For the lawyer and diplomat Jan Hecker, the term "top civil servant" was not just a description of his position, but also a substantive statement: In the legislative period that is now ending, he was the Federal Chancellor's sherpa in foreign policy, i.e. one of the most important among the department heads of the Chancellery, which transform the political will of the leadership into practical action.

And Hecker's way there was not a straight-line administrative career, but rather a hike fed by a thirst for knowledge, political curiosity, diligence and the most diverse participating interests.

On this hike he stopped at very diverse professional stations, the only constant thing was that it was a solid ascent.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Hecker comes from the family of a naval officer. He was born in Kiel and experienced the changes of location - to Wilhelmshaven, also to Oslo - that professional soldiers of the Bundeswehr have to expect from their families. From 1988 his studies took him to Freiburg, Grenoble and Göttingen, followed by a postgraduate program in Cambridge. He operated it in two ways: next to law was political science; in his doctorate he tried to combine the two. The dissertation dealt with "European integration as a constitutional problem in France" and thus already pointed to Hecker's foreign policy interests.

After completing his legal clerkship, he initially worked for two large law firms, but two years later his professional curiosity drew him away again.

Hecker joined the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 1999.

It was the time of the red-green federal government and the Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily.

Hecker, who was still a member of the SPD at the time, worked on, among other things, asylum and migration issues and undertook excursions into other domestic policy issues.

For two years he was seconded to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Hecker also accompanied the Chancellor on trips

He also found time to return to legal science.

He held teaching positions at the Berlin universities and at the Viadrina in Frankfurt / Oder.

There he completed his habilitation in 2005 with an investigation into the effectiveness of state economic supervision, and since 2010 he has been teaching public law and European law as an adjunct professor.

Around a year later, Hecker's legal areas of expertise and his professional circumstances changed again.

He was appointed judge at the Federal Administrative Court and assigned to the Senate that deals with university law, association and assembly law, gun law, police law and regulatory law.

The further - more political - steps on the path of his career were less controllable at will. When Chancellor Angela Merkel was looking for a head for the new coordination staff in the Chancellery at the height of the refugee crisis in autumn 2015, who would take care of all aspects of the topic from combating the causes of flight to refugee accommodation, the choice fell on him. Hecker also accompanied the Chancellor on trips to African countries and in 2017 switched to the position of Foreign Policy Advisor in the Chancellery. There he had to maintain connections with Washington in difficult times and was constantly engaged in efforts to stabilize German (and European) relations with Turkey.With his wealth of experience in his luggage, Hecker took up the post of German ambassador in Beijing a few weeks ago. There he died suddenly last Sunday at the age of 54.