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Global Challenges – Order and RespoAnsibility
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
There is no guarantee, of course, that such efforts will be successful or help to achieve a peaceful resolution to the world’s conflicts. One thing is certain, however, which is that if we want to preserve the opportunities for reaching understanding in all of these conflicts, then cooperation with and between civil societies plays an ever more decisive role. I am grateful to the German cultural and educational institutions for dedicating themselves to this key task together with the Federal Foreign Office. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks especially to the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, our oldest cultural mediator, for doing such important work for the cause of peace in the midst of growing uncertainty and disintegrating orders, thereby remaining true to its original mission statement in the best conceivable way.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, born in Detmold in 1956, studied law and worked for a number of years as an academic assistant at Giessen University before entering the world of politics in the early 1990s. He headed Gerhard Schröder’s personal office in the government of Land Lower Saxony and was Head of the State Chancellery. Following the change of federal government in 1998, he was appointed as State Secretary, becoming Head of the Federal Chancellery soon afterwards. He helped to spearhead important reform projects of the Social Democrat/Green coalition government, such as the decision to phase out nuclear energy and the Agenda 2010 programme. He was Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Grand Coalition from 2005, and also Deputy Chancellor from 2007. From 2009 to 2013, he chaired the SPD parliamentary group and was leader of the opposition at the German Bundestag before returning to the Foreign Office as the Minister in December 2013.