The former office manager of Annalena Baerbock, Titus Rebhann, will become chief lobbyist at the energy company RWE on March 1, 2023. Rebhann was head of Baerbock’s Bundestag office until the change of government. He then moved with her to the Foreign Office.

A long-time close associate of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Titus Rebhann, is moving to the energy group RWE as chief lobbyist. The former office manager of the Greens politician will become head of the company’s capital representative office in Berlin on March 1, 2023, as an RWE spokesman confirmed on Tuesday in Essen. The “world” had previously reported.

Rebhann was head of Baerbock’s Bundestag office until the change of government at the end of last year. Then he moved with her to the Foreign Office. However, the ministry pointed out that he had been released from work since mid-October and “had no professional contacts with RWE and was not involved in any projects directly related to RWE”.

Changes from politics to business are not uncommon. For example, former federal government spokesman Thomas Steg became chief lobbyist at Volkswagen in 2012. In 2013, the Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery, Eckart von Klaeden, also joined Daimler as a lobbyist. Contacts to politics can be very helpful in such jobs.

This should also apply to Rebhann: RWE relies heavily on renewable energies, but also on lignite in the Rhenish mining area in North Rhine-Westphalia by 2030. In North Rhine-Westphalia’s state government, Environment Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens) was once Rebhann’s boss: the future RWE lobbyist headed Krischer’s office for eight years during his time in the Bundestag. In 2018 he switched to Baerbock.