Andrea Fischer

After graduating from high school, Andrea Fischer completed an apprenticeship as an offset printer. She then worked as a printer and proofreader and additionally completed her studies in economics at the Free University of Berlin. After completing her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the European Parliament, the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Federal Insurance Institution for Employees (Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte).

She has been a member of the German Green Party since 1985, before that she was a member of the Group of International Marxists (GIM), the then German section of the Fourth International. From 1994 to 2002 she was a member of the German Bundestag. After the 1998 federal elections, she was appointed Federal Minister of Health on October 27, 1998, as a member of the federal government headed by Gerhard Schröder. She resigned from office on January 9, 2001, in the wake of the BSE crisis. Shortly afterwards, the resignation of the Federal Minister of Agriculture, Karl-Heinz Funke, was also announced. In the film Schlachtfeld Politik – Die finstere Seite der Macht (Battlefield Politics – The dark side of power) by Stephan Lamby, she describes that there was massive pressure from the party leadership. The film asks whether Andrea Fischer had to resign after Joschka Fischer's wild years (Der Spiegel edition 2/2001), not so much because of the BSE crisis as to relieve Joschka Fischer.[1]

Fischer was elected as the leading Alliance 90/The Greens candidate in the Berlin election on September 18, 2011, in the district assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung) of Berlin's Mitte borough, where she was chair of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group until October 30, 2012.[2]

On October 15, 2012, Fischer was elected by the Regional Assembly to the office of Finance Director of the Hanover Region, which had been restructured by Regional President Hauke Jagau.[3] It manages the areas of finance, facility management and hospitals. In April 2013 she took over as chairman of the supervisory board of the Klinikum Region Hanover.[4]

After her time as an active politician, Fischer became active as a freelance publicist and lobbyist in international health policy. From 2001 to 2009 she was patron of the Federal Association of Experienced Psychiatrists (Bundesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener).[5] From 2004 to 2006 Fischer was a member of the management team of the consulting firm Institut für Organisationskommunikation (IFOK GmbH), where she was responsible for health and nutrition. Previously, she was head of the Center of Canadian Universities (CUC) in Berlin.[6]

Fischer is Vice Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Man, Ethics and Science (Institut Mensch, Ethik und Wissenschaft).[7]

From 2006 to 2009 she worked at the PR agency Pleon in Munich, where she headed the medical-pharmaceutical area of healthcare.[8] Since then she has been self-employed in this field.[9] Since April 2006, Fischer has been co-editor of GesundheitsNachrichten, a specialist journal for the health industry.[10]

From October 2002 to the end of 2003, Andrea Fischer and BamS editor-in-chief Claus Strunz hosted the n-tv programme Grüner Salon.[11] She appears regularly in broadcasts on Deutschlandradio Kultur, where she presents new publications of German-language crime literature.

Fischer supported the Berlin Pro-Reli campaign, which failed in April 2009, as a testimonial. Since 2008 she has been the diocesan leader of the Malteser Hilfsdienst in Berlin.[12]

As a young woman, Fischer left the Catholic Church, into which she rejoined a good twenty years later.[13]