Thilo Sarrazin

He grew up in Recklinghausen in a Huguenot family that was originally of southern French origin. His mother came from a family of former West Prussian landowners. From the age of seven he attended a children's home in Bavaria. After graduating from high school at the Gymnasium Petrinum and completing his military service, Sarrazin studied economics at the University of Bonn from 1967 to 1971. He then worked as an assistant at the Institute for Industrial and Transport Policy at the University of Bonn. In 1973, he received his doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.). From November 1973 to December 1974, he was a research associate at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. He also joined the SPD in the mid-1970s. Sarrazin worked in the federal civil service from 1975. From 1975 to 1978, he was an advisor at the Federal Ministry of Finance (1977 secondment to the IMF in Washington, D.C.). He then became a department head at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs until 1981; from 1981, again at the Federal Ministry of Finance.

In private life, he married Ursula Breit nit whom he became the father of two sons. In October 1981, Sarrazin became office manager and assistant to Federal Finance Minister Hans Matthöfer before succeeding Manfred Lahnstein. In the Federal Ministry of Finance, he continued as head of several departments, including the "Inner-German Relations" department from 1989 to 1990, which prepared the German-German monetary, economic and social union. Ind