Friday party

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Helmut Schmidt: founder of the Friday Society

The Friday Society was founded in 1985 by Helmut Schmidt and took place during the winter semester. It was dissolved at the end of the 2014/2015 winter semester because Helmut Schmidt gave up his role as organizer for reasons of age, but could not find a successor. It consisted of 25 members and was founded for the purpose of exchanging members beyond its own professional area. For this purpose, it was agreed to set up a lecture evening with subsequent discussion every second Friday of the month, the lecture topic and speaker being determined by a committee. The lecture evenings took place in Helmut Schmidt's house in Hamburg-Langenhorn . In this way, politicians, entrepreneurs, artists, doctors and scientists informed each other about the latest developments in their field and discussed questions of public welfare. Until her death, Helmut Schmidt's wife Loki personally looked after the guests' dinner; then this was given to a catering service.

The society was particularly interested in foreign and world politics . The internal politics took in the Freitagsgesellschaft more of a a minor role. In addition, various topics from all disciplines were dealt with. According to the company, the lectures of the Friday Society were on the same ground as the lectures of the Wednesday Society .

The presentations were recorded and then made available to members in writing. Some of these writings were found in the books Explorations - Contributions to Understanding Our World. 1999 and Deepening - New Contributions to Understanding Our World. Published 2010 by Helmut Schmidt. With this exception, all participants were bound to strict confidentiality and in fact nothing of what was discussed there should never have leaked to the public.

The members lived or came from Hamburg or worked there. Partisan affiliations were irrelevant. A total of 175 lectures were given, over half of which were guest speakers.

In the winter semester 2014/15, the Friday Society was dissolved after 27 years. A few months later, on November 10, 2015, Helmut Schmidt died.

Members of the Friday Society

Guest speaker

  • Bartholomäus Grill , German journalist, author and Africa expert of the time
  • Hans Küng , Swiss theologian, Roman Catholic priest and author.
  • Hubert Markl , President of the Max Planck Society, member of the Kuratorium der Zeit
  • Loki Schmidt , German pedagogue, botanist, nature and plant conservationist, as the wife of former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, host of the Friday Society
  • Wolf Singer , neurophysiologist and brain researcher
  • Richard von Weizsäcker , German politician (CDU), former Mayor of Berlin and Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The end of the Langenhorn "Friday Society" . Hamburger Abendblatt, abendblatt.de. October 6, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2015.
  2. ↑ Helmut Schmidt: Deepening - New Contributions to Understanding Our World. Minutes of the Friday Society. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 10.
  3. ↑ http://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/hamburg-nord/article205974393/Das-Ende-der-Langenhorner-Freitagsgesellschaft.html