My sole aim is to ensure in the course of my life that an increasing number of people become familiar with the art of classical horsemanship which has become a matter of such great importance to me, and that they will also learn to appreciate it.  I hope very much that a great number of riders will be able to experience serious enthusiasm for classical horsemanship in its true and original sense. (Anja Beran)Anja Beran was born in 1970 to parents who were both successful entrepreneurs in the textile industry. Nevertheless she had a predominantly country upbringing, her favourite childhood haunt being her grandfather’s hunting lodge in the Altmühltal – despite the fact that it had neither electricity nor running water. Much more important than such commodities were the nearby stables which gave the young Anja Beran the opportunity to roam her grandfather’s hunting grounds for hours on horseback, accompanied by her dog. She soon achieved her bronze-level riding and driving medal and subsequently began to discover her passion for dressage.
At the young age of 15 years this passion brought her to Portugal, where she had the opportunity of riding with the ‘ecuyer’ Luis Valenca. One year later she met Manuel Jorge de Oliveira, the man who was to become her equestrian mentor. A particularly distinguishing feature of this Portuguese personality, an ardent admirer of the famous equestrian expert, Nuno Oliveira (despite sharing the same name, they are in no way related), is the fact that he is a “complete horseman” in every conceivable sense. Indeed, he is not only a rider and trainer, but also a successful breeder.
Portugal subsequently became Anja Beran’s second equestrian home. Indeed, even in Germany, her life began to take on a “Portuguese dimension“ because, from the age of 16 onwards, she rode with Marc de Broissia, who had actually done his fundamental training in France before moving to Portugal in order to perfect his skills as a master of classical dressage.
Marc de Broissia’s yard subsequently also became Anja Beran’s first “workplace”. At the age of 19, immediately after passing her higher school leaving certificate, she became a member of his training team and rode under his auspices for the next 14 years. This not only gave her the opportunity to ride horses of a wide variety of different breeds and training levels, but also to bring some horses on herself from the very initial stages of training to top haute école level.
Today Anja Beran considers having completed such a long period of learning, with many different horses and challenges, as being one of her great strengths. And this is why she places great emphasis on continuity at her own yard.
This establishment is Gut Rosenhof in the idyllic Bavarian location of Rudratsried. Anja Beran has lived there since 2000 and has been running the Rosenhof yard independently since 2002. She is currently working with around 45 horses – most of them stallions – from Germany as well as abroad. And because Anja Beran is a true perfectionist in everything which she undertakes, she also completed a distance-learning business management degree course in the 1990s to qualify as a “Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH)”.
Another of Anja Beran’s great strengths is her international vision. She travels a lot and has held clinics in Sweden, England, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Holland as well as the USA. International press contacts are also a natural consequence of such activity. Equestrian magazines in Portugal, England, Sweden, Holland and Russia have already published reports about Anja Beran.
Furthermore she demonstrated her great commitment, in addition to extensive practical experience and profound theoretical knowledge gleaned from other classical publications on the subject, when she wrote her first book "In Deference", the English translation of which was published in 2006 and became an instant success. The magazine Bayerns Pferde voted the German version "Equestrian Book of the Year“ and it was even a subject of discussion in the German national newspaper Süddeutschen Zeitung. Meanwhile published in several different languages, it has already become a standard work of reference for all persons who are seriously interested in classical horsemanship.
Additional to the book, Anja Beran has published four DVDs, which are in wide circulation.
The latest mission and project of the 39 year-old dressage trainer is now the recently established Anja Beran Foundation, which sets out to represent the tradition of classical horsemanship in theory as well as in practice, and to give it new impetus. Training of talented pupils to become masters of classical horsemanship is one of the practical aims being pursued by the foundation. Naturally Anja Beran places great emphasis on sustainability as well as thoroughness in this context.
As far as the theoretical aims are concerned, a series of publications and lectures are presently in the process of preparation and are subsequently intended to propagate the foundation’s message on a broad scale.