From October 2018 until November 2019 the German government sponsored “Deutschlandjahr USA – The Year of German-American Friendship”, working together with the Association of German Industries and other partners, such as the American Council on Germany, to organize various initiatives, presentations, and events under the motto “WunderbarTogether” with the aim to strengthen the transatlantic partnership by spreading knowledge about Germany within the United States. Since 1952 the American Council on Germany (ACG) has been one of the strongest pillars supporting transatlantic friendship and working to provide knowledge about the two countries and build trust between them. At the invitation of the ACG last year, I had the opportunity to speak in Chicago and to participate in a series of Community Town Halls in Boise, Salt...
While we figure out how to increase German capital investment into venture, which policy changes would help to improve access of German startups to American venture capital regarding early-growth capital access, especially in ‘Made-in-Germany’ deep tech topics? Between 2015 and 2018 US investment into German venture capital-backed companies totaled USD 3.7 billion. During the same time frame German investment into German venture capital-backed companies was USD 3 billion. Given that the US venture capital market is much more developed than its German little sibling, this may come to no surprise. However, VC firms traditionally invest a large share of their capital into their respective home markets. But looking at capital flow in the other direction, from German venture investors into US-based VC-backed startups, an astonishing...
Over the last 200 years, Liberalism has been a stunning success story. It brought forward liberty and prosperity for the many instead of privileges for the few. Yet, today liberal thinking and liberal politics are under siege. To regain public support, they need a profound update, offering convincing answers to the major challenges our societies are facing: globalization and digital revolution, climate change and global migration, growing inequality and fear of the future. Liberal democracy is in trouble. If we compare the current political landscape with the liberal awakening of 1989 and the early 90th, when the Soviet Empire collapsed and millions of people all around the globe reclaimed their right to liberty, the situation couldn’t be more different. This was the time when Francis...
by Rick Locker October 15, 2019 N/E Knox County, On the Grow A 20-person delegation of Germans and Americans working in education and economic and workforce development visited Pellissippi State Community College and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Knoxville as part of the American Council on Germany’s initiative, “Transatlantic Cities of Tomorrow: Digitalization and the Future of Work.” The project is a three-year exchange program in which leaders in small- and medium-sized cities in Germany and the U.S. work to develop solutions to common challenges resulting from digitalization and to identify innovative approaches to turning these challenges into opportunities for their local workforces and economies. The delegation included educators, workforce development specialists, information technology experts and representatives from economic development organizations, business incubators and local governments from...
The fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t start in Berlin in November 1989. It started months earlier … in places like Turkey, Poland, and Hungary. In 1989, The Wall Street Journal/Europe’s editorial page, where I worked, was uniquely positioned to cover the events that unfolded in that period. Our editor, Seth Lipsky, had been based in Europe for years, on both the editorial and news sides of The Journal. His wife, Amity Shlaes, a features writer and editor for the page, was in the midst of writing a book on West Germany, and our colleague Peter Keresztes had walked his family out of Budapest in 1956, over the mountains into Austria to escape that communist regime. I was the junior staffer of the office, about...
