Prof. Dr. Martin Henssler

Managing Director of the Institute for Labour and Economic Law
Managing Director of the Institute for the Law of the Legal Profession
Director of the Institute for Company Law

Curriculum Vitae

Professor Dr. Martin Henssler was born in Stuttgart in 1953. He studied law at the University of Konstanz. In 1983 he was awarded his Ph.D. at the same university for his doctoral thesis entitled “The employment contract in the multi-corporate enterprise” (“Der Arbeitsvertrag im Konzern”), his Ph.D. advisor being Professor Dr. Bernd Ruethers. From 1983 to 1986 Martin Henssler worked as a state attorney and judge at the district court of Konstanz.

In 1990, Martin Henssler completed his professorial thesis entitled “Risk as the Subject Matter of Contracts” (“Risiko als Vertragsgegenstand”) and was appointed Professor of Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law at the University of Heidelberg. In 1991, Martin Henssler was appointed Professor of Civil Law, Labour Law and Economic Law and Managing Director of the Institute of the Law of the Legal Profession at the University of Cologne. Since 1998 he has held the positions of Managing Director of the Institute of Labour and Commercial Law, Managing Director of the Institute of the Law of the Legal Profession and Co-Director of the Institute of Corporate Law. He has further been visiting professor at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne since 2009.

From 2006 until 2012 Martin Henssler was President of the Association of German Jurists (Deutscher Juristentag e.V.) and President of the Association of Civil Law Professors of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Zivilrechtslehrervereinigung) from 2007 until 2011. He still is a peer reviewer for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and has been a member of the SME (small and medium-sized businesses) Advisory Board at the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology since 2010. Since 2012 Martin Henssler has been the Managing Director of the European Centre for Liberal Professions, a joint research unit of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Law.

From 2013 until September 2015 he was Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Cologne and subsequently Vice-President (Prorektor) for academic staff and financial planning of the University of Cologne from October 2015 until April 2018. He currently has a visiting professorship at the University of Florence.

In 2007, Martin Henssler was awarded the “Prize for Good Legislation” by the German Society for Legislation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesetzgebung e.V.) and the Order of the Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2012.