Wir hoffen, einen solchen Gedankenaustausch bald  einmal  wiederholen zu können.

The U.S. ambassador’s visit at the Hermann-Ehlers-Highschool

On April 20th, 2010 the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Mr. Philip Murphy, visited our school and spent some time talking to us about America in general and American foreign policy in particular.

In my opinion, the conversation with Mr. Murphy was very interesting. His American accent was something I enjoyed quite a lot because I prefer the American pronunciation to the British one. What I also really liked was the way he addressed us – he treated us like equals and didn’t give me the impression that he felt superior to us. He had a lot of humour and even talked about soccer, which I’m not especially interested in personally, but by that he certainly appealed to some of my classmates. He seems to be a very friendly and open-minded politician with an impressive personality. Although he obviously avoided some of the more controversial topics, he was very honest and interested in our opinion. I was pretty much amused by his German pronunciation and it made me smile.

He let us know about his private life; which gave me the impression that he wanted to appear like a normal person with a family and hobbies. What I also liked is that he asked for our names and shook our hands and when we had to pose for a group picture, he helped the girls (including myself) sitting in the outer rows to get over the tables.

All in all, I enjoyed the “interview“. I finally got the chance to meet a real American in person, which has not been possible for me very often before.


Elisabeth Kochan, E-LK

When Mr. Philip D. Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, came to our school on Tuesday 20^th, we had the chance to ask him questions about current affairs. Of course, we were well prepared but only a few students took the opportunity to ask questions although Mr. Murphy proved to be a very frank and likeable person. He appealed to us due to his charismatic appearance and his humorous approach to the problems we discussed and this was something we all appreciated very much.

It was very interesting to get to know his point of view concerning political and sometimes even critical questions. All in all I really liked the meeting because it was very informative and definitely no waste of time.

Susanne Hartwich, 2. Sem.