Daniel Kriener

Daniel Kriener (born October 18, 1960 in Beirut , Lebanon ) is a German diplomat . He has been the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Venezuela since 2018 .

Life

Kriener was born as the son of Heta, b. Bentlage, and Gustav Adolf Kriener were born in Beirut when his father held a position as a pastor in the local parish office there. He has five brothers. After graduating from the Wilhelm-Dörpfeld-Gymnasium in Wuppertal , he did his community service from 1979 to 1981 as a volunteer for the Action Reconciliation Peace Services in Birmingham / Coventry Cathedral . Kriener then began studying at the Philipps University of Marburg , which he graduated in 1989 with a diploma in political science . He then received a research grant at the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw for 1989 and 1990 .

Career in the Federal Foreign Office

In 1992 Kriener began training as an attaché at the Foreign Office in Bonn . From 1994 he was consul at the German consulate general in Breslau , Poland . In 1997/1998 he completed a master's degree in public administration (MPA) at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . He then worked for the Foreign Office on East Central Europe ( Slovakia , Hungary ) and the Baltic Sea Council . In 2001/2002 Kriener worked as an exchange officer at the US State Department in Washington, DC After that, he worked until 2006 under Wolfgang Ischinger in the political department of the German Embassy in Washington . This was followed by activities in the task force for the German G8 presidency in 2007 and as deputy head of the USA / Canada department at the Foreign Office in Berlin . From 2011 to 2014 was Kriener Counselor at the German Embassy in Santiago de Chile . In 2014 he again worked in Germany, this time as Head of Unit for the Andean countries .

In October 2018 Daniel Kriener succeeded Stefan Herzberg as Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Caracas , Venezuela . On March 6, 2019 Kriener was from the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza to persona non grata declared, as he the South American country had interfered the previous day in the internal affairs by the self-appointed interim president Juan Guaidó on his arrival at Caracas airport from imminent arrest - because of previously unauthorized departure - wanted to protect. Kriener was the only one of twelve ambassadors who had received Guaidó at the airport, who had been expelled by the Venezuelan government. On March 6, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas did not react to the expulsion decision, but called Kriener “back home for consultations”. On March 7, 2019, Guaidó stated in an interview with Spiegel that Nicolás Maduro was illegally holding the office of president and was therefore not able to declare an ambassador to be an undesirable person.