Stefan Freitag: Consciously experiencing the world on two wheels

Business maths, accounting, annual financial statements: Stefan Freitag's courses are all about numbers in terms of content. But whenever he comes into contact with students, he is actually interested in more: "I want to train people who will not only do their job later on, but also take on social responsibility. I want my students to understand the impact of their actions," says Freitag.

Insight into entrepreneurial thinking and action

In order to bring this to life outside of the classroom, he launched the Tour de CSR in 2019 together with his colleague and current Dean Professor Norbert Seeger and Holger Willing from ZEV. CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility and describes conscious entrepreneurial action that endeavours to take ecological, social and sustainable aspects into account. During the week-long cycle tour, students travel to companies, political institutions or special locations to talk to them about social responsibility, sustainability and Europe. The programme is not only aimed at business students, but also at all H-BRS students thanks to the link with the Responsibility course.

The former 'crazy idea' has now become a permanent fixture in the university calendar. in August, 15 students took part in the latest edition of the Tour de CSR, which led via Cologne, Aachen and Hasselt to Brussels. 400 kilometres in five days - that is, of course, a sporting challenge that has to be mastered as a group: "The great thing about cycling is that although you are pretty exhausted at some point, you realise that you can still keep going for a while. And how a group can also pull each other along. Some participants are experiencing this for the first time and are then even more motivated to get there. That's interesting to observe," says Freitag.

On the other hand, cycling also offers space to exchange ideas and consciously experience the journey - something that is particularly important to Freitag, a passionate cyclist: "For me, cycling is freedom. I race through the countryside by car or train, but on my bike I experience where I'm travelling and can still cover long distances in one day with relative ease," he says.

Experiencing the landscape by bike

Being out and about in nature, consciously experiencing the landscape and engaging in dialogue with different people: Today, cycling fulfils all of these things for Freitag, who is out and about on two wheels whenever he can.

After reunification, he initially moved from Saxony-Anhalt to East Westphalia with his parents before moving to Kassel to study business education. After graduating and gaining his first professional experience as a product management employee at a solar energy company, he decided without further ado to leave everything behind: "Apart from me, only engineers worked in my department. The work was fun and exciting, but I realised that I wanted to do something else," says Freitag. Together with his current wife and colleague Christine Freitag, he travelled Europe on foot and by bus, including to Scotland, Ireland and France. In addition to consciously experiencing the countries, Stefan Freitag was also interested in coming into contact with a wide variety of people. Be it with other travellers or the local population: "I had lots of conversations in hostels and pubs. I just find it exciting to find out how people think, what they say and what is important to them," says Freitag. 

In 2008, the couple's four-month trip finally ended in Bonn, the city where Christine Freitag studied. During his self-employment in the field of adult education, Stefan Freitag initially came to the H-BRS as a maths lecturer and eventually ended up at the university as part of the Pro-MINT-us project.