
Stefanie Brunner
Stefanie grew up between the Black Forest and Vosges in a village in the Baden Rhine valley, where everything was always a bit better and a bit more beautiful than anywhere else. Due to the geographical proximity to France, Stefanie discovered that there are languages in the world other than German at an early age. Even as a child she liked to play ‘teacher’ and tried out her pedagogical skill on playmates and neighbours’ children.
Love brought her to the land of mountains, chocolate and many varieties of cheese. Thanks to the broad Alemannic dialect spoken in her village, she found it easy to understand the majority of German-speaking Swiss people. Today, the people in her homeland think she speaks perfect Swiss German; but even after many years here, the people in the land of mountains still see things slightly differently.
After graduating from high school, she worked for various companies as a foreign language correspondent, in which role she was able to use her foreign language skills as she wished. After a long maternity leave, she picked up the teaching game from her childhood again and started to teach others the secrets and beauty of her native language. She acquired the methodological and didactic tools for this calling in specialist training courses.
When Stefanie isn’t teaching (which is rarely the case), you can find her in her garden, which she passionately tends and cares for and in which she regularly gives herself aching muscles. Maybe that’s why sport isn’t so important to her – after all, why run when you can sit down? She also loves to sing and couldn’t imagine a life without music. Since she sadly cannot travel as often as she would like, she brings the world to her through her work. That’s why she still thinks her job is the best job in the world, even after so many years.

Ulrike J. Wolff
Ulrike loves Zurich!!! However, she grew up in Germany in the Ruhr area and on a North Sea island on the Danish border. On the North Sea coast she enjoyed the sea breeze in her hair and discovered her passion for long walks. There she also developed her literary talent and wrote her first love poems, which were later even published under her pseudonym ‘Lina Rengis’.
So it was no surprise that she enrolled to study literature. However, back then she was more often to be found in the cinema than in the lecture hall. She fell in love with a Swiss man and moved to Zurich, where she continued her studies and her trips to the cinema. Beginning already during her school years and studies she has continually taught—very successfully, according to rave reviews from so many former as well as current students.
Teaching is still a great pleasure for her. She especially enjoys preparing students for the Goethe diploma – in which she excels. Could this be because her mother named her after the last great love of the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
She also loves reading and is interested in contemporary art and good wine – and feels especially at ease when she can sit in the sun by the sea or by Lake Zurich. She likes to travel and so she’s glad that she gets to meet people from all over the world thanks to her profession. Her attempt to learn Latin gave her a huge headache and stomach cramps, so she has a lot of sympathy for those who don’t find it so easy to learn a language.
Her friends find her patient and sensitive and love to have a laugh with her. Her students also benefit from these character traits, of course.