Eckart Peter Hans von Klaeden (born 18 November 1965 inHanover) is a German politician of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU) who served asMinister of State at theGerman Chancellery from 2009 to 2013.
Eckart von Klaeden took hisAbitur at the Emperor William Gymnasium in Hanover in 1985, served his military service from 1985 to 1987 and became aKorvettenkapitän (corvette captain) of the Reserves. He went on to study law at the universities of Würzburg and Göttingen, taking his first state exam in 1993 and his second in 1996.
Von Klaeden became a member of theJunge Union in 1983. Between 1992 and 1996, he served on the board of the CDU in Lower Saxony, under the leadership of successive chairmen Josef Stock (1992–94) andChristian Wulff (1994-96).
Von Klaeden served as member of the German parliament, theBundestag, between1994 and 2013. He was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs (1994-1998) and of the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure (2002-2005). Between 2000 and 2005, he also served asFirst Secretary of the parliamentary group, in this position assisting the parliamentary group's successive chairmenFriedrich Merz (2000-2002) andAngela Merkel (2002-2005). From 2005, he was his parliamentary group's spokesman for foreign policy. In addition to his committee assignments, von Klaeden served as chairman of the German-Hungarian Parliamentary Friendship Group from 2002 until 2005.
Starting in 2004, von Klaeden was a member of the national board of the CDU under the leadership of chairwomanAngela Merkel. In this capacity, he was the party's treasurer from 2006 until 2013.[1]
In 2007, 2008 and 2009, von Klaeden participated at theBilderberg Conference.[2]
On 27 May 2013, von Klaeden informed the public that he would not run again for a seat in theDeutscher Bundestag in the2013 German federal election and that he would start a job at theDaimler AG, Stuttgart as Manager, "Global External Affairs und Public Policy", chieflobbyist, at the end of 2013.[3] His abrupt switch to the company prompted an investigation by Berlin prosecutors and new rules on "cooling off" periods.[4]
At a November 2023 meeting ofThe Heritage Foundation, von Klaeden "imploredMichael Anton to ask Trump to please talk to America's European allies as he formulated his foreign policy".[5]
He is a member ofAtlantik-Brücke,Amnesty International andSociety for Threatened Peoples (GfbV).
Von Klaeden isProtestant and a member of the presidium of theDeutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, a Protestant organisation. He is married and has three daughters.
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