General Meeting

Dr. Inke Arns is the director of the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund. She studied Slavic studies, Eastern European studies, political science and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam and received her doctorate from the HU Berlin in 2004. Since 1993, she has worked as a freelance curator and author specialising in media art and theory, net cultures and Eastern Europe. Her curatorial work has been reviewed in renowned media and has repeatedly received awards. She is the editor of numerous publications and author of many articles on media art and net culture. 2021-2022 she held a visiting professorship for curatorial practice at the Kunstakademie Münster, 2022 she was curator of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo (artist: Jakup Ferri) at the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Since 2022 she has been a member of the Academy of the Arts of the World. Inke Arns has collaborated with the Goethe-Institut on several occasions, including curating the travelling exhibition "Die Grenze" together with Thibaut de Ruyter on behalf of the Goethe-Institut Moscow (2017-2019). From 2013 to 2019 she was a member of the Visual Arts Advisory Board of the Goethe-Institut.

Simone Baumann has been managing director of German Films since 2019 and previously worked as a film producer for over 25 years. She studied philosophy in Rostov/Don (Russia) and started her career in documentary film at MDR in the early 1990s. In 1997 she became managing partner of LE Vision Film- und Fernsehproduktion. From 2001 to 2019, she was the Eastern Europe foreign representative for German Films. Simone Baumann is a member of the Malik Bendjelloul Memorial Foundation, the Board of European Film Promotion and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy Awards), among others. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

Christina Beinhoff has been Head of the Department for Culture and Society at the Federal Foreign Office since August 2025. After studying law, she initially worked at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development before moving to the Federal Foreign Office in 1999. Her diplomatic career took her to New York City, Seoul, and Paris, among other places. She subsequently took on various roles at the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Defense, and the Federal Chancellery, most recently as acting foreign and security policy advisor to the Federal Chancellor. From April 2022 to August 2025, she served as Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Kingdom of Sweden alongside her husband. Ms. Beinhoff is married and has two children.

After completing her apprenticeship as a carpenter, she studied industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She then taught design history there (1994 to 2000). In 2006, she founded Vienna Design Week with Lilli Hollein and Thomas Geisler and was co-director until 2013. From 2001 to 2013, she also worked as a freelance design curator for exhibition projects throughout Europe. From 2014 to 2018, Beyerle was Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Schloss Pillnitz, and also a member of the Management Board of the Dresden State Art Collections, one of Germany's leading museum associations. She has been Director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg since December 2018

Saba-Nur Cheema is a political scientist and anti-racism trainer. From 2015-2021, she was the educational director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre in Frankfurt. She is currently a researcher on Anti-Semitism in educational contexts at Goethe University. Cheema is a member of the German government's Independent Expert Group on Muslimophobia, which was appointed in 2020. She is co-editor of the book "Frenemies. Antisemitismus, Rassismus und ihre Kritiker*innen" (2022) and designed the new online dossier "Jewish Life in the Past & Present" for the Federal Agency for Civic Education in 2021. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

Ferenc Csák has been the Head of the Cultural Department of the City of Chemnitz since 2015 and is also the city's project officer for the implementation of the Capital of Culture programme for 2025. After studying art history and political science, he held various management positions in the cultural sector in Hungary. From 2010 to 2012 he was General Director of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest and from 2010 to 2011 Clore (Cultural Leadership Programme) Fellow in London. Since 2015, he has been a member of the board of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft e. V. and the Rotary Club Tertia in Chemnitz. He has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

He is a jury member of Resonanzen - Schwarzes Literaturfestival, curated by Sharon Dodua Otoo, and regularly publishes on the literature of transculturality and the significance of African literature in the world of tomorrow. For the Berlin Senate, he is working on a concept for remembering colonialism, and for the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin he is active in the decolonisation competence centre. Diop lives and works in Berlin.

Olga Grjasnowa has spent long periods abroad in Poland, Russia and Israel. She is a graduate of the German Literature Institute Leipzig and has published four novels so far. For her highly acclaimed debut "Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt" (2012), Grjasnowa was awarded the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize and the Anna Seghers Prize. In 2016, she was a scholarship holder at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul for seven months. Most recently, her novel „Der verlorene Sohn“ (2020) and the essay „Die Macht der Mehrsprachigkeit. Über Herkunft und Vielfalt“ (2021) have been published. Olga Grjasnowa 's works have been translated into 15 languages, dramatised for stage and radio and made into films. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2016. Since 2023, she has been a professor of language arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Ingrid Hamm is the founder and Executive Director of the Global Perspectives Initiative. She is deeply engaged in the international dialogue on global development. She has been active in major German foundations for three decades, including 15 years at the Bertelsmann Foundation. From 2003 to 2015, she headed the Robert Bosch Stiftung. In 2016, Ingrid Hamm founded the non-profit organisation Global Perspectives Initiative. She is also active in German and international bodies, for example the University Council of the University of Tübingen, and the Board of Trustees of the Karl Schlecht Foundation. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut's General Assembly since July 2005, and was a member of the Executive Board from 2008 to 2017.

Prof. Manuel Hartung has been Chairman of the Board of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius since January 2022. Previously, he headed the WISSEN department of the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT since 2019 and was editor of the magazines ZEIT CAMPUS, ZEIT GERMANY and ZEIT SPEZIAL. Manuel Hartung has been associated with DIE ZEIT with interruptions since 2004 - among other things as editor-in-chief of ZEIT CAMPUS, as managing director of the subsidiary of ZEIT-Verlag, TEMPUS CORPORATE, and - between 2015 and 2019 - as head of the education department CHANCEN. Manuel Hartung attended the Henri Nannen School of Journalism in Hamburg and studied history in Bonn and New York as well as public administration at Harvard. He taught at the Universities of St. Gallen and Göttingen; he currently teaches at the Institute for Culture and Media Management at the University of Music and Theatre in Hamburg. Manuel Hartung has been a member of the Bucerius Law School Board of Trustees since 2017. Since 2022, he has also been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bucerius Law School and of the Board of Trustees of the Bucerius Kunst Forum. Since 2023, he has been a member of the programme council of the Futurium. Previously, he was involved in the university council of Coburg University of Applied Sciences, the advisory board of Common Purpose Germany and the board of the Values Commission, among others.

Philipp Haußmann completed his second state examination in law before joining what is now the Klett Group as a trainee in 1995. In the years that followed, he held various positions in subsidiaries of the Klett Group - from Editorial Director of PONS GmbH to Managing Director of Ernst Klett Sprachen Verlag. Since 2007, Philipp Haußmann has been Spokesman of the Management Board of Ernst Klett AG and is directly responsible for the holding companies Klett Lernen und Information (KLI) and Klett Kita und Schule (K&S) as well as the corporate communications of the Klett Group. As a family member, Philipp Haußmann today represents the fourth generation of the educational group and is a shareholder of the company.

Gesche Joost is a professor of design research at the Berlin University of the Arts and works at the interfaces between science, politics and digital companies. Her work is about digital transformation in society and business. She heads the Design Research Lab and designs new forms of human-technology interaction at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. She is a member of the supervisory boards of SAP, ING Deutschland and ottobock and in 2016 co-founded the non-profit startup Calliope gGmbH, which gives children access to digital education. She has been on the presidium of the Goethe-Institut since January 2022 and 1st Vice President since January 2023.

Dr Annekathrin Kohout is a cultural historian and media scientist. She studied German language and literature, art history, media theory and photography in Dresden, Karlsruhe and Leipzig. She worked at the ZKM Karlsruhe until 2015 and as a research assistant at the Department of German Studies at the University of Siegen until 2022, where she completed her doctorate in 2021. In addition to her work as a freelance author, she is co-editor of the magazine "Pop. Kultur und Kritik" and editor of the international "Journal of Global Pop Cultures". She is also co-editor of the book series "Digitale Bildkulturen" published by Klaus Wagenbach. In her writings, Kohout focusses on the aesthetics, history and theory of pop and popular culture, social media and contemporary art. Since 2014, she has been writing about the intersections of pop, internet phenomena and art on the blog "Sofrischsogut". She is also the author of the book "Netzfeminismus", a short and concise cultural and discourse history of female image politics. 2022 saw the publication of "Nerds. Eine Popkulturgeschichte" was published in 2022, and her new book "K-Pop. Local popular culture, global alternative culture?" will be published in 2023.

Michael Krüger is a writer, poet, publisher and translator. He was publishing director of Carl Hanser Literaturverlage for many years and editor of "Akzente" and "Edition Akzente". From 2013 to 2019, Michael Krüger was President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. In 2015, he was curator of the Cologne literature festival Poetica. He is a member of various academies and the author of several volumes of poetry, stories, novellas, novels and translations. He has received numerous awards for his literary work, such as the Peter Huchel Prize (1986), the Mörike Prize (2006) and the Joseph Breitbach Prize (2010).

Janina Kugel is a German manager and supervisory board member. She was a member of the board and labour director of Siemens from 2015 to 2020. Janina Kugel is a multi-supervisory board member in Germany and abroad and a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group and EQT. In 2018, Kugel was selected by a jury as "Prima inter Pares" on a list of the 100 most influential women in German business. She is, among other things, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Technical University of Munich and the International Advisory Board of the IESE Business School. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

Christian Kullmann is Chairman of the Executive Board of Evonik Industries AG. He studied economic history at the University of Hanover. Kullmann began his professional career in 1994 at Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG in Frankfurt. In 1996 he switched to Dresdner Bank. From 2003, Christian Kullmann headed the Central Communications and Executive Office department at RAG Aktiengesellschaft in Essen and held this position at Evonik Industries AG, Essen, from 2007 to 2013. He was appointed General Representative of Evonik Industries AG in 2013 and was appointed to the Executive Board on 1 July 2014. In May 2017, Christian Kullmann took over as Chairman of the Executive Board of Evonik Industries AG. In March 2020, he was elected President of the German Chemical Industry Association. He has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022 and is Chairman of the Goethe-Institut's Business Advisory Board.

Henning Lobin studied German language and literature, philosophy and IT. In 1999, he was appointed to the Chair of Applied Linguistics and Computational Linguistics at the University of Gießen. Since 2018, he has been Director of the Leibniz Institute für Deutsche Sprache and Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Mannheim. Lobin is a member of the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (German Spelling Council) and spokesperson for the Humanities and Educational Research Section of the Leibniz Association. In 2021, he published the book "Sprachkampf" on current language policy debates with Duden-Verlag.

Dr Ulrika Ulrike Lorenz has been President of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar since 2019. Previously, the art historian with a doctorate in art history headed the Kunsthalle Mannheim for over ten years and was responsible, among other things, for its new building with a dynamic museum concept and digital strategy. In 2018, she was awarded the Golden Badge of Honour of the Frauenbrücke Prize for the inner unity of Germany. Since 2014, she has been an active member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin - Section "Visual Arts". Ulrike Lorenz has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since December 2020.

Jagoda Marinić is a Croatian-German writer, playwright and columnist. She studied German, political science and English in Heidelberg. She published her first collection of stories "Eigentlich ein Heiratsantrag" in 2001 and was awarded the Grimmelshausen Prize for "Russische Bücher" (2005). Her debut novel "Die Namenlose" was published in 2006, followed in 2016 by the novel "Made in Germany - Was ist deutsch in Deutschland", in which she explores Germany's identity as a country of immigration. Since January 2022, she has been writing a fortnightly column in the Stern. Jagoda Marinić has also been the director of the Intercultural Centre in Heidelberg since 2012.

Susan Neiman is a philosopher and director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. After studying at Harvard University and the Free University of Berlin, she received her doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University. She was a professor at Yale University and Tel Aviv University. Neiman is, among other things, a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Grundwertekommission of the SPD, a member of the advisory board of the Allianz Kulturstiftung and of Facing History and Ourselves. Her books have been translated into 15 languages, and in 2021 she received the August-Bebel-Prize. Since 2010 she has been member of the Goethe-Institut.

Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a curator, author, biotechnologist and, since 2023, artistic director at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HWK) in Berlin. He is the founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, artistic director of Sonsbeek20-24, and artistic director of the 13th Bamako Encounters 2022. Ndikung was the lead curator of Adam Szymczyk's Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017; guest curator of the Dak'Art Biennale in Dakar in 2018, and artistic director of the 12th Bamako Encounters in 2019. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finnish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. He is currently a professor in the MA programme Spatial Strategies at Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin. He has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

Thomas Oberender is an author, curator and dramaturge. He studied theatre studies and scenic writing in Berlin and wrote his doctorate on Botho Strauß. Oberender was a co-founder of the authors’ theatre association Theater neuen Typs in Berlin. In 1999 he became head dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus Bochum and then co-director at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. He was theatre director of the Salzburg Festival, then artistic director and managing director of the Berlin Festivals. He publishes plays, reviews and essays on contemporary artists and political and aesthetic transformation processes. Since January 2022 he has been on the board of the Goethe-Institut.

Dr Nicolas Peter has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt of the BMW Group since 2020. He has long been associated with the Goethe-Institut as a member of the Economic Advisory Board. From 2017 to May 2023, he was a member of the Board of Management for Finance at BMW AG. In his CFO role, he has primarily promoted the idea of sustainability in finance and industry, particularly in various honorary roles, including at the Value Balanced Alliance (vba) as well as at the DRSC and the Deutsches Aktieninstitut. Nicolas Peter is also a member of the Economic Advisory Council of the French Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and holds the honorary title of Conseiller du Commerce Exterieur de la France. He holds a Master's degree in law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He obtained his doctorate there in 1989 (Dr jur.) and passed his second state examination in law in 1991.

Prof. Dr. Sandra Richter studied political science, German language and literature, philosophy and art history at the University of Hamburg, earned her doctorate at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen in 1998 and habilitated at the Department of Language, Literature and Media Studies at the University of Hamburg in 2003. She has been Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Stuttgart since 2008. Sandra Richter has been a member of the Council for Information Infrastructures since 2018. Her research and work focuses on intellectual history, poetics and aesthetics, methodology and empirical literary studies. Sandra Richter has been Director of the German Literature Archive Marbach since 2019. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2018.

After studying and completing his doctorate in Jena and Giessen, he worked at Japanese universities for 20 years and has been an associate professor at Keio University Tokyo since 2008. Since 2021, he has been Professor of Didactics of German as a Foreign and Second Language at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. In his academic work, he is primarily concerned with the professionalisation of teachers, the didactics of foreign language teaching and empirical teaching research. He is the author of a volume in the Goethe Institute's training series "Deutsch Lehren Lernen".

He studied the viola at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and musicology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Together with Titus Engel, he founded the Akademie Mu-siktheater Heute, which has been continued as a Deutsche Bank initiative since 2001. In spring 2001, he began working at the Salzburg Festival as personal assistant to the artistic director and dramaturgical assistant. In the same role, he went to the Ruhr with Gerard Mortier to help develop the first RuhrTriennale from 2002 to 2004. From 2004 to 2008, he worked at the Opéra National de Paris Bastille/Garnier, initially as Adjoint au Directeur and from 2006 as Directeur de la coordination artistique. From 2008/2009 to 2016/2017, he was Artistic Director at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Viktor Schoner has been Artistic Director of the State Opera Stuttgart since 2018/19. His particular concern to keep opera relevant for future generations on stage, backstage and in the auditorium is reflected in the establishment of a separate venue for the Junge Oper and the founding of AKADEMIE2030.

Michael Schwarz studied administrative science in Konstanz and in the USA. He has been working in the foundation sector since 2005, when he joined the Robert Bosch Stiftung after a stint as a consultant at CNC AG, an international strategic communications consultancy. There, he first worked as a project manager in the field of science, then as an assistant to the executive board and most recently as head of communications. In 2014, Michael Schwarz switched to Stiftung Mercator, where he was Managing Director until 2022. Since March 2022, he has been Managing Director of the Baden-Baden Entrepreneurial Talks.

Arila Siegert is a German dancer, choreographer and opera director. She studied New Artistic Dance and classical dance at the Palucca School in Dresden. She began developing her own choreographies while still a student. International guest performances followed and she created full-length ballets. In 1987 she founded her own dance theatre at the Dresden Staatsschauspiel and a dance company at the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau. From 1996 to 1998 she took over the direction of the stage at the Bauhaus Dessau. After that she began an international career in music theatre. Over 50 productions have been created since then. Arila Siegert has been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and is a member of the academies in Berlin and Dresden. Since July 2010 she has been a member of the Goethe-Institut's general assembly.

Nominated by the SPD parliamentary group of the German Bundestag, Berlin

appointed by the parliamentary group DIE LINKE (The Left Party) of the German Parliament, Berlin

appointed by parliamentary group BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN of the German Parliament, Berlin

appointed by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group of the German Parliament, Berlin

Representative of the Länder Governments appointed by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany,Ministry of Education and Child Day Care, Schwerin

Representative of the State Governments appointed by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, Bavarian State Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, Munich

Sophie Engel grew up in East Berlin and in the district of Neubrandenburg (Vorpommern), where she discovered her love of languages and language acquisition at an early age. She studied Slavic studies in France and German, French and work teaching in Bremen to become a teacher. Sophie Engel describes herself as a person with a migration background and has lived in many countries before being seconded by the Goethe-Institut. Her focus is on networking, creating new things as a community and overcoming crises. It is especially important to her not to forget the fun, joy and positive motivation despite all the problems. She has been working for the Goethe-Institut since 2008, first as a PASCH ExU and since 2014 as head of the language department, and since 2021 she has represented employees abroad on the presidium.

Anja Geissel, born in Duisburg, studied Russian and German at the University of Cologne. After her traineeship at the Studienseminar Siegburg, she taught German as a foreign language at various educational institutions and worked freelance for the WDR. She also worked for the German Central Agency for German Schools Abroad as a German teacher in Jelenia Góra (PL) for two years. Anja Geissel has worked for the Goethe-Institut since 2000. She worked in Bonn (Inter Nationes) and at the locations in Prague, Shanghai and Singapore and most recently at the head office in Munich. In 2021 she was elected to the presidium as an employee representative of the head office.

Tessen von Heydebreck is a former German bank manager. After studying law, he joined Deutsche Bank in 1974, where he took over the management in 1991. From 1994 to 2007, he was a member of the bank’s executive board. From 2009 to 2017, Tessen von Heydebreck was a member of the supervisory board of Dussmann Verwaltungs-AG in Berlin and, since January 2011, a member of the board of trustees of the Peter Dussmann Stiftung. He is committed to cultural causes in various places. For example, he is honorary chairman of the board of trustees of the IJP Internationale Journalisten-Programme e.V.. Since January 2018, he has been a member of the presidium and 2nd vice president of the Goethe-Institut.

Bettina Lantz-Okoye has been working in client management, accounting and business organisation at the Goethe-Institut Düsseldorf since 2002. Before that, she studied literary translation at the HHU Düsseldorf after a one-year stay in London and Paris. She then trained as a bookseller and worked in this profession until 2002. She also obtained an additional qualification in German as a foreign language in 2012. Since 2010 she has been involved in the Goethe-Institut’s Hausgewerkschaft GEW, in the local works council and as a delegate in the Goethe-Institut’s general works council. In 2021 she was elected to the presidium as the employee representative for Germany.

Oliver Scheytt is the owner of the personnel and strategy consultancy KULTUREXPERTEN GmbH. He was head of the cultural department of the city of Essen from 1993 to 2009 and managing director of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 from 2006 to 2012. From 1997-2018 he was president of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft e.V. and since 2007 professor of cultural policy at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre. His publications include the 2008 book “Kulturstaat Deutschland. Plädoyer für eine aktivierende Kulturpolitik”. Oliver Scheytt has been on the presidium of the Goethe-Institut since January 2018.