Namibia Initiative of the State of Baden-Württemberg

During a visit to Namibia in March 2019, Minister Bauer presented the “Witbooi Bible and Whip” captured by German colonial troops in 1883 and announced further initiatives by the state of Baden-Württemberg to ensure that German-Namibian history is not forgotten and that reconciliation takes place. “We want to work through our shared colonial history together and open a new chapter of cooperation today”, she said on February 27 in Windhoek. This will include exchange programs and knowledge transfers as well as cooperation at university and archive level. New concepts for working through our shared history will also be developed. The goals of this project are to make the historical sources of the National Archives more accessible and to promote the exchange of knowledge between the countries.

Under Theresia Bauer, the Doctoral Association of the Universities of Applied Sciences Baden-Württemberg [de] was founded in 2022, which gave the universities of applied sciences the opportunity to exercise the right to award doctorates without the universities. The aim is to open up a new way for graduates of the universities of applied sciences to develop further scientifically and at the same time to strengthen the universities as an institution. In September 2022, Bauer granted the association, founded in May 2022, the right to award doctorates.

Candidacy for mayor of Heidelberg

On 21 March 2022, Bauer announced that she would run for mayor in Heidelberg on 6 November 2022. In this context, she resigned from her ministerial post. On 28 September 2022, Petra Olschowski [de] was sworn in as her successor.

Bauer received 28.6% of the vote in the first round. Since incumbent Eckart Würzner [de] missed the absolute majority of the votes with 45.9%, a second round of voting took place on November 27, 2022. All candidates except Würzner, Bauer and the Die-PARTEI candidate withdrew. In the second round of voting, Bauer received 42.4% of the vote and was thus defeated by the incumbent mayor Würzner, who received 54% of the vote.

Awards

After 2013, 2015 and 2016, she was named Science Minister of the Year by the German University Association [de] (DHV) for the fourth time in 2022. In 2015, 2,480 (9.4%) of the 26,519 members of the DHV took part in the vote. Bauer was rated by 294 participants and received an overall score of 2.85. In 2016, she received an overall score of 2.62. She was certified as being willing to engage in dialogue, politically rational and "partially even excellent".

Criticism

Dealing with the allowance affair at the Ludwigsburg University of Administrative Sciences

At the end of 2011, the former rector of the Ludwigsburg University of Public Administration [de] granted 17 professors financial allowances on an illegal basis. In four cases, a legal basis for the allowance was subsequently found. Due to the so-called protection of legitimate expectations, the other 13 professors continued to receive the allowances. In this context, Theresia Bauer was accused of not having forwarded the matter to the public prosecutor's office or the Court of Auditors, and of not having sufficiently supported the subsequent rector, Claudia Stöckle, in the clean-up work. On 19 January 2017, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) parliamentary groups announced that they wanted to set up a committee of inquiry. Since 20 July 2017, the committee of inquiry has also been dealing with matters relating to the salaries of professors at the University of Applied Sciences for Technology, Business and Design (HTWG) in Konstanz.

As the affair continued, Claudia Stöckle was dismissed as rector by the ministry in 2015. In 2018, the Stuttgart Administrative Court ruled that the removal of Rector Stöckle was unlawful. The reasons for the judgment also state that the so-called Stratthaus Commission, which Bauer set up to clarify the situation, was by no means free and independent in the court's opinion. Rather, it was used and directed by the Ministry of Science in order to make Stöckle's replacement, which had initially failed, possible. This contradicts Bauer's representation to parliament, the university committees and the public. The opposition parties then applied for Minister Bauer's dismissal, but this was rejected in the state parliament.

Tuition fees for non-EU students and second degree students

The step announced by Bauer in October 2016 to reintroduce tuition fees for non-EU students and second-year students met with widespread criticism from organisations and associations: Among those opposed to the proposal were student representatives, the German Student Union, the SPD and FDP parties, trade unions (GEW, DGB), the Action Alliance against Tuition Fees (ABS [de]), the Federal Association of Foreign Students (BAS [de]), the Free Association of Student Unions [de] and the Umbrella Association for Development Policy Baden-Württemberg e. V. (DEAB).

After the introduction of tuition fees, one fifth fewer international students enrolled than in the previous year. Several students have filed a lawsuit against the fees before the administrative courts of Freiburg and Karlsruhe. However, according to the State Statistical Office, the number of international students rose again by 8.7% in the winter semester of 2018/19.

Relationship with the student body

As Minister for Science, Art and Culture, Theresia Bauer reintroduced the organized student body in Baden-Württemberg. Student representatives, however, criticized the minister's dealings with the student bodies: for example, the representatives only learned about the planned introduction of tuition fees for non-EU students and second degree students from the press. This approach is repeated with the planned cuts to the political mandate of the student body. The state student representation sees this as a "gross breach of trust" and is calling for the minister to resign.

Memberships

• Senate of the Max Planck Society
• Senate of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Publications

• Politische Intelligenz? Ein Blick aus der Praxis zwischen Politik und Wissenschaft. In: Rainer M. Holm-Hadulla, Joachim Funke, Michael Wink (Hrsg.): Intelligenz: Theoretische Grundlagen und praktische Anwendungen. Heidelberg University Publishing, 2022, ISSN 2509-7822. 
• Theorie – Praxis – und zurück. Als Politologin im Parlament. In: Matthias Catón, Julia Leininger, Philip Stöver, Claudia Ziller (Hrsg.): Politikwissenschaft im Beruf. Münster 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-8360-7. 
• Teilzeitbeschäftigung von Frauen im europäischen Vergleich am Beispiel Schwedens, Großbritanniens und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In: Ulla Kilchenmann (Hrsg.): Flexibel oder flexibilisiert? Chancen und Fallen der Teilzeitarbeit von Frauen. Zürich 1992, ISBN 978-3-905493-35-1. 
• „Wir war’n die jüngste der Parteien“. In: Winne Hermann, Wolfgang Schwegler-Rohmeis (Hrsg.): Grüner Weg durch schwarzes Land. Edition Erdmann, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-522-62680-X. 

External links

• Persönliche Internetpräsenz
• Abgeordneten-Seite bei der Grünen-Fraktion im Landtag von Baden-Württemberg
• Abgeordnetenprofil beim Landtag Baden-Württemberg in der 17. Wahlperiode
• Theresia Bauer on abgeordnetenwatch.de
• Leonie Seifert: Die Musterschülerin. In: Die Zeit No. 9 vom 26. Februar 2015 Seite 64 Chancen

Einzelnachweise

1. "Wechsel in der Stiftungsverwaltung: Petra Olschowski übernimmt Vorsitz". Retrieved 2024-01-02.
2. "Theresia Bauer wird neue Geschäftsführerin der Baden-Württemberg Stiftung". bwstiftung.de. 2024-06-15. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
3. "Zitat" (in German). Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg. 2019-02-27. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
4. "Namibia-Initiative des Landes" (in German). Retrieved 2020-02-20.
5. Theresia Bauer (2022-03-21). "Ich möchte Oberbürgermeisterin für Heidelberg werden". Theresia Bauer (in German). Retrieved 2022-03-21.
6. "Ergebnis". Retrieved 2022-11-06.
7. "Ergebnis". Retrieved 2022-11-27.
8. "„Wissenschaftsministerin des Jahres": Theresia Bauer holt den Titel –". Stuttgarter Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2016-02-16.
9. Nils Mayer (2017-01-19), "Verwaltungshochschule Ludwigsburg: Opposition will Rolle von Bauer klären", Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Stuttgart, Germany, retrieved 2017-01-21
10. Universität Hohenheim. "Offener Brief an Theresia Bauer: Verfasste Studierendenschaft" (in German). Retrieved 2017-01-21.
11. "Stellungnahme zum Anhörungsentwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Landeshochschulgebührengesetzes und des Akademiengesetzes in Baden-Württemberg | Deutsches Studentenwerk" (in German). Retrieved 2017-01-22.
12. DGB Baden-Württemberg. "DGB Baden-Württemberg | DGB lehnt Wiedereinführung von Studiengebühren grundsätzlich ab" (in German). Retrieved 2017-01-22.
13. Aktionsbündnis gegen Studiengebühren. "Stellungnahme des Aktionsbündnis gegen Studiengebühren (ABS) zum Studiengebührengesetz BW vom 17. November 2016: Aktionsbündnis gegen Studiengebühren" (in German). Retrieved 2017-01-22.
14. "Pressemitteilung: Kabinettsbeschluss in Baden-Württemberg zu Studiengebühren für ausländische Studierende | Bundesverband ausländischer Studierender". Retrieved 2017-01-22.
15. fzs – freier zusammenschluss von studentInnenschaften. "fzs – Keine rassistischen Studiengebühren! – freier zusammenschluss von studentInnenschaften" (in German). Archived from the original on 2017-01-22. Retrieved 2017-01-22.
16. Uwe Kleinert. "DEAB". Retrieved 2017-01-22.
17. Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg. "Zahl der internationalen Studienanfänger steigt wieder deutlich an". Retrieved 2020-02-18.
18. ^ "Über mich". Theresia Bauer (in German). Retrieved 2023-04-04.

• Living people
• 1965 births
• People from Heidelberg
• Alliance 90/The Greens politicians
• Members of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg
• 21st-century German women politicians
• German Roman Catholics
• University of Mannheim alumni
• Heidelberg University alumni