Klaus von Dohnányi

Who is Klaus von Dohnányi?

Klaus von Dohnányi is a German politician. He is the son of jurist Hans von Dohnányi as well as a nephew of Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both his father and uncle were executed in 1945 as part of the anti-Nazi German Resistance. His younger brother Christoph is a conductor. He also has a sister, Barbara.

After studying law at the University of Munich, and later in the United States at Columbia, Stanford and Yale universities, Dohnányi started his career with the Max Planck Institute for International Private Law. He then moved to Ford Motor Company, the car manufacturer, working for the company in both Detroit and Cologne where he was head of the Planning Division. From 1960–67, he was a Managing Partner of the Institute for Market Research and Management Consulting in Munich.

In 1969 he was elected to the German Federal Parliament from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and served in the Economics ministry as state secretary, and later as Federal Minister of Education and Science until 1981. That year he was elected First Mayor of his home city, and thus Minister-President of Hamburg, one of the federal States of Germany. He served two terms as First Mayor, from 24 June 1981 until 8 June 1988.