Dr Thomas de Maizière was appointed Federal Minister of the Interior on 17 December 2013.
Thomas de Maizière was born in Bonn on 21 January 1954. He is married and has three children.
After acquiring his higher education entrance qualification (Abitur), he completed his compulsory military service with the 142nd armoured infantry battalion in Koblenz. He is a lieutenant of the reserve.
From 1974 to 1979 de Maizière studied law and history in Münster and Freiburg. After his first state examination in law, he took his second state examination in 1982. In 1982 he received a doctorate in law from the University of Münster.
In 1983 he worked for the governing mayors of Berlin, Richard von Weizsäcker and Eberhard Diepgen. From 1985 to 1989 he headed the policy division at the Berlin Senate Chancellery. He served as press spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives.
In 1990, he helped establish the office of minister president of the last government of the German Democratic Republic and was then a member of the delegation negotiating the Unification Treaty.
From 1990 to 1994 he was state secretary at the Ministry of Culture for the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. From 1994 to 1998 he was head of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian State Chancellery.
In 1999 he was minister of state and head of the State Chancellery of Saxony.
From 2001 to 2002 he served as minister of finance for the state of Saxony. From 2002 to 2004, he was state minister of justice and from 2004 to 2005 state minister of the interior in Saxony. He was a member of the Saxony state parliament from 2004 to November 2005.
He served as head of the Federal Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Tasks until October 2009. In October 2009, de Maizière was directly elected to the German Bundestag, and from 28 October 2009 until 3 March 2011 he was Federal Minister of the Interior.
From 3 March 2011 until December 2013, he was Federal Minister of Defence.
On 17 December 2013, he was again appointed Federal Minister of the Interior.