Tweet
Germany elects its first two black MPs in breakthrough hailed as 'historic'
Germany has elected its first black MPs in a landmark development for a country where ethnic minorities have been slow to emerge into national politics.
Charles Huber (left) and Karamba Diaby the first two black MPs to be elected in Germany Photo:
Damien McElroy By Damien McElroy, Berlin7:27PM BST 23 Sep 2013
Karamba Diaby and Charles Huber were elected for rival Left and Right political factions in Sunday's general election to Germany's parliament, the Bundestag. Both have Senegalese backgrounds but followed very different paths into politics.
Mr Diaby, 51, arrived in the former East Germany as a Communist exchange student, able only to identify two uniquely German institutions: the Bundesliga football league and BMW car company. He went on to qualify as a chemist and has lived in the eastern city of Halle since 1986. He now represents the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
"My election into the German Parliament is of historical importance," he said yesterday.
Mr Huber, 56, is a well-known television actor, having featured for years in a popular peak-time detective series, Der Alte (The Old Man). A nephew of a former president of Senegal, Mr Huber, whose mother is German, played the character of a police superintendent Henry Johnson between 1986 and 1997.
The two men are at the forefront of the gradually increasing diversity of German politics. The conservative Christian Democratic Union of Mr Huber and Chancellor Angela Merkel also secured its first Muslim MP, a woman, in the election.
Cemile Yusuf, Turkish-origin of Muslim background and Christian Democratic Union member of parliament.
Germany has elected its first black MPs in a landmark development for a country where ethnic minorities have been slow to emerge into national politics.
Charles Huber (left) and Karamba Diaby the first two black MPs to be elected in Germany Photo:
Damien McElroy By Damien McElroy, Berlin7:27PM BST 23 Sep 2013
Karamba Diaby and Charles Huber were elected for rival Left and Right political factions in Sunday's general election to Germany's parliament, the Bundestag. Both have Senegalese backgrounds but followed very different paths into politics.
Mr Diaby, 51, arrived in the former East Germany as a Communist exchange student, able only to identify two uniquely German institutions: the Bundesliga football league and BMW car company. He went on to qualify as a chemist and has lived in the eastern city of Halle since 1986. He now represents the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
"My election into the German Parliament is of historical importance," he said yesterday.
Mr Huber, 56, is a well-known television actor, having featured for years in a popular peak-time detective series, Der Alte (The Old Man). A nephew of a former president of Senegal, Mr Huber, whose mother is German, played the character of a police superintendent Henry Johnson between 1986 and 1997.
The two men are at the forefront of the gradually increasing diversity of German politics. The conservative Christian Democratic Union of Mr Huber and Chancellor Angela Merkel also secured its first Muslim MP, a woman, in the election.
Cemile Yusuf, Turkish-origin of Muslim background and Christian Democratic Union member of parliament.
Comment