Ms. Marie Elisabeth Mueller is a communications advisor, senior editor and journalist with a specialization in digital storytelling. Over the course of her career, she has travelled to many countries and experienced living in different cultures. In the year 2022, she received the prestigious Gisela Bonn award from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Govt. of India (ICCR) for her contribution to the development of Indo-German cultural relations.
We are delighted to have her interview for the Kaffeeklatsch series!
Hello, greetings from Stuttgart! I’m Marie Elisabeth Mueller, and I’m an advisor for digital communications, and also an editor, a storyteller and a trainer.
In today's noisy landscape of signals and messages, well told and visualized stories can make a difference and succeed in securing the most valuable currency in communications, the attention of people. A digital-storyteller must master both, the art of storytelling, which is finding a story which addresses the people’s needs, then visualizing it in an emotional and meaningful way; and the knowledge to apply multiple digital methods. This is to create interactive, multidimensional and engaging stories. Today, every professional in every field should be able to tell stories about themselves, their team, company, product, and services. Digital storytelling and social media make a powerful combination together. Everyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can build a voice, and can professionally communicate in both public and personal spaces.
Telling stories using technology for communities and the social goods has always been my passion. Since my school days, I started to work in a local print newsroom and in the state theatre of Düsseldorf as an assistant dramaturgist. After I completed my Magister Artium in German Studies, I was inspired by the then British film and opera director Peter Greenaway, and was determined to follow his approach.
My Ph.D. supervisor was a boon for me, Professor Dr. Joachim Paech. He was the first in Germany to head a full chair of media science as a major subject with its own curriculum and department, and has also won several awards. He was very approachable, thoughtful, supportive and an intellectual, with whom it was always a pleasure for me to converse with.
For my work-related projects, I travelled a lot, also far beyond Europe, and have been able to visit and work in many countries and meet many people. Once you travel to a far away region, this experience changes your life forever!
I’ll never forget my first train journey from Chennai to Thalassery overnight. The train was delayed, the timetable obsolete. On the tracks and beyond, everything was pitch dark. And inside was no screen nor announcements in any language I speak. So, for hours I had literally no idea where I was, and I believe hardly anyone of my family and friends would have known where to find me. That was somehow a precious feeling, I felt preciously alone with the universe under the stars! I talked to my Indian co-travellers in the compartment. And somehow I requested them to inform me on arriving in Thalassery. We arrived shortly before 3 a.m. A passenger in a military uniform informed me before the arrival, and we stood for minutes together at the open train door, enjoying the cold breeze. When then the train slowed down and stopped, he helped me get down.
The platform was totally empty – apart from a young guy in traditional white clothing who came to pick me up. What a wonder! That night, I met him for the first time, and he is now my good friend Shijin. We both, along with his whole family, share many sweet memories. But that night, a total stranger came to pick me up and bring me safely to a hotel before we met the next day for a tour across the town.
And this would become another legendary day, when I came across a grand statute of Dr. Hermann Gundert in downtown Thalassery. After that, I learned about his and his wife Julie's work for the educational system in Kerala. Gundert is famous throughout India for writing the first Malayalam grammar book and the first Malayalam – English dictionary. What a coincidence! It was the first time I learned about the former missionary, and scholar from Stuttgart – where I started my journey to India! And in fact, Grundert is Hermann Hesse’s grandfather!
So, I learned a lot during these few days, and a few years later, I donated my private
systematic library, which I had built from teenage age on, to the new Gundert Museum and Study Center. Shijin and his wife helped me to realise that, together with the Kerala government. In 2020, I received the Gisela Bonn award for my donation and the collaboration with the people and communities of readers in Kerala.
When I lived and worked in Nairobi, in Kenya from 2004 onwards, I learned about India a lot. Funny, isn’t it? In Kenya, I met many Kenyans with a background in India or Pakistan. There, I started to get a distinguished taste of quality Indian food and listened to Indian music. I started to learn more about India in East-Africa, many years before I travelled to India for the first time. India is just so diverse and huge, alone by the numbers, it’s almost a continent more than a country. For me, India is connected to people and experiences. I love their style of humour. Indians make fun and joy their companions in all life situations. I also adore the way Indians cherish their food and make it an absolutely healthy and multifaceted community experience. On the other hand, the unemployment, pollution, and traffic are worrisome issues, and Indians are making great efforts to tackle them.
When I was in Pune, I visited several media houses and the representative office of Baden-Württemberg in Pune. I also met a brilliant young graduate from the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) in Chennai, specialised in soccer sports, who shared a few insights and warmed me up to the city. A couple of years later, we met again in Cologne, where had enrolled for a Masters sports programme. He faced some problems in Germany. He didn’t learn German, as the study program had announced it would be in English. I helped him to adjust to the university and environment and had a chance to reciprocate his kindness.
One of my best heart-warming experiences in Pune was in a train from Pune to Mumbai. I met a young married couple who were totally surprised to meet a European on the train! We really had a lot to talk about and shared a lot of interests and passions. We had our dinner together, and it was an unforgettable evening!
I met the most inspiring, innovative and open-minded students and media professionals in India. I feel Kerala is like my second home. When I met Professor Rajaram via Twitter, we both started to work together in the circle of international colleagues from the US and the UK in the Global Pop-up Newsroom. It is a digital-distributed newsroom with students journalists and young reporters from four continents and many world regions. Successively, I invited the Chairman Mr. Sashi Kumar, who founded India’s first private TV station Asianet News in Thiruvananthapuram in 1995, and Professor Rajaram to Stuttgart, Germany. We also enabled German exchange students to study at the ACJ in Chennai.
Subsequently, Professor Rajaram and I organised intensive workshops and trainings for German students and also for mid-career professionals in newsrooms in Germany, as well as for Indian students and newsrooms in India. In the course of our collaboration, we developed a well-structured, innovative methodology for digital storytelling and a handy toolbox for agile digital storytelling. Part of it we share in our textbook “Social Media Storytelling”, which has been published in German (Rheinwerk) and in English (Routledge) in 2021.
Having met so many Indian students in Germany, I can say one thing for sure-learning German is an excellent preparation for any sort of collaboration with Germany. Be it as a student in Germany or as a professional in the German labour market, Germany is looking for qualified experts and staff in many industries, and this could be a good future perspective for Indian students.
I hope to be able to visit India again. I’m invited to an official visit from the Indian government as the 2020 laureate of the Gisela Bonn award. India as a country and its people are a life-changing experience for me, and my experiences, emotions and memories explain this #Gefühl better than any words.
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