Jubilee in Jakarta
The DAAD Regional Office in Jakarta has just celebrated its 25th anniversary.
In March 2015, the Regional Office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Jakarta celebrated its first 25 years with a formal ceremony followed by an alumni conference. It was first based in a garage attached to the former Consular Section of the German Embassy. “There was no telephone, no toilet, the roof leaked, and anyone interested in what we did had to queue up outside,” recalls Irene Jansen, who was then a lecturer, but is now Head of the Regional Office. The formal ceremony was attended by 350 alumni from all over Indonesia. The most prominent among them, former Indonesian President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, held a moving speech in which he thanked his “intellectual children and grandchildren” who have since followed his path to Germany. Some 30,000 students and academics have taken that path, about 3,000 of them on DAAD scholarships.
