Heiko Maas

Early life and education

Maas was born in Saarlouis on 19 September 1966. He studied law at Saarland University.

Political career

Maas was first appointed to the Saarland Parliament in 1996, under the mentorship of Oskar Lafontaine who would later leave the Social Democrats to found his own party.

Leading the SPD into the 2009 state election only months before the federal elections that year, Maas announced he would form a coalition with Lafontaine’s Left Party should the two obtain a majority, suggesting that the party could become a potential ally for the SPD at federal level in the 2013 election. At the time, any such coalition in Saarland was widely seen as undermining the pledge made by the Social Democrat’s candidate for the federal elections, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, not to rule with the Left Party. Eventually, the SPD only gained 24.5 percent, making it the party’s worst election result in the state.

Maas was a SPD delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2010 and 2012.

After the 2012 state election, the SPD went into coalition with the CDU, which before that election had been governing the state in coalition with the Green Party and the Liberals. While the Social Democrats and Left had won enough seats to form a coalition, Maas ruled out such an alliance in favor of a coalition with the CDU led by incumbent Minister-President Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. As deputy minister-president, he took over responsibility for the economy, transport, and employment.

Following the 2013 federal elections, Maas was part of the SPD team in the negotiations with the CDU/CSU on a coalition agreement; he was a member of the energy policy working group led by Peter Altmaier and Hannelore Kraft. On 17 December 2013, he was sworn in as the minister of justice and consumer protection in the third cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, succeeding Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

He earned the nickname 'Prohibition Minister' by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for his many unapproved legislative proposals.

In June 2017, Maas disclosed to the Bild newspaper that he was the recent recipient of an unprecedented number of death threats including a bullet casing in the mailbox of his private residence. He attributed the threats to dissatisfaction with current German immigration policy.

Homeland security

Following the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture in December 2014, Maas told German newspaper Bild: "The CIA's practice of torture is gruesome […] Everybody involved must be legally prosecuted."

In early 2015, Maas successfully introduced a new law meant to mitigate radical Islamist attacks, by making it a criminal offence to travel abroad to receive military training. Shortly after, he and Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) jointly submitted a draft law permitting the temporary retention of internet and telephone data – excluding e-mail traffic – to aid criminal investigations.

Crime and prosecutions

In July 2015, Maas announced plans to amend Germany's penal code on sexual assault in accordance with the Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe; the reform is to punish abuse which exploits a victim's fear of a "perceived menace" and tighten sentences in rape cases.

In August 2015, Maas initiated the dismissal and retirement of chief federal prosecutor Harald Range; his ministry had questioned Range's decision to open a much-criticized treason investigation against journalists of netzpolitik.org who had reported about plans of Germany's domestic spy agency – the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – to expand surveillance of online communication. Range, meanwhile, had accused the government of interfering in the investigation.

Digital policy

In a 2014 interview with the Financial Times, Maas called it "not acceptable" that Google "dominates the search engine world, and is able to rank its search results in a manner apt to promote its own business interests." In 2015, he endorsed criticism expressed by Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VzBz) which held that Facebook’s data protection terms were too vague. Later that year, he publicly accused Facebook of doing too little to thwart racist posts and hate comments on the social media platform.

Anti-whistleblower law

After the Netpolitic scandal in 2015, where a German language blog leaked top secret documents, Maas proposed new legislation called 'Data Stolen Goods'. Ulf Buermeyer, a judge of the District Court in Berlin cautioned that this anti-whistleblower law would be a massive attack on democracy and freedom of speech.

The law was passed as Section 202d of the German Penal Code (§202d StGB) by the Bundestag on 16 October 2015.

Freedom of speech

In early 2017, Maas proposed the "Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz" ("network enforcement law") to combat online hate speech and fake news. The United Nations responded with a letter, warning that several democratic freedoms were under attack. The proposed law was met with criticism throughout Germany from industry associations, IT experts, scientists, net-politicians, lawyers, privacy activists and civil rights campaigners who regard it as unconstitutional and defiant of EU-law and warn of "catastrophic effects for freedom of expression", causing online platforms to drastically censor online speech, resulting in privatization of legal enforcement and abolishing online anonymity.

The law was passed on 30 June 2017. It also requires social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to publish a biannual report on received complaints and how they dealt with them. Fines of up to €50m are possible for companies that "systematically refuse to act or do not set up a proper complaint management system" and some warn that this threat of punishment may motivate companies to delete content rather than risk punishment.

State Trojan horse surveillance

On 22 June 2017, Maas expanded by 27 the number of offenses for which a lawful online search using malware can be used. Experts and civil rights defenders have strongly criticized the law for being a gross provocation, violating privacy and undermining cyber-security. Maas has also been accused of using tricks for the proceeding of passing these amendments and using a "backdoor" that has "nothing to do with democratic debate culture".

Law governing sexual offences

After the massive sexual assaults of New Year 2016 in Cologne, Heiko Maas wanted to reform sexual prosecution laws. Tonio Walter, writing an op-ed in Die Zeit, said that the law was overly broad: under a proposed ban on groping, he claimed, a wife could be punished for embracing her husband from behind, while rules against sex by coercion could punish a boss whose employee consented to sex under a (possibly mistaken, said Walter) fear of losing the job. Walter likewise said that the penalty of 10 years in prison for a sexual assault and 15 for rape by coercion would be too much, noting that non-sexual assaults received a lesser penalty under the laws.

Sexist advertisement

In April 2016, Maas called for a legal ban on sexist advertisements, which "reduce women or men to sexual objects." Germany's Association of Communications Agencies (GWA) observed that it is a subjective matter of taste whether an advertisement is sexist or not. FDP leader Christian Lindner remarked that the proposed ban indicated a similar mindset as radical Islamic leaders.

Other activities

Personal life

Maas enjoys football and is a triathlete. He is married and has two children.