wille, wein & weiber

Berliners, Hamburgers, old and new faces, good conversations, common ideas, beautiful wine and a fun evening that also benefits others - that's the idea. 

Wille, Wein & Weiber was born on my first birthday back in Berlin, after 7 years in Hamburg and united girls who didn't know each other yet: old friends from Berlin, friends from Hamburg who had travelled to Berlin and new friends from Berlin met each other and it was all so much fun that we wanted more of it - alternately in Berlin and Hamburg (and soon also in Zurich)!

The motto:

Every woman brings one woman with her. 

Every woman pays for herself.

Every woman donates. 

I'm very much looking forward to your participation, great networking and hope for all of you at the next appointment, whether in the mother- or capital city (link to the group)!

All love wishes

Your Franzi 

WILLE, WEIN & WEIBER goes Zurich! 

Finally what my dearest friend Helena and I had planned for months has worked out: A women's evening in Zurich - and what a night!

A big and incredibly exciting group of women from all over the world, two men (!) and Wilhelm von Stotzingen from the Learning Lions, who was the first male speaker of the format and he gave a grandiose lecture on his heart's project. 

The Learning Lions start where help is most needed: in East Africa in Turkana County, the most disadvantaged area of Kenya. There, young people are being trained as IT entrepreneurs. The aim of the Lions is to use Kenya's great demographic potential, because 80% of the population here are under 20 years old - unimaginable with the opposite development in Germany! These young people are to be trained for the digital industry, because today everyone in Africa has the Internet. Thus a perspective for an independent life can be created for them, and that in an area, in which otherwise absolutely no economy exists and no other possibilities are present. So the educated remain faithful to their homeland and do not move for work in large cities, which cannot catch the masses of immigrants any longer. A vicious circle that Learning Lions breaks. An all-round impressive project that Wilhelm and his wife Charlotte launched in 2015. 170 Kenyans have already completed their training and stand on their own two feet as media designers or programmers.  

Thanks to everyone for this great start in Switzerland - and especially to you, Helena - you organized a wonderful evening in such a beautiful grain silo with a great mix of women (and brave men!), even Beyza from Berlin was there! Zurich, we'll be back!

2 years WILLE, WEIN & WEIBER, what a party, this evening in again - I repeat myself! - a great round of great women! Just in time for the start of the new year, which always puts our family into a birthday marathon (my niece on 9.1., myself on 10.1., my dad on 11.1. - and now also a party on 12.1.!), we met at Da Piada in Auguststraße in Mitte. Berliners, Hamburgers (who came again extra - thanks to you, Beate, Kendra and Kikilein!), mothers, women (who noticed that they were pregnant that evening), artists, designers, speakers, online marketing experts, lawyers, camerawomen, PR ladies, specialists in fine material theory (who doesn't know what that is, look here), architects, painters and and and - it's so colourful and new every time that we simply don't need the men ;-) 

As colourful as the wonderful Beyza Nur Özler, who took us into the new year with her inspiring manner. How she describes herself? On Instagram she writes: Mother of two. Nomad soul. Carpet dealer. Business account: @wildheartfreesoulberlin. Your passion? Yes, exactly carpets. Exactly Kilims. The colourful marvels that awaken every room and every room with colour. The forms show like the Elibelinde, a strongly abstracted woman who puts her hands on her hips. Or, in short, Agz and Akrep, Wolf's Mouth and Scorpio, the two ancient protective signs of the shepherds. Or eye and amulet, which offer protection from evil and are considered lucky charms. "Whoever places a Kilim in his room will be rewarded with fullness of life," she says about her protégés. 

Beyza told of her Turkish roots and of her parents who emigrated from Turkey to Swabia in the 70s and rebuilt their lives in Germany as guest workers. And so her roots remained foreign to her and it was only after her studies of textile economics, her move to Berlin and much more that her desire to get to know them prevailed. She travelled to Turkey with her first daughter Rosa - and found so much more than she could ever have imagined. She found her home. From the very first moment, these beautiful, colourful, hand-knotted carpets from the 60s and 70s, which she took with her to Berlin and sold to friends and acquaintances, were part of it. The demand was so great that she organized the first bazaar in Berlin in April 2014, her "temple" was born. Wild heart free soul, that's what she calls herself and that's how she called her business, which today sits in Prenzlauer Berg and attracts people week after week who want to get a piece of this Beyza feeling. 

And Beyza herself, what is her dream? To open a school in Turkey that also inspires young people for this craft and keeps this tradition alive. "I'm afraid that there won't be any more soon," she says. Beyza still buys directly from the women in the mountains of Turkey, supports the local weavers and wants to keep this craft alive. "The women used to weave particularly beautiful carpets for their own families," she says. These are true works of art. There are very few of them left".

She told us about them and much more. Thank you, dear Beyza, that was a wonderful start to the year with you! 

Just in time for Christmas, on the 10th WILLE, WINE & WEIBER evening I was able to win a woman as a speaker who focuses on exactly what we all associate with love, beauty, elegance, luxury and refinement, without knowing what is really behind this industry: the great Guya Merkle from Vieri Fine Jewellery talked to us about jewellery, about precious stones, about gold and also about where all the sparkling stones and shiny precious metals come from. 

In a small, intimate and nice round we met for a great dinner at Arabica in Berlin Kreuzberg and listened to Guya after the main course, fascinated by her beginnings as a revolutionary in gold and precious stone mining. When she suddenly and surprisingly took over the family business at the age of 21, she found herself in a Swiss mountain village from one day to the next and was responsible for the business in a business to which she never really wanted to belong. Growing up in a jeweler's family, she actually aspired to other fields, and then continued what her grandfather started in Pforzheim at the end of the 1930s.

But the decisive point: Guya changed things. When she travelled to Peru to see where all the gold that her company turned into jewellery came from, she saw children working in gold mines, families without any other perspective, mothers with children following their fathers into the shafts and a system she could not accept. So she decided to turn this industry of feelings, desires and luxury upside down. She herself wrote that she saw her chance to follow in her family's footsteps, but that her personal touch contributed to it: fairness. 

Today the company is called VIERI and works exclusively with fair won and processed gold, mostly old gold. Because Guya's philosophy is to use all the gold that has already been extracted from the earth and not to continue mining new gold and to let this finite resource rest. "In 30 years there won't be any more gold anyway," she says. "We have to rethink." In order to bring about change on the ground, Guya is creating new sources of income for the people with its earthbeatfoundation foundation. In Uganda, beehives are being set up (and they needed them anyway!) and people are being trained as beekeepers to enable them to find new ways that will not force adults or children to work in the unhealthy and dangerous gold mines. 

Guya's philosophy has convinced stars such as Rihanna and Emma Watson - and she also made us all shine when she showed us one or two of her beautiful pieces of jewellery. Such a big, warm evening that made us all freeze in admiration for Guya, who moves so much and transforms negative things into positive ones - thank you, Guya, that was really special!

The donation pot of € 465 went to earthbeatfoundation and will hopefully move a lot - thanks to everyone!

Networking among women - why doesn't it work as well as it does among men? Are we missing the beer at the bar, the football conversations or are we the ones standing in each other's way? The 9th Wille, Wein & Weiber Abend had exactly this topic in mind and gathered the biggest girls' round ever:

We almost cracked the 50's mark and romped around cackling and NETWORKING (!) in the Klippkroog in Hamburg Altona (Big thanks also to you!!).

There were women with whom I was at the horse farm and who still trot through my life today, women who were my boss, women with whom I once worked together, women whom I know through our friendly men, women who have already been to the women's evening and spoken there, women with whom I am related, women who are married to my youth friends - and: many many women whom I did not yet know! How did this happen?

On the one hand there is the idea from the beginning that every woman brings one more woman with her (which almost always makes each of you very well-behaved). On the other hand, I had a partner by my side at this women's evening, who supported me with her madness energy and drummed for the evening as if there was no tomorrow: Cornelia Paul. We got to know each other on the phone when I was looking for a speaker and we decided without further ado to turn the one-people-show into a panel of several ladies who can talk about networks because that's exactly what they did for their profession. So we had 6 (!) ladies as guests who talked about their idea of networking after the main course:

Vanessa Jobst-Jürgens from the Mompreneurs

Doreen Buceta Hager of the BusinessMoms

Anke Pauli of Guanshe

Irina Rohpeter from Zonta Club

Annelies Catharina Peiner of Nushu Female Business

Katharina Kieck from loyalsea

Martina van Kann also shot great photos throughout the evening - for which I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart and which are all linked here! Finally there were even real give-away bags with beautiful things by Ewa Duhnke from Ewa Duhnke cosmetics , Katrin Lange from elikat , Susi Leyck from Gesund & Mutter and Enja Jans from MOKA Publishing.  

The donation pot of € 250 went to the Hamburger Tafel. I thank everyone who was there - what a round!