Egon Hölder was born in Pforzheim on 30 May 1927 and died on 2 September 2007. Following his military service and captivity (1944 to 1946), he obtained the university entrance qualification in Pforzheim in 1947. From 1948 to 1951 he studied law and social studies including technical subjects in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. In 1951, he passed the first state examination in law and in 1955 the second state examination in law.
Following his second state examination in law, Egon Hölder joined the Federal Ministry of the Interior and was first engaged in constitutional matters. In 1958, he was seconded for a short time to the administrative district authorities of Mayen/Eifel and Neuwied/Rhine and in 1959 to the Federal Administrative Court in Berlin. In 1960, he returned to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. From 1963, he was Head of Section for issues of civil defence and emergency rescue, from 1967 Head of Section for organisational issues of the Federal Government and federal authorities. At the same time, he was responsible for the project group on “government and administrative reform”. In 1970, he was appointed Ministerialdirigent and head of a Sub-Directorate whose field of competence included especially issues of efficient application of data processing in public administration and data protection problems. From 1974 to 1983, he was head of the Sub-Directorate for federal cultural affairs and political education, also at the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
On 27 June 1983, Egon Hölder was appointed President of the Federal Statistical Office and fifth Federal Returning Officer. His term lasted until the beginning of June 1992.
Under his lead, Bundestag elections were conducted on 25 January 1987 (the former d'Hondt or highest average method was replaced by the Hare/Niemeyer method for distributing the seats, and Germans living abroad were entitled to vote for the first time) and 2 December 1990 (first all-German election), and European elections were held on 17 June 1984 and 18 June 1989.
