Former German minister becomes new mayor of Berlin

Franziska Giffey has become Berlin’s new mayor as the leader of a three-party left-wing governing coalition

BERLIN -- Franziska Giffey, a former federal minister who quit Germany's national government earlier this year, became Berlin's new mayor on Tuesday as the leader of a three-party left-wing governing coalition.

Giffey was elected by the state legislature nearly three months after a regional election in which she led her center-left Social Democrats, the party of new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to a narrow victory over the environmentalist Greens.

Giffey, 43, served as minister for women and families in ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel's last government until she resigned in May amid allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis. She was later stripped of her doctorate, but stuck to her longstanding plan to run for mayor.

She said at the time that she wrote the thesis “to the best of my ability” and mistakes she made weren’t intentional or planned.