German Green leader divorces for fourth time
German Green leader divorces for fourth time
Luke Harding in Berlin
Friday September 19, 2003
The Guardian
Germany's most popular politician, the foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, has got divorced for the fourth time, the mass-selling Bild Zeitung newspaper claimed yesterday. Mr Fischer, 55, the leader of the Green party, secretly split from 34-year-old journalist Nicola Leske after four years of marriage, the tabloid reported. His new student girlfriend has already moved into his Berlin home, together with her child, Bild claimed.
The private lives of German politicians have come under increasing scrutiny since the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, angrily denied media reports last year that he was living separately from his wife, Doris.
Mr Schröder - who also has been married four times - is popularly known in Germany as the "Audi chancellor", a reference to the car manufacturer's logo of four rings.
Mr Fischer, who in polls consistently emerges as the country's most popular politician, was secretly divorced in a Frankfurt court, Bild reported.
The foreign minister, who led Germany's opposition to the US war in Iraq, got married for the first time in Gretna Green, Scotland, at the age of 18. He remarried and divorced twice in the 1980s and 90s, and took up marathon running after splitting from his third wife, before falling in love with his fourth wife, 21 years his junior.
He was recently at the centre of speculation that he wanted to quit German politics to take up a future post as Europe's first foreign minister. But this month Mr Schröder said Mr Fischer would be his running mate again in the next general election in 2006.
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