Hans Peter Bull

Federal constitutional and administrative lawyer

(* 17 October 1936 in Lübben, Germany)

He was the first federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, and held the office of interior minister in the state of Schleswig Holstein for seven years. Hans Peter studied Law between 1956 and 1960 in Hamburg, Marburg and at the Free University of Berlin. He graduated with a doctorate in law in 1963 and, in 1966, completed his second state examination. On completing his studies in 1972, he qualified for a professorship in constitutional and administrative law.

Hans Peter Bull has been a member of the SPD since 1967, and assumed the office of chairman of the State Arbitration Commission in Hamburg. From 1973 to 1978, he was professor of public law at the University of Hamburg; he subsequently held the office of federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information from 1978 to 1983. Between 1983 and 1988 he resumed his duties as professor at the University of Hamburg until he became the interior minister of Schleswig Holstein in 1988. He held this office until 1995 and then returned to his work as a professor at the University of Hamburg until his retirement in 2002. From 1997 to 2003 he held the office of vice-chairman of the Federal Arbitration Commission of the SPD. Hans Peter is also a member of the working committee of social-democratic lawyers (AsJ) in Hamburg.

Compared to currently active data-protection activists, he assumes a rather more moderate attitude, which not least may be a consequence of his earlier activities as interior minister. He doesn’t see data protection as a value in itself, but rather as a counterweight and corrective measure against the misuse of data exploitation. He categorically rejects the wide-ranging data protection as advanced by Simitis, Bäumler and Weichert, for example, as paternalistic and an infringement on citizens’ rights. Instead he emphasises the status of the individual as a socially related entity and underlines the necessity of a socially adequate flow of information. With regard to the private enterprise sector, he subscribes to the essence of in dubio pro private enterprise rather than in dubio pro libertate.