Green politican Jürgen Trittin is Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in Germany.
He was born on July 25, 1954 in Bremen. He earned an university degree in Social Economy in Göttingen and worked as journalist.
His political career started in 1982 as Secretary of the Alternative-Greens-Initiative List (AGIL) Group in the Göttingen City Council (until 1984). From 1984 to 1985 he worked as Press Spokesman for the Greens Group in the Lower Saxony State Assembly, which he joined in 1985 as member of the state parliament.
From 1990 to 1994 Jürgen Trittin was the Lower Saxony Minister for Federal and European Affairs and the Head of the Lower Saxony State Mission to the Federal Government in a coalition cabinet with the SPD, lead by then minister president of Lower Saxony Gerhard Schröder (SPD).
After Schröder won the state elections in 1994, giving his SPD a majority, Trittin worked as Member of the Lower Saxony State Assembly and as Deputy Chairman of the Alliance 90/The Greens Group in that parliament. In 1994 he became Spokesman of the national Green Party.
In 1998, Trittin was elected as Member of the federal parliament (Bundestag). At the same time he discontinued his work as Spokesman, because party statutes don't allow the combination of being a member of parliament and being a member of the party executive.
In the federal red-green coaltion cabinet, he was declared Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, which he is since October 1998.
Trittin is single and father to one daughter.
