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Name: Ammon, Peter
Current Position: Previous Ambassador
At a time of global economic crisis, with the European currency, the “Euro,” near collapse, Germany has sent an ambassador to the United States who has a doctorate in economics and whose career has focused mainly on economic issues. Peter Ammon presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on September 9, 2011.
Born February 23, 1952, in Frankfurt, Ammon was an avid teenage hobby pilot who hung out with American pilots from the Air Force base in nearby Freiburg. At the Free University of Berlin, Ammon studied mathematics, physics and economics from 1970 to 1975, and earned a PhD in Economics at the same institution in 1978, where he also worked as an Assistant Professor for three years.
After joining the German Foreign Service in 1978, Ammon attended diplomatic school in Bonn (which was West Germany’s capital from 1949 to 1990, and unified Germany’s capital from 1990 to 1999) until 1980. Early foreign assignments included service at the German embassies in London, UK, from 1980 to 1982 and Dakar, Senegal, from 1982 to 1985. Back in Bonn in 1985, Ammon served at the Foreign Ministry Economics Department until 1989, after which he was posted to New Delhi, India, from 1989 to 1991.
He returned to Bonn to serve in the Ministry’s Policy Planning Department between 1991 and 1996. From 1996 to 1999, he was Head of Policy Planning and speechwriter for the German President (a mainly ceremonial post). He was first posted to the United States in 1999, serving as Economics Minister at the German Embassy in Washington, DC, until 2001. As Undersecretary for Economics and Sustainable Development at the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin from 2001 to 2007, he was the “G8 Sous Sherpa” and led preparation efforts for the annual G8 world economic summits, which Germany hosted in June 2007. From July 2007 to July 2008, he was Germany’s Ambassador to France. From August 2008 to August 2011, he served as State Secretary at the Foreign Office.
Ammon is married to Marliese Heimann-Ammon. They have two grown daughters, Ariane and Christina. His personal interests include working out, hiking and the music and poetry of Bob Dylan.
Saving the Euro: Germany’s New Envoy Insists “We Will Prevail” (by Larry Luxner, Washington Diplomat)
Porträt Peter Ammon Botschafter In USA, In SPE: “Ich bin kein Freund von Pessimismus” (“Portrait of Peter Ammon, Ambassador to the US: I am no friend of Pessimism”) (by Hans Monath, Der Tagesspiegel) (in German)
Botschafter Peter Ammon: Berlins neuer Mann in Washington (“Ambassador Peter Ammon: Berlin’s New Man in Washington”) (by Matthias Gebauer and Gregor Peter Schmitz, Der Spiegel) (in German)