Stephan Kramer

President of the State-Agency for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia (State Domestic Intelligence Service) since December 2015. The agency’s task is to avert all efforts meant to harm the State of Thuringia, Germany, the free democratic basic order, and the German population on the state level in cooperation with the federal and other state agencies. To this end, the agency collects and analyses information about extremist, terrorist, and any other efforts posing a threat to security, and about foreign intelligence services’ activities directed against Germany. The predominant purpose of collating all gathered information is to keep the Government informed about the security situation.

Previously served as:

– Director, European Office on anti-Semitism of the American Jewish Committee, Trans Atlantic Institute (TAI), Brussels between July, 2014 and July, 2015.

– Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) from April 2004 until January 2014 and head of the office of the European Jewish Congress in Berlin.

– Executive Director of the Zentralrat (March 2000 until 2004)

– Personal assistant to the President of the Zentralrat, Ignatz Bubis (sel.A.)(1999-2000)

– Press spokesman, Consultant for individual & slave labour Compensation Funds and advisor for public and government relations, Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Frankfurt/Main Office) (1995-1999).

During his time with the Claims Conference, he also established and supervised local offices of the Central and Eastern European Holocaust Compensation Fund of the Claims Conference in Kischinev, Moldova; Bukarest, Romania and Budapest, Hungary. 

He has served as chief of staff to three different members of the German Bundestag between 1989 and 1995, among them the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and President of the Inter-Parlamentarian-Union (IPU), the Economic Affairs Committee and the Children Commission of the Bundestag.

He studied law, economics and social science (B.A. and M.A.). He is Vice-Chairman of the board of trustees of the AMCHA-Foundation Germany, a member of the advisory board of the Padeia Institute, Sweden. He serves on various advisory committees for projects against Racism and Intolerance, of Civil Society and Remembrance, also on the international advisory board of the Holocaust Museum in Macedonia.

He is an active reserve-officer of the German Navy (Lt.-Commander) and teaching political science and security policy at the German Naval Academy in Mürwick. He served also with the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) dealing with counterintelligence, the detection of “anti constitutional activities” within the German Armed Forces and the protection of German Armed Forces from sabotage and foreign espionage. He is a longstanding member of the German Council on Foreign Affairs and the German Atlantic Council.