Abraham Geiger Preis 2008

Speech by Federal Minister Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble
in honour of
Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan
 on the occasion of
conferring the Abraham Geiger Prize
on His Royal Highness
on 4 March 2008 in Berlin

(Check against delivery)

"Eureka!" – or in English, "I've got it!" – was reputedly the word Archimedes exclaimed on solving a particularly knotty scientific problem. Human beings have been blessed with the ability to pass through the world with eyes open, ask questions and, in their thirst for knowledge, seek the answers.

Some questions are as old as humankind itself. They have been repeatedly asked anew by people from all cultures, nations, and religions. These are the big questions about the divine and the ultimate, but also about our own origins and future, and how people live with one another.

The answers to these questions may be more or less controversial. However, Douglas Adams' answer in his science fiction classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy may prove a sobering thought to the one or other of us. In his book, a dedicated high-performance computer called Deep Thought calculates the answer to the question of questions, namely – and I quote – "…the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything". After seven and a half million years of calculation, the computer announces its eagerly awaited answer:  "Forty-two".

That answer may not be exactly satisfying but it is completely harmless. The number 42 can hardly provide a reason for militant, nationalist or extremist groups to feel superior to others or suppress them, destroy cultural monuments or sow the seeds of war and violence. The situation only becomes alarming when people believe they have found ultimate answers that exclude others with different beliefs from the community. At that point, freedom and diversity, and hence the basis of a life in common, are in danger.

The terrible attacks on 11 September 2001 made many people aware of a new burgeoning global threat to our peaceful lives. In a newspaper article published soon after the attacks, you Prince Hassan yourself indicated the course that the world community now has to follow. You wrote: "We need to leave behind, without regret, those closed societies that have established their understanding on principles of superiority and ideological ascendancy.“ Your words have weight: hardly anyone else knows both the theory and practice of Muslims, Jews and Christians living together as well as you do.

You expressly support Yehudi Menuhin's suggestion of establishing an Assembly of Cultures as a potential future platform for global dialogue and a forum for identifying the values, goals and visions that we all share. Such discussions may sometimes be difficult but they are vital for a free and secure society, as I can testify from my own experience with the German Conference on Islam, which admittedly takes place within a somewhat smaller frame. We have to try and establish commonalities on the global, national and local levels, and free ourselves from prejudices and enemy stereotypes.

In your activities, Prince Hassan, you have dedicated yourself to the big questions in life, for example, the question of justice, tolerance, sustainability, and global responsibility. You have not only given key impulses to a dialogue of cultures but also offered new ideas on sustainable energy policies. In this field too, you may well have found yourself saying "Eureka!" more than once.

For example, within the DESERTEC project, you have been calling for a far-reaching energy partnership between Europe, Africa and the Near East. Your plan foresees using the deserts to generate solar energy, with just a fraction of the Sahara's surface area needed to satisfy Europe's thirst for energy. Might you here have been carried away by your imagination? Far from it. Two studies commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment have confirmed the feasibility of your idea.

Your inspiring cosmopolitanism, your intellectual openness and your engaging personal manner have led you to become a universally valued partner in dialogue on pressing global concerns. You began your academic career in Christ Church, a unique Oxford institution. Christ Church is not only a university college but also a Cathedral Church and, for centuries, a place of dialogue between academia and religion. There you learnt to balance the attachment to tradition and the fascination of the new. And you would not have been a true Oxford undergraduate if you had not also taken the chance to look beyond your own subject's backyard – something, incidentally, that also characterised, in his own way, the Cambridge student Douglas Adams.

You are in your element in thinking in terms of the larger picture. Until recently, you were the President of the Club of Rome, an organisation that is home to sustainable thought in global terms. As a Board Member of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, and the founder of the International Cultures Foundation and a member of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, you highlight the commonalities of culture and religion and not, as so many others do, the differences.

You have written no less than seven books – which is certainly far from the norm for a homo politicus. But then it is also far from the norm for the scion of a Hashemite royal house to have mastered not only many other languages but also biblical Hebrew, to be able to read German and count among his many honorary academic degrees a doctorate honoris causa from the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Tübingen (2001). By the way, a helicopter pilot's licence and a 7th Dan black belt in Taekwondo are also similarly far from the norm.

Today, in commemoration of the great liberal Jewish thinker Abraham Geiger, we are honouring Prince Hassan as "a voice for global sustainability, reconciliation and inter-religious dialogue“. Abraham Geiger managed to successfully combine a strong faith with tolerance and academic freedom. Hence, it was no coincidence that he became the founder of modern Koran studies. Geiger was also a modern man of faith in not ascribing a particular role to any one religion as a chosen faith. Moreover, he astutely differentiated between universal religious values and the specific commandments and laws of one's own religion.

Figures such as Abraham Geiger and Prince El Hassan bin Talal show us the possible shape of a fruitful dialogue between Islam, the Jewish faith and Christianity. Only if such an exchange of ideas succeeds will our societies be open to migrants with other religions, cultures and ethnicities in their midst.

The Lebanese author Amin Maalouf once said: "The hosting county is neither a blank nor a finished page, but a page in the process of being written". His words succinctly summarise a crucial insight: migration also changes the hosting countries; migrants play their part in writing the screenplay of a receiving country's future development. And if it all works out, they enrich their new home with the skills and abilities they bring with them.

To prepare the ground for this, we need figures such as Prince Hassan. May your work long continue to be our inspiration!