Guido Westerwelle (; 27 December 1961 – 18 March 2016) was a German politician who served as Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011, being the first openly gay person to hold any of these positions. He also led the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) from 2001 until he stepped down in 2011. A lawyer by profession, he was a member of the Bundestag from 1996 to 2013. For his party he was also its first and so far only Chancellor candidate in the 2002 federal election, becoming also the youngest candidate for the office of Chancellor to date. Early life and education Guido Westerwelle was born in Bad Honnef in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. His parents were lawyers. He graduated from Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in 1980 after academic struggles resulted in his departure from previous institutions where he was considered an average student at best, but substandard otherwise. He studied law at the University of Bonn from 1980 to 1987. Following the First and Second State Law Examinations in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he began practising as an attorney in Bonn in 1991. In 1994, he earned a doctoral degree in law from the University of Hagen. Career in the FDP Westerwelle joined the FDP in 1980. He was a founding member of the Junge Liberale (Young Liberals), which became the party's official youth organization in 1983, and was its chairman from 1983 to 1988. In a 1988 newspaper interview, he singled out the FDP's rejection of an amnesty for tax offenders and its diminished enthusiasm for nuclear power as fruits of the youth wing's labors. He was a member of the executive board of the FDP from 1988, and in 1994, he was appointed secretary general of the party. In 1996, Westerwelle was first elected a member of the Bundestag, filling in for Heinz Lanfermann, who had resigned from his seat after entering the Ministry of Justice. In the 1998 national elections, he was re-elected to parliament. As his parliamentary group's home affairs spokesman, he was instrumental in swinging the FDP behind a 1999 government bill to make German citizenship available to children born in Germany of non-German parents. In 2001, Westerwelle succeeded Wolfgang Gerhardt as party chairman. Gerhardt, however, remained chairman of the FDP's parliamentary group. Westerwelle, the youngest party chairman at the