Klaus Iohannis

Klaus Iohannis married ethnic Romanian Carmen Lăzurcă in 1989. His wife is an English teacher. The couple has no children.

Klaus Werner Johannis was born on June 13, 1959, in Sibiu, Romania, to Susanne and Gustav Heinz Johannis. He has a younger sister, Krista Johannis. His father worked as a technician at an enterprise, while his mother was a nurse.

He studied physics at the Faculty of Physics of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and graduated in 1983.

He embarked on a career as a high school physics teacher and worked at various schools and colleges. From 1989 to 1997, he worked at the Samuel von Brukenthal Gymnasium in Sibiu, the oldest German-speaking school in Romania.

In 1997, he was made the Deputy General School Inspector of Sibiu County, a position he held until 1999. He became the General School Inspector, head of public schools in the county in 1999.

Klaus Iohannis had always been interested in politics. He had joined the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR) in 1990 and served as a member of its board of education in Transylvania from 1997.

His first big political achievement came in 2000. The FDGR chose him as a candidate for mayor of Sibiu. He won the election with 69.18% of the votes to become the first ethnic German mayor of a Romanian city since Albert Dörr, who served from 1940 to 1945.

Immediately upon taking up this post, he started working to improve the city which was close to ruins. He began strengthening the infrastructure and implemented administrative reforms.

As the Mayor of Sibiu, he helped to turn the hitherto little known city into one of Romania's most popular tourist destinations. He strengthened the city’s infrastructure and tightened the administration to build the city into a major tourist spot. The city became European Capital of Culture in 2007 which made him a national figure.