Berlin Peace Watch Prize

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The Berlin Peace Clock with the inscription "Time blows up all walls" was designed by the jeweler Jens Lorenz. From 2003 to 2014, a replica of the watch was awarded as a prize by the Berlin Committee for UNESCO Work.

Origin and private initiative

On November 9, 1989, the jeweler Jens Lorenz presented a watch he designed in Berlin, which, with its clockwork from a Westphalian Benedictine monastery, is almost three meters high and weighs 2.5 tons. The clock bears the inscription "Time blows up all walls" and was originally intended to be a sign of hope that the division of the world into "East" and "West" could finally be overcome. During the presentation of the watch, news of the fall of the Berlin Wall became known. Thereupon the Berlin-born decided to carry the watch “as an ambassador of peace and freedom into the world”.

In 1992 the first three Berlin peace watches came to Michail Gorbatschow , Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl . In 1999, another peace watch was given to former US President George Bush Sr. to hand over. In 1996 Pope John Paul II was presented with a Berlin peace watch.

With the handover of the Berlin Peace Clock No. 1 to Mother Teresa in 1993 in India, the North-South conflict should also be addressed. In 1994 the Berlin Peace Clock was handed over to the German Parliamentary Society in Bonn. In 2013, at the Rotary Global Peace Forum in Hiroshima, a Berlin Peace Watch was awarded to Rotary International . Since the Berlin Committee for UNESCO Work is not allowed to work abroad according to the statutes, the award was made on the sole initiative of Jens Lorenz.

The price

From 2003 to 2014 the Berlin Peace Clock was awarded as a prize by the Berlin Committee for UNESCO Work to personalities and institutions who, in the opinion of the committee, contributed to overcoming walls between people based on the United Nations' “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” to have.

The award consisted of the solemn public handover of the replica of the great Berlin Peace Clock donated by Jens Lorenz on November 9, 1989, as well as a certificate.

A board of trustees selected the winners.

The last award ceremony took place on December 11, 2014 in Berlin in the atrium of Deutsche Bank .

Board of Trustees

At the last award, members were:

  • Gudrun Kammasch, chairwoman of the Berlin Committee for UNESCO Work
  • Jutta Limbach , former President of the Goethe Institute
  • Jens Lorenz, initiator and founder of the Berlin Peace Clock
  • Lothar de Maizière , last Prime Minister of the GDR
  • Peter Mussbach , former director and artistic director of the State Opera Unter den Linden
  • Eric Schweitzer , President of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Award winners

literature

  • Klaus Hüfner, Siegfried Baur, Jens Lorenz: The Berlin Peace Watch Prize 2004

Web links