DAlexander Graf Lambsdorff’s early political career took place at a time when there was still a firm connection between the terms “FDP” and “foreign policy”. Lambsdorff headed the office of the Bundestag deputy Klaus Kinkel in 1998/99, i.e. in those years in which his six years as foreign minister had just ended; Kinkel, in turn, took office in 1992 as the successor to Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Lambsdorff felt at home in both worlds as the son of a diplomat (Hagen Graf Lambsdorff) and the nephew of a politician (the former Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff). After schooling in Hamburg, Brussels and Bonn and studying history in Bonn and Washington, he joined the foreign service in 1995 and worked there, among other things, in the planning staff, at the Washington Embassy and as a country officer for Russia.
No place in government
He tried in vain for the FDP in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament in 2000, and in 2004 he managed to get into the European Parliament, where he also held top liberal positions for three electoral terms. Lambsdorff remained in his European functions during the period when the FDP was again governing with the Union parties in Berlin from 2009 and Guido Westerwelle took over the position of foreign minister. But Westerwelle’s tenure no longer functioned as a refresher on foreign policy competence for the Free Democrats, but rather as their swan song.
So it happened that Lambsdorff, who over time became the leading foreign policy head of his party, did not find a place in the front row of the FDP government in autumn 2021. Party and faction leader Christian Lindner preferred to identify himself and the Free Democrats with other departments than with the Foreign Office. Lambsdorff initially remained what he had been since 2017: deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group with responsibility for foreign policy. He had just presented a study on Germany’s foreign policy role during the Cold War entitled “When Elephants Fight”.
That was a description of the situation that could also have been related to the situation of the author. In the fall of 2021, the larger coalition partners, the Greens and the SPD, did not want to comply with the FDP’s wish to entrust Lambsdorff with the post of ambassador in Washington. Instead, his move to another top diplomatic position is now considered certain: Lambsdorff is to become German ambassador in Moscow next summer.
