Spiros Simitis (; 19 October 1934 – 18 March 2023) was a Greek-German jurist and a pioneer in the field of data protection. In recognition of his role, admirers sometimes describe him as "the man who invented data protection".
He was appointed Chief Data Protection Commissioner for the state of Hessen in 1975, and remained in post till 1991. When the West German government prepared for the 1978 launch of a national equivalent, he was seen by commentators as the obvious choice for the post of Federal Commissioner for Data Protection. He 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. That involved reducing the staffing level at the new commission from 32 – "previously agreed as necessary" – to 20. "The state of Bavaria on its own is budgeting no fewer than twenty data-protection staff for the coming year – a telling comparison" ("Allein das Land Bayern sehe für Datenschutz-Aufgaben in seinem eigenen Bereich im kommenden Jahr nicht weniger als zwanzig Bedienstete vor – eine "bezeichnende Relation"").
Spiros Simitis obtained West German citizenship in 1975. His younger brother, Costas Simitis, served as Prime Minister of Greece and was leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) between 1996 and 2004.
Biography
Spiros Simitis was born in Athens. Georgios Simitis, his father, was a lawyer and law professor. He completed his schooling in Athens. Directly after that, with his brother Costas Simitis, he moved to West Germany for university-level education in law. The brothers studied at the University of Marburg, where between 1952 and 1956 Spiros Simitis worked for his degree and doctorate in jurisprudence. He 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" ("Die faktischen Vertragsverhältnisse als Ausdruck der gewandelten sozialen Funktion der Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts"). He then moved a short distance south, to Frankfurt University, where he worked as a research assistant till 1962/63. His ambition was to make his career in the universities sector: accordingly, in 1963 he received his habilitation at Frankfurt. His dissertation was entitled (loosely translated), "The significance of the welfare state principle in family and company law" ("Der Sozialstaatgrundsatz in seiner Bedeutung fuer das Recht von Familie und Unternehmen"). Although the risks associated with unregulated accumulation by public bodies of vast quantities of personal data were already appearing on the horizon among academics familiar with developments in database technology, his habilitation was not concerned with Data Protection, the speciality which by the end of the 1960s had become the focus of his work.
Around the time he submitted his dissertation Simitis met the Freudian psychoanalyst-scholar Ilse Grubrich at the home of their friend, the sociologist-philosopher Jürgen Habermas and his wife Ute. The wedding ceremony for Spiros and Ilse Simitis took place on 3 August 1963, following the Greek Orthodox rite which on this occasion, as one impressed academic colleague noted, involved "dancing around the bride and groom with floral wreaths".
His 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. Returning to Frankfurt in 1969, he took a professorship in Labour law, Civil law and Legal informatics, with a particular focus on Data Protection. 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 (1976), Strasbourg University (1987–1988) and Yale University (1981–2000).
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. It was from the start, in his words, a "reaction to the constant refinement and evolution of Information Technology" (als "Reaktion auf eine sich ständig weiterentwickelnde und verfeinernde Informationstechnologie"). In 1975 he took German citizenship, and this opened the way for him to take over as Chief Data Protection Commissioner for the state of Hessen in succession to Willi Birkelbach, although sources make clear that in reality his was the defining contribution from the establishment of the department in 1970.