Christian Patermann was born in Gliwice, Upper Silesia, in 1942. Following his High School years, he studied Law, Economics and Languages in Germany (Freiburg, Munich, Bonn), Switzerland (Lausanne, Geneva) and Spain (Santander) and completed his Doctoral Thesis in Law at the University of Bonn in 1969.

He entered the German public service in 1971 by joining the Federal Ministry of Science and Education, Bonn. From 1974-1978 he became Science Counsellor at the German Embassy in Washington D.C., USA. He then returned to the Ministry of Research and Technology where he held many positions in Germany and International Organisations, like ESA, ESO, EMBL. In 1988 he became Director of Cabinet of the German Federal Minister of Research and Technology, Dr. H. Riesenhuber. This comprised also the position of the spokesperson of the Ministry. In 1993 he was appointed Deputy Director General of the Ministry.

In 1996 he went to Brussels to become the Programme Director for "Environment" Research at the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission at Brussels.

Since January 2004 he was Programme Director for "Biotechnology, Agriculture & Food" Research at the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission, which from 2007 also comprised Aquaculture and Fisheries as well as Forestry. During these years he was responsible for the elaboration of the new concept of the Knowledge Based Bioeconomy ( KBBE ), which today is known as biobased Economy or more simply Bioeconomy in Europe.

In August 2007 Christian Patermann retired. He now lives in Bonn and advises public and private institutions and companies, among them the largest German Land NorthRhine-Westphalia , the Fraunhofer Society, the Swiss Agricultural Research Council etc. Since beginning of 2009 he has been appointed member of the first Research and Technology Council " BioEconomy " of the Federal German Government. The University of Bonn awarded Christian Patermann in November 2011 an honorary doctor's degree because of his merits to promote European Agricultural Research .In April 2012 Christian Patermann was appointed member in the Georgofili Academy in Florence, the oldest Science Academy in the area of agrosciences in the world. In 2018 he was appointed Fellow of the International Society of Horticultural Societies in Louvain, the largest international Assembly in Horticulture worldwide.