Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftspreis
Living Democracy
„Rarely has it been so clear: Humanity and its planet need change. For peace and freedom. For the environment and climate. For equal opportunities and social balance“, says Uwe Jean Heuser, jury chairman of the Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftspreis (Helmut Schmidt Future Prize). For this reason, the three partners – DIE ZEIT, the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation) and THE NEW INSTITUTE – are awarding the Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftspreis for innovative achievements in the fields of democracy, society and technology to an international personality for the first time this year. The prize will be awarded in a closed ceremony on 28 June 2022 in the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall.
The „Zukunftsfestival“ (Future Festival), which the three cooperation partners are organizing as a supporting program for the Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftspreis, is open to all interested parties. It will encourage curiosity through innovative and lively events in the fields of ecology, digitalization, civil society, democracy and the welfare state, and is a special part of the „Lange Nacht der ZEIT“ (Long Night of DIE ZEIT), which will once again be celebrated in Hamburg with a large audience on 2 July 2022.
The Prize
Helmut Schmidt understood democracy as a struggle for the best possible solutions. He trusted in the strength of rational elements and was convinced that a compromise had to be reached at the end of intensive debates on political issues. According to Schmidt’s classical understanding, political decisions were taken in parliaments by democratically legitimized parties.
At the same time, Schmidt cultivated an exchange of views and debate across milieus with broad sections of society, and „trust“ for him carried immense significance as a political category. He attached great importance to exploring complex problems and illuminating them in a well-founded manner from different perspectives. This explains his thirst for knowledge and his openness to new and interdisciplinary approaches. Schmidt recognized early on that the future issues of the late 20th century could not be resolved within the narrow confines of the nation-state. Rather, he was convinced that European answers and global initiatives were required.
In the future, the Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftspreis will be presented annually to an international personality whose significant work stands for innovative achievements in democracy and the common good.
„Politics is not simply thinking, but also acting.“
(Helmut Schmidt, 1969)
The award winner 2022
Vanessa Nakate is the first awardee of the new Helmut Schmidt Future Prize.
This is how the jury explains their choice: „Vanessa Nakate is one of the leading voices for climate justice, a voice of the young generation, of the future, of the Global South. She is advocating for Uganda, Africa and beyond, for a large part of the planet that is particularly hard hit by climate change and least culpable for it. She is courageous, innovative, responsible, and represents many activists who are defining a new global common good. We look forward to learning much more from Vanessa Nakate in the future, and we are pleased and respectful to award her the Helmut Schmidt Future Prize 2022.“
Vanessa Nakate is the founder of the Africa-based Rise-Up movement. The 25-year-old began demonstrating for climate in her hometown of Kampala in January 2019 after witnessing droughts and floods devastate communities in Uganda. Today, she leads international campaigns to raise awareness about the effects of climate change, which are already being particularly evident in Africa. In 2020, Vanessa Nakate was named a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals and was included by the BBC in its list of 100 Women of the Year and 100 Most Influential Young Africans. In 2021, Nakate published her autobiography, „Our House Has Long Been on Fire: Why Africa’s Voice Must Be Heard in the Climate Crisis.“
The members of the jury
Francesca Bria is the President of the Italian National Innovation Fund CDP Venture Capital. She is an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL in London and a member of the „New European Bauhaus“ Round Table established by the European Commission. She is also a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Economic and Societal Impact of Research and Innovation (ESIR). Francesca Bria leads the DECODE project on data sovereignty in Europe, is a senior adviser to the United Nations (UN-Habitat) on digital cities and digital rights and was formerly Chief Digital Technology and Innovation Officer of the City of Barcelona, Spain.
Francesca Bria has a PhD in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Imperial College, London. As Senior Programme Lead at Nesta, the British Innovation Agency, she led the D-CENT project, the biggest European Project on digital democracy and cryptocurrencies. She has taught at several universities in the UK and Italy and has advised governments, public and private organizations on Technology and Innovation policy and its socio-economic and environmental impact.
Francesca Bria has been listed in the Top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes Magazine, and in the World’s top 20 most influential people in digital government by Apolitical. Francesca Bria has been awarded Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
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Carsten Brosda has been Senator of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg since February 2017. In November 2020, he was elected President of the German Theater and Orchestra Association.
Since July 2018 he has been co-chair of the Commission for Media and Network Policy of the SPD party executive, and since November 2019 he has been chair of the Social Democracy Cultural Forum. He was Hamburg’s State Secretary in the Department of Culture, State Secretary for Media and Digitization in the Senate Chancellery and the Senate’s Media Officer. In Berlin, he previously worked as head of the communications department of the SPD party executive and deputy head of the management and planning team at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. He studied journalism and political science at the University of Dortmund, completed traineeship as a newspaper intern at the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and wrote his doctoral thesis on „Discursive Journalism“. He regularly publishes on socio-political topics. His current books deal with changes in public discourse and the media landscape as well as issues of social cohesion.
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Christoph Gottschalk is Executive Director of THE NEW INSTITUTE and has extensive experience in advising international executives, companies and non-profit organizations at the interface of politics, business, media, science and culture. Until 2019, he was partner and head of the Berlin office of Kekst CNC. Previously, he led the Hamburg office of Russell Reynold Associates with a focus on global, senior mandates in the areas of non-profit, public policy, government affairs and media. From 2003 to 2005 he was the German Adviser to the French Prime Minister and a member of his Cabinet at Matignon. Christoph Gottschalk sits on advisory boards of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Bucerius Law School and is a member of the board of trustees of the Hamburg Overseas Club.
He is also a Senior Adviser to 365 Sherpas. He studied Political Science and European Public Policy (MSc) in Berlin, London and Aix-en-Provence. He is a graduate of the „Studium Generale“ of the Leibniz-Kolleg in Tübingen and is a certified systemic coach and organisational consultant.
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Uwe Jean Heuser is Head of the Green Department of the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. He studied economics in Bonn and Berkeley (USA), completed his PhD in Cologne and acieved a master’s degree at Harvard. He is one of Germany’s most renowned business journalists and non-fiction authors.
At DIE ZEIT, he was a co-founder of the Reform Workshop, which searched worldwide for new reform ideas from 1997 to 2000 and also worked internally to open up the newspaper. He was then head of the business department until 2021, when he co-founded, developed and has since headed GREEN, ZEIT’s new sustainability department. From 2015 onwards, he additionally edited the magazine ZEIT Geld (ZEIT Money). Today, he is the editor of the quarterly magazine ZEIT für Unternehmer (ZEIT for entrepreneurs), which he co-developed in 2018.
In 2004 he received the Herbert Quandt Media Prize for the collection of articles „Creators and Destroyers“. In 2011, he was awarded the Dietrich Oppenberg Media Prize by Stiftung Lesen.
His book „Humanomics“ won the getAbstract International Book Award as German Business Book of the Year 2008. „Anders Denken“ was shortlisted for the German Business Book Award in 2013. His latest book, „Capitalism Included“, describes how we can survive the battle against the populists.
In addition to his journalistic work, Uwe Jean Heuser has lectured at Harvard, New York University and St. Gallen. Today he is an honorary professor of economics at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and is involved in several foundations.
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Max Hollein was appointed Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018 and is responsible for guiding the museum’s artistic vision and for all of its programming, research, and collection initiatives. He oversees the Met’s curatorial, conservation and scientific departments, exhibition and acquisition activities, institutional support, education and public outreach, as well as libraries, digital projects, publications, imaging and design.
Prior to joining the Met, he was Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where his tenure was characterized by visionary programming, pioneering acquisitions, and rigorous fiscal management. Previously he simultaneously led the Schirn Kunsthalle, the Städel Museum, and the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main, as Director and CEO, all of which experienced significant growth and increased attendance during his tenure.
Born in Vienna, Max Hollein studied at the University of Vienna (Master of Art History) and at the Vienna University of Economics (Master of Business Administration). He began his career at New York’s Guggenheim Museum as Chief of Staff of the Director and six years later assumed his leadership role in Frankfurt.
Max Hollein has published and lectured widely and has organized a number of major exhibitions in modern and contemporary art. He is a member of supervisory and advisory boards of major cultural institutions worldwide, including the National Gallery in Prague and the Neue Galerie in New York. In 2009 he was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and the Arts. In 2016, he received the Goethe Badge of Honor, among other international awards.
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Nina Wienkoop has been Programme Director for Democracy and Society at the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung since 2020. Most recently, she was responsible for a research and consulting project on diversity-conscious organisational development in youth engagement at the Institute of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). Previously, Nina Wienkoop was a research associate at the Center for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies at the Faculty of Law of the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), a member of the third-party funding coordination and project management team of the Transatlantic Postdoctoral Fellowship (TAPIR) of the Science and Politics Foundation and a lecturer at the Georg-August University Göttingen. She is a member and former board member of the Institute for Protest and Movement Research (ipb) and initiator of the working group on movements and institutions. As a freelancer, she gives various lectures, holds workshops, training sessions and advises, among others, the German Foreign Office, the journalists.network, the parliamentary group Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Federal Association of Diakonie Germany
Nina Wienkoop studied political science and ethnology at the Universities of Konstanz, Göttingen, Galway and Berlin and received her PhD in Political Sciences from Leuphana University in Lüneburg in 2020 with research visits to Burkina Faso and Senegal. She has worked as a visiting scholar at the Scoula Normale Superiore Florence, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Dakar, the Centre pour la Gouvernance Democratique Burkina Faso and at the Foundation for Science and Politics (SWP) in the project „Urban Spaces.Protests.World Politics“.
© BKHS Michael Zapf
Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and since October 2020 the new Director of the Department Transformations of Democracy. He has been awarded the 2019 Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin and was Karl W. Deutsch Visiting Professor at the WZB from 2019 to 2020.
His book „How Democracies Die“ (with Steven Levitsky, Crown, 2018), a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into more than fifteen languages. His book, „Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy,“ an account of Europe’s historical democratization, won the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations, as well as three other awards including the American Sociological Association’s 2018 Barrington Moore Award for the best book in comparative historical sociology.
© Annette HornischerThe Initiators
The Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung commemorates one of the most important 20th-century German statesmen. As a future-oriented think tank, it addresses issues that also interested Schmidt, the pioneering thinker. Three overarching programmes are at the heart of the foundation’s work programme: 1. Europe and International Politics, 2. Global Markets and Social Justice and 3. Democracy and Society. The foundation was established in 2017 by the German Bundestag as one of six non-partisan foundations commemorating politicians. It is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
THE NEW INSTITUTE is an Institute of Advanced Study and a platform for shaping social change. Its mission is to develop visions for fundamentally reconfigured societies. THE NEW INSTITUTE combines academic rigour with innovative practice to inspire, promote and implement societal change. They aim to close the gap between insight and action, by bringing together academics from different disciplines with activists, journalists, artists, politicians and entrepreneurs.
DIE ZEIT is the heart of the ZEIT publishing group: With a circulation of more than 600.000 copies sold and a reach of more than two million readers, the weekly newspaper is Germany’s leading quality newspaper. It is a medium of orientation and a platform for democratic discourse in our society. With ZEIT ONLINE, the ZEIT publishing group has one of the largest offerings for sophisticated online journalism in its portfolio. In addition to the newspaper, the website and successful magazines for various target groups, DIE ZEIT and ZEIT ONLINE also produce numerous podcasts with a wide reach.
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