“If this school is the Vatican of Vienna’s national religion of waltz, then Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer is its pope.” – The Washington Post

About Professor Elmayer

After completion of his studies at St. Gall Business Unviersity Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer started his industrial career at the age of 23 in the Swiss Chemical Industry in Basel. Later he was transferred to the South African subsidiary where he was in charge of the department for planning, information, control, marketing services and logistics.

6 years later he returned to Europe and joined a German metallurgical group in Bonn where he was responsible for international sales and the entire high purity metals division which he had built up to become the leader in the most competitive markets like Europe, Japan and USA. He also was on the supervisory board of a metal producing subsidiary in Norway.

Taking over Elmayer Dance School…

After 10 years in management at German industry he returned to Vienna in order to take over Tanzschule Elmayer in the third generation of the family and dedicate his activities to the invaluable and unique Viennese traditions of etiquette, dance and ball ceremonies.

He became a certified Austrian dancing teacher and is in charge of training and managing the opening comitees of most of the famous traditional Viennese ball opening ceremonies from the balls at the Hofburg to the Philharmonikerball at the Musikverein.

Prof. Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer wrote 5 books on manners and is giving about 100 seminars, workshops, and lectures per year primarily on the topic of business etiquette in English and German. He was elected Austrian trainer of the year in 2007.