Persons and Committees

President • Secretary General • Steering Committee

The President – Curriculum Vitae

Ursula Seiler-Albring became the President of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen on May 18, 2006

• 1963 – 1969 studied sociology, political science, psychology and constitutional law in Göttingen, Tübingen and the Freie Universität in Berlin
• 1983 – 1994 member of the German parliament, the Bundestag. Among other things, a member of the parliament’s budgets committee
• 1991 – 1994 Minister of State for European Affairs in the Federal Foreign Office
• 1995 – 1999 Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Vienna
• 1999 – 2003 Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Sofia
• 2003 – 2006 Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Budapest
• Honorary Senator of the Andrássy University in Budapest

The Secretary General – Curriculum Vitae

Ronald Grätz, born in 1958 in São Paulo, has been the Secretary General of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the editor of the quarterly magazine "KULTURAUSTAUSCH" since September 2008.

Education
• Studied German language and literature, Catholic theology and philosophy at Tübingen and Frankfurt/M.

Career
• Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M.
• Head of the German Language Department at São Paulo for IOM, Bonn
• Deputy Director of a UNESCO project school at São Paulo
• Consultant for teacher liaison work at the Goethe-Institut Barcelona
• Head of cultural programmes at the Goethe-Institut Moscow
• Consultant to the Board of Trustees at the head office of the Goethe-Institut Munich
• Director of the Goethe-Institut in Portugal

Steering Committee

Members
• Ursula Seiler-Albring, President of the ifa
• Prof. Dr. Götz Adriani
• Dr. Bernt Graf zu Dohna
• Dr. Uschi Eid, MdB
• Dr. Susanne Eisenmann, Mayor for Culture of the City of Stuttgart
• Martin Eberts, Federal Foreign Office
• Otto Ruthenberg, Daimler AG
• Helga Solinger, Minister retired
• Klaus von Trotha, Minister retired
• MR Joachim Uhlmann, Baden-Wurttemberg Ministery for Science, Research and The Arts
• Werner Wnendt, Federal Foreign Office

President 1998 – 2006
Alois Graf von Waldburg-Zeil

Secretary General 1998 – 2008
Prof. Dr. Kurt-Jürgen Maaß