Egon Hölder was born in Pforzheim on 30 May 1927 and died on 2 September 2007. Following 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 the 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 Federal Returning Officer. His term ended on 1 June 1992.
Right at the beginning of his term, Egon Hölder was faced with the protests against the population census. Through wide-ranging public relations activities, he succeeded in reducing the resistance and on 25 May 1987, the census of population, occupation, housing and non-agricultural local units was successfully conducted.
Another big challenge was the introduction of federal statistics in the new Länder in the 1990s and the integration of the former Statistical Office of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). The basic steps were initiated by Egon Hölder. In his function as Federal Returning Officer, Mr. Hölder also performed the first all-German elections on 2 December 1990.