“It was with deep sadness and dismay that we learned of the sudden death of the German Ambassador to China, Prof. Dr. Jan Hecker. Our thoughts at this moment are with his family and the people who were close to him,” the embassy said, without giving details of when or where Hecker died, or specify a cause of death.

From 2015, Hecker was head of the refugee policy coordination team at the Federal Chancellery. In October 2017 it was announced that he would succeed Christoph Heusgen as a foreign policy advisor to Angela Merkel.

He is a former member of the SPD. At the end of December 2018, Hecker resigned as a judge at the BVerwG and switched to civil service.