Savannah's International Business News Source
Thu, Aug. 19, 2010
Trevor Williams

Consul General Lutz Görgens mentioned sustainability and global warming at a reception Monday night, but Germany's top diplomat in the Southeast wasn't talking about the environment.

Standing on a brick step at the back of his residence off West Paces Ferry Road, he welcomed a group of young scholars from the city of Nuremberg, jokingly calling them warriors in the fight against “global aging.”

Some 160 students applied to become Nuremberg ambassadors through the city's Future Leaders Program. Among those, 50 were invited for interviews and 15 were ultimately selected.

The eight-day visit reciprocates a trip to Nuremberg by 13 Fulton County youths, who traveled there in July 2009 as part of Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves' Global Youth Leadership program. Exchanges among young people are integral to sustaining sister-city ties when the current activists have faded from the picture, Dr. Görgens said.

The consul general called the 12-year-old Nuremberg-Atlanta partnership “arguably the most vivid, the most productive and the most encouraging that we celebrate here in the American Southeast with Germany.”

Shean Atkins, who chairs the Atlanta-Nuremberg sister city committee, said the relationship “is based on friendship and must be sustained, and the only way we can do that is through these youth.”

Harald Riedel, Nuremberg's chief financial officer, is accompanying the group on his third trip to Atlanta since 1999.

He brought greetings from Nuremberg Lord Mayor Ulrich Maly, reminisced about prior Atlanta visits lauded the achievements of the partnership based on mutual human and civil rights emphases of the cities. See Mr. Maly discuss how Nuremberg deals with its past

Mr. Riedel specifically recognized Teri Simmons, a partner in the immigration practice at Arnall Golden Gregory LLP who chairs the Atlanta Sister Cities Commission and chaired the Atlanta-Nuremberg committee for years.

“Our partnership is only as strong as the people behind it,” said Mr. Riedel, who was slated to meet Tuesday with Roosevelt Council, CFO of the City of Atlanta, as well as Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and City Councilman Kwanza Hall of District 2.

The young Nuremberg leaders have a schedule full of tourist activities, cultural experiences and meetings with executives from Nuremberg companies in Atlanta, including Dirk Ebener, CEO of NürnbergMesse, and S.A. De Kock, managing partner, Rödl & Partner USA.

They will also meet with Georgia Department of Economic Development leaders and Fulton County officials.

The trip will stoke the partnership further and lead to a personal “metamorphosis” of the Nuremberg students, said Mr. Eaves, who launched the Global Youth Leadership program three years ago, taking students first to South Africa.

“I have seen young people have the opportunity to go overseas and come back a changed person,” he said at the reception.

Follow the Future Leaders' blog (in German) here.

For more information about the program, contact Kathleen Röber at the German-American Institute in Nuremberg by email at Roeber@dai-nuernberg.de.

Recent coverage on Atlanta-Nuremberg ties:

Atlanta, Meet Nuremberg, Your German Sister

With 18 Sister Cities, Atlanta Still Lacks International Department

Related Countries: Germany
3:11 p.m. August 20, 2010
SandySpringsyOga:
Please know that the correct spelling is: Nürnberg [one may also spell it Nuernberg]
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