While growing up in a town near Hanover (Havelse) in Germany, my wish was to become a teacher. My passion for biochemistry as well as for arts and the French language grew during my high school years. By the end of high school, I began considering both molecular biology and art history in addition to languages for my future professional life. For this reason, I decided to study medicine in combination with the French language.

In autumn 1985, I started my medical studies as a major and minored in French at the Romanistic Institute at the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany. There I achieved a natural science degree in French in 1987. Throughout my six years of medical education, I performed my practical training in departments of endocrinology at different hospitals in France including the University of Nice, Hopital de Cimiez and the University in Montpellier. Within the last year of my medical studies in Paris at the Pierre et Marie Curie University, I also undertook training in surgery. Enabled by substantive semester breaks, German medical students can undertake professional training in foreign countries for up to three months. In as much, I have considered myself lucky to have been able to combine my practical medical training and studies and still enjoy art and culture in France.

During my medical studies at the Georg August University of Göttingen in the late 1980s, I was truly inspired early by my mentor and University teacher Prof Dr med. h.c. Werner Creutzfeldt, FRCP to begin working in the field of neuroendocrine tumors. Prof Creutzfeldt, head of the Department of Gastroenterology and Endocrinology was a leader of excellence in the field of gastrointestinal endocrinology, neuroendocrine tumors and the entero-insulinar axis/incretin system in Germany, which paved the way for new treatment strategies in …