Prof. Dr. Edgar Franke - Parliamentary State Secretary

Curriculum vitae

Edgar Franke was born on 21 January 1960 and grew up in a political family in North Hesse as the son of August Franke, Head of an Administrative District and Member of the Land Parliament. After completing his school-leaving exam (Abitur) at the Albert-Schweitzer School in Kassel, he performed his non-military service at the National Association for Workers' Welfare.

He subsequently studied politics and law in Marburg and Gießen. He holds a PhD in municipal law from the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen, which he completed under Professor Klaus Lange, the longstanding President of the State Court of the Land of Hesse.

A member of the SPD since 1976, he has been active in various party bodies. From 1985, he was able to gather practical experience in municipal politics as a municipal representative in Edermünde and, from 1997, as a city counsellor in Gudensberg.

After a short period of employment at a legal firm, he went on to work for the National Association of Occupational Accident Insurance Funds. There, he started off heading up an expert group on public law and later became the rector and a professor at the University of the German Statutory Accident Insurance in Bad Hersfeld.

Prof. Edgar Franke is the author of numerous publications in the field of social and public law and, most recently, was the editor of the practitioner’s commentary to the Social Code VII published by the Nomos Verlag and a commentator of the Constitution of Hesse.

From 1 September 1999 up to the federal elections in 2009, he was the directly elected mayor of the city of Gudensberg. In 2005, he was re-elected with over 90% of the votes.

Since 2009, he has been directly elected four times consecutively as a Member of the Bundestag for the constituency 170 of Schwalm-Eder/Frankenberg.

From 2014 to 2017, Edgar Franke was Chairman of the Health Committee in the Bundestag. In 2018, he became the deputy health policy spokesperson of the SDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag and continued to serve in this office until 2021.

Moreover, from 2018 to 2021, Edgar Franke held the position of Federal Government’s Commissioner for the Victims and Bereaved of Terrorist Offences Committed on National Territory.

Prof. Franke is a member of the Executive Board of the German Parliamentary Society (DPG). He is vice-president of the DPG.

He was awarded the Johann Bachmann Prize in 2019. He received this honour for his efforts advocating anti-corruption legislation for the public health system.

Since 8 December 2021, Edgar Franke has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Health.

Edgar Franke is widowed. On 26 April 2024, he remarried. He has two daughters from his first marriage. He lives with his family in Gudensberg in the northern part of the county of Schwalm-Eder and in Berlin.