was born as Angela Behnke in Eastern Germany.

When she was seven years old, her family escaped to the West. She went to school in Solingen. As a student she was awarded a scholarship by the American Field Service and spent one school year in the USA. She graduated with honors from Winona High School in Minnesota before passing her final exam at a German Grammar School (Abitur). Angela Spizig studied English, French, and Comparative Literature at the University of Cologne and travelled extensively in Europe and North and Latin America. At that time she met her husband, the lawyer Heinz Spizig, who shares her interest in politics, travels, culture and languages.

From 1974 to 2000 Angela Spizig taught languages and literature at Cologne Secondary Schools.

During numerous stays on the American West Coast, she was introduced early on to ecological questions, problems and solutions at a time when those issues had not been perceived in Europe yet.

In 1985 she organized an initiative of Cologne citizens, working for ecological improvements in city planning and traffic infrastructure. This is how she became involved in local politics and joined the Green Party. In 1994 she was elected to a district council, in 1999 to the Cologne City Council. In the year 2000 the City Council elected her Vice Mayor.

The main focus of her work is culture, the media, ICT, international affairs. Since the year 2000 she has been an active member on the board of the Global Cities Dialogue: The Global Cities Dialogue is a worldwide network of cities, which deals with the new technologies and their application in city administrations, with e-government, with problems and possibilities of the information/knowledge society and the aim of overcoming the digital divide.

She is also Vice President of the European Cultural network “Les Rencontres”. As Angela Spizig speaks English and French fluently, she is often invited to make contributions or to be the Chair at Cultural conferences all over Europe, her main focus being literature, film, photography.

Since 2000 she has been serving the city as one of the three Vice Mayors of the City of Cologne. She represents the Mayor and the City locally, abroad and in numerous other international networks. After the local elections in 2004, the new council re-elected Angela Spizig Vice Mayor for another five-year-term.