Berlin: German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel will not be a member of Angela Merkel's new coalition government after he was fired by his own party.

Gabriel, from Merkel's coalition partners the Social Democrats (SPD), had been expected to lose his post after tense relations with Andrea Nahles, his party's new leader.

Gabriel, who was last year voted Germany's most popular politician, posted on Twitter on Thursday that Nahles and Olaf Scholz, the SPD's acting chairman, told him he would no longer have a ministerial post.

His successor, to be announced on Friday local time, was expected to be Heiko Maas, 51, who served as justice minister in the last grand coalition. Katarina Barley, 49, the family minister, and Thomas Oppermann, 63, who is vice-president of the Bundestag, were also said to be in the running.

Maas introduced ambitious laws in his previous job that forced social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to remove hate speech from their sites. The law was seen as an international test case but is set to be amended in response to criticism that too much content is being blocked.