Matthias Makowski was born in 1960 in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia. He studied Catholic theology, classical philology and German studies at the Ruhr University in Bochum and completed a doctorate at the same university in 1987. At the same time, he worked as a secondary school teacher. After a period as a DAAD Lektor in Shanghai and teaching positions at the Goethe-Instituts in Prague, Riga and Krakow, he took over as head of the language department at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich in 2008. This was followed by the management of the Goethe-Institut in Athens from 2012 – 2019. Since August 2019, he has been the director of the institute in Sao Paulo, responsible for South America. He is married and has two almost grown-up sons.