Reinhard Krapp was born on November 27, 1953 in Lohne / Oldenburg. He attended high school in Vechta / Oldenburg (Gymnasium Antonianmu Vechta) and then did his military service in Wildeshausen / Oldenburg.
From 1973 to 1978 he studied law and economics at the Westphalian Wilhelms-University of Muenster / Westphalia and the University of Lausanne / Switzerland.
In September 1978 he passed the first state examination in law at the Higher Regional Court in Hamm/Westphalia and then worked as a trainee lawyer in Bonn, Cologne and Montreal/Canada. In July 1981 he passed his second state examination in law in Düsseldorf.
He joined the Foreign Service as an attaché in 1981 and passed the state examination for the Higher Foreign Service in 1983. From 1983 to 2018 he was employed in various departments of the Foreign Office and at the embassies in Ottawa, Cairo, Moscow and Sofia.
He also worked at the German Permanent Mission to the European Union in Brussels and at the United Nations in New York. He was, among other things, environmental officer at the Permanent Mission of Germany to the European Union in Brussels, head of the “International Environmental Policy, Climate Policy and Sustainable Development” department at the Foreign Office in Bonn and Berlin, head of the legal and consular department at the German embassy in Moscow and most recently Envoy and Head of the Economic Department of the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in New York.
After his retirement in July 2018, he was admitted to the bar by the Cologne Bar Association and now focuses on issues of international environmental law. Attorney Krapp is laureate of the renowned Elisabeth-Haub-Prize for international environmental diplomacy and international environmental law.
He is married, has three children and four grandchildren.