In a ceremony for invited guests on 1st October 2021, the German City of Leipzig, together with the Carl and Anneliese Goerdeler Foundation and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), awarded the Carl and Anneliese Goerdeler Foundation Prize for local politics. This year, the prize went to two winners: the city of Essen and the European Region of Pomerania.

Appreciation of concepts for overcoming the pandemic

Both award winners developed and implemented their outstanding municipal policy concepts for overcoming the Corona pandemic in cross-border European and international partnerships. On the one hand with Mongolia and Chile, on the other with Poland. The prize money was 2,000 euros each.

Other important partnerships

In addition, four other municipal partnerships - Frankfurt an der Oder with the Polish city of Słubice, the so-called QuattroPole (Metz, Saarbrücken, Trier, Luxembourg), Nalbach with the city of Assiè-Koumassi in Côte d'Ivoire and Darmstadt with the Italian city of Brescia were judged as outstanding.

Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler

Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (1881 - 1945) was a committed local politician throughout his life. In 1930 he was elected Lord Mayor of Leipzig. Goerdeler met the Nazi regime with great scepticism from the beginning. When his National Socialist deputy had the Mendelssohn monument removed during his absence - against explicit instructions - Goerdeler demonstratively resigned from office in December 1936. During the war, Goerdeler became one of the leading forces of the German Resistance. On 2 February 1945, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was executed.

The Carl and Anneliese Goerdeler Foundation

The children of Carl and Anneliese Goerdeler established the charitable foundation in memory of their parents in 1995. The purpose of the foundation is to promote education, science and research as well as art and culture. Preferably, this support is to benefit the city of Leipzig. In this way, the founders want to contribute to the renewal of the city in the fields of communal politics and culture and to a recovery of civic power to shape the city. The Municipal Science Prize of the Foundation was awarded for the first time in 2000.

Connective Cities

Through its International Cities Platform - Connective Cities -, GIZ had intensively accompanied and supported the entire call for entries and award ceremony. Connective Cities is a cooperation between the German Society for International Cooperation, Engagement Global and the German Association of Cities.

This is a press release from the City of Leipzig, which we kindly publish here with their permission.