In Deference

Anja Ilona Beran was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 15.05.1970 as the daughter of entrepreneurs. She spent a major part of her childhood at her grandfather's hunting lodge in Altmühltal, Bavaria. She was surrounded by hunting dogs and horses: Friesians and Arabs, the scent of the forest… This all had a very profound influence on her and after finishing school (best "A" level results of her year in 1989) her wish was to become either a forester or a professional rider. Anja Beran has never been too keen on big crowds of people; she has never lived in a large city nor has she ever set foot in a discotheque or any similar kind of place. Since 1985, the year in which she also passed the examination for the driving and riding bronze plaque, she visited Portugal on account of the horses. This is when she started lessons with Luis Valenca. Every free moment of her holiday time she spent at his large training centre. A stroke of fate brought her into contact with Manuel Jorge de Oliveira. He saw that this young lady wanted "more" – she wanted to really feel and understand classical equestrianism. Manuel began to work with her and promote her - and he is still her "mentor" today. At home in Germany she was also lucky enough to find one of the best instructors imaginable when it is a question of good, meaningful training of horses and horsemanship in the true, traditional sense of the word: Marc de Broissia. For 16 years she worked extremely closely with him – they made numerous appearances together in Berlin, Munich, Mannheim, Münster at fairs and horse show events. Such experiences had a profound influence on Anja Beran. She had the privilege of training all breeds of horses from 3 year-olds through to full maturity. This bore fruit: in 1998 and 1999 she took first place at the "Day of the Iberian Horse" dressage show with a horse she had trained herself. To the great disappointment of her parents this meant that she only had time for a correspondence study degree course in business studies, which she concluded in 1996. This obviously stands her in good stead today with the management and running of Gut Rosenhof.