TUM Community

TUM in their Hearts for 70 Years

When Günter Heilmann began studying architecture at TUM on January 1, 1955, in the winter semester of 1955/56, he had no idea how groundbreaking the start of his studies would be for his life, even beyond his professional career. Today, at the age of 90 and with a diamond diploma certificate in hand, he and his wife Lore look back on an active and joyful life.

Lore Heilmann – then “still Miss Brüggemann”- also studied architecture at TUM a little later. The two met and fell in love at the university, which their fellow students captured in a humorous caricature: two desks placed neatly side by side, with two lamps attached to them, secretly embracing under the table. The two TUM Alumni found the drawing so beautiful that they used it as the front page for their engagement announcement.

Their story began in 1969 during their undergraduate studies at TUM. Herbert and Rita founded a study group together with two other students – the beginning of a connection that would go far beyond their studies, as Herbert already suspected. “I had my eye on Rita from the very beginning,” he writes. “However, it took six months for her to feel the same way.”

The wedding took place in 1974, and this wonderful photo of the two was taken, which they shared with the TUM Community on the TUM Alumni Instagram channel in 2025. Two years later, they graduated together.

Miriam and Max von Stern-Gwiazdowski did not meet on campus, but at a concert at the Munich University of Music and Theatre, where they happened to sit next to each other in June 2012. At the time, Max was studying forestry and Miriam was studying nutritional science at TUM.

They met again and arranged to meet for their first “date” in the cafeteria on the TUM Campus Weihenstephan. They fondly remember events they attended together, such as the brewers’ summer festival and many Förster-Niko parties, their graduation ceremonies, and the days they spent together during Miriam’s semester abroad in Colombia. They also have fond memories of the places they frequented during their student days, such as the IV dormitory in Vöttig, where Max lived as a student, or the ZIEL at Gregor-Mendel-Str. 2, where Max often picked Miriam up after work for an after-work beer.

For TUM Alumni Renate and Paul Schweiger, their time studying at TUM also turned into a special love story. The two met in the early 1970s at the TUM Campus Weihenstephan. Paul Schweiger was a doctoral student at the Institute for Plant Nutrition, and Renate was attending lectures and practical courses at the institute as an undergraduate student. Since the doctoral students were involved in the courses, the two met almost weekly and knew each other by sight. Even outside the lecture halls, while shopping or in cafés, they kept running into each other, and at some point, the formal “Sie” naturally gave way to the familiar “Du.”

Gradually, they got to know each other privately, learned where the other came from, talked about their families, and had more and more mutual friends and acquaintances. “For us, this led from getting to know each other to falling in love,” writes Paul Schweiger. On a beautiful September day in 1973, Renate and Paul tied the knot in a heartfelt ceremony in Freising.

Tanja-Carina Bigall and Christian Einzmann first met during their main studies when they took a design semester together. They fondly remember the creative hours and sometimes entire weekends spent in the white hall, the camaraderie and exchange within the design groups, “the interesting building sites for the designs in many districts of Munich,” and the exciting excursions to Ticino, La Tourette, Norway, and Brazil. They worked on their diploma theses at the same time, so they were given the same design task on a complex construction topic at the Isartor.

The two only got to know each other better after completing their studies at TUM during their legal clerkship in the field of building construction and urban development at the Free State of Bavaria. After subsequently working together for the first time at the government of Lower Franconia, their professional and private paths diverged once again before they got together as a couple in 2009 and married in Chiemgau in 2012.

Tanja-Carina Bigall and Christian Einzmann (both architecture graduates in 2000) studied architecture at TUM. Because they started their studies one year apart, they had very different experiences during their basic studies: Tanja-Carina Bigall took her first steps in the field of design under an experienced professor with a strong focus on building construction. Christian Einzmann, on the other hand, spent his first four semesters with a professor newly appointed from Switzerland, who taught a highly conceptual approach to architectural vision, organization, and design.

They now live as a family with two children in the Munich area and work in different but comparable positions in Munich: Tanja-Carina Bigall in the field of housing for the Free State of Bavaria and Christian Einzmann in mobility planning for the City of Munich.