With Christmas and the winter holidays approaching, it is time to look back at a great year for our association. After an almost two-year break, we were very happy to host again a series of events.
Over the course of 2022, we organized 11 in-person events across Germany with several hundred of you attending, including recently our Christmas dinners in Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne and Munich. We especially remember the alumni sailing & networking weekend at lake Tegernsee and our annual meeting in Berlin.
In July, 21 alumni joined us for the third LSE alumni sailing & networking weekend at lake Tegernsee, using the opportunity to meet fellow alumni and enjoy the beautiful Bavarian landscape as well as a sailing experience on state-of-the-art yachts on the lake.
Fortunately, the great wind and weather conditions enabled us to have an enjoyable sailing competition tilting the boats to steep sloping positions. This was great fun! In the evening, everyone enjoyed a barbeque dinner at Hotel Terrassenhof with many alumni networking at the bar until late.
On 10 and 11 September, 56 alumni joined the annual meeting 2022 in Berlin. The annual meeting started on Saturday with a visit to the Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, the former GDR Stasi prison. Contemporary witnesses gave us an authentic and very vivid impression of the prison conditions between 1946 and 1990.
In the evening, we enjoyed a reception and dinner at the prestigious Berlin Capital Club next to Gendarmenmarkt. During the dinner, LSE Professor Kristina Spohr, one of the leading experts on security architecture post 1989 and the author of a landmark biography of former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, gave us her interpretation of the revolutionary upheaval of 1989 and its impact on later development from post-Wall peace to the current conflicts. Her lecture sparked a lively and extensive Q&A session and many discussions among alumni afterwards.
On Sunday, we jointly kicked off a series of start-up events called “Social Innovation Trek” hosted by LSE Generate with a panel of LSE Alumni Start-up Entrepreneurs, including Ola Kohut, Founder of Joy Space and Rayd Abu-Ayyash, MD of Value for Good, discussing "Change Makers: How entrepreneurship is a catalyst for the betterment of society" at INOSPACE at betahaus in Kreuzberg.
We would like thank you for making 2022 such a successful year, by attending our events, by sharing your ideas on further alumni activities, and of course by volunteering and supporting our alumni group. A special thanks to our regional coordinators and everyone helping us organizing events, all members of the board and our cash auditor who enable us to have such an active and varied alumni life in Germany.
We wish you and your loved ones a peaceful and Merry Christmas. We also wish you all the best for a successful, healthy and happy New Year 2023 and look forward to seeing you next year at our events.
Kind regards,
Pia Wagner
President, German Friends of LSE