Columbia once again welcomed a collection of students from Gedern, Germany, with 2023 marking the 30th anniversary of the sister cities exchange.

Along with being a milestone year for the program itself, this is also the 30th year Gedern English teacher Andreas Heuser has overseen the exchange on the German side, as he was one of the individuals to get the Columbia-Gedern partnership started in the first place.

For three weeks, students from Gedern have been staying with host families in the community, spending time at Columbia High School and generally getting to know each other and build relationships.

As they do each visit, students and members of their host families have participated in a number of activities and small trips together, with visits to the St. Louis Arch and Missouri History Museum as well as a tour of Monroe County featuring Rock City, Monroe County History Museum and Miles Cemetery.

One of the larger exchange events took place April 26 – in the middle of the three-week visit – as students, host families and members of Sister Cities of Columbia gathered for the organization’s Spring Dinner.

Following the meal, Sister Cities of Columbia President Ingrid Soraghan spoke about the relationship between Gedern and Columbia that has persisted through the last three decades.

Soraghan offered numbers to contextualize this relationship. There have been a total of 16 Gedern visits to Columbia, 12 Columbia visits to Gedern and 553 students who have participated in these exchanges.

Additionally, 25 of the German students who have participated over the years have also stayed for a full school year while one American student has spent a full year in Gedern.

Columbia High School German teacher Taylor Nickerson explained that disparity by noting German students learn a second language much earlier than students in American schools, and thus actually attending class for a year can be less of a challenge for them.

Soraghan went on to offer great praise to Heuser for his contributions over the years.

“How lucky we have been to have Andreas Heuser leading the student exchange from the Gedern side each and every year since 1993,” Soraghan said.

She then presented Heuser with a picture of a brick engraved with his name that was recently installed in the sidewalk at Metter Park.

Later at the dinner, Nickerson spoke to offer his thoughts on the exchange program as well.

He said he started teaching at CHS unaware of the program, though he quickly dove into it with enthusiasm as he had fallen in love with Germany and decided to teach German thanks to an exchange trip he had participated in when he was younger.

Nickerson offered a special thanks to his German colleague – as well as Heuser’s wife Christine – for the work they’ve done together over the years.

“Had I known then what the exchange program was going to bring to me in my life and being able to work with Andreas over the last almost 13 years, I never could have imagined,” Nickerson said. “I’m very lucky to know you, I’m very lucky to be able to work with you and I’m very lucky to have somebody like you, and Christine as well, in my life. So, thank you very much.”

Nickerson then presented three videos, one of which featured Heuser’s son and daughter who both participated in the exchange and spent a year in Columbia shortly after.

Another of these videos began with the phrase “wunderbar together,” a reference to an international German-American relations campaign that has cropped up in recent years.

Heuser received additional recognition at Monday’s Columbia City Council meeting where he was presented with a small, engraved crystal globe to commemorate his 30 years of service.

“It shows the world, and this is what our program is about,” Heuser said. “Get to know the world. Don’t stay just in your country. Don’t think all you see at home in your country is everything. Get out. Get to know the world, and start with going to see your sister city, your partner school. That’s the beginning, and that’s a good beginning, and it’s always been a good beginning for 30 years now. It’s just a wonderful program.”

In an interview with the Republic-Timeslast Friday, Heuser offered additional perspective both on the program and himself.

Heuser is originally from Fulda, a town to the east of Gedern, both of which lie in the Hesse state of Germany.

He later attended university in Mainz, though his interest in teaching can be traced back to his earlier years as a student when he tutored in English and Latin, his two biggest interests and current teaching subjects.

“It turned out that my tutoring was successful, their grades improved,” Heuser said. “So I tutored more and more, which is a good way to make money as a student… and then I thought of becoming a teacher, and the two subjects that I thought were most interesting and I was most successful in were English and Latin.”

Eventually meeting Christine who lived in Frankfurt, which sits between Mainz and Gedern, Heuser found himself beginning his Gedern teaching career in 1990.

Shortly after, a group of Columbia citizens hoping to gain a better understanding of their German heritage would visit Gedern, where they primarily traced their family trees.

This early version of Sister Cities of Columbia visited Heuser’s school in Gedern, and as the English teacher, he was introduced to show them around.

While he appreciated the goal of Sister Cities, namely building a relationship between Columbia and Gedern, he recognized that a proper relationship wouldn’t be able to form as it was.

“I thought, ‘These are all old people, retired people, and if a relationship is started on that basis, it’ll take a couple of years and it’ll be over again. So definitely there have to be young people included,’” Heuser said.

With the hopes of building a relationship between students in the two communities, Heuser started a pen pal program among his students.

From there, “Sister Cities Junior” took off with the first Gedern to Columbia exchange in 1993, and while the program has had some gaps – largely due to 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic – Andreas, along with Nickerson and those before him, have been able to provide over 500 students with a unique cultural exchange experience.

Among those participating this year are German students Anna Kremer, Kahoula Moussaid and Melani Jovanova, each of whom shared a presentation on German culture and life at the Spring Dinner.

After the dinner, they also discussed how the trip had been going and what prompted their interest in the exchange, with Moussaid and Jovanova saying that they had long had an interest in American culture.

“It just felt like such a big opportunity,” Moussaid said, “and now that I’m here, I feel like I’m living the teenage dream. I feel so happy, and it’s been such a nice time being here. Everybody’s so kind.”

Kremer said this wasn’t her first time participating in an exchange, and her big reason for visiting again was the opportunity to see her host family, with whom she’d developed quite the bond.

The trio agreed that the relationship they had each developed with their host families was truly special, and none of them were eager to head back to Germany.

And, even though there was still over a week left in the trip at the time of the Spring Dinner, all of them shed a few tears at the thought of having to say goodbye.

“I don’t want to leave my host family,” Kremer said. “They’re so kind to me. It feels like a real family for me, and I’m only, like, 10 days here, and it will be really hard to say goodbye.”

As Soraghan, Nickerson and Heuser described, these kinds of relationships are at the heart of the exchange program.

“It sure does make me happy,” Heuser said. “It’s a good feeling to see that I could help bring people together.”

While this year’s visit may not be Heuser’s last as he is currently planning for a 2025 retirement at the latest, it will be his final time overseeing the trip on the German side as he hopes to hand over the reigns to his colleague back in Gedern, taking on more of an advisory role for the next visit.

His departure looming, Heuser will certainly leave behind a strong legacy in both Gedern and Columbia, with his 30 years of work having contributed both to the relationship between the two communities and relationships formed by the hundreds of students he has impacted.