20 Facts About Spiros Simitis

Spiros Simitis was a Greek-German jurist and a pioneer in the field of data protection.

Spiros Simitis was appointed Chief Data Protection Commissioner for the state of Hessen in 1975, and remained in post till 1991.

Spiros Simitis was indeed offered the job, but he rejected it in protest against the government decision, taken shortly before launch, to cut the resources allocated to the new department.

Spiros Simitis was born in Athens to Fani and Georgios Simitis, a lawyer and law professor who later became a member of the National Liberation Front government in World War II.

The brothers studied at the University of Marburg, where between 1952 and 1956 Spiros Simitis worked for his degree and doctorate in jurisprudence.

Spiros Simitis received his doctorate for work completed in 1956 on "Actual contractual relationships as an expression of the changing social purpose of legal principals in civil law".

Spiros Simitis's ambition was to make his career in the universities sector: accordingly, in 1963 he received his habilitation at Frankfurt.

Spiros Simitis's dissertation was entitled, "The significance of the welfare state principle in family and company law".

Around the time he submitted his dissertation Spiros Simitis met the Freudian psychoanalyst-scholar Ilse Grubrich at the home of their friend, the sociologist-philosopher Jurgen Habermas and his wife Ute.

Spiros Simitis's next move was to the recently reinstated Law Faculty at the nearby University of Giessen, where between 1964 and 1969 he was employed as a full professor in Private law and Interjurisdictional Private law, along with Trade and Commercial law.

Spiros Simitis was director of the Research Centre for Data Protection at Frankfurt University and has been a guest professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Strasbourg University and Yale University.

Spiros Simitis authored the Data Protection Act for the state of Hessen which came into force in its original form on 13 October 1970 and is widely seen as the world's first statute on data protection.

In November 1977 it emerged that Spiros Simitis had turned down the post and cabinet minutes indicated that the government had agreed to a headcount level of only 20.

Spiros Simitis had refused the job because proper resourcing for the national Data Protection Commission, as previously agreed, would not be forthcoming.

Spiros Simitis took on the office in an atmosphere of widespread continuing scepticism on the challenges involved in Information Technology legislation.

Spiros Simitis has been a member of the German Council for International Private Law since 1966.

Spiros Simitis served between 1990 and 1996 on the research council of the European University Institute in Florence, in 1994 as advisor to the ILO on creating a system for regulating employee data protection, and between 1998 and 1999 as chair of the European Commission's High-level-expert-commission on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Spiros Simitis served on it again between 2008 and 2012.

Spiros Simitis was an honorary doctor of the Democritus University of Thrace since 1992, and, from 2003, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Spiros Simitis was an honorary member of the German Jurists Convention from 2002 and a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens from 2003.