He was state minister, federal minister and failed in three attempts for the office of Saarland head of government. There was then no more room for Heiko Maas in the traffic light coalition. Now the 56-year-old is turning his back on politics. Apparently he has already found a new job.
Former Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is resigning from the Bundestag. The SPD politician presented his concerns to his parliamentary group, as a spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group said in the Bundestag. According to the spokeswoman, Maas wants to sign his mandate waiver with Bundestag President Bärbel Bas tomorrow, Wednesday. "I have always said that I will not retire as a politician. That time has come now," he wrote on Instagram. "Now a new phase in life begins for me, a time after politics." The Juso chairperson Emily Vontz will replace him from the Saarland state list.
The fully qualified lawyer was Federal Minister of Justice from 2013 to 2018 and then Foreign Minister until December 2021. Since then, Maas has been a member of the Bundestag for the Saarlouis constituency. According to information from the "Saarbrücker Zeitung", Maas will join a Berlin law firm as a partner in January. According to the newspaper, he has not previously worked as a lawyer.
Maas entered the Saarland state parliament in 1994 and became State Secretary for the Environment in 1996. In 1998 he took over the department. From 2012 until his move to Angela Merkel's cabinet in Berlin, he was also Minister for Economic Affairs. As the SPD's top candidate, he failed three times in his attempt to become head of government in the federal state.
In 2017 he entered the Bundestag for the first time. Four years later, he again won the direct mandate and prevailed against Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier from the CDU. In the traffic light coalition, he did not take on a new department and was ultimately only a simple member of the Bundestag.
