Bettina Wulff

Bettina Körner was born 25 October 1973 in Hanover, Lower Saxony, the second child of Inge and Horst Körner. She spent her childhood in the town of Großburgwedel and was raised as a Protestant.[1]

Körner married Christian Wulff on 3 March 2008. Their son, Linus Florian was born two months later. Christian and Bettina Wulff each have a child from previous relationships. He had been married to his wife Christiane for 18 years before announcing their divorce in June 2006. He and his former wife have a daughter, Annalena. Bettina Wulff also has a son, Leander Balthasar (born 2003), from an earlier relationship.[2]

After completing Abitur at the Leibnizschule in Hanover in 1993, Wulff studied media management and applied media sciences at the University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover[1] and was enrolled there until 2000.[3] Between 1998 and 2000, she worked as a public relations assistant for an internet agency. After that she was employed as a press officer for a car manufacturing supplier and later for a pharmacy chain.[1] In February 2012, after her husband's resignation from the Office of German President and in the wake of a scandal about alleged corruption, she founded the public relations agency Bettina Wulff Kommunikation.[4]

Wulff was 36 years old when her husband was elected President; she became a media star for "her looks and her glamour, her height and her elegance"; the tabloid press was fascinated by the fact that she had a tattoo, "as if it were a badge of hipness".[5]

In 2012, she undertook legal action against Google, TV host Günther Jauch, and 34 other German and foreign bloggers and media, which led to cease and desist orders. The centrepiece of the associated lawsuit is Google's autocomplete feature, because the search engine would suggest terms such as "escort" and "prostitute" when searching for Wulff's name.[7][8] The autocomplete results were generated as a result of unsubstantiated rumors about Wulff spread by gossip sites and blogs.[8] Wulff had concerns that the autocomplete suggestions would be interpreted by users as a statement of fact.[8] According to a survey by a polling group for the tabloid Bild am Sonntag, 81% of Germans had never heard the rumours before she started her campaign.[5]