Photo: Leonie Rabea Große / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy premier and economy minister of the German state of Bavaria and chairman of the Free Voters party, was found dead in his hotel room in central Berlin on Wednesday evening, November 4. He was 55. Berlin police and the city’s public prosecutor said they had opened a death investigation, and the cause of death has not been made public.
What investigators have said
In a joint statement, Berlin police and prosecutors said Aiwanger was discovered lifeless in his room in the Mitte district early on Wednesday evening. A homicide unit of the Berlin state criminal police office has been assigned to the case. The stated aim is to establish the exact cause and circumstances of death and to rule out the involvement of anyone else. Officials said the investigation is continuing and gave no further details.
German media reported that Aiwanger had travelled to Berlin for the opening of a new office for his party in the capital, but cancelled his speech at the event because he was not feeling well. According to those reports, he could not be reached afterwards and was later found in his room at a hotel on Friedrichstrasse.
Shock in Munich
Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder of the Christian Social Union (CSU), who governed alongside Aiwanger for eight years, said he was deeply shocked.
The sudden death of Hubert Aiwanger is an absolute tragedy. Our thoughts are now first and foremost with his family and his children.
Markus Söder, Bavarian Minister-President
Who was Hubert Aiwanger?
Born in Lower Bavaria, Aiwanger led the Bavarian branch of the Free Voters from 2006 and entered the state parliament in 2008, where he became the party’s group leader. Under him, the Free Voters joined the Bavarian government for the first time in 2018 as junior partner to the CSU, and he took charge of the economy ministry while also serving as Söder’s deputy.
He was the national face of the Free Voters and known for a combative, populist style. Yet his success in Bavaria never carried over to the federal level: the party has not won enough votes to enter the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament.
Aiwanger was also at the centre of a major controversy in 2023, weeks before a state election, when a newspaper reported that he had written an antisemitic leaflet as a 17-year-old school student in the 1980s that referred to the Auschwitz death camp as an “entertainment quarter”. He denied writing it but admitted that one or more copies had been found in his school bag. He apologised for the affair but refused to step down.
What happens next
Police and prosecutors have not said when they will announce the cause of death. His death also leaves Bavaria’s governing coalition and the Free Voters without the man who led the party in the state for two decades and as its national chairman.
Aiwanger is survived by two children. He lived with his partner, Tanja Schweiger, a district administrator from the Free Voters.
