[1] His father was the heir to the fortune and legacy of the Princes zu Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, a noble family known in Germany since 1129, whose Imperial county was made a principality of the Holy Roman Empire in 1792, but mediatized under the sovereignty of the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806.

[2] In 1970 he began working as a researcher at the Institute for Environmental Management Studies at University of Giessen and in 1973 he became the personal advisor of Bundestag vice president Liselotte Funcke.

After the death of his successor, Günter Rexrodt, Solms was again appointed Secretary of the Treasury in the middle of 2004, confirmed on 5 May 2005 in Cologne by a majority of 90.6%.

In his capacity as vice president, he was also a member of the parliament's Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigns committee chairpersons based on party representation.

He did not run for a parliamentary seat in the 2013 elections after having failed to be selected for the first position on the Hesse FDP state list in December 2012.