Simone Schwanitz appointed Secretary General

Schwanitz will take up office on 1 February 2022

In its meeting on 19 November 2021, the Senate unanimously recommended Simone Schwanitz as the new Secretary General. With the incumbent Secretary General Rüdiger Willems will retiring on 31 May 2022, Martin Stratmann had appointed a search committee at the beginning of 2021 to identify a suitable candidate for this office.

Simone Schwanitz will be known to some in the Max Planck Society as the former Head of the Department "Research, Technology Transfer, Digitisation, European Union" in the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg. In this position, which she has held since 2016, she is also a member of the Board of Trustees of several Max Planck Institutes.

The 53-year-old political science graduate has been able to gather excellent knowledge in personnel, budget, construction and legal matters through her many years of work at the operational, ministerial level, as well as in the organisation of their implementation. "This will benefit her not only in managing the general administration, but also in interacting with the institutes, bodies and committees as well as with the ministries and the Joint Science Conference of the Federation and the Länder," Martin Stratmann is convinced.

Simone Schwanitz will take up her post on 1 February 2022. Rüdiger Willems will still be available in February 2022, ensuring an orderly handover