The governor of southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg state, Winfried Kretschmann, expressed sorrow Friday at Thomas Schaeuble's death.

He died late Thursday after suffering from complications following a heart attack last summer.

Schaeuble served as Baden-Wuerttemberg's state interior minister from 1996 to 2004. Since leaving the government, he had headed the state-owned Rothaus brewery.

Like his elder brother Wolfgang, the 70-year-old finance minister, Thomas Schaeuble was a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, a one-time party leader who helped negotiate German reunification more than two decades ago, has been a key figure in the eurozone debt crisis since becoming Merkel's finance minister in 2009.