{"id":47233,"date":"2019-01-31T15:50:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T14:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.steinmuehle.de\/blog\/2019\/01\/31\/back-to-the-roots-former-boarding-school-student-michel-hermens-is-now-the-head-of-the-house\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:41:08","slug":"back-to-the-roots-former-boarding-school-student-michel-hermens-is-now-the-head-of-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/blog\/2019\/01\/31\/back-to-the-roots-former-boarding-school-student-michel-hermens-is-now-the-head-of-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the roots: Former boarding school student Michel Hermens is now the head of the house"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You must have felt extremely at home in your school environment to decide that you wanted to work there later on. That was the case for Michel Hermens. From 2004 to 2008, the native Dutchman lived in the Stamm- and Westfalenhaus at the Steinm\u00fchle boarding school. He returned to that very place and is now the head of the M\u00fchle. <\/p>\n

Born in Eindhoven in 1987, he came to Germany at the age of three and \u201cdidn\u2019t understand a word.\u201d A Philips plant in Wetzlar was the reason his parents moved to Central Hesse. They had imagined their son\u2019s school career would go more smoothly. According to Michel, stress at school\u2014and consequently within the family\u2014led them to enroll him at the Steinm\u00fchle boarding school. <\/p>\n

After 12 years of school, he wanted to break away from the daily school routine and become more active. With his vocational diploma in hand, he planned to pursue an apprenticeship in the hospitality industry. However, the young man\u2019s expectations of this career field did not pan out. He then completed a voluntary social year at an elementary school, working in before- and after-school care and handling administrative tasks. This successful experience subsequently inspired him to study to become an elementary school teacher in his native Netherlands. <\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the end of it. Michel Hermens found himself drawn back to Marburg. Back to his roots. In 2012, he financed an internship at the Steinm\u00fchle boarding school by working at a gas station. \u201cIt felt like coming home, walking down Steinm\u00fchlenweg again.\u201d <\/p>\n

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“I see myself in the students themselves”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It went without saying: I\u2019m staying here. Michel Hermens had to admit, however, that quite a bit had changed. Although the boarding school had already housed boys and girls together in the Westfalen- and Hessenhaus during his own school days, the house meetings were still held separately. The resident teacher for the boys in the house was a male staff member, while the girls were supervised by a female staff member. <\/p>\n

There were also personnel changes, as was to be expected at the time. Rowing coach Martin \u201cStromi\u201d Strohmenger was an assistant at the Westfalenhaus back then. Michel Hermens knew the boarding school director from his earlier days as a teacher. Of the rest of the teaching staff, two were still there. <\/p>\n

He hit it off with the students right away. \u201cI quickly realized that we had a good connection,\u201d says Michel Hermens, looking back on the early days of his return. \u201cFor many students, I became a trusted figure right away.\u201d The man, who initially worked as an assistant at M\u00fchle and Hessenhaus, reflects on his own past today: \u201cI see myself in the students.\u201d <\/p>\n

He says that the challenges\u2014even in tricky situations\u2014are what make the job particularly enjoyable and rewarding. He views many of the changes in a positive light. \u201cThe social aspect,\u201d says Hermens, \u201chas really developed at Steinm\u00fchle Boarding School. The study center also opens up opportunities that didn\u2019t exist before.\u201d <\/p>\n

The athletic Dutchman, who once felt the urge to move around, has (once again) found peace at Steinm\u00fchle Boarding School. He is able to instill this sense of \u201cinner peace\u201d in his students. Nevertheless, he still travels home regularly to visit his family in Maastricht. And on vacation, he goes to special places with unique landscapes. For Michel Hermens, even on vacation, things don\u2019t have to be ordinary, normal, or run-of-the-mill. One of his favorite places: the Azores. <\/p>\n

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M. Hermens with his current residential group<\/p><\/div>\n

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A photo from school days<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  You must have felt extremely at home in your school environment to decide that you wanted to work there later on. That was the case for Michel Hermens. From 2004 to 2008, the native Dutchman lived in the Stamm- and Westfalenhaus at the Steinm\u00fchle boarding school. He returned to that very place and is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":47235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,89,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-former-students-alumni","category-life-at-boarding-school","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48939,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47233\/revisions\/48939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}