Berthold Finkelstein
Berthold Finkelstein (born December 23, 1925 in Krefeld , † October 27, 1996 in Bonn ) was a German economist . He was married to Gertraude Hinnrichs, with whom he had their son Johannes Finkelstein.
Life
Berthold Finkelstein was the son of his Jewish father Hans Finkelstein , who put an end to his life in 1938 because of persecution through the ordinance to exclude Jews from German economic life. He was therefore considered a half-Jew . As such, he had to do forced labor at IG Farben in accordance with the Nuremberg Race Laws . Forced labor, the loss of his father and the trauma of the war left a deep mark on him.
After the end of the Second World War , he began studying at the University of Bonn in 1945 . He chose chemistry , theology and economics as subjects and graduated with a degree in economics.
activities
Even during his studies, before the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, he organized the first international meetings with universities in neighboring European countries, including Oxford . From 1949 he took part in the founding of the International Student Union (ISSF) and became its chairman. He was also active with the Young European Federalists Germany .
Gustav Stresemann Institute
On the initiative of the Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak , the youth secretariat of the European Movement was founded in 1951 . The aim was to win over the young generation in the Western European countries to the idea of European unification and to encourage them to actively participate in building a new democratic and peaceful order in our continent. Berthold Finkelstein became the head of the German office of the European Youth Campaign. In 1959 this facility was transformed into an independent institute for supranational education and European cooperation . The aim was to honor the merits of the statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann for peace and European cooperation and gave him the name Gustav Stresemann Institute . Finkelstein headed the institute until his death in 1996.
Working group of German educational institutions
In the Association of German educational institutions , he worked from 1961 to 1981 on the board or as chairman of the association. In this function he significantly supported the development of political education as a basic element of an enlightened democracy in Germany. His experiences with fascism were both an incentive and a warning. In 1966 at the nationwide congress on political education in Bonn , he stated that many institutions of political education had emerged “from the experience of a catastrophe that was caused and made possible by a society that was under-age due to a lack of political insight, a society that did not distinguish leadership from seduction could".
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Berthold Finkelstein, the founder and first director of the Gustav Stresemann Institute, accessed on May 8, 2018
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Finkelstein, Berthold |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German economist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 23, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Krefeld |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 27, 1996 |
| Place of death | Bonn |