Ferdinand von Schirach

Ferdinand von Schirach
Ferdinand von Schirach
Born	1964 (age 52–53) Munich, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Lawyer, writer
Website	www.schirach.de

Ferdinand von Schirach (born 1964 in Munich) is a German lawyer and writer. He published his first short stories at the age of forty-five. Shortly thereafter he became one of Germany's most successful authors. His books, which have been translated into more than 35 languages, have sold millions of copies worldwide and have made him "an internationally celebrated star of German literature."

A member of the noble Sorbian (West Slavic) Schirach family, he is the son of Munich businessman Robert von Schirach (1938–1980) and his wife Elke (née Fähndrich, 1942) and a grandson of the Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach. His American great-grandmother is a descendant of two signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, and descends from the Founding Fathers of the United States, the Mayflower pilgrims.

He grew up in Munich and Trossingen and was educated at the Jesuit college Kolleg St. Blasien, about which he wrote in connection with sexual harassment in the Catholic Church in Der Spiegel. After studies in Bonn and his Referendariat in Cologne and in Berlin he became an attorney in 1994, specialised in criminal law. Von Schirach is considered a prominent attorney and represented, among others, the BND spy Norbert Juretzko, and, in the so-called "Politbüro trial", Günter Schabowski. He attracted attention in connection with the "Liechtenstein Tax Affair", in which charges were brought against the German Federal Intelligence Service Bundesnachrichtendienst and when he complained to the Berlin data protection agency on behalf of the family of the late actor Klaus Kinski, when it allowed the publication of Kinski's medical file. Schirach is active exclusively in the domain of criminal law.