hier&there Journalism Award

Enlarge image Nichoas Potter talking to Mrs. Boomgarden (left) (© German Embassy) Beyond official relations Britons and Germans from all walks of life are creating living links between Britain and Germany. The hier&there Journalism Award highlights these relations. The three winners Nicholas Potter, Andreas Wolff and Steve Evans not only told a story on what hier&there is about, but are themselves living examples of today’s vibrant British-German relations. The awards were presented by the German Ambassador Georg Boomgarden.

Nicholas described how British musicians have been influenced by a unique German musical genre, electronica, which sprang up after the fall of the Berlin Wall and was nurtured by the creative energies of the reunited capital. As a German literature and history student from London currently studying in Berlin, his insider view of both music scenes is a joy to read. Raised in Reading, he first got to know the twin town Düsseldorf on an exchange programme and later as a language assistant, improving his German. Enlarge image Andreas Wolff talking to the German Ambassador (right) (© German Embassy)

Andreas told the story of a Scotsman who, at the age of 17, found a dead German sailor washed up on the shore of his home town in the last days of  World War Two. He made it his personal quest to track down the family of the soldier and tell them under what circumstances he died. Andreas, born and raised in Berlin fell in love with Scotland on his fist visit aged 14 and kept returning until he eventually decided to settle down there. He is now working as a journalist for, among others, the Gaelic language TV channel BBC Alba.

Steve wrote an entertaining article about German versus British manners and how ‘directness’ can be perceived as being rude and ‘friendliness’ as dishonest. Steve is the BBC's Berlin correspondent. Before that, he was the BBC's North America Business Correspondent, based in New York, and then the presenter of the Business Daily program for the World Service.

Updated: 16 November 2011