Jürgen Reitmaier was born in Braunschweig in 1946 and studied at Bonn University before going on to Oxford to read for an MLitt in economics. His career in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spanned 30 years and saw him work across both the European and African Department. At the latter, he led the country teams for Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Guinea, Mozambique and Tanzania. Reitmaier retired from the IMF in 2006 and began a new career in consulting, working with – among others – the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 5 June 2026.
Jürgen Reitmaier
Germany & Magdalen 1972
Jürgen Reitmaier at Cecil Rhodes' Grave, 1966.
A brass plaque outside Jürgen’s Berlin apartment building commemorating the Jewish residents who had lived there and were deported during the Holocaust.
‘It exposed me to British culture’
I was born only about 14 months after the end of World War Two. My mother was Swedish and she and my father had met in 1938 in Stockholm where my father was working for a German export company. With the outbreak of war in 1939, my father had to return to Germany and was drafted into the army. After the war, he very quickly found a job in Bonn and that is where I grew up and attended school, and where I stayed for my first degree.
My high school was called Beethoven Gymnasium, reminding us that Bonn is the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, and we were very proud of Beethoven! It was a good school and I enjoyed going there. My favourite subjects were maths and natural sciences, and also English. In the late1950s, my older brother and I went to stay with a family in Bognor Regis in Sussex to improve our English, and I went back there are number of times. I found it very interesting and it exposed me to British culture and language.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
I chose physics as the subject of my university studies, but I wasn’t happy. My main concern – and I’m sure I’m doing an injustice to physicists here – was that it felt like I was absorbing facts rather than being allowed to have an opinion. My interest in social studies was growing, so it was quite natural for me to switch to economics. At the time I switched, I already had a vision of myself working either for the IMF or the World Bank.
I wanted to study abroad and had always felt drawn to England, and when I was looking at scholarship opportunities, I discovered the Rhodes Scholarship. The interview was in Hamburg, at the big, grand headquarters of an old and well-known insurance company, in the board room on the top floor – dark wood panelling all around and stern gentlemen looking down from oil paintings. The committee looked very friendly, not nearly as stern as the paintings. I had no clue how I had done, and they told us all to assemble in the waiting room at four o’clock. Then the National Secretary came in and said ‘We don’t need Mr Reitmaier and Mr Gutzeit [Herwig Gutzeit (Germany & St Catherine’s 1972)] right now. The others, please follow me.’ We knew there were two Scholarships available, and it gradually dawned on the two of us that we had been selected.
‘In Oxford, I was nurtured’
I was part of the third group of post-war German Rhodes Scholars, because the German Scholarship, which had been set out in Cecil Rhodes’s will, was suspended during the Second World War, and then graciously reinstated in 1970, which I believe even required an Act of Parliament. I felt very welcome, although I knew no one, and for a time, I felt lonely. But both the college and the economics faculty were good at looking after and informing their new students.
I was very lucky that my first supervisor was Sir Alex Cairncross, an eminent economist and Master of St. Peter’s College. Because of my subject matter I later switched supervisor to Max Corden at Nuffield College, a trade economist from Australia, who was also remarkable. The contrast between Oxford and a German university could not have been greater. There, you were completely anonymous, whereas in Oxford, I was nurtured and I could easily find out what I needed to do next.
Alongside my studies, I joined the Oxford Architectural Society and we would visit country houses in Oxfordshire. The Arts and Crafts movement appealed to me, including William Morris, who had been active in the Cotswolds. Musical life in Oxford was also fantastic; I discovered especially choral music.
‘In my view, the most interesting job an economist can have’
I felt drawn to public service. I did not really consider going into private business and I think that Cecil Rhodes saw the recipients of his Scholarship more in public service. I applied to both the IMF and the World Bank. Both invited me to interview in one trip to Paris, and I was very surprised when I received offers from both. I consulted Alec Cairncross, and he advised me to go for the IMF. That was also my own inclination, and I started there, in the Young Professionals Programme, in September 1975.
My first assignment in the IMF was as a country economist in the European Department. That involved working on economic analysis and travelling to the relevant country once a year for a policy consultation. It required a good sense of policy requirements, based on sound economic analysis: in my view, the most interesting job an economist can have, translating theory and analysis into policy advice. For two years of my time at the IMF, I was desk economist for Australia. I used my travel there to seek out fellow Rhodes Scholars from my own time at Oxford. I also met again my old supervisor Max Corden, who had returned to take up a professorship in Canberra, so, it was a homecoming, in a way.
When I was desk economist for Germany, I asked to take a leave of absence from the IMF for two years to work in the Ministry of Economics in my hometown, Bonn. It was beneficial for me, and I was also able to bring an IMF perspective to the Ministry. On a personal note, I met my wife in the German Ministry of Economics. We got married, and she was adventurous enough to say farewell to the Ministry, so that we could travel back to Washington where I resumed my work for the IMF. As a lawyer, my wife first studied for the bar exam in the United States and then practised there. We also had our two children in Washington.
From 1988 until 2006, I worked in the African Department, and that was where my interest in development economics grew. Africa was a very different environment, because every developed country was looking to the IMF’s verdict on country performance in order to tailor their own assistance. One time in the 1990s, after a policy discussion in Zimbabwe, I actually visited Cecil Rhodes’s grave in that country. It was very moving, and it made me think of Rhodes’s vision for the world, and also of the controversy surrounding him as a colonial leader, which cannot be forgotten. I spent the final two years of my career at the IMF as resident representative in Kenya, which was very different from working in Washington. We built relationships, both inside the government and outside. My heart still beats in Africa and with Africa, and my wife and I still support projects there. When I retired from the IMF in 2006, I had the opportunity to get involved with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which works with governments and with oil, gas and mining companies to promote transparency of government revenue from these important sectors.
One of the other projects I have been closely involved with is research into the Jewish residents of our Berlin apartment building who were deported during the Holocaust. I think that remembering the victims of persecution and murder by the Nazis is not instilled enough, certainly not enough in the new generation, and the rise of the right wing in Germany is of great concern. In front of many residential buildings in Germany, residents have inserted small brass plates into the sidewalk called “Stolpersteine”, that give a victim’s name, date of birth, date of deportation and the name of the concentration camp. We did not have any of those markers in front of our building, and so, I began to do research, starting from a rough list compiled by a Jewish resident who moved away around 15 years ago. We now have names of 21 victims on a brass plate on the wall of our building.
‘The candidates were so good’
For nine years, I was lucky enough to be part of the selection committee for the German Rhodes Scholarship. It was very interesting, and very daunting, because the candidates were so good. I used to think that there was no way I would get the Scholarship now! I also remember attending the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Scholarship in Cape Town. What was particularly important was the outreach by Nelson Mandela to the Rhodes Trust. It was a significant gesture also for South African society and for the need to overcome the legacy of Apartheid. So, the creation of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation was a very important step in my mind. I strongly hope that the Rhodes Scholarship will survive all the challenges; in fact, I have little doubt that it will, because I see it in good hands.