In 2010, news media reported that Michael Kretschmer, the CDU’s general secretary in Saxony, had offered personal meetings with Tillich in exchange for party donations worth €500 to €8,000, or about $680 to $10,900.

[4] By 2012, opinion polls put the backing of Tillich's CDU at 44 percent, at the time the highest level of support in any of the 16 German federal states; this made commentators describe him as “Germany’s second most-powerful politician from the formerly Communist East“ after Chancellor Angela Merkel.

[5] Tillich participated in the exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU and SPD parties to form a coalition government under Merkel following the 2013 federal elections.

Ahead of the elections, he had soon put an end to speculation that he might team up with the newly founded AfD, which the CDU instead attempted to characterize as a fringe movement that flirts with the far right.

[7] At the time, Saxony was the first of three eastern regions to hold elections in a two-week span, with Brandenburg and Thuringia later rounding off the first set of electoral since Merkel won a third term.

When the AfD overtook the CDU for the first time to emerge as Saxony's most popular party in the 2017 national elections, Tillich resigned and Michael Kretschmer took over.

Her father was a forced laborer from Poland who settled in Lusatia after World War II and married a Sorbian woman.