Gerhart Holzinger (born 12 June 1947 in Gmunden, Upper Austria) is an Austrian jurist, educator, and career civil servant.

It came as a surprise to the family when Holzinger's mathematics teacher suggested that the boy be sent to gymnasium to receive a more extensive secondary education.

Holzinger graduated from gymnasium in 1966, the first person in his wider family to obtain matura and thus to earn the right to attend university.

[1] After his year of national service, Holzinger enrolled in the University of Salzburg, originally reading German studies.

Holzinger had fallen in love with literature and language as an adolescent, spending long hours reading the classics and memorizing Goethe's Faust, but was made to question his choice of career by endless and exhausting lectures on the analysis of Biedermeier poetry.

At the same time, he found himself impressed by René Marcic, a legal philosopher lecturing on the importance of law for society.

In 1992, he was granted the title of Head of Section (German: Sektionschef), the highest rank an Austrian civil servant can hold.

In 1998, he submitted his habilitation thesis to thee University of Graz and became an associate professor (Dozent) of Austrian constitutional and administrative law.

[11] In 1990, Josef Riegler of the Austrian People's Party considered Holzinger as a potential successor for Egmont Foregger, the outgoing minister of justice at the time.

[12] An expert on fundamental rights questions,[8][9] Holzinger has tended to support expansive interpretations of constitutional civil liberties and due process guarantees.

[6] In human rights matters, commentators have noted, he regularly found himself more aligned with Social Democrats and Greens than with his fellow conservatives.