Hubert Aiwanger, the head of the Free Voters and Bavaria’s deputy premier and economics minister, has died at the age of 55. He was found dead in a Berlin hotel room on Wednesday, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office confirmed. Aiwanger was a father of two and had led the party at state level since 2006 and nationally since 2010.

Aiwanger had been due to speak at the opening of a Free Voters office in Berlin that afternoon, but withdrew for health reasons and was represented instead, according to dpa information cited in the report. He was later unreachable before being found lifeless.

Bavarian Premier and CSU leader Markus Söder called Aiwanger’s death a tragedy and said his thoughts were with the politician’s family and children. State parliament president Ilse Aigner described it as a major loss for the Bavarian parliament and the state’s political community. Opposition parties also expressed shock.

Aiwanger entered the Bavarian state parliament in 2008 and became the Free Voters’ parliamentary group leader. In 2018, the party formed a coalition with the CSU, and Aiwanger became economics minister and deputy premier.

His political career faced a major challenge in 2023, when an antisemitic leaflet from his school years resurfaced weeks before the Bavarian election. The coalition came close to collapsing and Aiwanger faced possible dismissal. The Free Voters nevertheless recorded a then-best result of 15.8% in the election.

Known for his distinctive Lower Bavarian dialect and unscripted speeches, Aiwanger built a reputation for focusing on issues affecting ordinary people. Before entering politics, he successfully bred pigs and later often drew on his rural background in political disputes. He was an agricultural engineer whose home was a farm near Rottenburg an der Laaber in Lower Bavaria.

Aiwanger had led the Free Voters to repeated electoral gains in Bavaria, including in the 2023 state election and the state’s local elections in the spring. His long-held ambition of taking the party into the Bundestag remained unfulfilled.

Sources: Handelsblatt.