Category: past-posts

What an evening! Glorious weather, sparkling company, beautiful music, and excellent food made our Tripartite Gala Dinner at the Golf Club Grand Ducal a true summer highlight. Guests enjoyed drinks on the terrace overlooking the greens, and we were honoured to count H.E. Joanne Olivier, British Ambassador to Luxembourg, among us. After the drinks, we repaired to the banquet room and the evening began with a musical treat from Duo Natalia — Natalia van der Mersch (violin) and Natalia Kovalzon (piano) — who performed Gluck and Sarasate with beauty and fervour. A warm thanks to the Natalias, to Ambassador Olivier, and to all our guests who met up in festive spirits and helped make this a wonderful and memorable summer evening!

OUSL, Oxford University Society of Luxembourg asbl

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AGM 2025

20 May 2025

We just had our AGM at the Kirchberg Campus and I thank all for the good turnout. We said goodbye to three members (Henri Dupong, Linda Chirila and Katia Volodine) and hello to three new members (David Clark, Lidiya Cherneva and Bob Kieffer). The meeting was followed by a blind tasting champagne quiz arranged by Jos van Bommel, which was very popular – even if nearly all of us failed it!

For the Chairwoman’s report please go to the About page.

With very best wishes,

Mette Ahlefeldt-Laurvig
Chair, Oxford University Society of Luxembourg (OUSL)

AGM 20 May 2025

On on a sunny 6 May, The society held its very first New Members Welcome Drink at Café des Capucins (now Mezza)— and made the start of a new tradition!
Over the course of our two-hour cocktail reception, we had a lively and cheerful get-together with a great turnout of both new and long-standing members. Gathered around Mezza’s long bar, everyone enjoyed a format that offered a wonderful opportunity to connect and mingle.
The team at Mezza was efficient and friendly throughout, and the food and drinks were both generous and delicious.
The Committee wishes to thank everyone who joined us and helped make this such a successful launch of what is definitely set to become an annual tradition.

What a fantastic day the OUSL had on 12^th April, when we met at the Villeroy & Boch’s 

(“V & B”) headquarters in Mettlach. The outing was brilliantly organised by Jan Könighaus in cooperation with Baron Paul de Schorlemer, a member of the V & B family. 

We were honoured to count Their Excellencies, the Ambassador of Japan to Luxembourg, Tadahiro Matsubara and his charming wife, among our party, and we had a very good crowd of Oxonians and partners, and families with young children. 

With the sun beaming from a blue sky, making it a summer’s day in the middle of April, we began our day at the Schinkel fountain in front of the headquarters which are housed in old abbey buildings.

Our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide took us through the beautiful park full of rare, century-old species of trees. Among other, she showed us the romantic remnants of the oldest church in the region dating from the 9^th century and an impressive modern art installation “Map of the living world” created by Stefan Szczesny for the Expo 2000 in Hannover with five walls covered in thousands of small, jigsaw puzzle-shaped tiles. 

We then moved inside the headquarters in the old abbey and saw a selection of the beautiful rooms where the modern V & B business is still housed. After the tour, we visited the brand-new’ V & B World’ – a gem of a museum which was informative to grown-ups and fun for the young ones. 

Rich with impressions we repaired to lunch at the wonderfully situated Schloss Saareck. Here, Count Felix von Hardenberg made us feel very welcome as he joined our party as we were treated to a delicious meal at an elegantly dressed long table in a private dining room.

A truly wonderful day out with the OUSL!!

The Johanitter Order in Belgium and Luxembourg extended invitations to Oxbridge alumni societies for their charity event 3 April 2025 at Cercle Münster: a Dinner-Talk with Oxford Chair, Mette Ahlefeldt-Laurvig (Dphil, history), and the evening drew a good crowd from across the societies.

Mette gave a wide-ranging PowerPoint presentation on her subject of Reformation in a talk entitled: ‘Sin, Sex and Salvation: Marriage and Childbearing after the Reformation,’ focussing on legal, theologian and social issues with regard to the Lutheran regulation of marriage.

The talk was followed by a lively Q & A session in the cozy surroundings of the 1st floor restaurant of Cercle Münster.

The event was arranged by the Jan Könighaus and Moritz von Kunow and all net proceeds go to the charitable work of the Johanitter Hëllefsgemeinschaft.

What a fabulous evening we had with Jens Tholstrup at Cercle. Jens’ talk on the Hanseatic League took us back to the late Middle Ages when the League was at its height and in control of the trade in the wider Baltics area of many essential products, from herring to cloth. The talk inspired a host of excellent questions and this in turn was followed by a delicious and congenial dinner with members and friends from both Oxbridge, LSE, the Johanitter Order and Deutscher Verein. A Warm thank-you to Jens Tholstrup and to all our guests for making it such an enjoyable evening.

For some great pictures of the event see below

An evening with Franz Schubert’s Winterreise

On 1 February, alumni of Oxford, Cambridge and Cercle Club members enjoyed a beautiful late afternoon & evening Concert-Dinner with Oxbridge tenor Alexander Gebhard (Trinity College, 2012; St Edmund Hall, 2016) and French pianist Grégoire Baumberger, whose intimate and spellbinding performance took us through Franz Schubert’s Winterreise. After the concert, the (beautiful) melancholy was washed away with cocktails followed by a delicious dinner by Cercle’s new chef. The event, which was spearheaded by Jan Könighaus, had a really good turnout and great atmosphere.