Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria’s deputy premier, economy minister and chairman of the right-wing populist Free Voters party, was found dead in a Berlin hotel on Wednesday.

He was 55. He had been scheduled to speak at the opening of his party’s Berlin office but canceled because of health reasons, according to the dpa news agency. The body was at the Neuer Fritz hotel on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin-Mitte. Berlin prosecutors confirmed that the body was found in the hotel room; the cause of death was not immediately disclosed. Alexander Hoffmann, who heads the Christian Social Union (CSU) group in the Bundestag, mourned the death and called Aiwanger a “politician through and through” who shaped Bavaria.