Bernd Fabritius | |
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| Federal Government Commissioner for Matters Related to Ethnic German Resettlers and National Minorities | |
| Assumed office 11 April 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Günter Krings |
| Member of theBundestag forBavaria | |
| In office 22 March 2021 – 26 September 2021 | |
| Preceded by | Tobias Zech |
| In office 22 October 2013 – 24 October 2017 | |
| President of theFederation of Expellees | |
| Assumed office 7 November 2014 | |
| Preceded by | Erika Steinbach |
| Chairman ofLandsmannschaft der Siebenbürger Sachsen in Deutschland | |
| Assumed office 2007 | |
| Preceded by | Volker Dürr |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1965-05-14)14 May 1965 (age 60) |
| Political party | Christian Social Union |
Bernd Fabritius (born 14 May 1965) is a Germanlawyer andpolitician of theChristian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) who has served as a Member of theBundestag from 2013 to2017[1] and again in 2021.
Fabritius was born inAgnita,Sibiu County,Romania, and is aTransylvanian Saxon. His father was an insurance merchant and his mother was a bank clerk. He attended the German-language high schoolSamuel von Brukenthal National College inSibiu in the early-1980s before working briefly as an assistant teacher. He left communist Romania with his family and settled in the Bavarian town ofWaldkraiburg in 1984; he has said his family and other Romanian Germans left Romania with a heavy heart and only due to state pressure of the then-communist regime.[2] From 1985 until 1988, he studied at theBavarian University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration and Legal Affairs (de:Hochschule für den öffentlichen Dienst in Bayern; FHVR), and then studiedpolitical science at theBavarian School of Public Policy from 1988 until 1991. From 1991 until 1996, he studied law at theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich, passing his first state examination in 1994 and his second in 1996. Fabritius subsequently started his jointdoctorate in law at theUniversity of Tübingen in cooperation with theRomanian-German University of Sibiu(de;ro) in 2001, graduatingmagna cum laude in 2003.
Fabritius was elected to the German Bundestag in the2013 federal elections. He served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, its Sub-Committee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policies, and on theCommittee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. On the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, he was his parliamentary group'srapporteur on discrimination.
Between 2014 and 2015, Fabritius was also a member of the Committee on Affairs of the European Union, where he served as his parliamentary group's rapporteur on relations withUkraine andRomania. In 2015, he succeededPeter Gauweiler as Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policies. In addition to his committee assignments, he served as deputy chairman of the German-Romanian Parliamentary Friendship Group and as member of the German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group and of the German-US Parliamentary Friendship Group.
From 2014 to mid-2015, Fabritius briefly served as a full member of the German delegation to theParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where he sat on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights and on the Sub-Committee on the Rights of Minorities. Between 2015 and 2016, he served as the Assemby’s rapporteur on the rule of law in South-East European countries.[3] From 2016, he was the rapporteur on the reform ofInterpol[4] and the rule of law in south-east European countries.[5]
In November 2014, Fabritius was elected President of theFederation of Expellees (BdV), succeedingErika Steinbach. He has described his goal as the organisation's leader as representing the interests of all people with roots in Eastern Europe and South Eastern Europe and as building bridges with those countries. While the Federation of Expellees has traditionally focused on the expellees of the 1940s, Fabritius has said he will also place emphasis on recent emigrants from Eastern Europe such as the Romanian Germans.[2]
Under the umbrella of the German parliaments’ godparenthood program for human rights activists, Fabritius has been raising awareness for the work of persecuted Ukrainian filmmaker and writerOleg Sentsov since 2015.[6]
In June 2017, Fabritius was one of only seven CSU members who voted in favor of Germany’s introduction ofsame-sex marriage.[10]
Fabritius lives in acivil union with his partner; it became publicly known that he is gay in 2014.[11]
