The GdP vice chairman resignation of Sven Hüber on 26 August 2026 has drawn fresh scrutiny to one of Germany’s most prominent police union figures, after media reports surfaced alleging serious misconduct during his service in the East German border troops in the late 1980s.
Hüber, 62 and according to the Berliner Zeitung shortly before retirement, had served as deputy federal chairman of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP) since September 2022. He also held the position of chairman of the main staff council of the Federal Police.
The allegations, first published by the right-wing portal Apollo News and based on a sworn witness statement, claim that Hüber pushed a pistol into the mouth of a man attempting to cross the border and kicked him in the face. The same statement alleges he instructed soldiers to follow a shoot-to-kill order and, when a post leader declined to fire on escapees, publicly demoted him and called him a traitor.
Hüber denied the accusations as false and damaging. He said he stepped down to ensure the legal dispute would not harm the union.
ZDF‘s legal expert described the allegations as gravierend, meaning grave or serious. Before formally stepping down, Hüber informed GdP chairman Jochen Kopelke, 42, and the union’s senior committees of his decision and transferred his responsibilities with immediate effect.
GdP Vice Chairman Resignation Came After a Separate Political Controversy
The DDR-era allegations were not the only controversy surrounding Hüber in the weeks before his resignation. In July, he had published an article in the GdP’s member magazine Deutsche Polizei warning against the consequences of an AfD sole government in Saxony-Anhalt. He invoked an innerer Notstand, or inner state of emergency, and argued that an ‘AfD seizure of power’ would not release any civil servant from their constitutional oath.
The article, addressed to the GdP’s approximately 200,000 members, triggered a wave of membership cancellations from the union, the Berliner Zeitung reported.
The rival police union DPolG criticised Hüber for breaching the principle of union neutrality. DPolG federal chairman Heiko Teggatz characterised the statements as an attempt to exercise political influence over union members.
Legal Action Threatened Over ‘Distorted Publications’
The GdP has said it intends to pursue criminal and civil legal action against those responsible for what it describes as false claims, threats, and distorted publications relating to the affair, according to the taz.
The union’s official records, updated following his departure, now list Hüber as Stellvertretender Bundesvorsitzender (Rücktritt vom Amt am 26. August 2026), confirming his resignation from office on that date.
The allegations relate to conduct under the GDR’s border regime, which operated a formal Schießbefehl, or shoot-to-kill order, against those attempting to cross into West Germany. Prosecutions and disciplinary consequences for those who enforced that regime have continued to surface in German public life across subsequent decades.
N-tv reported that Bild and other outlets carried Hüber’s statement that his legal fight should not become a burden for the organisation he served. Whether the GdP’s own threatened legal action produces proceedings, and whether any criminal investigation follows into the DDR-era conduct itself, will determine how far this affair extends beyond the union’s internal affairs.
