Opening Speeches – M100 SANSSOUCI COLLOQUIUM

Opening Speeches

2024

Dr Anna Wieslander

Director for Northern Europe
Atlantic Council
Sweden

2022

Olga Rudenko

Editor-in-Chief
The Kyiv Independent
Ukraine

2021

Opening Speech Strategic Roundtable: Benjamin H. Bratton

Professor of Fine Arts
University of California, San Diego
USA

Opening Speech Schlosstheater: Andreas Reckwitz

Professor of Social Theory and Cultural Sociology
Humboldt University in Berlin
Germany

2020

Professor Timothy Garton Ash

Professor of European Studies
Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College
Oxford University
UK

2019

Professor Saskia Sassen

Professor of Sociology
Columbia University
USA

2018

John Kornblum

Political commentator
Former US Ambassador to Germany

2017

Can Dundar

Editor-in-Chief Özgürüz
Former Editor-in-Chief Cumhuriyet
Turkey/Germany

2016

Professor Dan Diner

Historian
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Israel

2015

Hans-Dietrich Genscher

Former Vice Chancelor and Foreign Minister of Germany

2014

Professor Shoshana Zuboff

Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
USA

2012

Robert Menasse

Essayist
Austria

2011

Christopher Walker

Vice President for Strategy and Analysis (2011)
Freedom House
USA

I am very moved, especially because I was not expecting to hear these words, which are like an embrace for me. So I want to thank you for this award, for the incredibly moving words of Giovanni di Lorenzo, for this wonderful sky that has welcomed me to Potsdam, and also to thank the Federal Chancellor for her touching words, and for her encouraging presence. Because the awareness raised heartens me a lot more than words. Roberto Saviano, M100 Media Award laureate 2016
It is a great honour for me to be here and receive this great price. It's a very big day for me. I thank Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dr. Joachim Gauck for the kind and strong words, and for their appreciation. Thank you, I will never forget this day! Kurt Westergaard, danish cartoonist, M100 Media Award laureate 2010
At the same time, today’s prize is an appeal to all persons who hold positions of responsibility in governments, in culture and in the media: be steadfast, value-oriented and also COURAGEOUS when irresponsible persons and powers undermine or relativise our values of freedom. It is a virtue to yield to a convincing argument, but it is cowardice to yield to a threat from enemies of freedom. Joachim Gauck in his laudation to Kurt Westergaard, 2010
I receive [this award] with an immense joy, happiness and humility also, because I think by being with you today here, I am receiving this price in the name of those who are still suffering in the jungle of Colombia and of those in the world that are living in similar conditions and who cannot speak for themselves freely. Ingrid Betancourt, M100 Media Award laureate 2008
But I have to say that in our modern society the media has a very, very particular responsibility, also for the European idea. And I hope that the event today – and the events which will follow – will help us to communicate better, to explain better and to convince people that Europe – and acknowledging all the problems, the mistakes and the deficits – […] that at the end of the day the idea of European integration is the best idea that we have ever developed in our history. Günther Verheugen, former EU-Commissioner, in his keynote speech 2005

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