Peter Gottwald

Prof. Dr Peter Gottwald was born in Breslau in 1944. After studying law in Munich and Berlin, he passed both state exams with distinction. He went on to become Dr jur. utr. in 1974 and Dr jur. habil. in 1977, with Karl Heinz Schwab as academic suprvisor. In the same year, he became full professor of law at the University of Bayreuth. From 1983 to 2012, he held the Chair for Private Law, Procedural Law and Conflicts of Law at the University of Regensburg. From 1985 to 1987, he was dean of the Law Faculty. He declined positions at the Free University of Berlin and the universities of Erlangen, Tubingen and Zurich/Switzerland. Between 1981 and 1989, he also served as associate judge at the Higher Regional Courts of Bamberg and Munich.

Since 1987, he has been the joint editor-in-chief of the German Journal of Family Law (FamRZ) and since 2011 of the International Journal of Procedural Law. He has revised the leading German textbook 'Rosenberg' on civil procedure (2010, 17th edition) and the textbook 'International Civil Procedure' by Nagel (2013, 7th edition). He has published a handbook called 'Insolvency Law' (2015, 5th edition) as well as a practitioners' handbook called 'Family Procedure' (2012, 4th edition) and is a commentator for the Munich Commentaries on the Civil Code (2016, 7th edition) and Civil Procedure (2013, 4th edition; 5th edition forthcoming).

Peter Gottwald was a visiting professor at Tulane Law School (1989), at Kansai University Osaka (1992), Ritsumeikan University Kyoto (1999 and 2004), Bilkent University Ankara (2012 and 2013), International Hellenic University Thessaloniki (2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016), University of Haifa (2014) and Chuo University Tokyo (2014). He is laureate of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1999) and became doctor honoris causa of Thessaloniki University Law School in 2005.

He was vice-president of the (German) Association of International Procedural Law from 1989 to 1997 and president from 1997 to 2009. At the International Association of Procedural Law, he was secretary general from 1995 to 2009 and then president till 2011. He is now honorary president of both associations.