Professor Widdig,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Winner of the Lufthansa Award for Excellence in German Studies,

Let me first of all express my pleasure at being here today to present the Lufthansa Award for Excellence in German Studies.

I was only too happy to accept Professor Widdig’s invitation to attend this ceremony today, to express, on behalf of Lufthansa German Airlines, my gratitude regarding your excellent work.

I would like to tell you, in the name of the many colleagues who will assuredly profit from the results of your efforts, how fundamentally important the exchange between the MIT students and Lufthansa German Airlines is to us.

In my opinion, the promotion of the German-American dialog remains one of our major tasks.

This is why I particularly salute Professor Widdig’s commitment to safeguarding and deepening the reciprocal understanding between the cultures, and in preserving and advancing the interest in Germany.

After all, it is your interest in the German language and culture, along with your professional and private contacts that arise because of your language skills, that will help influence the quality of German-American relations in the future.

Upon completing your studies, many of you will take on leading positions in economic, political and public life. Thanks to an initiative such as the MIT Germany Program, your needs regarding an internationally-directed education can be specifically addressed. You are learning German today, in order to use it later in your respective jobs.

And in my opinion, by relaying communicative skills, the language program of the MIT Germany Program is playing a major role in achieving this.

“Language is a nation’s mirror; when we look into this mirror a large relevant reflection of ourselves greets us”

I support this assumption by Schiller and purport that by being intimate with the German language, you will gain access to the German culture.

Ladies and Gentlemen I must however at this time confess something, while preparing this speech, I began to slightly ponder over the question whether there is A German culture if it really is mirrored by its language.

Let me explain to you my thoughts and recount the following small anecdote:

Some days ago I met with persons responsible for Personnel Marketing for various German companies, in order to discuss current work topics.

Among other things, we discussed specifically scrutinizing the offers and services of various online job brokers.

While rummaging through the numerous online advertisements, I observed the following:

Despite Germany’s unemployment problem, it is creating professions at an unprecedented rate. The pace of this profession-creating has been in fact so great, that several specialized dictionaries have been recently published.

“Name-lifting” the titles for these professions from English words makes it easy for Germans who speak English to comprehend, but others are perplexed. They require special dictionaries since nearly all of these names originated in the United States.

The only German words most often used are the articles: “der Contentmanager”, “der Innovationsmanager”, “der Fundraiser”, “der Senior Consultant Electronic Commerce”, and so on.

Others are hybrids such as “der Gagschreiber” or “der Gesundheitsmanager”.

Various professions are also striving to increase their prestige through “name-lifting”. Germany’s Hausmeisters have become “Facility Managers” and the country’s secretaries have become “Team Assistants”. This trend features both English names substituted for German ones, as well as German names translated from English ones.

A number of Germany’s professions are brand new. Take for example “Microtechnologist”; this is what several hundred young people will become by mid 2002.

This was only a small selection of the terms that attracted my attention in my current position as Director of Corporate Personnel Marketing.

This is however not the only area in which Anglicisms, meaning English words or English structures, have found entry into the German language.

In Germany, the vocabulary of many teenagers seems to be, in parts, largely made up of words such as ‘crazy’, ‘funky’ or ‘cool’ (which in Germany is equivalent to ‘great’ or ‘amazing’). Dates are no longer made but rather ‘geschedult’.

Sales agents working for Deutsche Telekom (the German phone company) ask their customers (diesen Satz komplett auf deutsch vorlesen) “Führen Sie immer noch Call-by-Call - Gespräche am Telefon oder haben Sie Ihren Anschluß schon auf Preselection umgestellt? Vielleicht hilft es Ihnen weiter, wenn Sie die Hotline der Telekom anrufen.”

It appears that the German’s pleasure in using Anglicisms is limitless

The former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said: “Languages are by far the most important vehicles of cultural evolution, and at the same time the most important element of national – and also personal – identity”.

Does this mean that the Germans no longer possess a national identity? Could your studying of the German language and culture therefore be futile since basically they no longer exist, and the rest is increasingly converging with the Anglo-American culture?

I will answer with a definite NO. The MIT German Studies program is by no means futile. Those of you who have already had the opportunity to complete an internship in Germany or who have traveled there, have most likely been able to very closely assure themselves of an existing German identity.

And exactly this identity also includes elements from the American culture.

Language diversity, meaning the methods to master conceptually – is the heaven that sparks scintillation.

Diversity, excitement, polarity – these are the elements with which humankind unfurls its prowess.

And that is why it is so important that you are contributing to the mixing and the exchange of both cultures, by taking part in the MIT Germany Program.

You have been able to unfurl your prowess in an impressive way in your assignments, which I would now like to honor today.It is my great pleasure to present the Lufthansa Award for Excellence in German Studies 2002 to ......