Academic exchange: 50th anniversary of Fulbright Programme
Celebration at Bonn University
Dieser Artikel in Deutsch
"The Fulbright Programme made me go the extra mile", was the impressive conclusion reached by Dr. William Bader on 18 July 2002 when summarizing the experiences he had as one of the first Fulbright Fellows in the post-war Germany of 1953, which had a formative influence on his life.
The foundation charter of the German-American Fulbright Programme was signed at the Palais Schaumburg in Bonn on 18 July 1952. 50 years later, the anniversary was celebrated at Bonn University with an evening attended not only by former Fulbright Fellows and friends of the Fulbright Programme, but also by two direct descendents of the original signatories, John J. McCloy II, son of the High Commissioner of the same name, and Konrad Adenauer, grandson of the Federal Chancellor at the time. Dr. William Bader, former Assistant Secretary of State and Fulbright alumnus, and the director of the Deutsche Welle, Erik Bettermann, both held a ceremonial address for a programme which, since its foundation, has seen 30,000 German and American students, academics, teachers, journalists, and educational experts striving to support the ideas of the American Senator J. William Fulbright.
In 1946 the programme's founder launched the international exchange of young academics between the USA and other countries with the eponymous Fulbright Act. Former German Fulbright Ambassadors working for intercultural understanding and cosmopolitanism include the German Nobel Prize winner, Erwin Neher, the journalists, Ulrich Wickert and Josef Joffe, the politician, Hanna-Renate Laurien, and the stage director, Werner Herzog.
About 700 German and American fellows are sponsored by the internationallyreputed Fulbright Programme every year. "My Fulbright year was one of the most decisive in my academic career", was a comment made, for example, by Professor Reimar Lüst, former President of the Max- Planck-Gesellschaft and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The unique encounter with the host country, "the extra mile", was and remains to this day a key experience in the professional and personal training of Fulbright Fellows.
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