German politician outs himself

Wowereit: "I am gay and that's a good thing"

BERLIN, Germany -- A mayoral candidate in Berlin has become the first politician from a major German party to reveal he is gay.

Klaus Wowereit, 47, became a national celebrity and stunned the political establishment when he ended a speech to fellow Social Democrats (SPD) saying: "I am gay and that's a good thing."

Political scientist Bernhard Wessels of Berlin’s Free University said: "He was a nobody in Berlin and now almost everyone in Germany has heard his name -- but not because of his politics, because he admitted he's gay.

"It was a courageous step and a very smart move. It's been well-received."

Wowereit says his coming out was not all voluntary. According to the Associated Press, he did so because of rumours that conservative tabloids were planning to make an issue of it, after news leaked that he told party leaders last week he was gay to warn that it could be used in the campaign.

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He is expected to be named mayor this week when the SPD formally end their decade-old partnership in the local assembly with the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) following a financial crisis in the city.

Ruling mayor Eberhard Diepgen is expected to be ousted in a no-confidence vote that begins on Thursday.

Berlin's 10-year-old governing coalition of the SPD and the CDU collapsed after the state SPD disagreed on the handling of a crisis triggered by huge losses at a state-owned bank.

Wowereit is expected to preside over a minority government coalition with the left-leaning Greens, supported by the reform communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), until new elections can be held in the autumn.

Wowereit -- a lawyer who has been in the city assembly since 1995 -- is seen as the architect of the SPD's strategy to oust Diepgen.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who made no secret of his desire to get his SPD back in the mayor's office, has championed Wowereit and went out of his way to welcome the newly outed mayoral candidate.

"He is the man who puts Berlin first, the one who will lead the city out of the mess that the CDU caused," Schroeder said.

There are several leading politicians in Germany who are known within Berlin circles to be gay, but gays in the major parties had so far opted to remain silent, Reuters reported.

In Germany, the private lives of politicians have been off limits to the media.

Schroeder is on his fourth marriage, but that wasn't raised as an issue before his 1998 election win. And ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl's private life was strictly off-limits to reporters.