Bilderberg Conference

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The Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek
Issue for the first Bilderberg conference in 1954

The Bilderberg Conferences are informal meetings of influential people from business , politics , the military , the media , universities , the nobility and secret services , where thoughts on current political, economic and social issues are exchanged.

The Bilderberg Group (also known internationally as the Bilderberg Club or Bilderberger ) is not a formal organization. As far as is known, there is neither a membership status nor a founding agreement. The agenda items and the lists of participants will only be made available to the international press agencies after a meeting. Any agreements will not be published. As with the similarly globally oriented and discreetly operating Council on Foreign Relations, the Chatham House Rule applies : It can be reported in general terms, but never quoted by name.

For the first time the conference in May 1954 at the invitation of Prince was Bernhard of the Netherlands in the time he owned the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands organized, the name Bilderberg was taken from the first meeting. This first meeting of high-ranking personalities grew out of fears that Western Europe and North America might not work as closely together as the serious problems facing the states at the time seemed to necessitate. Most of the participants have always come from NATO countries; since 1989, people from other countries have been taking part in the conferences.

Various conspiracy theories have grown up around the "Bilderbergers" .

History of origin

The impetus for founding the Bilderberg Conference came from Józef Retinger . As early as the Second World War , Retinger, as an advisor to the Polish government in exile, organized meetings in London between representatives of governments in exile and foreign ministers from European countries. In these conferences, which took place between October 1942 and August 1944, the post-war customs agreement between the Benelux countries was born. After the war, Retinger presented his position on European unification at a conference at Chatham House : “The end of the period during which the white man spread his activities over the whole globe saw the Continent itself undergoing a process of internal disruption.” (Eng: "At the end of the phase during which the white man spread his activities across the globe, the continent itself went through a process of internal disruption.") At that time, Retinger was General Secretary of the Belgian Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland standing Economic League for European Cooperation (ELEC) , from which the European Movement later emerged. Soon after his London speech he made the acquaintance of W. Averell Harriman , the American ambassador to Great Britain, who arranged for him to stay in the USA, where Retinger wanted to recruit support for the local government for the ELEC. Among others, Retinger made contact with Adolf Berle Jr. and John Foster Dulles in the USA .

As a result, the European Movement received substantial financial contributions from both the US government / CIA and private sources through the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE) and other institutions. In 1952, Retinger resigned from his post as General Secretary of the European Movement and began to encourage more informal and confidential meetings between European and US politicians and business leaders. In particular, these talks should eliminate the growing tensions between the European states and the USA. He consulted the former Belgian Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland , who was President of the OEEC at the time , as well as Paul Rykens , the then chairman of Unilever and former advisor to the Dutch government, who was in exile in London, and drafted plans with them for a recurring conference. Retinger won Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands as chairman and symbolic figure for this transatlantic dialogue . The idea for the new discussion platform was to find two people from each of the more important European countries in order to reveal the conservative and liberal perspective. Thanks to Bernhard's position and Retinger's connections, ten people were found in a short time:

What the reservations of the European states towards the USA consisted of was discussed at the first conference of the European core group on September 25, 1952. A summary was confidential to the United States, but the presidential election was in full swing. Since there was no room for Prince Bernhard's concerns in this situation, a renewed attempt after the 1952 elections seemed sensible. But again the idea was rejected before Bernhard turned to Walter Bedell Smith . The CIA director briefed CD Jackson , special adviser to the re-elected US president, of the matter.

A response letter was drafted in collaboration with John S. Coleman and the Committee for a National Trade Policy . Other people were included, such as Joseph E. Johnson ( Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ), Dean Rusk (Director of the Rockefeller Foundation ) as well as David Rockefeller and Jack Heinz . Nevertheless, it was not until 1954 that all organizational questions could be settled. Max Brauer and Rudolf Mueller took on the task of nominating seven people for Germany to take part in the “confidential conference”. At the beginning of May 1954 the personnel issues were resolved. On the afternoon of May 28th, the members of the group met in Soestdijk Palace in the Netherlands for their final final discussions.

The following morning at 10 a.m. the first conference in the Hotel de Bilderberg was opened by Prince Bernhard. The agenda for the meeting dealt with the positions on “Communism and the Soviet Union”, “The colonies and their people”, “Economic policies and their problems” and “European integration and the European Defense Community”. It was not about a "solution" to the questions, but about an exchange of the respective points of view. Even though the topics for the conference were given, the Europeans kept coming back to the anti-communist campaign of Senator Joseph McCarthy . Some saw in his zeal the danger that the USA would develop into a dictatorship, but this was rejected by the US representatives. "Obviously," says Retinger, the participants in the annual Bilderberg conferences must be "influential and generally respected as well as have specialist knowledge or a lot of experience" in order to use their "personal contacts and their influence in national and international circles" to achieve that set by Bilderberg Aims “to be able to suffice. The participants should be very open, not represent obviously national convictions and not be burdened with prejudices, as well as share western cultural and ethical values ​​in order to be able to meet the goal of reaching as many people as possible from the most diverse circles. The organizers take care to maintain a party-political balance, because "it can't hurt if controversies are also carried out in a polar manner within the framework of [...] [this] conference ". For the respective composition of each meeting, a balance is sought which reflects as well as possible the prevailing opinion of the respective country on the given topics.

The former member of the Steering Committee , George C. McGhee , told Prince Bernhard's biographer about the competencies of the participants in the Bilderberg conferences: “I think you can say that the Treaties of Rome , which introduced the common market , were at these meetings Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands presided over his involvement in the Lockheed bribery scandal . As with all Bilderberg activities, Bernhard's involvement was handled very discreetly, so the meeting in Hot Springs , Virginia , scheduled for April 22-25, 1976 , was canceled to avoid public attention due to his long-standing role. Prince Bernhard finally resigned from office in August of the same year. In April 1977, the informal conferences were resumed under the chairmanship of Alec Douglas-Home and continued to this day with the chairmanship changed several times.

organization

procedure

Bilderberg conferences usually last three days. Above all questions of the world economy and international relations are discussed. The discussions do not result in a final declaration and are not published in full.

After each conference, every participant and everyone who previously participated in a Bilderberg conference will receive a minutes of the meeting. These minutes are not verbatim minutes, but only summaries of the meetings, in which statements are never assigned to a specific participant, but always only to their country of origin. Since 1963, the participants have also received an explanatory booklet to complete the picture of such a conference. These papers are to be treated with special confidentiality. The Bilderberg meetings usually take place in high-class hotels.

Willy Claes , former NATO Secretary General and two-time participant in the Bilderberg Conference, confirmed this procedure in an interview on the Belgian radio station Radio 1 (VRT) : The conference participants are given ten minutes to give a lecture on a specific topic, with one specific session started by a rapporteur , followed by input from the other participants. The Bilderberg Steering Committee transmits the results of the discussion in the form of syntheses to all participants who, in the course of the following year, are to implement the strategies outlined in the syntheses in the respective political, corporate or other environment in their home countries.

Management, organs

The chairman of the steering committee is responsible for chairing the Bilderberg conferences. From 1954 to 1976 Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands held this office. In 1976 he was succeeded by former British Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home . In 1980, during the Bilderberg Conference in Aachen, the latter handed over the chairmanship of the steering committee to Walter Scheel , the former Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany .

In 1985, Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden , one of the former presidents of the SG Warburg bank , took over the chairmanship. In 1989 he was succeeded by Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington , the former Secretary General of NATO , who held the post for ten years. Then Étienne Davignon , a former member of the European Commission , took the chair. In 2012 Henri de Castries , CEO of the French insurance group AXA , took over the chairmanship of the steering committee of the Bilderberg conferences.

The chairman of the steering committee is supported in his work by two honorary general secretaries, one for Europe and Canada and one for the USA. Accordingly, there are secretariats in Leiden and New York . There is also a voluntary “finance manager”.

In 1956, an eight-member Steering Committee was set up. Steering Committee members can attend any conference or other meeting. The Steering Committee is not an elected committee. The members are appointed by the chairperson of the conference and, after consultation with these members, the participants are selected at the next conference. Between the annual large Bilderberg conferences, further meetings of the Steering Committee take place only on important occasions. The Steering Committee always has two members from Germany, one of whom is responsible for finances, the other for the selection of topics and speakers. Theo Sommer , the chief editor of the time , held this post for a long time ; he was followed first by Christoph Bertram , then by Matthias Nass , both also members of the editorial team at the time .

In 1959 an advisory group was added. As announced, “if felt to be necessary”, it usually meets for the first few decades in the Soestdijk Palace, the headquarters of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

participation

Participation in the annual conference is dependent on an invitation from the chairman and the two honorary secretaries-general, which follows the advice and recommendation of the steering committee. After the official organizers have announced, the participants will be selected in such a way that a “well-informed, balanced discussion” on the items on the agenda is ensured. The business language is English.

Usually around 130 people take part, whereby a geographical and functional peculiarity becomes recognizable: two thirds come from Western Europe and one third from North America. Around two thirds of the invited participants come from the financial sector, industry, universities and the media and around one third from governments or political institutions.

The conference has been attended by around 2,500 people since 1954. They came from around 28 countries and belonged to around 15 international organizations. Women have also been taking part in the events since 1972.

All participants take part in the conferences exclusively as private persons and not in their official position, although their position in public life can play a decisive role in these co-options .

The narrowest circle of participants has included the English, Belgian and Dutch royal families, bankers and the political and military strategists of the North Atlantic Alliance since the beginning .

The most active participants are Giovanni Agnelli ( Fiat ) and David Rockefeller ( Chase Manhattan Bank ), who were each present at around 20 Bilderberg conferences and also belonged to the Advisory Group. Former US Minister Henry Kissinger also enjoyed a strong position at the meetings .

Jürgen Schrempp is one of the German participants . Since the 1960s, a representative from Deutsche Bank ( e.g. Hilmar Kopper and Josef Ackermann ) and a representative from the weekly newspaper Die Zeit (e.g. Helmut Schmidt and Christoph Bertram ) have always been present on the Steering Committee from Germany .

Hotel Taschenbergpalais Dresden, venue 2016

Conference locations and frequency

The annual large conference is the most important event that the Bilderberg organizers hold.

Until the mid-1960s, the meetings of the Bilderberg group were largely unknown worldwide.

Over 60 conferences took place from 1954 to 2019. Up until 1957 there were two meetings a year, since then only one. In 1960 the name was changed from the Bilderberg Group to the Bilderberg Conference . On average, every fourth conference is held in North America to accommodate US and Canadian participants.

financing

According to the conference, the expenses for the secretariat of the Bilderberg conference are completely covered by private donations; The members of the Steering Committee who come from the country in which the respective conference takes place are responsible for the financing of the costs arising from the catering for the individual conference participants. As became known at the 2011 conference in Switzerland, the organizer and the federal government shared the costs for the extensive security measures. It is not known how high these costs were and how it was handled at other conferences. Participants should bear the costs of traveling to the conference themselves. In 2008 it became known that Eckart von Klaeden's travel expenses ( CDU participant ) had been covered by the German Bundestag. After the Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann ( SPÖ ) took part in the conference the following year, there was a parliamentary inquiry about details about the contents of the conference as well as the motivation and financing of Faymann's conference participation. According to the opponents of the conference and a newspaper, the costs for the extensive security measures have been borne by the public sector, i.e. the taxpayers, at least since 2015.

classification

Media presence in Germany

The research assistant at the Institute for Practical Research in Journalism in Leipzig, Uwe Krüger , who published a dissertation on elite journalism and its networks , wrote one of the few reports about the Bilderbergers in Germany in 2007 in the media magazine Message : Alpha- Journalists embedded .

Although Die Zeit had already reported on the Bilderberg Conference in Telfs in 1988 , the Munich media sociologist and publicist Rudolf Stumberger said of the 2010 Bilderberg Conference that he did not understand that “the responsible editors of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit had been narrow for many years are intertwined with the Bilderbergers and yet like all the other participating journalists never report a single line about the conferences ”. He suppose this is about personal vanities . Since then, the meetings have been mentioned in individual articles of the time , so in 2011.

Effects

Due to the legally informal nature of the meeting, no executable decisions can be made. The discussions are intended to reach a consensus on a common line of thought and action. Only a few effects are actually verifiably known:

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 on the advice of Rockefeller at a Bilderberg conference. According to the Belgian entrepreneur and honorary chairman Etienne Davignon, the introduction of the euro goes back to a Bilderberg conference. According to the former US ambassador in Berlin, John McGhee, the Bilderberg conferences played an "important role" in the design of the Treaty of Rome establishing the EEC .

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in a book published in 1992 that the Bilderberg Conference does not justify any of the secrets that are made about it. “Nobody seriously believes that these meetings can have any effect. In reality they are only one thing: leisure activities in their most distinguished form ”.

confidentiality

The conference hotels are usually closed to other guests for the time of the Bilderberg conferences. On June 9, 2011, the Italian EU parliamentarian Mario Borghezio was taken into custody by the police and temporarily expelled from the canton of Graubünden after he had tried to enter the Bilderberg conference hotel Suvretta House in St. Moritz . The incident led to diplomatic entanglements between Italy and Switzerland.

The World Economic Forum in Davos , the Atlantic Bridge , the Munich Security Conference or the meetings of the Trilateral Commission are so-called “privately” organized meetings. Rudolf Stumberger ( see above ) is astonished by this conception of "private meetings" where practically no sheet of paper fits between the world of business and that of politics. He classifies the practiced secrecy differently:

“ Re-feudalization tendencies . This means that in addition to the official, democratic structures, the unofficial structures are increasingly gaining weight again. And these elites, these self-appointed elites who sit on top, they are increasingly isolating themselves. "

Eckart von Klaeden ( see above ):

“At the conference you can freely and openly discuss current problems in world politics and the economy. Therefore, the conference is confidential and takes place behind closed doors. This is the agreement between all participants ... "

criticism

conspiracy theories

The strict secrecy of the topics of conversation at the conferences often gave rise to conspiracy theories .

Des Griffin claims in his book The Rulers - Lucifer's Fifth Column (English original title: The Fourth Reich of the Rich - translated: "The Fourth Reich of the Rich") that the Bilderbergers were striving for a "world dictatorship" in the sense of a New World Order and would become theirs "Relentlessly develop further" plans in this regard.

The German author Andreas von Rétyi speculates about whether they were behind the murders of Alfred Herrhausen and Olof Palme , who allegedly stood against them. He also attributes the responsibility for a whole series of decisive events in post-war history to the Bilderbergers, such as:

In 1991 Bill Clinton , then still governor of Arkansas, took part in the conference and is said to have been sworn in on the project of the North American free trade agreement . He has agreed to support.

The right-wing US magazine The Spotlight speculated in May 1993: "The Bilderbergers are too powerful and too ubiquitous to be publicly reported about them." The Anti-Defamation League complains that the critics are polemic against an alleged conspiracy of the Rockefeller and Rothschild families , the international banks and an allegedly emerging “secret world government ” serving anti-Semitic stereotypes.

In August 2010, after a report by AFP, two comments were published by Fidel Castro , according to which the world's youth should be sacrificed to a nuclear holocaust due to the conspiracy of a world government . Behind this world government stands the Bilderberg Conference. Castro is referring to the book by the Russian journalist Daniel Estulin about the “true story of the Bilderbergers”, which was published in German in 2007 by Kopp-Verlag .

Social sciences

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski , representative of Power Structure Research , criticizes the fact that almost nothing is known about the Bilderbergers , similar to other encounters between the rich and powerful, while Hartz IV recipients , for example, have constant monitoring of the offices and accompanying social research are subject to. It is these who really hold power in their hands:

“Power also has something to do with this money-power dimension and in this respect politicians cannot control the level above it, for example the financial elite . Mr Tietmeyer said this very clearly back in 1996, the politicians had no idea how much they are dependent on the financial markets. "

The Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liège disapproves of the Bilderbergers' secrecy, but does not subscribe to any conspiracy theory. He uses the example of the Bilderbergers to show how power works and what close relationships exist between politics, business and the media.

According to the Hamburg historian Bernd Greiner, there is a functional differentiation of statehood in the sense of Niklas Luhmann . These competencies are nowhere near as bundled as they are assumed in conspiracy theories; rather, there is a lack of “this one, controlling center” in both business and politics. That was shown, for example, in the Greek crisis or in the problem of the reduced intervention potential.

According to journalist Marcus Klöckner, the personal discontinuity and the heterogeneity of the participants as well as the rarity of their meetings refute the idea that the Bilderbergers are a secret world government . Nevertheless, in terms of democratic theory , the meetings are by no means as harmless as the comparison with the usual backroom discussions of politicians, journalists and business leaders suggests. Through the secret meetings, important parts of the political decision-making process would be outsourced from the public sphere and removed from democratic control. The enormous social capital that comes together at the meetings makes it possible to implement projects of great importance, even if not all participants have consented to the consensus.

politics

The participation of the Green politician Jürgen Trittin at the Bilderberg conference in Chantilly (Virginia) in spring 2012 triggered different reactions in his party.

At the conference in Dresden in 2016, AfD , NPD , Pegida , Rote Fahne / Antifaschistische Aktion and others called for participation in protest rallies.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Gijswijt: Informal alliance. The Bilderberg group and transatlantic relations during the Cold War, 1952.1968 , Routledge, London / New York 2019 (Routledge studies in modern history, Volume 41), ISBN 978-0-8153-9674-1 .
  • Ian Richardson, Andrew Kakabadse, Nada Kakabadse: Bilderberg People. Elite Power and Consensus in World Affairs . Routledge, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-415-57635-2 (English).
  • Björn Wendt: The Bilderberg Group. Knowledge of the power of social elites . 1st edition. Optimus Wissenschaftsverlag, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-86376-143-1 .
  • Björn Wendt, Marcus B. Klöckner, Sascha Pommrenke, Michael Walter (eds.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks . VSA, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-696-1 .

Web links

Commons : Bilderberg Conference  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

General

media

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Detlef Grumbach : Re-feudalization and privatization of power? - About the Bilderberg Conference 2010. In: Deutschlandfunk , June 2, 2010.
  2. ↑ List of participants for the most recent conference on the official website of the Bilderberg Conference.
  3. ↑ BT-Drs. 18/8383
  4. ↑ 2 to 6 June: Bilderberg Conference in Sitges, Spanje ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). Interview with Willy Claes . Radio 1 , Vlaamse Radio , June 4, 2010, transcript ( memento of January 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ Audible distribution . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1987, pp. 238-242 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group. In: BBC News , September 29, 2005.
  7. ^ Chairman. In: bilderbergmeetings.co.uk , accessed July 15, 2017.
  8. ↑ Marcus Klöckner: The discrete power of the Bilderbergers. In: Andreas Anton, Michael Schetsche and Michael Walter (eds.): Konspiration. Sociology of Conspiracy Thinking . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 99 f.
  9. ↑ Answer of May 15, 2003 by Romano Prodi for the European Commission to Parliamentary Question P-1370/03 of April 4, 2003.
  10. ↑ a b Pepe Escobar : Bilderberg strikes again. ( Memento from June 26, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Asia Times , May 10, 2005.
  11. ^ Richard Schroetter: First Bilderberg conference 50 years ago. ( Memento from July 24, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Das Kalenderblatt, Deutschlandradio on May 29, 2004.
  12. ^ Governance and Funding. Bilderberg Conference website, accessed December 9, 2017.
  13. ^ Roman Seiler: Bilderberg Conference - guest list and agenda top secret: this is where the world's elite meet. In: blick.ch. January 2, 2012, accessed June 14, 2015 .
  14. ^ Eckart von Klaeden (CDU). ( Memento from July 10th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: abektivenwatch.de .
  15. ^ Parliamentary inquiry from the FPÖ on Werner Faymann's participation in the Bilderberg Conference 2009. In: parlament.gv.at .
  16. ^ Georg Larcher: Public authorities pay for Bilderberg meetings. In: mein district.at . March 25, 2015, accessed June 8, 2015 .
  17. ^ Uwe Krüger : Alpha journalists embedded. In: message. No. 3, 2007 (PDF at Lobbycontrol ).
  18. ^ Theo Sommer : Weltbühne. Sleepless gendarmes. In: Die Zeit , June 10, 1988.
  19. ↑ Heike Faller : End times mood. Save yourself who can! In: ZEITmagazin , February 24, 2011.
  20. ^ Peer Teuwsen : Management. “Responsibility is fun”. In: Die Zeit , June 22, 2011.
  21. ↑ Heike Faller , Max Otte : Financial Crisis. The old man and the more. In: ZEITmagazin , August 4, 2011.
  22. ^ A b Marcus Klöckner: Bilderberg Conference: Secret Meeting of the Elite. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 7, 2010, accessed on April 10, 2011, 3:30 p.m. CEST.
  23. ↑ John Kenneth Galbraith : Rule of the Bankrupt . Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1992, p. 136. (Original title: The Culture of Contentment , ISBN 0-395-66919-7 ).
  24. ↑ Italy calls for clarification after the Bilderberg incident. ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Schweizer Fernsehen , June 11, 2011.
  25. ↑ Rudolf Stumberger: The private meeting of the rich and powerful. In: heise.de , January 23, 2008, accessed on June 3, 2010, 3:32 p.m. CEST.
  26. ↑ Assumption of costs by the Bundestag - information from Eckart von Klaeden on parliamentwatch.de ( Memento of July 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
  27. ↑ Marlon Kuzmick: Bilderbergers . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, pp. 123 f.
  28. ↑ Des Griffin: The Rulers . Lucifer's fifth column. VAP - Publishing House for Extraordinary Perspectives, Wiesbaden 1980, p. 138 (Original title: The Fourth Reich of the Rich .).
  29. ^ Andreas von Rétyi : Bilderberger. The secret center of power. Kopp Verlag , Rottenburg 2006.
  30. ↑ Hans-Peter Siebenhaar : Bilderberger meeting: secret society of power . In: Handelsblatt , June 4, 2015, accessed on June 13, 2016.
  31. ↑ cit. based on Robert Anton Wilson and Miriam Joan Hill: Everything is under Control. Conspiracies, Cults and Cover-Ups . HarperPerennial, New York 1998, p. 76 ff.
  32. ↑ Debunking the Bilderberg Myth ( Memento of April 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on the Anti-Defamation League website, accessed on February 7, 2013.
  33. ↑ Marlon Kuzmick: Bilderbergers . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, p. 124.
  34. ↑ Afp: abroad: That's the limit - Fidel Castro's Magical Mystery Tour. In: badische-zeitung.de. August 21, 2010, accessed June 14, 2015 .
  35. ↑ Hans Jürgen Krysmanski : Davos is “like a Bambi gala”. In: stern.de , January 24, 2008, accessed on June 3, 2010.
  36. ↑ Marcus Klöckner: The discrete power of the Bilderbergers . In: Andreas Anton, Michael Schetsche, Michael Walter (Eds.): Konspiration. Sociology of Conspiracy Thinking . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, pp. 102-108.
  37. ^ Trittin and his Bilderberg problem. In: Spiegel Online .
  38. ↑ Matthias Kamann, Michael Stürmer: Stepping after the Bilderberg conference in need of explanation. In: welt.de. June 5, 2012, Retrieved June 6, 2012 .
  39. ↑ Secrecy creates trust - and fear of world government , Der Tagesspiegel of June 9, 2016