About our Club

The Rotary Club Munich-International was chartered on 27 July 2002 and became the first English-speaking Rotary Club in Germany. With approximately 80 members our club has covered almost 20 nationalities and ethnic back­grounds over the years.

 

Activities:

In recent years, we have regularly organized three main activities. First, a charity bazaar, second, a classic car rally, and finally, our traditional art auction. The charity bazaar was conducted five times at the “Agentur für Arbeit”.  The classic car rally has already taken place twelve times and has become a traditional event in the vintage car scene. We are happy to have regular and loyal guests. Finally, our art auction, which we conducted 15 times, and became our flagship event. It is a fantastic team effort with around 20 members plus Rotaract and Interact members.

 

Young moms at our charity bazaar

 

Our traditional classic car rally

 

The art auction became a well-received institution in the art scene of Munich

 

Projects:

The projects we support as a result of these activities have two main focal points: education for young people and medicine. Both areas have a strong local, but (as an international club) also an international focus. Generally, we strive for long term and sustainable support.

 

Milestones:

Two major milestones of our club happened in 2016 and 2017. In October 2016 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our Orlandus Lassus Foundation with a wonderful concert at the University of Music and Theatre, Munich, with 10 scholarship holders. More information about the foundation, the activities and the scholarship holder at www.orlanduslassus.de.

 

10 years Orlandus Lassus Foundation. Scholarship holders together with our members and guests of honour: President of HMTM Prof. Bernd Redmann and composer Wilfried Hiller

 

In September 2017 we celebrated the charter of Interact Munich-international at Munich In­ternational School (MIS) and completed the Munich-International family with Rotary, Rota­ract and Interact.

 

Charter of Interact Munich-International with Sibille Vinzens, President RCMI, Stephanie Olescher, President Interact Augsburg, Tanvi Padhye, President Interact M-International, and Marina Bassilious, President Rotaract M-International

 

Scholarships:

To foster the development of the young generation, as one of our clubs’ strategic cornerstones, we manage to send 5 students to a long-term and 20 students to a short-term youth exchange during the last ten years.

 

Rotaract:

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our friends at Rotaract Munich-International for their fantastic cooperation over the past ten years. Rotaract was engaged in particular at our art auction by almost 20 friends who gave our team fantastic support. As part of this close and fruitful collaboration, we also took the oppor­tunity to think about the next generation of our club. The result of these considerations is that today four Rotaract past presidents in their early 30s are active members of our club.

 

Pandemic:

Like in all other situations of life and business, the COVID pandemic was a big impact on our club live. On Friday, March 22nd, 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the lockdown. One hour later, the president cancelled Mon­day’s club meetings, and at that moment, we had no clue how to continue. Are online meetings really a replacement for a vibrant club life? We tried it because there was no alternative anyway. Within one week, our club became an e-club.

 

The first online meeting was fun and a disaster at the same time. It took some time to get everyone on board and explain how to handle the technique and the behaviour in an online meeting. On the other hand, we had attendance rates up to 60 % and friends we hadn't seen for a long time suddenly looked at us happily on the screen.

 

As we became more and more professional, we ended up having club assemblies (inclusive online voting) and even a Christmas party online. The latter was impressive in that our Orlandus Lassus scholarship holders provided their music contributions online with incredible professionalism.

 

Our club's leadership, particularly four presidents, were especially challenged by the pandemic. The first challenge was to switch the club to pandemic mode. The second challenge was to successfully keep an online club together. And finally, it was a challenge to get back to normal and establish a vivid club live again. We are proud that we have succeeded in doing this very well and we are convinced that this also says something about the cohesion among our

 

In Memoriam:

Over the past ten years, we have had to bid farewell to our honorary members Norbert Gabers (Feb. 2014) and Karl-Heinz Güntermann (Mar. 2018) as well as our members Dr. Utz-Hellmuth Felcht (May 2023) and Dr. Peter Koppe (Dec. 2023). We will always keep an honourable memory.