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Felor Badenberg (2020 with the then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer)
Photo: Sean Gallup/ddp/Pool Getty Images
For more than two years, Felor Badenberg has been taking care of right-wing extremism and heads the responsible department of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Their importance has increased in recent years after the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, recognized that right-wing extremism is “the greatest threat to security and democracy in Germany”.
Badenberg also played a leading role in the trial against the AfD before the administrative court in Cologne, which the Federal Office won - it is allowed to classify and monitor the entire party as a right-wing extremist "suspected case".
Now Badenberg, born in Tehran in 1975, is to move up to the office of the authority and become vice president.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) decided that, SPIEGEL learned from parliamentary circles.
The Federal Cabinet has approved the personnel.
This makes Badenberg the first female vice-president since the office was founded.
Badenberg is a lawyer, has been with the Federal Office since 2006 and has already completed many positions there: As a consultant, she dealt with extremism related to foreign countries, then she headed the personnel department in the Central Services department, where she also took care of equality.
Under the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who was ousted in 2018, she was in the staff department and responsible for his reports to MPs and the government as well as Maassen's lectures and speeches.
She later built up the Federal Office's cyber defense department into a separate department, which she then headed before moving to the right-wing extremism department in January 2020.
Editor's note: In a first version of this text it was said that the personnel had yet to be confirmed by the cabinet. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, this has already happened.