Gustav Stresemann Institute – Conference Center and Hotel
The Gustav Stresemann Institute (GSI) was founded in 1951 by Berthold Finkelstein.
A relief bust at the main entrance commemorates this outstanding pioneer of political education in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Finkelstein, born in 1925, was the son of chemist Dr. Hans Finkelstein and was declared a “half-Jew” under the „Nuremberg Race Laws“, which resulted in him being forced into hard labor.
There, as Berthold Finkelstein later recalled, he met political prisoners from other countries, such as France and Poland, and became a “European.” After liberation, Finkelstein organized the first international encounters with students from neighboring European countries, because “international educational work began after the war in the form of international encounters.”
The student engagement became the starting point for ongoing educational work. When the GSI headquarters in Bergisch Gladbach was no longer available, the institute succeeded in acquiring the site of a former agricultural research station in Bonn from the federal government, brought about by a unanimous (!) decision of the plenary session of the German Bundestag.
Gustav Stresemann, after whom the institute is named, deliberately places the GSI in the tradition of Franco-German reconciliation. Like few other German foreign policy makers, Stresemann made a name for himself in the process of Franco-German understanding after the First World War, even in the face of massive political resistance. On August 13, 1923, Stresemann was appointed Reich Chancellor and Foreign Minister by Friedrich Ebert. While Stresemann’s chancellorship ended on November 30, 1923, he remained Foreign Minister in seven further cabinets until his death on October 3, 1929.
Stresemann successfully pursued the goal of ending Germany’s isolation in foreign policy. Germany’s admission to the League of Nations in 1926 symbolized the new role of the German Reich. Together with his French counterpart Aristide Briand, Gustav Stresemann was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
Find more information here: https://www.gsi-bonn.de/en/