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The German Chancellor will attend the award ceremony, at which Hildegard Hamm-Brucher, former Minister of State, will hold the laudation for Roland Berger and Michael Naumann, former Minister of State and editor of DIE ZEIT, will give the laudatory speech for Imre Kertesz.
In Roland Berger, an entrepreneur with a strong commitment to human rights and equal opportunities in education is honored. The Chair of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants presides over the Roland Berger Foundation's Board of Trustees, a foundation founded by himself which awards an international "Prize for Human Dignity" annually.
In addition, the Roland Berger Foundation – endowed with a foundation capital of EUR 50 million from Roland Berger's private funds – sponsors talented young people from the socially underprivileged classes to counteract the disadvantages they face in the German education system. Roland Berger's commitment to human rights and education originate from his family's experience under the Nazi regime: His father distanced himself publicly from the National Socialist German Workers' Party and was arrested in 1944.
The Nobel Laureate in Literature Imre Kertesz is honored for his literary oeuvre. Born in 1929, the author was deported as a teenage Jew to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944, and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. Back in his home town of Budapest, he later wrote the novel "Fatelessness." Through the eyes of a 15-year-old prisoner, he describes his experience of concentration camps with matter-of-fact exactitude. The newspaper "DIE ZEIT" found at the time, that "Kertesz' account of life in a concentration camp, alongside Primo Levi's and Jorge Semprun's, is one of the most shattering of its kind, even though it provokes profound confusion and perplexity." Also in his later novels – among them "Kaddish for an Unborn Child" and "Liquidation" – and in his autobiography, he grappled with the genocide of the European Jews and advocates personal responsibility and existential radicality.
The presentation of the award will take place within the framework of the traditional gala dinner held at the Jewish Museum Berlin. A reception in the rooms next to the exhibition "Looting and Restitution. Jewish Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present" will commence the evening, followed by the award ceremony in the Museum's Glass Courtyard. The gala dinner which concludes the evening also supports a worthy cause, with the proceeds going towards the Museum's educational programs for children and young people.
As at the preceding award ceremonies, the guest list comprises prominent figures from the worlds of politics, business, culture, and the media. Those from the business world include the Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Global Head of Government Relations, Allianz SE, Jurgen Kluge, Director of McKinsey Germany, Johannes Ludewig, former Secretary of State and Director of CER Brussels, Rene Obermann, Deutsche Telekom Chairman, Hanns-Eberhard Schleyer, Secretary General of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts, Henning Schulte-Noelle, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Allianz SE, the publisher Friede Springer and the financier Max Warburg.
Acceptances from the political arena have been received from Minister of State for Cultural and Media Affairs Bernd Neumann, and Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schauble, as from the members of the Bundestag Monika Griefahn and Monika Grutters, former Ministers of State Manfred Lahnstein and Otto Schily, former Bundestag President Rita Sussmuth. Further guests include the actress Iris Berben, the TV presenter Maybrit Illner, Michael Jansen, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" Foundation, Salomon Korn, Vice-President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Jurgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Fritz Pleitgen, Chair of the Board of Directors of RUHR 2010, Christina Rau, widow of the former German President Johannes Rau, the art collectors and patrons Dieter and Si Rosenkranz, and the publicist Nike Wagner to name but a few. -- www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de
Posted November 12th, 2008 by ruzik_tuzik
