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Who is the new State Secretary in Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs? The Green from Frankfurt am Main is not easily pigeonholed – and that could be an advantage.
The 57-year-old Green from Frankfurt am Main is not easy to pigeonhole. The fact that, as a former top banker, he can do more than politics and is not particularly ideologically driven – that’s exactly what recommended him to his party for the new post.
A weekend to think about it
As the successor to the dismissed State Secretary Patrick Graichen, Nimmermann is supposed to save the controversial energy transition in the heating sector for Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck. When the request came last Friday, he is said to have asked for a weekend to think about it, according to the Greens. After all, the job is one of the most delicate in the federal government at the moment.
On Monday morning, Nimmermann agreed. The man – married, two children – is already a recognized expert in cool arithmetic by profession. Because Habeck’s future for climate-neutral heating is an economist. In the financial center of Frankfurt, where the Greens fought hard battles between Realos and Fundis in the days of Joschka Fischer, Nimmermann became a qualified economist. Then he made a career there as a banker.
“Spontaneous” switch to politics
In 1999 he started at BHF-Privatbank, in 2013 he even became its chief economist. He had previously completed his doctorate with a thesis entitled “The Taxation of International Factor Incomes”, which was quite realpolitik.
A managerial position in a bank, a change into politics and then also a green man: that makes Nimmermann a “rare specimen”, as the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” once admiringly stated. But no calculations: he made the move to politics in the fall of 2014 “spontaneously,” he later reported.
At that time, the Greens made him Finance Secretary of Schleswig-Holstein. Nimmermann quickly proved himself in the role of crisis manager for particularly difficult cases in the green area of responsibility: During the financial crisis, he managed the privatization of the ailing HSH Nordbank and helped to protect the federal state from legacy assets worth billions.
Vice Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein at the time was the Green Habeck. Now the Federal Minister of Economics, who is under pressure, expects Nimmermann to “rethink the processes with a fresh perspective” for him.
Experience with sensitive political missions
Habeck can be sure that his new man will not lack the necessary self-confidence: In Wiesbaden, Nimmermann is considered highly intelligent, ambitious and loyal – and some also as unapproachable. “I will miss this cool guy and the whole cabinet will miss it,” said Schleswig-Holstein’s CDU Prime Minister Daniel Günther when Nimmermann moved back to his homeland in Hesse in 2019.
There the Green gained even more experience in dealing with delicate political missions. In the house of the Green Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir, he took over responsibility for the economy, the Frankfurt financial center and internal organization.
It was above all historical emergencies that Nimmermann demanded: first state aid in the corona pandemic, then aid in the energy price crisis after the Russian attack on Ukraine. Al-Wazir praised his former state secretary in Wiesbaden that he was “the right man for a challenging task” after his move became known.
At an energy summit organized by the state government in Wiesbaden last winter, Nimmermann campaigned for citizens to save electricity and gas as much as possible. He underscored the fact that pragmatism is also important to him here by announcing that the government’s savings tips are “practically implementable and effective in the short term”.
Politically active, “but in the background”
A big specialist in the field of energy transition as his predecessor Graichen is not a never-ending man. That’s not a disadvantage: Habeck doesn’t have to worry about the successor having such a close and family-like network that was fatal to the predecessor.
He was already ecologically active during his economics studies. At that time he was involved in the Hessian Society for Democracy and Ecology, which was close to the Greens. He has always been politically active, “but in the background,” he said in an interview some time ago.
The 57-year-old quickly felt how things would go if he were to be more in the foreground in the future. The opposition FDP parliamentary group in Hesse used the news of his move to the Ministry of Economics to make the bad judgment: The Green is a “gray mouse” and “hardly anyone in Hesse will miss him”.
Even if the liberals in the Berlin traffic light are his coalition partners in the future: Nimmermann must also take their resistance into account if he is to push through the heat transition for Habeck. He may also have acquired resilience in his earlier hobby. He is a member of Eintracht Frankfurt and used to play for the club himself – on the rugby team.