Vita Lord Mayor Gert-Uwe Mende

Born in Bonn in 1962, Gert-Uwe Mende moved to Bebra, a town in Northern Hesse, in 1966 and grew up there. He studied in Göttingen, majoring in mediaeval and modern history, with political science and economics as minor subjects, and graduating with a Magister Artium degree in 1987. He subsequently fulfilled his alternative civilian service with the Göttingen students union.

He then worked for the Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) daily newspaper in Kassel, first as a trainee and, later, as an editor in the news and politics department. On 1 July 1991, Gert-Uwe Mende was appointed spokesman to Dr Herbert Günther, the then Hessian State Minister of the Interior, and continued to hold the position when Gerhard Bökel succeeded in 1994. From 1997 to 1999, he was head of the minister's office. From May 1999 to 2006, Gert-Uwe Mende acted as the spokesman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament (Landtag), to become secretary of that group in May 2006, a position he held until being elected Lord Mayor.

In 1979, Gert-Uwe Mende became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Before being elected Lord Mayor of Wiesbaden, he was deputy chairman of the SPD sub-district of Wiesbaden; since 2016, he was a member of the Wiesbaden-Dotzheim borough council, most recently, since August 2018, serving as its head.

Gert-Uwe Mende is married and the father of two adult children.