New Board Chair for the 2023/2024 School Year

Dear children and parents,
dear École de Gaulle-Adenauer team,

a new school year is beginning, and I am delighted to start it together with you and to represent the Deutsch-Französischer Schulverein Bonn e.V. as Ute Kuhn’s successor.

I will surely get to know all of you personally over the coming weeks, but I would already like to introduce myself briefly.

I was born and went to school in Hanover, but France played a big role in my life from very early on: after a school exchange in Poitiers, I had already decided to move to France after my Abitur. I then spent more than 25 years in Lyon, where I studied, worked and raised my two children.

I am therefore familiar with the German and French school systems, as well as with the international partner school of the Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium in Lyon, where my children completed their AbiBac, and with working alongside German and French teachers and parents’ associations.

Early in my career I taught German as a foreign language at various vocational institutes, but after a few years I changed direction to look after customers and service provider networks within an international group of companies. Over 18 years there I got to know many parts of a business, took on a wide range of tasks and led many projects. Teamwork was always the key to success.

When I decided to return to Germany in 2019, I had the opportunity to take on similar tasks in international cooperation, including with France, at a German group of companies. The structure was familiar and the international exchange interesting and rewarding, but the connection to France and the French overseas territories was unfortunately very limited.

The prospect of working in a German-French environment again and exchanging with families whose situation I can identify with so well from my own experience was decisive for me, both professionally and personally. I am therefore very much looking forward to my new role and to working with all of you.

With this in mind, I wish you, and especially our children, einen guten Start et une bonne rentrée 2023/2024!

Katrin Weiland