Thomas de Maizière

was born in 1954, in Bonn. After completing his schooling and subsequent military service, he studied law and history from 1974 to 1979 in Münster and Freiburg. Following his first state law examination, a period of legal clerkship, and his second state examination, he earned his doctorate in 1986. From 1985 to 1989, de Maizière worked in the Berlin Senate Chancellery as a speechwriter and head of the policy division, later serving as the spokesman for the Christian Democratic fraction in the Berlin House of Representatives. In 1990, his cousin Lothar de Maizière brought him on board as an advisor to the staff of the last East German government. He became a member of the negotiation delegation for the German Unification Treaty and played an active role in the reunification of Germany.

After reunification, de Maizière was appointed state secretary in the newly established Ministry of Culture in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. From 1994 to 1998, he led the State Chancellery in Schwerin. Starting in 1999, he assumed the role of minister in the Free State of Saxony. In 2001, he transitioned to the finance ministry as the Saxon state minister, moved to the justice department in 2002, and took on the interior department in 2004. In 2005, Thomas de Maizière became the head of the Federal Chancellery, and four years later, the Federal Minister of the Interior. From 2011 to 2013, he served as the Federal Minister of Defence and from December 2013 to March 2018, returned as Federal Minister of the Interior. As a directly elected representative, he was a member of the German Bundestag from 2009 to 2021. Since November 2018, Thomas de Maizière has been the chairman of the non-profit Deutsche Telekom Foundation.