Julia Esser presents a commemorative volume honoring Spiros Simitis.
A recently published new volume in the series “Frankfurter Studien zum Datenschutz” [Frankfurt Studies on Data Protection] commemorates exceptional Frankfurt law professor Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Spiros Simitis, who passed away on March 18, 2023. “Spiros Simitis – sein Vermächtnis” [Spiros Simitis – his legacy] reproduces in slightly expanded form the lectures delivered at the symposium held in his honor on January 15, 2024, at Goethe University Frankfurt, and supplements these with two additional texts. Several articles reflect on the impulses Simitis provided in many areas, pay tribute to his lasting academic legacy, and commemorate him as a human being, scholar and politician (the title of the volume’s introduction, written by Prof. Gerhard Dilcher, who himself passed away on July 1, 2024). In addition to honoring a towering personality at Goethe University, the volume also relays through several different contributions, the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s.
Prof. Simitis held the chair of labor law, civil law and legal informatics (focus on data protection) for many years following his appointment in 1969. In this capacity he had an indelible influence both on the Faculty of Law and on Goethe University as a whole; he actively supported the university’s development in and around the 1970s. Despite a large number of calls from top universities in Germany and abroad, and his longstanding work as Hessian Data Protection Commissioner from 1975 to 1991, he remained loyal to the university. He founded the Data Protection Research Institute, and was extremely active as its director until he passed the baton to Prof. Spiecker in 2013. In his capacity as chair of the scientific board from 2008 to 2012, he also oversaw the establishment of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften Institute for Advanced Studies.
Yet Spiros Simitis was more than an academic with great personal charisma. He was a firm believer in a European community and a national and international champion of data protection, who occupied very powerful positions, including in the political and institutional spheres, having served on several high-ranking bodies and commissions in Germany and Europe. As such, from 2000 to 2005 he was chairman of the German Ethics Council, while at EU level, he became a permanent advisor to the European Commission on data protection issues in 1988. In addition, from 1998 to 1999 he served as Chair of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Commission on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. He headed the Council of Europe’s expert commission on data protection from 1982 to 1986, and throughout his lifetime received numerous awards and honors from Germany and abroad, and also held several honorary doctorates. Particularly noteworthy are his honorary membership of the Association of German Jurists and the Chancellor’s Citation of the University of California, Berkeley (its highest award) in 2010.
“Father of data protection”
Prof. Simitis’ most visible legacy – which also has had a global impact – is in the field of data protection law. At a time when computers were still programmed with punch tape and no one had even dreamed of the internet, Prof. Simitis already had the vision and foresight to warn of the risks to individual self-determination and democracy – posed by this technological information power from which citizens cannot protect themselves. As the “father of data protection,” he developed the world’s first data protection law for the German state of Hesse (1970) and made a key contribution to the importance and concepts of contemporary data protection throughout Europe and the world.
The contributions to the new volume go far beyond data protection and paint a picture of the professor’s diverse academic legacy while at the same time revealing his fascinating personality. Prof. Stefan Kadelbach, Dean of Goethe University’s Faculty of Law, reviews Prof. Simitis’ impressive academic career, recalling the friendly and attentive manner as well as the cosmopolitan outlook of a fabulous mentor and colleague. Frankfurt legal historian Prof. Gerhard Dilcher adds some very personal memories in what may turn out to be on of his last publications: Looking back on Prof. Simitis’ Greek roots and childhood during the Second World War, he describes the varied cultural influences Simitis experienced and the warmhearted and charming nature that characterized him as a human being, a jurist and a politically active citizen. Prof. Simitis was a master of all aspects of legal doctrine, he understood the law to be the protection of weaker individuals, and he also managed to implement legal concepts in actual policies – always against the background of his own experiences of dictatorship and the abuse of power. Social progress and the reform of backward, outdated (legal) structures were Prof. Simitis’ primary foci and drivers of his work, writes Prof. Manfred Weiss, describing the main features of Simitis’ special working style and methodological approaches. He surpassed all his contemporaries with his understanding of how to fruitfully apply knowledge and experience from other disciplines, countries and ages to further develop the law. His proposals for solutions and reforms have benefited humankind, they use law as an instrument to protect individual self-determination – and they reveal just what a forward-looking pioneer and true philanthropist Prof. Simitis was.
Optimism in the 1970s and 1980s
Goethe University’s Prof. Klaus Günther pays tribute to the theoretical aspects of Prof. Simitis’ work as a legal scholar. His chapter vividly describes the optimism that permeated the academic spirit of the 1970s and 1980s at Frankfurt’s Faculty of Law. Prof. Simitis was instrumental in shaping this spirit, thanks to his unique, interdisciplinary way of thinking and his outstanding ability to inspire others and put them under his spell – including Jürgen Habermas. Prof. Achim Seifert, Saarland University, looks back on Prof. Simitis’ extensive work on labor law; here, too, the legal scholar made a lasting contribution to the academic discussion of the law on codetermination by highlighting the need to be consistently receptive to social science findings. As such, Simitis applied arguments from comparative law to support alternative forms of codetermination which he viewed as superior and preferable to the institutionalized German model. The groundbreaking impact of Prof. Simitis’ interdisciplinary and international research approach is also evident in his work on family law.
On this topic, Dr. Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt, former Hessian Minister of Justice and erstwhile judge at Germany’s Constitutional Court, recalls that Prof. Simitis utilized the psychoanalytic findings from an American-British-German consortium surrounding Anna Freud to develop German law. By eliminating paternalistic structures from legal doctrine, Simitis made a fundamental contribution to harmonizing today’s family law with the German Basic Law and its concepts of equal rights and protection. His writings on child welfare law helped ensure that parental law is now centered on the child and its welfare – although Hohmann-Dennhardt notes that many adjustments are still necessary, which itself demonstrates how Prof. Simitis’ work continues to resonate today, something the volume’s editors and organizers foresaw. Simitis’ last doctoral student, Prof. Vagelis Papakonstantinou, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Athens, commemorates Prof. Simitis as a dedicated European with a cosmopolitan spirit, who created links across the Atlantic and took data protection to the U.S., all the while advocating for a shift in perspective, and someone who, above all else, can look back on great achievements in both legal practice and legal policy. Prof. Paul M. Schwartz, UC Berkeley School of Law, contributes some very personal memories of Simitis and his outstanding life’s work on the protection of individual self-determination and the defense of democracy, and provides another memorable review of the time spent on Bockenheim Campus and the huge and captivating impact of the then-Hessian Data Protection Commissioner, which can be felt until today. The volume ends with a summary of the main message of Prof. Simitis’ legacy by Prof. Indra Spiecker genannt Döhmann: it is essential that the law guarantee and protect the autonomy of the individual against power asymmetries in all areas of life; this task constantly presents itself anew, always in the light of current developments.
Prof. Simitis’ spirit and charisma continue to exert an influence through his writings, the laws and rulings that bear his mark, and in the people he inspired, connected and supported – as shown by the contributions to the book, which recall Goethe University’s golden age and are all worth reading.
Julia Esser
Julia Esser, research assistant at the Chair of Digitalization Law, University of Cologne, and in the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S), Goethe University Frankfurt
