Dagmar Wöhrl

Early life and career

As Dagmar Gabriele Winkler, she represented Germany in various beauty pageants: the 1973 Miss Universe beauty pageant where she did not place; the Miss International 1977 beauty pageant where she placed as 1st runner-up ; the Miss World 1977 beauty pageant (after she won the Miss Germany beauty pageant 1977) where she placed as 2nd runner-up; the 1977 Miss Europe beauty pageant (held in March 1978 having been postponed in 1977, yet still called Miss Europe 1977).

Political career

In 1994, 1998, 2002, 2005 and 2005, Wöhrl was elected to the German Bundestag, representing Nuremberg North. In the first government of Chancellor Angela Merkel between 2005 and 2009, she served as parliamentary Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Germany) under ministers Michael Glos (2005-2009) and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (2009).

In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2009 federal elections, Wöhrl was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on economic affairs and energy policy, led by Guttenberg and Rainer Brüderle. She has since served as Chairwoman of the Committee for Economic Cooperation and Development of the German Bundestag. She is also a member of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with Arabic-Speaking States in the Middle East, which is in charge of maintaining inter-parliamentary relations with Bahrain, Irak, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Palestinian territories.

Since 2009, Wöhrl has also been serving on the Committee on Cultural and Media Affairs, where she is her parliamentary group's rapporteur on creative industries.

In March 2015, Wöhrl accompanied German President Joachim Gauck on a state visit to Peru. In addition, she joined the delegations of Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller to Nigeria (2014), Ghana (2015), Liberia (2015) and the Central African Republic (2015).

In April 2016, Wöhrl announced that she would not stand in the 2017 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term. By early 2017, media reported that she would be joining the jury of Die Höhle der Löwen, a VOX reality television format featuring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas in order to secure investment finance from a panel of venture capitalists.

Development policy

When several Western countries froze their official development assistance for Uganda in response to the country's Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2014, Wöhrl warned that "stopping all the aid would only hit the poorest of poor once again."

Peace-keeping on the African continent

Wöhrl has in the past voted in favor of German participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions as well as in United Nations-mandated European Union peacekeeping missions on the African continent, such as in Somalia – both Operation Atalanta and EUTM Somalia – (2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), Darfur/Sudan (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), South Sudan (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), Mali – both EUTM Mali and MINUSMA – (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016), the Central African Republic (2014), and Liberia (2015). She abstained from the vote on extending the mandate for Operation Atalanta in 2011.

European integration

On February 27, 2015, Wöhrl voted against the Merkel government’s proposal for a four-month extension of Greece's bailout; in doing so, she joined a record number of 29 dissenters from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group who expressed skepticism about whether the Greek government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras could be trusted to deliver on its reform pledges. On July 17, she voted against the government’s proposal to negotiate a third bailout for Greece.

Corporate boards

Non-profit organizations

Personal life

Wöhrl is the wife of the German CEO Hans Rudolf Wöhrl. In 2001 she was subject of much media coverage after her younger son Emanuel died because of an accident. Her older son Marcus ran for the European Parliament in 2004.