Politician calls it quits to give wife kidney

The parliamentary leader of Germany's main opposition Social Democrats (SPD), Frank Walter- Steinmeier, said Monday that he was taking several weeks off politics to donate a kidney to his wife.

Steinmeier, a potential challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013, and who served as foreign minister from 2005 to 2009, told a hastily arranged news conference that his wife was seriously ill and urgently needed a kidney transplant.

"Owing to the lack of any alternative, and because preliminary investigations permit it, I myself will be the organ donor," the 54-year-old said.

Steinmeier said he was withdrawing from politics with immediate effect and would begin medical treatment this afternoon.

Steinmeier, who leads the center-left SPD in the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament), said he hoped to be back at work in October. He said his place in the Bundestag will be taken by the party's deputy leader in Parliament, SPD veteran Joachim Poss.

Reuters