The Krupp Internship Program

I have interned with several non-profits, projects, and non-governmental organizations around the city of Berlin under the umbrella of Schöneberg hilft e.V. Through the summer, I have worked broadly on refugee, intercultural, and migrant affairs through a mix of direct and indirect assistance. I have been able to cultivate my event planning, direct contact with refugees, English-German translation, graphic design, Excel/Notion, and plenty of other skills as I have switched assignments and worked in places around Berlin! It has been incredibly fulfilling to see the culture of solidarity here, and be a part of it in any way I can.

Krupp and Stanford in Berlin offered me the opportunity to study, live and work in Berlin and Meissen a couple years after unification.  Although that was more than three decades ago, the memories still remain, because the experiences I had in those places changed me a great deal.

I met an amazing array of people who, by and large, welcomed me with open arms.  In Meissen, a small town in the heart of eastern Germany, few things must have looked stranger than the sight of a Korean American kid like myself marching around the winding, medieval streets, grunting barely intelligible German.  Nevertheless, all kinds of people – young and old, employed and unemployed, those hopeful about unification and those fearful of its consequences – took me on tours, filled me with bratwurst and beer, introduced me to their families, and shared their stories with me.  For that I shall always be thankful.

I still draw upon the lessons of those days.  What did I learn?  That the impact of historical events, like the fall of the Iron Curtain, have a colossal, complex impact on individual lives that can never be fully characterized by a slogan or a sound bite.  That the most average looking person on the street can have an amazing story to tell and redefine for you the very essence of what it means to be kind or generous.  And that so much of who we are and what we have accomplished depends not only on what decisions we make, but also on what kind of conditions (for example, what side of the Iron Curtain) we happen to be born under.

Beginning in April 1986, I spent a number of months as a student of painting at the Hochschule der Künste (HdK; now the Universität der Künste) in Berlin, where I pursued my own work under the guidance of the Professor Hans-Jürgen (Hajo) Diehl among a group of talented and sophisticated Meisterschüler in his studio. The idea of putting one of the inaugural Krupp internships for non-scientists to this especially creative use came from Karen Kramer. I was simply in the right place at the right time: working towards completing degrees in Studio Art and Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford in California while the expansion of the Krupp internship program was underway at Stanford in Berlin. I had met Karen when she was a visiting faculty member in the Program in Structured Liberal Education at Stanford, and I suppose she sensed that Berlin might be a good place for me to broaden my knowledge of modern literature and art while also doing my own practical work.