Dr Christoph Müller has been German Ambassador to Australia since September 2011, following a posting as Ambassador to Peru.
Having lived and worked on all five continents, he has acquired more than three decades of experience in both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, including the opportunity to look at the Indo-Pacific from four different perspectives: from China, India, Peru and Australia. Against this background, he has a special interest in Australia’s and Germany’s role in the wider region, where joint objectives translate into a new dimension of the German-Australian relationship.
He was a member of the Australia-Germany Advisory Group whose recommendations for the deepening of the bilateral relationship were presented to PM Malcolm Turnbull and Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel last November in Berlin.
Dr Müller holds a Master of Arts degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts, and a Doctor iuris from the University of Augsburg, Germany. Prior to his academic and diplomatic career, he served for two years with the Alpine troops of Germany. He is married and has three daughters.
After his legal training and early years of employment at Otto Wolff AG, Dr Atzpodien moved in 1990 to the then Thyssen Industrie AG, where he took charge of the legal support service for the large-scale plant business. Since then, he has served the ThyssenKrupp Group in various capacities. As from 1st October 2001, Dr Atzpodien was an executive board member of ThyssenKrupp Technologies AG, in which capacity he was responsible for the plant engineering and construction sector once before, in the period 2005 to 2007. In March 2007, he was appointed CEO of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. Since October 2009, Dr Atzpodien was management board chairman of the Marine Systems business area of ThyssenKrupp AG. In January 2013, he took over as CEO of Industrial Solutions business area, which was formed through combination of the Plant Technology and Marine Systems business areas. Since October 15, 2015 Dr Atzpodien is concentrating fully on the management of Marine Systems.
