served from 2012 to 2026 as an executive board member (“Councillor”) of the North Rhine-Westphalia Association and the German Association of Cities. There, he headed the Department of Urban Development, Construction, Housing, and Transportation. He is the managing director of Solo Urbis GbR.
Hilmar graduated from high school in Bad Schwartau in 1980 and served for two years as a soldier in the German Armed Forces at a NATO headquarters in Cologne, Schleswig-Holstein, and Jutland (DK).
From 1982 to 1988, he studied spatial planning as well as urban and regional planning at TU Dortmund University and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, graduating with a degree in engineering.
Until 1991, Hilmar worked as a freelance planner in Dortmund at the urban planning and research officeZlonicky & Wachten and as an urban planning trainee in Frankfurt am Main, Maintal, and Erfurt. From 1992 to 1994, he worked for the GTZ as a planning consultant on the udle project in Kathmandu, Nepal. Until 2000, he served as head of the Department of Law, Procedures, Contracts, and Administration at the Dresden City Planning Office. At the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development, Hilmar was responsible until 2012 for Departments II – Urban Development and Projects and VI – Ministerial Affairs in Construction. This also included the Supreme Building Inspectorate of the State of Berlin. From 2007 to 2010, Hilmar was on leave and worked for German development cooperation in the GTZ’s Program for Sustainable Urban Development in Syria (UDP).
Since 1994, Hilmar has given lectures and seminars and held teaching positions at TU Dresden, HTW Dresden, MIT, Cambridge, USA, TU Berlin, the University of Stuttgart, and BTU Cottbus. Since 2024, he has held an honorary professorship in Urban Planning and Urban Management at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg.
Hilmar is married and has four children aged 15 to 30. He holds both German and Turkish citizenship and speaks English, French, and Turkish. He enjoys sailing and reads extensively. Another passion of his is the restoration of the village church in Buchholz, which serves as the family home in the Brandenburg Oberhavel district.