The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the world’s largest organisation for mobility and cooperation in tertiary education, is reinforcing and upgrading its Berlin office. As of this month, the “capital city office” will be headed by Ulrich Grothus, the DAAD’s Deputy Secretary General. This way, DAAD’s top management will be represented in Berlin, and the organisation will be able to enter into yet closer dialogue with the government and the media.

DAAD has been present in Berlin already since 1964. For a long time, however, the office was almost exclusively in charge of DAAD’s celebrated “Berlin artists’ programme” for writers, composers and film-makers.  After Germany’s reunification, and especially after the move of large parts of the federal government from Bonn to Berlin, the Berlin outpost was reinforced, to become the “capital city office”.  The DAAD’s headquarters remained and will also remain in Bonn in the foreseeable future.

Ulrich Grothus, who studied at the Free University of Berlin between 1970 and 1976, has been working for DAAD for almost a quarter of a century. During this period, he has successively been the head of DAAD’s three programme divisions. He has also been in charge of the DAAD branch offices in New York and Paris. Since 2008, he has been a Deputy Secretary General and the head of DAAD’s division for policy. Ulrich Grothus is also the Deputy President of the Academic Cooperation Association.

DAAD