Where do the rectors of German universities come from?

Where do the rectors of German universities come from? From Germany, largely, at least according to what I can make out. Of a total of 83 current rectors, 76 (85%) are German in origin. This is largely in proportion to the number of professors who are German, which according to this article is above 90%.

The idea to do this came from a Facebook post by Roberta D'Alessandro doing a similar thing for the Netherlands. This percentage is perhaps not hugely surprising in itself, but the overall low proportion of non-German professors did surprise me. I work in a department which currently has 11 professors, 5 of whom were not born in Germany.

Looking at the seven exceptions is interesting, too. Four of them are from Switzerland or Austria, where they would in all likelihood have spoken German from a very young age. The same may be true of Elizabeth Prommer, rector of the University of Rostock, who, although California-born, went to school in Bavaria. That leaves the president of the small private Constructor University in Bremen, Stanislav Protasov, who was born in Tashkent (then USSR), and the president of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Jan S. Hesthaven, who is Danish. Neither of these are hugely prototypical German universities, and in the former case it's been suggested that being mates with the man who owns the university may have played a significant role.

My feeling is that there's little antipathy to foreigners in the German academic system per se, but at the same time it's structurally quite difficult to penetrate due to its various idiosyncratic properties that the locals treat as self-evident natural truths about the universe. Actually running the show without German as one's native language would be a real challenge.

A quick note on methodology: I started with this list of universities, looked up who the rector or president is on Google, and tried to find their Wikipedia article. If this existed and stated where they were born or what their nationality was, I used that. Otherwise I tried to find another source, and this ultimately ended up being successful in all cases, so I didn't have to make inferences based on names. Unmarked entries in the list below are German.

Baden-Württemberg:

Kerstin Krieglstein

Frauke Melchior

Stephan Dabbert

(Danish) Jan S. Hesthaven

Thomas Fetzer

Peter Middendorf

Karla Pollmann

Michael Weber

Bayern:

Sabine Doering-Manteuffel

Kai Fischbach

Stefan Leible

Gabriele Gien

Joachim Hornegger

Thomas F. Hofmann

Bernd Huber

(Austrian) Eva-Maria Kern

Ulrich Bartosch

Udo Hebel

Paul Pauli

Berlin:

Günter M. Ziegler

Julia von Blumenthal

Geraldine Rauch

Brandenburg:

Gesine Grande

Eduard Mühle

Oliver Günther

Bremen:

Jutta Günther

(USSR) Stanislav Protasov

Hamburg:

Jörg Müller-Lietzkow

Andreas Timm-Giel

Hauke Heekeren

Klaus B. Beckmann

Hessen:

Tanja Brühl

Enrico Schleiff

Katharina Lorenz

Ute Clement

Thomas Nauss

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:

Katharina Riedel

(American) Elizabeth Prommer

Niedersachsen:

Angela Ittel

Sylvia Schattauer

Metin Tolan

Volker Epping

(Swiss) Denise Hilfiker-Kleiner

Klaus Osterrieder

May-Britt Kallenrode

(German-Swiss) Sascha Spoun

Ralph Bruder

Susanne Menzel-Riedl

Verena Pietzner

Nordrhein-Westfalen:

Ulrich Rüdiger

Angelika Epple

Martin Paul

Michael Hoch

Manfred Bayer

Barbara Albert

Anja Steinbeck

Stefan Stürmer

Joybrato Mukherjee

Ansgar Thiel

Johannes Wessels

Birgitt Riegraf

Stefanie Reese

Martin Butzlaff

Birgitta Wolff

Rheinland-Pfalz:

Malte Drescher

Stefan Wehner

Georg Krausch

Holger Mühlenkamp

(Austrian) Eva Martha Eckkrammer

Saarland:

Ludger Santen

Sachsen:

Gerd Strohmeier

Ursula Staudinger

Klaus-Dieter Barbknecht

Eva Inés Obergfell

Sachsen-Anhalt:

Claudia Becker

Jens Strackeljan

Schleswig-Holstein:

Christiane Hipp

Insa Theesfeld

Enno Hartmann

Thüringen:

Walter Bauer-Wabnegg

Kai-Uwe Sattler

Andreas Marx

(Austrian) Peter Benz