Gitte Zschoch
Designated Secretary General

Gitte Zschoch has been Secretary General of the ifa – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations since October 2021. The ifa is one of the key players in Germany’s foreign cultural and educational policy and is responsible for the German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale, which attracts 600,000 visitors. From 2018 to 2021, she headed the network of national European cultural institutes, EUNIC – European Union National Institutes for Culture, in Brussels. Prior to that, from 2009 onwards, she held various positions at the Goethe-Institut: in Seoul, Tokyo and Johannesburg, as well as at the Munich headquarters as Deputy Head of Communications, and most recently, from 2015 to 2018, as Founding Director of the Goethe-Institut in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gitte Zschoch studied Comparative Literature at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and completed her Master’s degree in Modern Korean Literature at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea, where she also worked as a lecturer in German. Since 2025, she has also been a member of the Board of the EUNIC network, which she currently chairs.
Gitte Zschoch will take up the post of Secretary General and Chair of the Executive Board of the Goethe-Institut on 18 July 2026.