We are proud to announce the opening of the new Diplomatic Council Chapter Berlin. Ambassador Prof. Dr. Heinrich Kreft (Amb. ret), acting president of the Diplomatic Council, personally takes charge of the new presence in German's capital. He brings with him a global network of contacts that will benefit all members of the Diplomatic Council (DC). The founding charter of the new chapter was signed by him together with Diplomatic Council Secretary General Hang Nguyen.
Professor Dr Heinrich Kreft is a Senior Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Centre. He teaches "Space Policy and Space Diplomacy" at Andrássy University Budapest and the Hungarian University of Public Administration (NKE/Ludovika). His book "Race to Space" (ISBN 978-3-98674-147-1) has become a standard work in the industry.
For four years until August 2024, Professor Dr. Kreft M.A., B.A. (USA) held the Chair of Diplomacy and was Programme Director of "International Relations and European Studies" at Andrássy University Budapest and Director of the Centre for Diplomacy there.
Prior to that, he was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (July 2016 to August 2020), Special Ambassador for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue and for International Scientific Relations, and Deputy Head of the Political Planning Staff at the Foreign Office in Berlin. Other stations in his 40-year diplomatic career included Washington, Tokyo, Madrid and La Paz.
From 2006 to 2010, he was foreign and security policy advisor to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag. He was also a visiting scholar at the Henry L. Stimson Center, the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institutions, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC.
Dr. Heinrich Kreft studied political science, modern history and sociology at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA (USA), at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Institut des Hautes Etudes de L'Amérique Latine at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, and at the University of Münster.
He has published numerous works on international relations. His most recent publications concern China, the Middle East in the broader sense, Hungary, Central Europe and the Western Balkans.
Of particular note is the work "Europe and the Emerging New Global Order", published in early 2025, to which he contributed significantly both as an author and as an editor. The book deals with the essential cornerstones of European security policy. The founding event of the new chapter took place on October 6th as part of a book presentation at the Romanian Embassy in Berlin.