ABSTRACT
Currently I am a professor in the Institute for Sport Science at the Free University Berlin. The University, which is located in the part of the city formerly controlled by the Western powers, as the name ‘free’ implies, has about 50,000 students. I have leading roles in quite a number of national and international scientific institutions and organizations. Among other ‘jobs’, I am President of the International Society for Sport History, and Vice President of the German Gymnastic Federation, which has four-and-a-half million members. But I do not feel anything like VIP, but just a normal person with strengths and weaknesses like everybody else. I do not tell everybody about my professional career because the people I meet outside the University, when I am playing tennis, skiing or visiting a concert, get to know me as person and not as a professor. Often I ask myself why I took on all these tasks and duties, which bring power and prestige, but also a lot of work. Especially in the last few years when I have achieved so much in my professional life but when at the same time my workload has been increasing continously, I sometimes think about how I became what I am and why I am doing what I do. Before I share with you a part
of my biography and describe the story of my professional career, the conflicts and problems, the successes and the failures, I will sketch in some background information about the university system in Germany, the position of women within this system, and explanations of the gender hierarchy within the scientific community.
