Sigmar Hartmut Gabriel (born 12 September 1959) is a German politician who was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2018 and the vice-chancellor of Germany from 2013 to 2018. He was Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 2009 to 2017, which made him the party's longest-serving leader since Willy Brandt. He was the Federal Minister of the Environment from 2005 to 2009 and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2013 to 2017. From 1999 to 2003 Gabriel was Minister-President of Lower Saxony. He represented Salzgitter – Wolfenbüttel in the Bundestag. Gabriel is a member of the Seeheimer Kreis, an official internal grouping of the party with liberal economic positions. Early life and education Gabriel was born in Goslar, West Germany, son of Walter Gabriel (1921–2012), a municipal civil servant, and Antonie Gabriel (1922–2014), a nurse. Gabriel's parents divorced in 1962, and for the next six years he lived with his father and grandmother Lina Gabriel, while his sister lived with their mother. After a lengthy custody battle his mother was awarded custody for both children in 1969. Gabriel's father was a Lutheran originally from Hirschberg im Riesengebirge in Silesia (now Poland), while his mother was a Catholic originally from Heilsberg in the Ermland (Warmia) region of East Prussia who had most recently lived in Königsberg; both parents came as refugees to West Germany during the flight and expulsion of Germans at the end of the Second World War. Sigmar Gabriel has described his family history as a "wild story of flight and expulsion" and noted that his parents dealt with the trauma of expulsion in different ways. According to Gabriel, his father was physically and emotionally abusive to him and was an enthusiastic supporter of the national socialist ideology "until his dying breath;" However, Walter Gabriel never saw active service during the war due to suffering from polio. His mother was involved in relief and solidarity work for Poland during the period of martial law in Poland. Sigmar Gabriel attended school in Goslar, and served as a soldier in the German Air Force from 1979 to 1981. He studied politics, sociology and German at the University of Göttingen from 1982 and passed the first state examination as a grammar school teacher in 1987 and the second state examination in 1989. Political career Gabriel joined the SPD in 1977 and soon