Friedbert Pflüger
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Friedbert Pflüger (March 6, 1955) is a member of the German Bundestag. He was elected to the list of the Christian Democratic Union in Lower Saxony.
After receiving his Abitur in Hannover, Pflüger studied political science and state law at the University of Göttingen, Bonn, and Harvard (US). In 1980 he received his master's degree at Bonn and in 1982 received his doctorate under Karl Dietrich Bracher with a thesis about US human rights policy in the 1970's.
From 1981 to 1984 he worked for the ruling mayor of Berlin. From 1984 until 1989, he was the press secretary for the Federal President of Germany, and then became a business leader in the Matuschka group.
Pflüger has been a member of the CDU since 1971. From 1977 until 1978 he was the national president of CDU student association. He was elected to the Bundestag in 1990.
Since 1998 he has been the party chief for the CDU in Lower Saxony, since 1999 the chief of the CDU committee for external and security policy, and since 2000 a member of the CDU executive committee. In 2002 he became the chief foreign policy speaker for the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag.
In March 2006 Pflüger was elected top candidate of the CDU for the elections in the State of Berlin in September. His party only got 21,3% of the votes,the CDU's worst result ever in Berlin.One reason could be the brevity of their election campaign,like Pflüger said himself.Possibly another reason is a statement Pflüger made in an interview for a local newspaper in Hannover.There he said:"My mother,my future parents-in-law and close friends live in Hannover.My home is Hannover." Members of other parties reproached him with lack of identification with Berlin.
Pflüger is a strong supporter of improved German-American relations and has been vocal regarding the threat posed to Europe and Germany by international terrorism. In 2004 he released a book, A New World War?: the Islamist Challenge to the West ("Ein neuer Weltkrieg? Die islamistische Herausforderung des Westens").
