Birgit Breuel

Who is Birgit Breuel?

Birgit Breuel is a German politician, representative of the German Christian Democratic Union. She is the former President of the Treuhand Agency, and Commissioner General of the Expo 2000 in Hannover, and later worked in several honorary positions.

Birgit Münchmeyer came from a Lower Saxony family of traders and private bankers. She is the daughter of merchant bankers who owned the bank Münchmeyer & Co.. On 8 August 1959 she married the Hamburg merchant Ernst-Jürgen Breuel.

Birgit Breuel studied political science at the Universities of Hamburg, Oxford and Geneva. In 1966, she entered into the CDU. From 1978 to 1986 she was Minister of Economy and Transport in Lower Saxony, then to 1990 was the Lower Saxony Finance Minister. In 1990, Breuel was elected to the Executive Board of the Treuhand - a holding firm responsible for the sale of GDR state assets. A year later she became the successor of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. Ironically Rohwedder was cautious about the sale of most state assets, favouring a worker owned solution if possible, Breuel favoured quick privatization. She departed in 1995 from this office. Breuel then became Commissioner-General of the World Expo Expo 2000 in Hanover.