Then he studied German language and literature at Humboldt University in Berlin, where he was an active member of the Catholic Student Community.

[2] From 1977 to 1990 Thierse worked as a research assistant at the Central Institute of the History of Literature in the Academy of Arts and Sciences of the GDR.

[3] In October 1989, Thierse joined the opposition group New Forum and in January 1990 the Social Democratic Party in the GDR, whose leader he became in June.

[6][7] In response to the CDU donations scandal in 2000, Thierse imposed a $21 million fine on former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's party for accepting illegal financing.

Among the honours Thierse received are an honorary doctorate (awarded by the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Münster) and the Federal Cross of Merit.

The proceeds were for the "Green Berets", a charity that helped young Muslims and Christians to rebuild destroyed areas like Bosnia or Afghanistan.

Thierse specifically mentioned the usage of Swabian or more generally South-German terms for food like "Wecken" or "Pflaumendatschis" instead of the Berlin dialect variants for rolls or plum cakes respectively.

Some commentators (inter alia, Germany's Stern magazine[25]) even raised accusations against Thierse of discrimination against large parts of the West German population.

Germany's Federal minister for Economic Cooperation, Dirk Niebel (FDP, liberal party), born and raised in Hamburg but representing a south-western constituency around Heidelberg, called Thierse furiously in a public reaction reported by the news magazine "Focus", a "pietistischer Zickenbart"[26] ("pietistic bitchy greybeard").

On 1 January 2013, Thierse re-affirmed his previous statements in the Berlin paper "Tagesspiegel": He called the public criticism "ridiculous", mentioned that intra-German migrants should be allowed to use their South German dialects only in their states/regions of origin and furthermore talked about an "Organisierte Schwabenschaft" (roughly "Organized Swabians")[27] that would have appeared in the nationwide media and that would abuse its influence.

[28][29] According to the weekly "Die Zeit" magazine, Thierse would have de-masked himself as a "babbit" who did serious harm to the gentrification debate by introducing ethnic terms and regional prejudice into the public discussion.

Prominent former TV host and political correspondent Ulrich Kienzle accused Thierse in an emotional personal letter to him of talking nonsense and artificially intensifying a deeply rooted rivalry between South Germans and Prussians that would date back to even before the Battle of Königgrätz where Prussian forces defeated Austria and its South German allies.

[30] In an online essay for Der Spiegel, Jan Fleischhauer pointed out that so called "Schwaben-Hass" (discrimination or hatred vs Swabians) would be a politically correct variant of xenophobia for left-wing intellectuals and bohemians used to hide respectively camouflage otherwise totally unacceptable political positions against foreign infiltration or domination by immigrants.

[31] For reconciliatory efforts, Thierse received a "Goldene Narrenschelle", an order of Carneval from Vereinigung Schwäbisch-Alemannischer Narrenzünfte (VSAN), an umbrella organization of Swabian–Alemannic Fastnacht.