The Center for German Studies in partnership with the University of Virginia Office of the President, the University of Virginia Center for Politics and International Residential College, and the German-American Association of Central Virginia will host a public event featuring His Excellency Peter Wittig, German Ambassador to the United States.

Peter Wittig has served as German Ambassador to the United States since April 2014. Prior to this, he was German Ambassador to the United Nations in New York and represented Germany during its tenure as a member of the UN Security Council from 2011 until 2012. There, he drew on his wide expertise in United Nations matters, having previously served as Director-General for United Nations and Global Issues at the German Foreign Office in Berlin and having been posted to the German Permanent Mission in New York in the late 1980s.

Wittig joined the German Foreign Service in 1982. He has also served in Madrid, at the headquarters as the private secretary to the Foreign Minister, and as Ambassador both in Lebanon and then in Cyprus. He was the German Government Special Envoy on the “Cyprus question” (the division of Cyprus) and has acquired extensive knowledge of the Middle East.

Before starting his career in the German Foreign Service, Wittig studied history, political science, and law at Bonn, Freiburg, Canterbury, and Oxford universities and taught as an assistant professor at the University of Freiburg.

His wife, Huberta von Voss-Wittig, has worked as both a journalist and a writer. The couple has four children: Valeska, Maximilian, Augustin, and Felice.

This event is free and open to the public.