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**//__ Hans Strothoff __//**
 * //__ The Founder of the Strothoff International School: __//**

Hans Strothoff a successful businessman and now a proud owner of an international school has an impressive biography.

Hans Strothoff was born in Bremen on the November 28, 1950. In Bremen, Mr. Strothoff grew up as an only child and went to school there. After he finished school, he started an apprenticeship as a businessman. With this step, he laid the foundations for his future career. In 1980, Mr. Strothoff built up his own empire, the MHK Group. The MHK Group is a dealership specialising in furniture and kitchens. After four years with his company in Bremen, Mr. Strothoff moved to Dreieich in 1984, and six years later, his company also relocated to Dreieich. Since then, the registered office of the MHK Group is in Dreieich. Furthermore, his company has been represented in the Netherlands since 1992, in Belgium since 1997 and in Switzerland since 2006 (“Meilensteine seit 1980“). Through radio advertising, the MHK Group became very popular in 2001.

Hans Strothoff has always been very committed to charity organisations or important institutions. One of his projects is the Möbelfachschule, a professional school for furniture, in Cologne. There, he is the president of the federal association of German furniture trading. He also supports the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, where the MHK Group holds a professorship for trade marketing.

Mr. Strothoff has two goals in his life which are very important to him. One of these goals is to have his own company, which he has already realized. Another main goal is to give something back to other people. The main point was to create a school that imparts different foreign languages because he realized in his job that globalization plays a big role. Knowing foreign languages is very important to be able to communicate with people from all over world in our globalized environment.

Hans Strothoff talked to many different people and decided with his wife and Peter Walter, the district administrator of Offenbach, to build a new school with different goals than “normal” German schools. Since then, he believes in a principle, which reads as follows: “Investing in the young is investing in our future” (Hans Strothoff). His standards for this school were to create a new learning environment. Technology plays a big role in his new school because he noticed in his job that technology advances day by day, and it is very important to orient oneself in this particular world. A few years later he was able to start to realize his goals of a better school. In 2009, the time had finally come and his school assumed shape, and on the 24th of August, the school opened for the first time. Now, Mr. Strothoff is the proud owner of an international school. ** Works Cited ** Strothoff, Jutta. Personal Interview. 27 September 2009.

“Meilensteine seit 1980 – Eine langjährige Erfolgsgeschichte,” www.mhk.de. 20 October 2009. Web.