Overview

• Irene Mihalic has written to Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt urging him to declare whether he will intervene in the case of Professor Stephan Maninger at the Federal Police Academy.
• Her letter argues the minister bears political responsibility for any lifetime professorial appointment and criticizes what she calls passivity toward exposure of trainees to constitution-hostile views.
• Parliamentary State Secretary Christoph de Vries previously declined to disclose personnel details, citing Basic Law constraints on parliamentary scrutiny of individual civil servants.
• The police union GdP commissioned expert Fabian Virchow, whose report links Maninger’s published positions to New Right discourse and warns of harm to integration, while academy-commissioned experts reportedly cleared him and his lawyer attacked Virchow’s credibility; a court ruling in related litigation is expected in November.
• Maninger joined the academy in 2016, became a professor in 2020, paused for about three years after allegations, and returned to teaching earlier this year in Lübeck.