Roderich Kiesewetter (born 11 September 1963) is a former Bundeswehr general staff officer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since 2009.
Early life and career
After passing the German Abitur examination in 1982, Kiesewetter joined the German military artillery forces. From 1983 until 1986 he studied economics and organizational sciences at the Bundeswehr University Munich and the University of Texas at Austin. From 1995 to 1997 he attended the German General Staff Course at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg, being awarded the Heusinger prize for the best German graduate.
Having finished the studies in Hamburg, Kiesewetter was posted at the European Council, the NATO Headquarters in Brussels and Mons as well as in the German Ministry of Defence. Besides that he also used to be commander of a German army battalion and took part in different military missions abroad. From 2006 to 2009 he was head of the offices of the then Chiefs of Staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Rainer Schuwirth and Karl-Heinz Lather in Brunssum, Belgium. In 2009 he had a post at the Rapid Reaction Forces Operations Command (Kommando operative Führung Eingreifkräfte), until he was elected member of parliament on 17 October 2009 and left the army as a colonel.
Political career
Kiesewetter has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 2009 federal elections.
In the Bundestag, Kiesewetter is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as deputy chairman of the Sub-Committee for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. In his parliamentary group he serves as spokesman for disarmament and on civilian crisis prevention. Within the Committee on Foreign Affairs, he is his group's rapporteur on the Balkans, the Mediterranean and Maghreb countries; he previously also covered energy policy.
In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections, Kiesewetter was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on foreign affairs, defense policy and development cooperation, led by Thomas de Maizière and Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Between 2014 and 2015, Kiesewetter represented the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in a crossparty committee headed by former defense minister Volker Rühe to review the country's parliamentary rules on military deployments. From April 2014, he served as member of the German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal; he resigned from the body in January 2015, citing an increased need to focus on his duties in the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In addition to his committee assignments, Kiesewetter is a member of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 2019, he has been a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.
In February 2013, Kiesewetter accompanied President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert to Morocco for meetings with the president of the House of Representatives, Karim Ghellab, the President of the Assembly of Councillors, Mohamed Cheikh Biadillah, Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, and Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani. In early 2015, he joined Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on official trips to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria; later that year, he also accompanied him on a trip to Cuba; it was the first time a German foreign minister had visited the country since German reunification in 1990.
Political positions
Domestic politics
Ahead of the Christian Democrats’ leadership election in 2018, Kiesewetter publicly endorsed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to succeed Angela Merkel as the party's chair. He later endorsed Norbert Röttgen as Kramp-Karrenbauer's successor at the party’s 2021 leadership election.
In September 2020, Kiesewetter was one of 15 members of his parliamentary group who joined Röttgen in writing an open letter to Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer which called on Germany and other EU counties to take in 5000 immigrants who were left without shelter after fires gutted the overcrowded Mória Reception and Identification Centre on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Ahead of the 2021 national elections, Kiesewetter endorsed Armin Laschet as the Christian Democrats' joint candidate to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel.