Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States of AmericaAmbassador Ischinger presented his credentials to President George W. Bush on July 31, 2001.
He was born in 1946 near Stuttgart, Germany.
In 1963/64, he was an American Field Service foreign exchange student in Watseka, Illinois, where he graduated from the local high school in June 1964.
Mr. Ischinger studied law at the universities of Bonn/Germany and Geneva/Switzerland and obtained his law degree in 1972. He earned a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass., in 1973.
From 1973 to 1975, he served on the staff of the Secretary General of the United Nations in New York.
He joined the German Foreign Service in 1975, and has served in Washington, D.C., Paris, and in a number of senior functions in the German Foreign Office. From 1993 to 1995, Mr. Ischinger was Director of the Policy Planning Staff; from 1995 to 1998, as Director General for Political Affairs (Political Director), Mr. Ischinger participated in a number of international negotiating processes, including the Bosnia Peace Talks at Dayton, Ohio, the negotiations concerning the NATO-Russia Founding Act, as well as the negotiations on NATO enlargement and on the Kosovo crisis.
From 1998 to 2001, Wolfgang Ischinger was Staatssekretär (Deputy Foreign Minister) of the German Foreign Office.
Mr. Ischinger has published widely on foreign policy, security, and arms control policy as well as on European and transatlantic issues.
He serves on a number of non-profit boards, including the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the East-West Institute in New York, the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft Frankfurt, the Council on Public Policy Berlin, AFS Germany (American Field Service), Youth for Understanding, and “Humanity in Action”, New York. He is also Chairman of the Ambassadors Advisory Board of the Executive Council on Diplomacy in Washington, D.C.
Wolfgang Ischinger is married to Jutta Falke, a journalist. Before coming to Washington, D.C., Mrs. Falke-Ischinger was the Berlin bureau chief of the German weekly “Rheinischer Merkur”.