JYM celebrates 50 years
The history of Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich (JYM) dates back to a tradition first developed in the early 1920s.
As an effort to promote international peace and understanding in the aftermath of World War I, a new form of international education was conceived for American undergraduates: the Junior Year Abroad. Based on the model of the University of Delaware's Foreign Study Plan, which made possible the first Junior Year Abroad program in Paris (1923), a "junior year plan" was extended to Germany in 1931.
Munich was the site of the first junior year program in Germany. Following its first experimental year of 1931-32, a JYM program was sponsored by the University of Delaware until its suspension in 1939.
The Junior Year in Munich was re-opened by Wayne State University in 1953, thereby making JYM the first U.S. study abroad program in post-war Germany. Since the first class of 12 JYM students arrived in the fall of 1953, more than 3,800 students from 500+ colleges and universities have studied at LMU Munich with the JYM program.
In June 2003, we marked this milestone in the history of study abroad with a 50th-anniversary celebration and alumni reunion in Munich!
June 12 Grosse Aula at LMU Munich
Festivities began in the Grosse Aula at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität on the morning of Thursday, June 12.
Professor Dr. Bernd Huber, Rector of LMU Munich, opened JYM's 50th-anniversary celebration and welcomed former students back to the university.
Stadträtin Ulrike Boesser, In Vertretung des Oberbürgermeisters der Landeshauptstadt München, and Robert Boehme, consul general of the U.S. in Munich, welcomed alumni and guests to Munich.
Professor Hans-Peter Söder, resident director, welcomed former students back home to JYM.
Dr. Kai M. Schellhorn, member of the board – BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, spoke of the need for greater German-American understanding and the contributions that young people can make to strengthen the tradition of German-American partnership.
Professor Mark Ferguson, program director of, reflected upon the unique tradition of "homecoming" within JYM, and Professor Don Haase read the laudation written by Professor Guy Stern, distinguished professor of German at Wayne State University.
Dr. Marianne Riegler receives honorary doctorate
After a musical interlude by the Junge Münchner Symphoniker, the ceremony began in which Dr. Marianne Riegler was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wayne State University.
Wayne State University President Irvin D. Reid read from the official Citation awarded by the Wayne State University Board of Governors:
"For your unstinting dedication to excellent intercultural education, your skill in leading the Junior Year in Munich program to greatness, and your invaluable service to German-American relations, Wayne State University proudly bestows upon you, Marianne Riegler, the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa."
Frau Dr. Riegler reflected upon her many experiences as JYM resident director, and accepted the honorary doctorate degree "on behalf of the students." Read Dr. Riegler's speech in its entirety below.
The Junge Münchner Symphoniker concluded the opening ceremony with the Blue Danube. After the opening ceremony, alumni and guests gathered for a reception in the historic Lichthof of the Ludwig Maximilians Universität.
Dinner at StuStadt
Reunion events moved from the university to the grounds of the Studentenstadt later in the afternoon. The Studentenwerk München reserved the main beer tent of the StuStaCulum just for JYM!
Dieter Massberg, Managing Director of the Studentenwerk München, welcomed JYMers back to the StuStadt where many had lived during their year in Munich, and showed stills from "Das Experiment" – a film made in the 1950s about American and German students living and studying together in Munich. He then tapped the keg!
June 13 Bavarian Dinner at the Löwenbräukeller
After a long evening at the StuStadt (followed by a well-deserved day of repose), JYM alumni, friends and guests met again on Friday evening, June 13, for the capstone event of JYM's 50th Anniversary Reunion: A Bavarian Dinner at the Löwenbräukeller!
Dr. Peter Rosenberger from the class of 1953 shared the enthusiasm of "die Alte Hasen" and proudly stated to all present: "Es war eine Freude, so wie eine Ehre!" He then got down to business and officially opened the Bavarian Dinner by tapping the keg with precision and determination!
Acceptance speech by Dr. Dr. h.c. Marianne Riegler
President Reid, verehrte Gäste, meine lieben Studenten,
The situation here demands that, for the first time in my Junior Year life, I break a taboo and speak English in front of my students!
Furthermore, the situation of being awarded a high academic degree normally demands a scholarly response. I would have met this expectation with great pleasure. Many of you know that, after I retired from JYM, I immediately became a student of Cross-Cultural Communication at the University. I wanted to find out whether the existing scientific theories in this field comply with my long time professional experience - and vice versa.
Most of these theories are based on the existence of so-called cultural standards: Your own, which you consider to be normal ones [and therefore automatically use as tertium comparationis], and those you are confronted with abroad. These you consider to be exotic (even when you are in the minority there)!
Theories have been developed which proclaim ways to solve related problems. Research demands that theories be validated, through repeated and repeatable experiments, with so-called homogeneous groups. In this respect, JYM students would have been the ideal homogeneous group: they are all Americans; they are all 20 years old; they all come with Junior standing from accredited U.S. universities and colleges; they all have a grade point average of B or better, and they all have had two years of college German or the equivalent.
All this applies. But our longtime intercultural endeavors with our students have taught us that they are not a homogeneous group, that they are not even a group in this sense. They are individual persons, with individual motivations and individual expectations. Motivations and subsequent expectations are essentials which determine the selection of each individual's perception of reality.
Whenever it comes to an intercultural discourse in any form and in any field, in our case related to study abroad, you must take into consideration that – aside from obvious differences between cultural standards [remember "These Strange German Ways"?] - you are primarily dealing with an individual person's subjective projection (or construction) of reality.
By the way, this is not only an intercultural but also an intracultural issue. Otherwise, there would not be so many misunderstandings among people with the same cultural standards. So much for the theories about the possibly overestimated role of cultural standards in intercultural situations.
Theories are products of reason. We all know that mere reason does not accomplish anything without emotional motivation. So let me speak about emotions which are involved in and move an institution like JYM.
I am not authorized to speak about the emotions which moved you students before, during and after your year of study abroad. I could quote 500 questionnaires which we sent out many years ago asking questions about still existing friendships, jobs related to the experience, etc. On 99% of the questionnaires, our former students wrote somewhere, "This was the best year of my life." Or another quote similar to many others in our guestbooks, "You can get the student out of JYM, but you cannot get JYM out of the student."
I could speak about my own emotions. Whenever I look back on the decades of my professional life with JYM, I feel that not everybody – though having invested the best of his knowledge and ability in a job – has the satisfying feeling I gratefully enjoy that his or her endeavors somehow made sense and were not futile.
And this brings me to the point I actually want to express on this occasion: We would not have this assembly in this venerable Aula, celebrating this 50th anniversary, we could not refer, as President Reid has, to "the national and international reputation which Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich enjoys", without the students with whom we had the privilege to share a special year in their young lives. They are the Junior Year in Munich!
They took the risk to study abroad, to face the academic and personal risks and challenges to study their third college year in a foreign language in a foreign university system, and at the same time, to survive in a foreign environment. They represented their families, their schools and their country admirably in a foreign culture.
The only thing we could do for them was to provide the academic, cultural and social opportunities in which they were able to demonstrate and profit from the true and real purpose of study abroad as it was meant by the founders of the program: to contribute to mutual understanding by deconstructing clichés and preconceived notions and by enhancing awareness and establishing genuine mutual respect – for themselves and for their hosts.
And with this, if President Reid and the Board of Governors of Wayne State University and the State of Michigan so agree, I accept this great honor in the name of and for the students of the Junior Year in Munich. Thank you.
Dr. Dr. h.c. Marianne Riegler
12 June, 2003
