Early Life and Education
Uchtdorf was born to ethnic Germans Karl Albert Uchtdorf and Hildegard Else Opelt in Moravská Ostrava (German: Mährisch-Ostrau), which at the time was in the Nazi-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Ostrava, Czech Republic). When he was a child, his family moved to Zwickau in eastern Germany while his father was away in the army, traveling through areas being bombed. As a result of his grandmother's encounter with an LDS church member in a soup line, Uchtdorf's family joined the LDS Church when he was still young.
When Uchtdorf was about ten, his father's political beliefs, incongruent with Soviet rule, earned him the label of "dissenter", thus putting their lives in danger. They fled East Germany and resettled in American-occupied West Germany.
He started studying mechanical engineering at age 18 but later continued Business Administration in Cologne, Germany and graduated from Institut pour l'Etude des Methodes de Direction de l'Entreprise (today the International Institute for Management Development) in Lausanne, Switzerland with an MBA. He received an honorary doctorate in International Leadership from Brigham Young University during the April 2009 graduation ceremony.
Read more about this topic: Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)