The Free Democrats appointed the Vietnamese-born health minister on Tuesday as their new leader to replace Westerwelle, who resigned on Sunday.

The Free Democratic Party's executive board agreed that Rösler should stand for the chairmanship at a party conference in May. He is expected to remain health minister.

Rösler was born in a southern Vietnamese village in 1973 during the war, and was adopted by a family in Germany at the age of nine months. He joined the pro-business FDP while he was still a teenager in 1992. Rösler studied medicine in Hanover and Hamburg and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 2002.

Rösler is affable and eloquent and less confrontational than Westerwelle, who is famous for his combative rhetoric. He has shown an interest in immigration issues and is expected to shift to a softer, more social FDP, if the pro-business party lets him.

Source: Spiegel