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- Marin Alsop
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Tessa Ganserer
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Transgender German Politician
b. May 16, 1977
“Visible gender diversity will ultimately also be an enrichment for all people.”
Tessa Ganserer made history in 2021 as one of two transgender women elected to the Bundestag, the German federal Parliament. As a representative of The Greens party, she supports a strong environmental agenda and is a fierce LGBTQ rights advocate.
Ganserer was assigned male at birth in Zwiesel, Bavaria. She attended Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Science in Freising, Germany, where she studied engineering and forestry. She graduated in 2005. Ganserer presented herself publicly as male until she was 41.
At age 21, Ganserer joined Germany’s Alliance 90/The Greens political party. From 2002 through 2005, she served as the spokesperson for the specialist forum on ecology at the Federal Association of Green Youth.
Ganserer served as a district executive in the administrative region of Middle Franconia from 2008 to 2018. In 2013 she was elected to a seat in the Lantag of Bavaria (Bavarian state Parliament). There, Ganserer sat on multiple committees, including transportation, energy, and technology, and served as vice chair for public service from 2013 to 2018.
In 2018 Ganserer came out as a trans woman, making her the first openly transgender member of a German Landtag. She was “shocked” by the hatred she faced on social media, although she said, “It was definitely outweighed by the many positive messages.” In the Lantag, she fought to make legal name and gender changes easier.
When Ganserer ran for the Bundestag, she set her sights on federal reform of the country’s restrictive 1981 Transgender Act. She said she ran “so that transgender people can finally raise a voice in the place where the legislative decisions on this degrading transsexual law are made." Elected in 2012, Ganserer and another female Greens candidate, Nyke Slawik, became the first two transgender members of the German federal Parliament.
In the Bundestag, Ganserer advocates for soil protection, reduced carbon emissions, and forest conservation. She champions health and gender-affirming care for LGBTQ people, the right of lesbian mothers to adopt children, and ending the ban on blood donations from gay men.
Ganserer has two sons and is married to Ines Eichmüller, a fellow Greens party politician
