The son of an American serviceman has become Germany’s first black mayor. John Ehret, 40, said that his skin colour had not caused him any problems when he was growing up in the village of Mauer, near Heidelberg in southwest Germany.
He was adopted at the age of five, having been given up to a children’s home when he was two. He went on to work for the federal criminal investigation department.
Local newspaper headlines about his election have focused on his colour. Although faintly embarrassed at being called the Kraichgau Obama — Kraichgau being the region north of the Black Forest — he put the slogan “Yes we can” on his website and won 58 per cent of the votes in the 4,000-strong community.
“It would be nice not to have everything reduced to my skin colour,” he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper when asked about his achievement. “I just want to give something back to the community where I had such a happy childhood.”
Like Barack Obama, Mr Ehret had minimal contact with his father. Born in Karlsruhe, he was given up to a children’s home at the age of two, he joined his adoptive family in Mauer aged five. His job in the BKA - the German version of the FBI - took him to Lebanon, Bosnia and Afghanistan, where he trained the Afghan police and won a medal.
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His late adoptive father was a local Social Democratic Party politician who once tried and failed to win the same mayoralty. Despite living with his wife and children in Cologne, Mr Ehret said that he could not resist running for the office when he spotted the vacancy on a visit to his adoptive mother.
“I want an open and transparent town hall – whether I am in the bakery, the supermarket or just going for a walk, I want people to tell me where the shoe rubs because I am one of them, a boy from Mauer,” he said.
“I want us all to work together in a fair, constructive and goal-orientated way to meet citizens’ needs.” Asked if he could become a national champion for ethnic minorities, he simply said: “I feel much too German for that.”