Prof. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann

President of the Goethe Institute

Klaus-Dieter Lehmann was born in 1940 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). He studied physics and mathematics, receiving his diploma in 1967, and passed the state exam in library sciences in 1970. He served for three years as a subject librarian at the Darmstadt University library. From 1973 to 1978, he served as deputy director at the City and University Library in Frankfurt. He was then promoted to director and became director of the Technical University for Library Sciences as well, serving in both roles until 1986. In 1988, he was named director of the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt. After German reunification in 1990, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann merged the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt and the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig to create the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

He was president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, one of the largest cultural institutions in the world, from 1999 to 2008. Its member organizations include 17 museums, the National Library, the Secret Central Archives and a number of research institutions. Lehmann is director of the board of the Council on Library and Information Resources (USA) and an honorary professor of Business Information Systems at the University of Frankfurt. On April 1, 2008, he became president of the Goethe Institute.

He was honored in 1990 with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and in 1996 with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1st class). He received an honorary doctorate from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 2001. He has published numerous works on information networks, library management and data processing. He also editor-in-chief of the Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie (Journal of Library Sciences and Bibliography).