 She passed her Abitur at the Elisabethschule Marburg in 1977 and studied Protestant theology at the universities of Tübingen, Edinburgh, Göttingen and Marburg.During her studies, she participated among other things in archaeological excavations in 1978 of several weeks' duration in Akko, Israel.In 1983 she became a "Vikarin" (German for curate) in Wolfhagen, near Kassel.