Dr Werner Schade studied agricultural science at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. His professional career began in 1990 at the Hanoverian Association as Executive Assistant. In the period from 1993 to 1996, he wrote his dissertation on “Development of an artificial insemination breeding program for the Hanoverian horse breeding”.

Until 2000 he worked as a project manager of the Equitana, the World Equestrian Fair in Essen. Then he founded together with his wife Dr Christa Finkler-Schade, an expert advice company for horse farms “Schade & Schade”. His consulting area included business and marketing.

In 2005, Dr Werner Schade came back to the Hanoverian Society and took over the position of the breeding manager and managing director in May 2006.

In an interview in 2014, he discussed the challenges for the Hanoverian Verband:

“I think the biggest changes have been structural. The changes in the community of breeders. We see many breeders with a farming background have given up breeding in the last few years – with the change of generations, whole farms have disappeared. The number of mare coverings have gone down, so there are problems for all the breeding associations in Germany, we are losing members, losing revenue. Breeding horses is becoming more and more professional, and the quality of the horses in the market is still strong, but after the financial crisis and the economic problems, the market went down, and this pushed along the structural changes.”

“We also see that breeding becomes more and more international. The stallion owners are more and more involved in equestrian sport – and if the stallion owner is unable to combine breeding and sport, then it is very difficult for them to survive. The ones who do go well in the sport, then their stallions go well at stud. The internationalism has seen a much greater exchange between the European breeding associations, with the bloodlines flowing from one country to another, from one association to the other.”