Barbara Hendricks has been the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety since December 2013. Before that, she served as the federal treasurer of the Social Democratic Party beginning in 2007. From 1998 to 2007 she was a Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Since 1994 Barbara Hendricks, who has a doctorate in History, has represented her home district of Kleve in the German Bundestag. Prior to that, she had gained political and professional experience working for the Deutsches Studentenwerk (National Association for Student Affairs) and in the administration of the Land North Rhine-Westphalia.
From 2001 to 2013 she was a member of the Executive Committee of the SPD. Barbara Hendricks was born on 29 April 1952 in Kleve in the Lower Rhine region, where she still lives.