In addition to Dagmar Ziegler, Ulla Schmidt (photo) apparently also has ambitions to become Vice President of the Bundestag
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Florian Ebener / Getty Images for Lambertz
The SPD is threatened with a dispute over the successor of the deceased Bundestag Vice President Thomas Oppermann.
On Wednesday, the SPD executive board, at the suggestion of parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich, named MP Dagmar Ziegler as a candidate for office.
According to SPIEGEL information, ex-Federal Health Minister Ulla Schmidt now also wants to run for the post.
The editorial network Germany (RND) reported first.
In a week and a half she will face Ziegler at the parliamentary group meeting.
Schmidt has been a member of the Bundestag since 1990, and was Federal Minister of Health from 2001 to 2009.
She was Vice President of the Bundestag between 2013 and 2017.
In a letter to the members of his parliamentary group, which is available to SPIEGEL, Mützenich wrote that Ziegler was "a comrade with an exemplary life from an eastern German state".
Ziegler was Minister in Brandenburg from 2000 to 2009 and has been a member of the Bundestag for eleven years.
Ziegler is currently the parliamentary director and spokeswoman for the conservative Seeheimer Kreis.
With her election, the SPD could "even more strongly acknowledge its responsibility for Germany as a whole and tie in with the social democratic founding days of reunified Germany," wrote Mützenich.
Oppermann collapsed on October 25 before a television interview and died a short time later in a hospital in Göttingen.
Oppermann had been a member of the Bundestag since 2005, and from 2013 to 2017 he was parliamentary group leader of the SPD.
After the 2017 federal election, Oppermann was appointed Vice President of the Bundestag.
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