The Anglo-German Foundation
How can modern industrial societies, increasingly inter-dependent, learn to coexist in a suitable environment, understand each other's different concepts of society? Can they avoid what Theodor Heuss called "the chain of misunderstandings firmly forged" which characterised so many of the past Anglo-German links and rivalries? This was a task for the Anglo-German Foundation for which a Royal Charter was granted by Her Majesty the Queen in 1974. The German Federal Government provided funds at the rate of DM 3 million per annum for the first five years, the British Government provided office accommodation and facilities. Today, both Britain and Germany are very different places from what they were in 1973, and the Foundation's work has moved with the time.
In its early days the Foundation focused mainly on Anglo-German comparisons on labour market and industrial relations issues, which more often than not produced 'German lessons for the British'. Many of the splendid German institutions created after World War Two - some of them with British help and advice - were scrutinised one by one and found to work rather better than their British counterparts. The Foundation played its part in raising awareness in Britain of, among other things, Germany's vocational training system, its relatively peaceful industry-based trades unions and its arrangements for worker participation and co-determination, commending them to the attention of British policy makers and thus helping to reshape Britain's own way of doing things.
Thirty years on, the talk in both our countries is as much about post-industrial as industrial society. Meanwhile, there has been a huge growth in the range of policy issues on which British and German policy-makers and researchers are working together.
This rich binational conversation does not mean that the Foundation's work is done; the spectacular recent growth in the readership of its reports demonstrates the contrary. But it has led the Foundation become more selective about the particular areas in which it can add most value.
Although the Foundation continues to address the wider agenda through its minor grants programme, it now concentrates its major resources on four priority topics of particular concern in both countries:
- Health Care Systems
- Work-Life Balance
- Employment and Social Policies for an Ageing Society
- Migration and the Labour Market
In July 2002 the Foundation's London team moved to new offices at number 34, Belgrave Square and resides now under the same roof as its colleagues at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the British–German Association, just a stone's throw from "an Embassy in Belgrave Square".
The Foundation's most important aim over the past 30 years however remains: bringing together of 'thinkers and doers' from the two countries - academic experts and practitioners, policy makers and opinion formers - to promote an informed cross-national exchange of views and opinions in its areas of interest. Every student of international affairs knows that lessons from one country cannot simply be transferred to another. But the large number of people whom the Foundation brought together during the past three decades were able to compare notes with their opposite numbers from the other country. Most found that the experience broadened their horizons, improved their decision-making and, dare we say it, proved highly enjoyable as well.
