Michael Wolff (consul-general)

Dr. Michael Wolff, MJur, JD, (born 30 September 1971) is the Consul-General for the Republic of Austria in Victoria, Australia. He is a former extreme sport personality, known as the first person to skydive and scuba dive the North Pole on the same day. He additionally has served as the captain of the Austrian team at 2001 International BASE jumping Championships in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Personal background

Dr. Michael Wolff was born in Moedling in Lower Austria on 30 September 1971. He is the third of four children of Dr. Volker Wolff and Elke Wolff (née Huber). At the age of six, his family moved to Steyr, where his father was the export manager for Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG, and in 1980 the family moved permanently to their former vacation home near Gmünd in the Carinthian Alps. Wolff holds dual citizenship in both Austria and Australia.

Educational background

Wolff attended the Gymnasium for Modern Languages in Spittal an der Drau in Carinthia. In 1988, he attended Santa Barbara City College. He was the youngest Austrian to attend college in the USA, being 16 years at that time. In 1994, he graduated from the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna, where he finished his studies two semesters before the minimum time allocated for legal studies. He was ranked first in his class of 721, and was awarded numerous academic scholarships.

In 1995, Wolff was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1996, he was awarded a Master of Comparative Jurisprudence from New York University (NYU) as a Fellow of the Institute of Comparative Law. That same year, he was awarded a Doctorate in Law from the University of Vienna.

Student fraternities

Wolff is a member of two fencing student fraternities, including Saxonia Vienna and the fraternity Corps Arminia Klagenfurt. He participated in six mensur bouts for Arminia in 1988 and 1989, and ten bouts for Saxonia between 1991 and 1994 for a total of 16 mensur bouts.

Professional background

Extreme sports

Wolff has performed about 1400 parachute jumps. He holds parachute instructor, static line jump master, and vector tandem parachute jump master ratings. He is also a PADI scuba diving instructor. In April 2000, he was the first person to parachute onto and scuba dive underneath the North Pole on the same day.

He was an active BASE jumper, being the first person to jump the Maltakraftwerke Koelnbreinsperre Dam in Austria in 1999. He was severely injured BASE jumping from the Waikato River Bridge in 2000 when he struck a cliff, but survived and became the captain of the Austrian team at 2001 International BASE Championships in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His BASE jumps have been shown on Cable News Network (CNN) and Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) and journals and magazines.

Corporate law

Wolff is admitted to practice law in the Federal Court of Australia and the state of New York. He has acted as in-house Counsel for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; Johannesburg, South Africa; Bangkok, Thailand; and New Delhi, India. Since 2008, he has been a member of the Victorian Bar in Victoria, Australia, and a barrister of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

On 18 July 2016, he was chosen as one of four finalists in the Barrister of the Year category of the 16th Annual Lawyers Weekly Australian Law Awards.

Diplomatic representation

In April 2009, Wolff was appointed as the Hon. General Consul for the Republic of Austria in Victoria, Australia. He was re-appointed in that role in 2014.