Mathias Geiger

Mathias Geiger (2017)

Mathias Geiger (born November 22, 1957 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a Hessian politician ( FDP ) and was Mayor of Eschborn from 2014 to 2020 .

Life

Geiger grew up in Eschborn. He attended elementary school there, then went to the Altkönig School in Kronberg im Taunus and the Rackow School in Frankfurt am Main. In 1975 he began training as an administrative clerk at the city of Eschborn, which he completed in 1978. During his professional career, he held various positions in the city administration of Eschborn, including as clerk and head of the residents' registration office . In addition, Geiger was a lecturer at the Hessian Administrative School Association in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main from 1992 to 2002 , and from 2000 to 2002 as a lecturer at the specialist academy for civil status. In 2002 Geiger was elected to the First City Council. In 2013, he ran against the incumbent Wilhelm Speckhardt ( CDU ) in the mayoral election on September 22nd and achieved second place with 31 percent of the vote. In the runoff election on October 6, 2013, he was able to prevail against Speckhardt with 61.1 percent of the vote. He took office on February 16, 2014. In the mayoral election on October 20, 2019, he lost 45.7 percent to 50.2 percent of the vote to his challenger Adnan Shaikh (CDU), who was also supported by the SPD and the Greens.

Geiger is married and has one daughter.

Preliminary investigation

On January 8, 2015 it was announced that disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against Geiger for taking photos of documents from the town hall .

The Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office, represented by Chief Public Prosecutor Nadja Niesen, has brought charges against Geiger at the regional court in Frankfurt am Main for breach of official and tax secrecy as well as for defamation and false suspicion . Geiger is said to have copied or photographed a large number of documents, some of which were personal or confidential, from the internal administrative area of the city of Eschborn or the city council during his tenure as First City Councilor from 2012 to February 2014. He handed these papers or documents burned on electronic data carriers to a lawyer known to him who was also active in local politics, who was to use them for political purposes, i.e. to the detriment of the mayor at the time and the Eschborn CDU as well as for the benefit of the accused, whatever he was supposed to use several cases also did. The fact that this lawyer later handed some of the CDs left to him, when the accused had already been elected mayor of the city of Eschborn, to a journalist, who in turn handed them over to the police in December 2014, ultimately led to the initiation of the present investigation. The accused is further accused of having in a written press release at the beginning of January 2015 accused the said lawyer against his better judgment of violating his mandate instructions by handing the CDs that were handed over to him for fiduciary custody to the journalist and thereby violating his legal confidentiality to have. In addition, at the end of January 2015 he is said to have deliberately untruthfully accused the lawyer of violating private secrets in order to initiate an investigation against him through corresponding information given in the context of a complaint to the public prosecutor's office.

On June 15, 2016, the Frankfurt Regional Court announced that the indictment against Geiger had been admitted and the main proceedings opened. On November 28, 2018, the Frankfurt Regional Court sentenced Geiger to a fine of 180 daily rates, with 60 daily rates already considered to have been served due to the inappropriately long duration of the proceedings of over two years. Geiger appealed against this judgment on time, so that it is not yet legally binding.

On December 17, 2018, an application by the parliamentary groups of the SPD, CDU and Greens to initiate a voting procedure against Geiger failed with 23 to 13 votes with one abstention (62.2 percent) from the two-thirds majority required for this. FDP, Free Voters and the Left Party voted against being voted out of office. His scheduled term of office therefore continues until February 2020.