• Programming
• Leader of the Arts

Dr. Michael Nentwich

February 2006

Dr. Michael Nentwich assumed the post of Executive Director of the Goethe-Institut, the German Cultural Center of Atlanta, located in Colony Square, in 2000.

He was born in Prague, Czech Republic, and spent his childhood in Austria, England, and West Germany. He studied in Nuremberg and Heidelberg, Germany, receiving his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Heidelberg University. Before joining the Goethe-Institut, Dr. Nentwich taught at schools and universities in Heidelberg, Mannheim, Berlin, London, and Hong Kong. Previous postings with the Goethe-Institut include Madrid, Spain, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and New York, as well as various cities in Germany.

The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit organization which is funded in part by the German government and which furthers German language and culture out of more than 140 branches in Germany and world wide. It offers German language courses, supports language teachers with materials and training scholarships, organizes or sponsors cultural programs, and encourages cultural ties between the US and Germany.

To offset recent budget cuts, a local support organization “Friends of Goethe” has recently been founded in Atlanta, which runs the institute’s language courses and helps raise money for its other programs. Many German corporations have branches in Atlanta, and Nentwich has worked hard to convince them to help fund cultural events. The largest program he runs out of Atlanta is the “Transatlantic Outreach Program” for social studies educators in all of the USA and Canada. With the support of Deutsche Bank and Bosch, it has an annual budget of almost one million dollars and publishes lesson plans about Modern Germany, offers in-service training courses all over the US, and takes educators to Germany each summer on study tours.

In Atlanta, Dr. Nentwich and his team organize cultural programs, especially films and talks, at the Atlanta premises, and works closely with the local cultural institutions such as the Woodruff Center, 7Stages and PushPush Theaters, Spivey Hall, Several Dancers Core, and the Southern Center for International Studies, as well as the local universities, to bring the German arts, and information about Germany, to Atlanta, and the Atlanta arts to Germany. In the course of the years, many of the leaders of Atlanta’s cultural institutions have become close friends. Atlanta has become a wonderful place to live, and Dr. Nentwich dreads the moment when he will have to retire and return to Germany. Perhaps someone will make him a job offer which allows him to acquire a green card and stay?