Mayr was born on 11 June 1944 in
Schärding,
Upper Austria. The son of an
Innviertel teacher and merchant family, he attended the
Stift Kremsmünster humanistic high school and then went to study in
Vienna. In 1968, he joined the editorial team of the Austria Press Agency. In 1981 he became deputy head of department and in 1988 head of the foreign policy editorial department. From 1988 he worked as
managing editor, became deputy editor-in-chief in 1993 and took over as successor to Josef A. Nowak in 1997. He campaigned for a modern and service-oriented agency, in particular by setting up an image service and a graphic editorial team in the 1980s and 1990s. He retired in 2005. In addition to his journalistic work, Mayr is a passionate
Tarock player and author of several books on the subject together with
Robert Sedlaczek. ==Books (selection) ==