Language Fluency as Global Weapon

“I can only advise every young person: Learn languages! This is also why I like to think back to my student days, which began in Cambridge and Bristol and later took me to Paris and Montpellier. Academic learning, and of course a joyful student life, are valuable factors that I also enjoyed during my semesters in Munich, Tübingen, Heidelberg and Mannheim. But the semesters abroad in England and France also made possible the so important immersion in the native languages. It is pleasing that today's students almost obligatorily incorporate semesters abroad into their academic training. In my day and even decades later, this was still not a matter of course.”

“I, a native of Heidelberg, left Germany over three decades ago. Since then, I have been living in Switzerland and have since obtained Swiss citizenship. I appreciate this innovation-friendly country, which (despite cantonal differences) is overall less bureaucratized than Germany and has given me the opportunity to be entrepreneurial worldwide from the start. In a way, I didn't emigrate, but returned to the country from which I came from family-wise. But more on that later.”