Newsletter

Week 30/2025

Dance like a Child

Nikolaus Forgó

18 Jul 2025 — 6 min read

The Hugarian word for sunflower is Napraforgó. These are from Weinviertel on Saturday.

I was not focused enough last Thursday, so that I mistakenly posted last week’s weekly 12 hours early. My apologies. That was, however, an unplanned experiment on how important consistency is as the post got significantly less attention from readers than normal.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song for the Week)

We are in Austria again. This week’s song of the week is from Sodl. It’s in particular nice to be heard during train rides so that I listened to it perhaps 50 times on my way to Klagenfurt last week.

Instagram has more on her, the song and the FM4 Amadeus-award she won.

The song’s YouTube video is somehow a mix of Falco’s Jeannie and Wiener Aktionismus (Viennese Actionism).

À propos Wiener Aktionismus: MUMOK Vienna currently has a very interesting - yet hard to bear - exhibition curated by MATHILDA on child abuse by Otto Muehl and in Friedrichshof commune. MUMOK is part of the “Bundesmuseencard” so that the entry is for free for cardholders. Der Standard has a commentary and an interview on the exhibition.

Retrospect

Brosius-Gersdorf

The issue of the postponed election of my former Hannover-Colleague Prof. Dr. Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf to the German Consitutional Court (see also Weekly 28/2025) kept me busy this week. Here’s a chronology, LTO has a report on an Open Letter that I signed - together with 300 other law professors.

Dr. Sabine Chai published a statement in the name of OEAWI - the Austrian research integrity organisation I am part of.

I discussed the open letter with the three professors having initiated it in an additional #arsboni session on Thursday.

Many of the issues we discuss - in particular how to handle the trend that everybody can feel and behave like an expert in constitutional law having “just another opinion” on fundamental rights such as human dignity and the power of coordinated opinion making on social media go beyond the case that is, still, very much in the center of my attention at the moment.

Broius Gersdorf’s current faculty in Potsdam published a message of support as well.

#arsboni

I published two more #laundry interviews I am proud of this week.

Main lesson here is how important the Carinthian Slovenians were for the beginnings of Austrian private radio. I was also very happy to meet Brigitta Busch - a colleague at UNIVIE and fascinating scholar. And it was equally nice to see Helmut Peissl again whom I had met due to the “Commit-Bürgerinnenrat” a few weeks ago (see Weekly 15/2025)

The other conversation was with Dr. Karl Newole on (lack of) compensation for terror victims. It was in particular interesting to hear about different approaches to the claims between the ministry of the interior (still no English website here, btw) and the Finanzprokuratur.

In addition, the LLP-project streamed an episode on labor law, but bandwith and other issues damaged the audio quality in a rather unacceptable way so that we will redo this episode, presumably next week.

IT-Security and Digital Souvereignty in Austria’s Universities

I had the pleasure to participate and speak at an event dealing, in particular, with IT-security threats at Austrian Universities, hosted by the Federal Ministry Women Science and Research. My part was, inter alia, on the relevance/meaning/impact of the NIS2-directive on Universities, an issue that desserves attention. One of the documents I studied in detail for this ist the current draft German implementing law from June 2025 that has a very narrow definition of research institutions, probably aiming to keep Universities out of scope wherever possible.

The informal reception took place in a nice room with a huge portrait of Emperer Franz Joseph in it, and the entry door to the venue (see below) has a catholic sign of Caspar Melchior and Balthasar; it’s always interesting to see how relaxed Austrian protococol is in such matters.

Media

My editorial on online surveillance (law) in MMR was published.

It’s rather outdated already, as the draft law passed the most relevant political steps and is to be debated in the parliament’s second chamber this Thursday and as the expected debate whether surveillance should be extended further has begun already

I gave a TV-Interview on the concept of trusted flaggers under the DSA and why enforcement is difficult. I also commented for ORF radio on changes in WeTransfer’s terms and conditions possibly allowing the company to use customers’ conten for AI training purposes.

These contributions will (probably) be broadcasted on Saturday in ZIB and Mittagsjournal.

Prospect

Empowering Privacy Germany

I will chair a panel in Munich at the Empowering Privacy Germany in Munich on July 24th. Plenty of interesting people will be there, including my fellow colleague Prof. Dr. Boris Paal. My panel starts at 10.45 and is on a very important topic “Evolving Compliance – From Privacy to Multi-Domain Compliance” and will discuss the (new) role models for data protection officers in the light of NIS2, Cyber Resiliance Act and the AI Act.

Free entry, registration required, no stream.

Strobl

By the end of next week, I will leave to Strobl for the Sommerhochschule. Two weeks of teaching outstandingly bright students and the Summer Discourse are ahead of me. Again, the summer discourse programme unites a terrific bunch of great people.

Registration is still possible. This is a view from the venue.

#arsboni

Dr. Katharina Trettnak-Hahnl and Dr. Günther Gast, LLM, joined me in the #laundry. We spoke about their policy paper (more on this also on LinkedIn) on how to guarantee that lawyering stays an attractive job perspective for the young.

The video editing and rendering is done, it will be public on Friday, July 18th, 9.00 am.

Look and Feel

When Breath Becomes Air

This is - another - report on the impact of a terminal cancer-diagnosis on a patient’s (rest of) life that I read. The author, Paul Kalanithi, was a young, very succesful and academically competitive neurosurgeon confronted with and dying of metastatic lung cancer in his thirties. The book is - topicwise - similar to Arbeit und Struktur (see Weekly 26/2025 ) and is also beautifully written - yet it’s rather different - as it stems from a very different personality shining through. I stumbled across the book via an excerpt published as an article in The New Yorker, “My last Day as a Surgeon” that touched me a lot and can be read for free. Here’s a review and a Subreddit. And here’s an interview with his widow Lucy Kalanithi, five years after his death. Fuck Cancer.

Cum-Ex

The audio book I am currently listening to is

Although it’s long (14 hours, I have heard 10 so far), I would recommend it, as one learns some news about attorneys, tax advisors, investment banks and their respective roles in this affair causing billions of damage. Hanno Berger, for example, is an interesting and still very active character - just like is former partner Kai-Uwe Steck and, in particular, state prosecutor Anne Brorhilker.