23 Facts About Gerhart Holzinger

Gerhart Holzinger was appointed to the Austrian Constitutional Court in 1995, serving as its president from 2008 until his retirement in 2017.

Gerhart Holzinger was born on 12 June 1947 in Gmunden.

Gerhart Holzinger's father worked for a local utility company; his mother was a homemaker.

Young Gerhart Holzinger was originally not expected to obtain higher education.

Gerhart Holzinger graduated from gymnasium in 1966, the first person in his wider family to obtain matura and thus to earn the right to attend university.

Gerhart Holzinger had fallen in love with literature and language as an adolescent, spending long hours reading the classics and memorizing Goethe's Faust, but was made to question his choice of career by endless and exhausting lectures on the analysis of Biedermeier poetry.

Gerhart Holzinger abandoned German studies, switched to jurisprudence, and received a doctorate of law in 1972.

Gerhart Holzinger's supervisor was Kurt Ringhofer, an eminent scholar and justice on the Constitutional Court.

In 1975, Gerhart Holzinger left Salzburg for Vienna, joining the Constitutional Service in the Chancellery, an office that assists ministries in drafting legislation and in evaluating the constitutionality of draft statutes drafted elsewhere.

Gerhart Holzinger served on the executive committee of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences in Brussels from 1989 to 1998 and as the president of the Austrian Society of Administrative Sciences from 1997 to 2009.

Gerhart Holzinger chaired the Ministry of the Interior Human Rights Council from 1999 to 2003.

Gerhart Holzinger was a member of the Austrian section of the International Commission of Jurists, becoming its secretary general in 1995 and serving as its president from 2000 to 2008.

Gerhart Holzinger was active in the Austrian Convention on Constitutional Reform, a reform initiative launched by the second Schussel government that aimed at decluttering Austria's famously extensive and convoluted body of constitutional law.

Gerhart Holzinger has been president of the Vienna Law Society since 2013.

Gerhart Holzinger was made an honorary full professor in 2002.

Gerhart Holzinger was made a member of the Board of Governors of the University of Graz in 2013;.

Gerhart Holzinger has never joined any political party but has been a member of the Cartellverband since his student days.

Gerhart Holzinger has consistently maintained an amiable working relationship with both sides of the political spectrum.

An expert on fundamental rights questions, Gerhart Holzinger has tended to support expansive interpretations of constitutional civil liberties and due process guarantees.

Gerhart Holzinger has two daughters, born in 1982 and 1983, respectively.

Gerhart Holzinger has finished an Ironman Triathlon in 2006, at the age of nearly sixty, and other triathlons besides.

Gerhart Holzinger still feels close to his native Gmunden and its environs, especially to the Traunstein.

Gerhart Holzinger still loves theater, including contemporary theater, and attends regularly.