Former Secretary of State Jürgen Heike is dead. He died on Tuesday after a long illness and a few days after his 73rd birthday with his family, like his son from Coburg New press said. The CSU politician from Neustadt near Coburg sat in the state parliament from 1994, and in 2018 he no longer stood because of his illness. Five times he got the direct mandate in the constituency of Coburg. In 2003, the then Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber made him State Secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and under his successor Günther Beckstein he moved to the Ministry of the Interior. However, only for a short time, after the state elections in 2008 he was no longer a member of Horst Seehofer’s cabinet.
Also in 2008, Heike ran as a district administrator candidate against Michael Busch from the SPD because another candidate had suddenly withdrawn. Heike lost, albeit narrowly, and remained a member of the state parliament.
State President Ilse Aigner, who also moved into Parliament in 1994, was struck by the news of his death. “I have always experienced him as a highly competent and committed representative of his homeland who knew how to win people over,” she said. In 2019 she had awarded him the constitutional medal in gold, and Heike was also a recipient of the Bavarian Order of Merit.