Born August 21, 1946, in Eisenstadt, Austria, Prosl grew up in Vienna and earned undergraduate degrees at the University of Vienna in Law and French in 1969. After completing two years of military service, Prosl studied at Europe’s oldest school of international relations, the Institute of Advanced International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1970 to 1972. Prosl’s first job in the field was with the United Nations Development Program in Burkina Faso and Rwanda, where he served from 1973 to 1977. 

 

Prosl joined the Austrian Foreign Service in 1977, and served at the Austrian Foreign Ministry in Vienna from 1977 to 1979. Prosl’s first foreign assignment was as First Secretary at the Austrian Embassy in London, from 1979 to 1981. In that year Prosl began his first stint in the United States, serving at the Embassy in Washington, DC, as Counselor for Economic Affairs till 1987, as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in 1987, and finally as Deputy Chief of Mission in 1988. 

 

Nearly ten years away, Prosl returned to Vienna in 1988 to serve at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the Office of the Secretary General from 1988 to 1991. He then returned to the U.S., but not to Washington, DC, serving from 1991 to 1995 as Austrian Consul General in Los Angeles, where he appeared in a documentary short film, Ein Österreicher in Hollywood. 

 

Prosl then bounced back to Vienna, serving in a succession of positions at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, including Director of the Department on Western and Northern Europe from 1995 to 1998, Director General for Legal and Consular Affairs from 1998 to 2000, and Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry from 2000 to 2002. Prosl then represented Austria to the world’s only other German-speaking nation, serving as ambassador to Germany from January 2003 to early 2009. 

 

Prosl is an accredited French language translator. He is married to Patricia Prosl-Hurni and the couple has two sons.