Ferdinand von Prondzynski

Ferdinand von Prondzynski (born 30 June 1954) is the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is known as a lawyer, a legal academic, a high-profile public commentator and a university leader in Ireland and Scotland. A German-born Irish citizen, he is a former lecturer and Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, and was later both a Professor and a Dean at the University of Hull, before serving as the high-profile second President of Dublin City University (DCU), Dublin, Ireland from 2000 to 2010. He has been Principal of the Robert Gordon University since late March 2011.

He is an authority on employment and commercial law and on certain EU and competition policy matters, and an active commentator on academic affairs and public policy.

Prondzynski's family were originally of Pomeranian-Kashubian origin, with its earliest records going back to 1366, but his lineage can be traced back with some certainty to 1550. He is a direct descendant of Ferdinand von Prondzynski, a 19th-century Prussian General from Groschowitz near Oppeln in Silesia (now Groszowice, near Opole, Poland). Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in Groszowice is named after him. Ferdinand von Prondzynski's grandfather, Alfred, was a lieutenant in the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded; he died later from his wounds, in 1932. His grandmother later remarried in the 1930s to a retired admiral, Karl Feldmann (who worked for the Ministry of Labour) when Ferdinand's father, Hans, was still a young man. Hans von Prondzynski was a captain in the German army during the Second World War{ was wounded several times in battle, and was inter alia awarded the Iron Cross Class 1 (EK1).

After the War, he studied law in Göttingen, and then joined the cement-producing company, Dyckerhoff AG, eventually becoming a director. He married Irene Countess Grote in the Grote family residence at Breese im Bruche, in Lower Saxony (Hanover) in 1950. The house had to be partially demolished in 1958, because of structural damage during the war and post-war years, and he, Irene, their son Ferdinand, and his two sisters, moved to Ireland in 1961. According to Prondzynski, his father's poor health, lack of funds to maintain Breese im Bruche, and a desire for a less stressful lifestyle, meant that Hans and Irene von Prondzynski left Germany and moved to the Knockdrin Castle and estate, near Mullingar, County Westmeath in Ireland. After a few years, Hans grew weary of farming and moved back to Germany and to Dyckerhoff AG, but the family kept their new estate in Ireland, and Hans retired to there in 1982. He died in Ireland in 1998, after a long illness. Irene von Prondzynski lived in Knockdrin until she died in 2017.

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