Beerfeltz, Hans-Jürgen

Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz is State Secretary of Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

He learned the fundamentals of development policy when working for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, his first job after graduating from Hamburg University in sociology.

Beerfeltz was head of office for the former German Minister of Economics, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, and was responsible in particular for coordinating his visits to the United States, accompanying him on them and also helping to receive foreign officials visiting Germany. He conducted visiting and training programs as part of international civic education within the remit of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, in particular in Central and South America.

Beerfeltz was formerly the Vice-President of Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education. Among his responsibilities were reconciliation with the Jewish people and, in particular, programs for journalists visiting Israel.
During his entire time as federal party manager of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Beerfeltz accepted additional assignments, often several times a year, as a development consultant in the fields of local government, NGO professionalization and promotion of democracy. He has undertaken more than 100 international assignments for a wide variety of agencies, with the main focus on Central and South America and South-East Asia.

He was active in the academic field, focusing in particular on all issues relating to the development of values and communication, also authoring and co-authoring a variety of publications and taking on assignments as a guest lecturer in Germany and the United States.

Beerfeltz sat on the executive committee of the Liberal International federation of liberal parties for four years and was a delegate on various European liberal bodies. As State Secretary, he has managed the day-to-day running of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) since November 2009.

In 2010 he became a member of the Broadcasting Board of the Deutsche Welle broadcasting corporation. Since the beginning of 2011 he has chaired the Supervisory Board of the newly established Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), formed through the merger of the former organizations that were responsible for Germany's technical development cooperation.