Governance of the Gesellschaft lies with the Governing Board. It determines the guidelines under which the Gesellschaft operates. All board members are appointed on a honourary basis. Its members are:
Thomas Matussek, Ambassador ret.
Chairman of the German Britsh Society since 2021
A lawyer by training and a military officer of the reserve, Thomas Matussek joined the German foreign service in 1975. After three years as First Secretary at the German Embassy in London, dealing i.a. with German-British associations, he worked in the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, with special responsibility for European affairs. Foreign assignments in New Delhi (press) and Lisbon (economics) followed.
Back in Bonn he served as Head of Foreign Minister Genscher’s private office (1991 to 1992) and Chief of Staff for Foreign Minister Kinkel (1992 to 1994). From 1994 to 1999 he was Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington DC. From 1999 to 2002 he served as Director General for Political Affairs at the Federal Foreign Office with responsibilities for the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2001 he organized the Petersberg Conference (Bonn agreement), which led to the founding of the new state of Afghanistan.
From 2002 to 2006 he was Germany’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. From 2006 to 2009 he represented Germany as Permanent Representative and Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. His last assignment in the German Foreign Service was Ambassador to India from 2009 to 2011.
In 2011 he became Head of Public Affairs of Deutsche Bank. From 2013 to 2016 he was Managing Director of the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft, the international forum of Deutsche Bank.
Since 2016 he is senior advisor of the London consulting firm Flint.
Ambassador Matussek sits on a number of boards of national and international nonprofit organizations.
Dr. Rupert Graf Strachwitz, Executive Director of the Maecenata Foundation, Director of the Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society
Deputy Chairman of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V., Member of the Governing Board since 2009
Ph. D., born in 1947, has been involved with not-for-profit organizations for well over 30 years – as a volunteer, staff member, board member, consultant, and researcher, and lecturer. Since 1989, he has been managing director of Maecenata Management, a consultancy that specializes in foundations and associations, corporate citizenship and philanthropy, and since 1997, he has also been the director of the Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society, Berlin. Furthermore, he is Executive Director of the Maecenata Foundation, Munich, Deputy Chairman of the German-British Society, Berlin, Chairman of the Board of the Wilhelm Kempff Cultural Foundation, Munich/Positano. He studied Political Science, History, and History of Art at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munich, Germany. He graduated as an M.A. in 1974 with a thesis on The Levellers, a 17th century English citizens’ action group. After serving at World Headquarters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (an international catholic disaster relief and medical aid organization) in Rome for two years, he became regional director for the Order of Malta Relief Service in Bavaria. Subsequently, he held a position in public life while serving on the board of a number of foundations as well as other NGOs, including German Caritas, where he was Vice-President in 1984/85. After becoming an independent consultant in 1989, he became increasingly involved with Third Sector research and chaired the German advisory committee of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project from 1995-2000. Today, while still acting as a consultant, his main focus is on research and public policy to do with civil society and philanthropy. From 1999 to 2002, he served as member of the German Federal Parliament Commission on Civic Action. He chaired the European Policy Working Group of Europa Nostra (from 2004-2010), and sat on the board of the Fondazione Cariplo, Milan/Italy (from 2000-07), and a number of other nongovernmental organizations at home and abroad. His approx. 400 publications, in German as well as in English, Italian, French, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, and Polish, include books and articles on foundation issues as well as cultural policy, the third sector, and civil society.
Sven Janssen, BSc MA PhD FRSA, Founding partner and CEO of Tradition Meets Future (TMF Growth)
Treasurer, Member of the Governing Board since 2023
Dr Sven Janssen studied economics and political science at universities in France, Germany, the UK and the USA and completed his PhD in finance and banking at the School of Management of the University of Bath (UK) on the topic of "British and German Banking Strategies", also published as a book by Palgrave Macmillan.
He has been a supervisory and advisory board member in several companies and is passionate about building bridges between established family businesses and innovative start-ups – and, of course, between countries. Sven also holds a professorship and regularly teaches at various universities.
Sven is a founding partner and CEO of Tradition Meets Future (TMF Growth), a Berlin-based investment platform that focuses on private debt solutions and corporate finance for tech-enabled European growth companies.
He began his banking career in 1999, focusing first on mergers and acquisitions and subsequently on capital markets financing. Among others, Sven worked for the family-owned banks Metzler, Sal. Oppenheim and Oddo and was a board member of an ESMA-regulated credit rating agency, for which he also established the ESG business.
Andreas Krautscheid, Former Minister of State
Member of the Governing Board since 2018
Andreas Krautscheid has been Chief Executive of the Association of German Banks, the voice of over 200 private German and foreign banks, since the beginning of 2018. From 2011, he was a member of the Senior Management Board, in charge of Political Affairs, Legal Affairs, Fiscal Affairs, Retail Banking and Digitalisation. During the past two years, he has been driving forward the association’s cooperation with fintechs, over 20 of which are already active within the association.
Mr Krautscheid brings with him a wealth of experience in both the business sector and high political offices. He was first State Secretary and then, from 2006, Minister for Federal and European Affairs and for the Media of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the 1990s,
Mr Krautscheid, a lawyer, was a Member of the German Bundestag, dealing particularly with international issues. His career in the business sector included spells as Head of Group Communications at the German subsidiary of a British company and Head of Regulatory and Competition Policy on the Board of Deutsche Telekom AG.
Mari Mittelhaus, Executive Director of the Deutsch-Britischen Gesellschaft
Member of the Governing Board since 2024
Mari Mittelhaus is the Executive Director and a board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V. (DBG), where she has worked since 2018. The DBG is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental and politically independent registered association. Its aim is to promote German-British relations in all areas of public and cultural interest.
Mari is responsible for organising the DBG’s four Königswinter Conferences, as well as a public lecture programme, administering the membership base and the network of German-British Associations in Germany. As a graduate of Humboldt University’s Master in British Studies, fostering German-British relations has been important for her for a long time. Having lived in the UK and the US, building bridges between societies through exchange and culture is both a professional and a personal passion of hers. Mari has an interdisciplinary background in business, event management and English politics, law, literature and culture.
She has organised the Young Königswinter Conference for 8 years and also sits on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Organisation.
Dr. Ruprecht Brandis, Director, Clean Energy Forum (Berlin)
Since 2021 in his capacity as Chairman of the Königswinter Stiftung ex officio Member of the Governing Board
After military service, banking apprenticeship, law school, PhD and a short-term employment as lawyer Ruprecht Brandis worked as an official in the Federal Economics Ministry, the German embassy in Washington D.C. and in the Federal Chancellery. In parallel he obtained a MBA degree in the period between 1997 and 1999. From 2001 – 2003 he practiced law again. In 2004 Ruprecht Brandis joined bp, first as deputy head of its Berlin office and from 2010 until September 2021 as office head and Director External Affairs Germany. From October 2021 until February 2024 he worked as Senior Adviser Europe in Communications & Advocacy of bp. Since March 2024 Ruprecht Brandis is Director of the Berlin based climate think tank Clean Energy Forum.
Dr. Birgit Bujard, Geschäftsführerin beim Institut für Politische Wissenschaft und Europäische Fragen, Universität zu Köln
Chair of the Young Königswinter Alumni, Member of the Governing Board since 2024
Dr Birgit Bujard is a political scientist and Executive Manager of the Institute for Political Science and European Affairs at the University of Cologne. Her research focuses on British politics and EU-UK relations.
She is also Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Turkey and European Union studies (CETEUS) and member of the Team Europe Direct, the speakers pool of the European Commission.
Since 2018 she is on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Association (YKWA e.V.), first as Deputy Chair and now as Chair. She attended the Young Königswinter Conference in 2011.
Anne Ruth Herkes, State Secretary ret., Ambassador ret.
Member of the Governing Board since 2024
Following a long career in the public service, most recently as Ambassador and then State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Herkes has been a Non Executive Director on supervisory boards in in Europe and North America since 2014. She also held advisory roles in the tech startup industry and geopolitical consultancies, most recently with the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington D.C.. Her board roles span across private banking in Europe, and the private equity industry in North America. She previously was a non executive director on the Supervisory Board of KFW IPEX Bank in Frankfurt.
She is Officier of the Légion d’Honneur, a member of Atlantik-Brücke and serves on the Advisory Board of Asia House London, as well as the transatlantic non-profit organisation 1014 Inc. - Space for Ideas, founded by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote transatlantic dialogue in the arts, society and cultural industry. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alfred Herrhausen Society, the former International Forum of Deutsche Bank.
From 2002 to 2006, Herkes was head of the Economic Department at the German Embassy in London. Prior to that she held roles at the diplomatic missions in Washington and Tokyo, and at the German OSCE mission in Vienna. From 2006 to 2009 she was a member of the management board of bp p.l.c. biofuels business in London, as Vice President Policy & Communication and Senior Strategy Advisor, jointly responsible for the development of the biofuels division. From 2002 onwards for nearly a decade she called London her home.
She graduated from Freie Universität Berlin, and holds an ‚Erstes Staatsexamen‘ in Romanistik and Political Science, preceded by an undergraduate education at the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris with a scholarship from Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. She completed postgraduate studies at the BSL Lausanne Business School and INSEAD/Fontainebleau.
John Kampfner, Journalist and Author
Member of the Governing Board since 2024
John Kampfner has had a long career in public life spanning global affairs, politics and culture. He is the author of seven books and is working on his eighth.
He began his journalistic career with the Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and German unification, then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC covering UK politics. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs.
He writes regular columns for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Politico and Der Spiegel. He is a regular contributor on broadcast media. He has a weekly Substack column, in which he analyses the state of Germany and the world.
His most recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’, was published in 2023. He has made many programmes for BBC TV and radio, including a two-parter called ‘The Ugly War’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2002, for which he was awarded Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year.
He is a Board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. In 2021, he set up the UK in the World programme at Chatham House, becoming its first director. He ran the free expression organisation, Index on Censorship, between 2008 and 2011; he subsequently advised Google on these issues. He was on the Council of King’s College London between 2012 and 2015 and Chair of the Clore Social Leadership programme from 2015 to 2018.
For eight years, from 2008 to 2016, he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, establishing one of the UK’s most successful art galleries. He was the founder of the Creative Industries Federation. He is now Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London.
Siegmar Mosdorf, former Parliamentary State Secretary, Partner and Chairman Kekst CNC AG Berlin
Member of the Governing Board since 2005
Siegmar Mosdorf is Partner and Chairman of Kekst CNC AG in Berlin. From 1999 to 2003 he was the Chairman of the Board of the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank and currently carries out various duties. He also is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen. From 1998 to 2002, he was Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, and worked as aerospace co-ordinator for the Federal Government. Between 1990 and 2002, Mr Mosdorf was Member of the German Bundestag and Member of the Committees for Economics, Transportation, Research, Technology, Foreign Affairs and Sport. Until 1990, he was the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) whip for the State of Baden-Württemberg. Between 1995 and 1998, he was Chairman of the Enquiry Commission for "The Future of the Media". Mr Mosdorf was a consultant in trade union affairs to the Works Council and Supervisory Boards of Daimler-Benz, Bosch, IBM, HP and Porsche from 1978 to 1982. He studied Economics, Law and Social Sciences at the University of Constance.