Migration history, AfD hunter, cyber defense expert: The Berlin CDU gets one top official German security authorities to Berlin: Felix Badenberg, Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution since June 2022, is to become a senator for justice in the black-red coalition of CDU state chief Kai Wegner. The daily mirror found out.
The Christian Democrats are delighted that they are the 47-year-old as independent could win for the office. Because with the doctorate lawyer the CDU sends a clear signal and thus clearly differentiates itself to the right. Badenberg headed the area for the protection of the constitution Right-wing extremism and counter-terrorism. She had the most Classification of the AfD as a right-wing extremist suspected case – also against the concerns of the then Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU).
Badenberg became born in the Iranian capital Tehran, her parents came to Germany when she was twelve years old. After studying law in Cologne with a focus on state and constitutional law, she went to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2006. The subject of her doctoral thesis read: “The child’s right to knowledge of its own parentage, taking into account the problem of anonymous birth”.
She initially worked in the Department of Foreign-Related Extremism and later worked in personnel administration and counterintelligence, among other things. From 2013, Badenberg rose to the Office management staff and managed the central reporting system. There she was responsible for the reports of the controversial authority president who was dismissed in 2018 Hans Georg Maassen to the Bundestag and the government.
She then built her own department for cyber defense on – a reaction to Russian hacking attacks. From January 2020 she finally headed the department for right-wing extremism and terrorism. A few months earlier, the neo-Nazi murder at the CDU politician Walter Lübcke and the right-wing extremist attack on a Synagogue in Halle the country.
Because of her hard line against the right, she is regularly threatened. As Vice President of the Federal Office, Badenberg was the first woman to be appointed to the post by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
Since then she belonged together President Thomas Haldenwang and the other Vice President of the Federal Office, Sinan Selen, to the top management of the agency. As Vice President, she was responsible for right-wing extremism/terrorism, central services, technical analysis, technical infrastructure and education and training. In concrete terms, this also applies to personnel, interception measures and IT.
