Leadership

Bern E. Deichmann
President

Mr. Deichmann served as President and CEO of Schulmerich Carillons, Inc. in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Princeton University, he is active in a number of business associations including the German-American Chamber of Commerce in Philadelphia and the American Council of Germany in New York. He is also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Walter A. Lehmann
1st Vice President

Mr. Lehmann is retired from the Prudential Insurance Company where he served as 2nd Vice President and General Manager in various offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He is currently President of the Deutscher Club of Clark, a position he has held for the past eight years after serving three years as Vice President.

Hank Stoffel
2nd Vice President
Regional Vice President North California

Captain Hank Stoffel served in the US Air Force stationed in Frankfurt, Germany from 1957 to 1961. In 1965 he earned his degree in Aeronautical Engineering and Aircraft Operations from New York University. Over the course of his career, he held various positions in aviation including Chief Pilot and Flight Instructor until his retirement in 2000. Thereafter, Captain Stoffel became actively involved in many German-American organizations in the Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area and joined the Board of the German-American Heritage Foundation of the USA.

Erich Ast
Secretary/Treasurer

Mr. Ast is founder and CEO of A&E Manufacturing, a Pennsylvania-based precision sheet metal fabricator. He is active in a number of German American cultural & civic organizations in the Pennsylvania area.

Fred H.W. Hansen
Recording Secretary

Mr. Hansen taught for the New York City Board of Education. He has been and continues to be active in many German American organizations, including the Plattduetsche Volksfest Verein, the Fritz Reuter Altenheim and the Schuetzen Park. Mr. Hansen received his MBA from Long Island University.

Rudiger Lentz
Executive Director

Rüdiger Lentz , born 1947, has been the Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Diplomatic Correspondent for Deutsche Welle from January 1999 to November 2009.

Prior to his assignment in Washington, he served as Deutsche Welle’s Brussels Bureau Chief. Before joining Deutsche Welle, Lentz worked as a correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel and as a TV commentator and reporter at ARD/WDR, Germany’s largest public TV and radio station. Lentz has also held various positions including that of Editor in Chief at RIAS-TV Berlin. He is a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, the School of Foreign Service in Washington and a regular guest on CNN and C-Span. Lentz studied international relations and history at the University of Hamburg and has published widely on international relations, history and the military.

He is President of the Atlantic-Initiative U.S. and Board Member of the German American Business Council (GABC) in Washington.