[1][2] It was widely believed that he was appointed at the eleventh hour only after the anticipated appointee, Spiros Simitis, had turned the job down because previously agreed levels of resourcing were dramatically cut at the last minute.

Bull took on the job in an atmosphere of continuing scepticism over the levels of government commitment to data protection and Information Technology legislation more generally.

[4] The family - Hans Peter Bull, his two-year-old sister, the parents and his grandmother - fled Lübben on 19 April 1945 as the Red army advanced from the east.

[10] He is also a member of the Hamburg-based Working Circle of Social Democratic Jurists ("Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialdemokratischer Juristinnen und Juristen" / AsJ).

In comparison with subsequent generations of Data Protection commissioners and officers, Bull's approach can be seen as relatively moderate, which may reflect his own later seven-year stint as an Interior Minister.

He rejects what he would see as a more extensive data protection regime advocated by Spiros Simitis, Helmut Bäumler and Thilo Weichert, which he characterises as paternalism and infantilising of the citizenry.