About the Creator of this Website

"He likes Mickey Mouse, and in his bag there is chaos," someone once wrote, describing a little self-concious red haired boy of about eight or nine years. And his school bag really was messy, as he readily admits, but his love for Mickey Mouse, at least the comics, never abated. Early on he liked to read Donald Duck comics which were always the first story in the weekly German magazine and he did not yet know the name of the comic artist, which he had always considered superior to others. Later he would learn his name, Carl Barks, and he would forever remain a fan of the master, the Duckman. His name is Stephan Ortmann, the creator of this humble website. On September 4, 1976, he was born in Marburg, Germany. About 7 years later, having moved around quite a bit, he and his family settled in a small town in Southwest Germany. This town is called Roigheim and it is the place where he attended the local Elementary School. I LOVE YOU, Hongzhuan

In 1987 he continued his education at the Ganztagesgymnasium Osterburken (GTO) and graduated there. His main main subjects were Math and English. After that he worked for a year at a local hospital. This was part of the mandatory social service that he chose because he refused to do military service. That year was very enlightening to him and it showed him how nurses work in an hospital environment. He also learned to be confronted with death, the only inevitability in life, and sometimes a daily occurrence in a hospital.

Yet he did not feel drawn to the medical profession, as others in his family, and so he chose Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg. Unfortunately, he was not prepared enough for that subject as he had to realize that he could not work with highly toxic chemicals and soon voluntarily dropped out and searched for a new possible career. Ever since his visit to Denver, Colorado, one year before his high school graduation, he had been fascinated with America, American culture and American politics. So he finally decided to study a subject which matched his interests: American Studies (which is mainly English Philology) and Political Science.

Therefore in 1998 he started to study Political Science and American Studies at the University of Tuebingen in southwest Germany. From March 20 till April 14, 2000, he had the chance to work as an intern for a newspaper called "Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung" in Buchen, which opened to him the world of journalism and showed him the realities of the rural environment, which was quite different from his idea of journalism, the kind that he had always associated with Bob Woodward from the Washington Post, his favorite newspaper.

From August 2000 till August 2001 he was enrolled as an exchange student at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Here he was an active and exhuberant member of the Japanese Club and the Karate Club, as well as a member of the International Club. To see some pictures, go to this site: My Greatest Memories.

In October 2001 he transferred to the University of Erlangen near Nuremberg, Germany, where he graduated with a degree equivalent to a masters in February 2004. In the summer of 2002 and from December 2003 to February 2004 he enjoyed to work as an intern for Siemens Medical Solutions in Erlangen, which gave him a chance to enhance his knowledge about web design as well as to learn Macromedia Flash and also allowed him to work in a job atmosphere with an exceedingly good team of fellow interns and superiors.

After his graduation, he went to China for the first time for a whole month in March of 2004. This exciting adventure can be relieved by going to this website.

In April 2004 he started to work on his doctoral thesis, titled "Explaining Nontransitions: The Strategic Behavior of Political Groups in Singapore and Hong Kong" with Prof. Mark R. Thompson (Erlangen University), which will be completed in March 2007. In July 2005 he was in Shanghai for language classes at the East China Normal University and in August 2005, he was a visiting scholar at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. From April 2004 to December 2006, he also worked at Oracle Corporation as a student employee in a sales team of a key account in Nuremberg.

On February 23, 2007 he got married to Hongzhuan Li in Skærbæk, part of Tønder, Denmark.

After graduation on February 15, 2008, he started his academic career at the FernUniversität in Hagen (Distance University Hagen), where he is presently working for PD Dr. Stephan Bröchler in Political Science V: Democracy and Development. He really enjoys his life at this great university.

Although this text was written in the third person, it was actually written by myself and therefore cannot be sufficiently objective as it seemed to suggest. Therefore I need to apologize for this and will continue to describe the rest in the first person.

My family:
I am the first of six children. I have two sisters, Susanne the oldest sister and Elisabeth, and three brothers, Sebastian, Christian, and Matthias (from oldest to youngest). To see some pictures of my family. Furthermore I need to mention my wife, Hongzhuan (picture).

My hobbies are:
Reading Japanese, American, British, and French literature, writing poems, short stories, and novels, collecting Disney comics, cooking, swimming, hiking, Karate, watching movies, putting together jigsaw puzzles, playing games, and creating web sites (See my site about my year in the US: My Greatest Memories)

My goals are:
At the moment, my immediate goal is to finish my Phd thesis. I am also planning to find a good job.