Europe – our challenge, our hope. Europe, the second side of the medal of German unity. Europe, to which we Germans always owe something, as much as we earn from it. All this and much more is the subject of the two-day conference “Europe 2023”, which is organized jointly by “Handelsblatt”, “Wirtschaftswoche”, “Tagesspiegel” and “Zeit”.
In a speech in Hamburg in 1953, Thomas Mann, the great German writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, expressed what could be called the Federal Republic’s credo: that it should always be about a “European Germany”, never about a “German Europe”. That still applies today.
It has guided the Federal Chancellor since Konrad Adenauer, each in his own way. Just a few examples: Helmut Schmidt, who invented the “European currency snake” with his French friend Valéry Giscard d’Estaing; Helmut Kohl, who never forgot about the unity of Germany, who introduced the common currency, the euro, and was made an honorary citizen of Europe for everything; Olaf Scholz, the former mayor of Hamburg, who governs 70 years according to Mann in the “turning point” that has gripped all of Europe.
Stephan Andreas Casdorff is the publisher of the Tagesspiegel. He sees a gift of history in shared Europe.
It’s about the war on Europe’s edge, a test for all values that can only be passed together. But it is also about the global claim to control climate change before it conquers the earth. And it’s about economic development under the sign of exponential technological growth.
The “mindset” is checked in the world
Human and artificial intelligence competing for solutions – who would have thought that a few years ago. Europe is currently reviewing its “mindset” here, as are the USA and China. The USA as exemplary friends, China as a competitor, as a trading partner, as a difficult political partner to talk to.
Not to mention Russia, which is relapsing into atavistic, tsarist ways of thinking. It has turned its back on Europe – with autocracy, nationalism and an abused religion. And yet this very Europe must be moved towards peace. For the sake of Ukraine and the continent.
A challenge every day, a hope every day – the “Europe 2023” conference helps to ascertain existing commonalities, to work out new ones and to consolidate them from year to year.
I work as a news website author and mostly cover the opinion section. I have been writing since I was a teenager, and have always enjoyed telling stories. I studied journalism at university and loved every minute of it. After graduating, I decided to move to London and take up a position with a Global Happenings. It has been an incredible experience, learning about all sorts of different cultures and meeting some amazing people. My goal is to continue learning and growing in my career so that I can provide readers with the best possible content.
