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Carsten Schneider would replace Marco Wanderwitz as representative for the East
Photo:
M. Popow / imago images / Metodi Popow
The previous parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Carsten Schneider, is to become the federal government's commissioner for the eastern German states, according to media reports.
Among other things, the "Rheinische Post" reported on the personnel.
Officially, the office is called "Minister of State for East Germany and Equal Living Conditions" and is organized in the Chancellery.
Schneider's office as manager of the SPD parliamentary group is to be taken over by the previous parliamentary group vice-president Katja Mast.
The 45-year-old Thuringian Schneider, who had also been acted as a minister in the new traffic light government, would succeed the CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz, who was assigned to the Federal Ministry of Economics as the federal government's representative for the new states.
Wanderwitz caused criticism with statements about East Germans
Schneider has been in the Bundestag since 1998.
From 2005 to 2013 he was budgetary spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, then deputy parliamentary group chairman and, since 2017, first parliamentary manager.
The previous commissioner for the East, Wanderwitz, caused a sensation in the Bundestag election campaign when he called the people in East Germany partly "socialized by the dictatorship".
He was therefore sharply criticized from within his own ranks, Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer blamed him for the poor performance of the CDU in the east and the strength of the AfD there.
Wanderwitz himself has also lost his direct mandate to an AfD candidate.
svs / dpa / AFP
