Mikhail S. Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 in the Soviet city of Privolnoye.

He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union while still studying law at Lomonosov University in Moscow.

After completing his first degree, he studied agricultural sciences and began his higher political career as first secretary for agriculture in 1970. He had been a member of the Central Committee since 1971.

After holding various posts, many of which took him abroad, Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party on March 11, 1985.

With the slogans perestroika and glasnost, or openness and restructuring, he initiated the reorganization of the Soviet Union. He acknowledged his country's political mistakes in the past and crimes committed during the Second World War.

His popular change of course helped him to become president in 1988. In this role, he held out the prospect of unilateral disarmament before the United Nations General Assembly. The opening of the Soviet Union that he initiated ended the Cold War and enabled the peaceful transformation of the Eastern Bloc.

Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for this commitment. After his resignation in 1991, he continued to work for a peaceful world and the growing together of nations.

During a visit to Wiesbaden on September 8, 1994, Lord Mayor Achim Exner received Gorbachev and his wife in the ballroom of the town hall. He praised the political work of his prominent guest and thanked him for his support in the negotiations on German unity.

Gorbachev expressed his gratitude for the warm welcome and noted that he had never felt more at home during his worldwide travels than in the Hessian capital. He had never been welcomed in any other city as warmly, relaxed and easy-going as by the thousands of citizens who had welcomed him and his wife in the spa town in the pouring rain.

The couple then signed the city's Golden Book.