Chapter 3: From new beginning to professional passion

I was lucky that my parents dared to make a fresh start after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jobs as a laboratory technician or butcher's saleswoman were no longer in demand. Today I would say that they realised that there was a gap there that they wanted to fill. The main driver was my mother, who decided to set up her own party service company, Wagner. My father, Hardy, had a perfectly acceptable job as a department manager for sporting goods in a large department store at the time. But he also seemed dissatisfied, quit his job and started the party service company in Magdeburg with my mother.

With this step, they not only changed their professional future, but also had a significant impact on my own. I experienced early on how much courage and perseverance it takes to become self-employed and how important it is to work towards a shared vision. These experiences have left me with a deep understanding of the value of hard work and the importance of quality in everything you do.

What I always enjoyed was organization, situational emergency management, working together in a team, problem solving and the feeling of creating something of my own. At 15, I already knew that if I did something professionally, I wanted to create something - to develop something further, to work ambitiously on something and to perfect it. I was never the type of person who just read a textbook to apply what I had learned. When I read textbooks, I was also thinking about how things could be done better, what alternatives there might be and how I could make something my own thing.

From the very beginning, my parents were determined to create something unique with their party service. They didn't just want to offer good products, but also to build a brand that stands for reliability and excellence. This attitude also influenced me, and I began to understand how important it is not only to achieve short-term success, but to build something that lasts in the long term. Looking back, it was precisely this combination of creativity, pragmatism and the desire for independence that later had a significant influence on my professional development.