Launching DeAN... Jörg Stephan

Missing Friday 13th by one week (after thorough consultation with certain astrologists) we came together on Friday 20th of November 1998 to "launch" DeAN. The location chosen for this event was the restaurant "Maximiliansbrauwiesen" in Lahnstein near Koblenz. Participants came from all over Germany (Hamburg, Dues-seldorf, Heidelberg, Passau etc.) as well as from the other end of the world, i.e. Sydney, Australia. The Sydney-siders were our special guests from

UNSW: Jane Morrison, Ian Morrison, Meg Debus Rogers and Russ. I wonder how they survived the extremely cold temperatures at that time of the year without any snow in Lahnstein to justify the cold...

Anyway, after most probably one of the quickest board meetings and membership convention ever we came to the cosy part of the evening. It all began with some of us doing their best to translate the menu into English and ended up in a great dinner, which everybody seemed to enjoy.

After that we got to know German "flexibility" when it comes to credit cards and Australian wines; however, the lack of flexibility in that restaurant was not apt to take away the good atmosphere of the evening.

Before everyone went "home" I was told to say a few words concerning DeAN and its "birth". By using the word "birth" you might have guessed that in some way I intended to compare DeAN's development to that of a human being. In his autobiography "Dear Me" Sir Peter Ustinov commented on his birth: "Of the actual events surrounding my birth I remember very little, and must therefore base my report on data from other sources."

Well, probably most of us can understand his problems. Anyway concerning DeAN's "birth", I felt the same, because when DeAN was "born", I was far away in Australia.

So the first "dean" I got to know was of a somewhat different nature and that dean was born long before as well as his relative like the Associate Deans and so on.

In September 1997 I got in touch with our DeAN for the first time. It was presented to me shortly after its birth by its proud mum (or one might also say president) Sabine Pittrof.

That's how I learned of DeAN's origin and Sabine is the source I had to rely on for information concerning the events surrounding DeAN's "birth".

So I was told that DeAN was actually born on the 27th of September, which somehow seems to be or become an important day in German history. And at least with respect to the 27th of September 1997 all of us here will agree that it was a good day.

Well, after two to three months the first steps followed and the whole family met from time to time in Bonn to observe DeAN's progress.

There were times when our child seemed to stumble, but in Lahnstein we celebrated the official "launch" of DeAN, and comparing it to a human being's life, this would probably be the christening, and therefore, we had a special cup from which everyone could take a sip of Australian wine (or water). From my point of view that was about as close as one could get to banging a bottle against a ship to celebrate its christening.

We also launched our new website and the first newsletter that evening and took a lot of photos for the next edition of the newsletter.

All of us really enjoyed that evening in a nice warm room, leaving the cold outside for other events to come...

At the end I would like to thank everyone who took part in the organisation of such a great evening, in particu-lar Stefan Thiel and Sabine Pittrof; and also our Australian guests for their support.