Lieutenant General  Hans-Werner Wiermann

Lieutenant General Wiermann joined the Bundeswehr in 1976. His training as an Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Officer in the German Army included degree studies in Electrical and  Communication Engineering at the Bundeswehr University in  Hamburg. As a junior and field officer, he was repeatedly selected for advanced military education, attending the General Staff Officer Course at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College in Hamburg from 1988 to 1990 and the British Army Staff College in Camberley in 1993.

His consistent professional development in politico-military affairs began early in his career, starting in 1994 with two successive assignments as Assistant Branch Chief Arms Control and Chemical Weapons Convention in the Joint Staff of the German Ministry of Defence and Assistant Branch Chief Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe seconded to the Federal Foreign Office.

While the development of military policy in national, bilateral and international settings has become the hallmark of his formidable career, Lieutenant General Wiermann also has a solid operational background. He has served in G4 Logistics and G3 Operations functions on the staffs of 1 Armoured Division in Hannover and IV Corps in Potsdam. He has held command at the lower tactical as well as the operational level.

Broadening his professional scope, Lieutenant General Wiermann then completed a two- year tour as Assistant Branch Chief Force Planning in the Policy and Advisory Staff at the very heart of the Ministry of Defence before his selection as Military Assistant to the German Chief of Defence in 2002. Equipped with his early experience in arms control and security policy and the impressions he gathered assisting the German Chief of Defence at the interface between the military and political arenas, Lieutenant General Wiermann moved on to a succession of increasingly senior positions in the Ministry of Defence.

From 2004 to 2012, he rose from Second Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Politico-Military Affairs and Arms Control to Director of Security Policy in the Ministry’s newly established Security Policy Directorate. Before leaving the Ministry of Defence in 2013, Lieutenant General Wiermann collected extensive experience in bilateral and international security policy, travelling the globe and leading and directing staffs or staff elements handling issues comparable in content and nature to NATO Headquarters’ International Military Staff.

In 2013, Lieutenant General Wiermann became the Bundeswehr’s Commander Territorial Missions, gathering operational-level command experience touching on some of NATO’s and the European Union’s most pressing adaptation challenges, including military mobility, the enablement of the European theatre, civil-military cooperation and civil preparedness. His command encompassed a network of liaison commands and staff elements establishing lasting relationships between military and civilian authorities in preparation for regional and national states of emergency.

On 12 August 2015, Lieutenant General Wiermann assumed the role as German Military Representative to NATO and the European Union. In July 2019, he became the Director General International Military Staff. Lieutenant General Wiermann is married to Susanne and has two daughters.