Mister Swoboda,
Doctor Frieling,
Consul General Corbett,
Mister Gross,
Mister von Uexküll,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Society is in a process of change. That is the new normal. Alterations in the world of business and in people’s daily lives happen all the time. We have to learn how to deal with the process of change. We must embrace change but also mould it. This calls for abiding values that serve as anchor and compass for the individual.

If we help young people learn fundamental lessons and acquire knowledge, if we give them a firm foundation and show that they have talents they were not aware of, it does more than simply boost their self-confidence; we are helping them to handle their skills and knowledge of modern matters in a responsible manner.

Today we are celebrating the opening of an extension that will give this school more choices. And it is, moreover, a well crafted building project. The design dovetails neatly with the existing architecture. The International School is repeating a tried and tested pattern in opening this new three-storey west wing with its new classrooms and a sports hall. It is, nevertheless, a new adventure.

But at this institute, whenever you embark on a new project, you hold fast to the values and educational objectives you have defined for your school: internationality, responsibility and the pleasure of learning.
It is not enough just to talk about values they must be part of daily life. We need to create conditions in which they can be experienced, in which an understanding of values is reached by discussing and thinking about them.

The International School of Hamburg (ISH) does exactly that. This school sets great store on learning by doing.
From the autumn onwards a new style of teaching will be introduced in the eighth grade; the new model is called project based learning.

You may wonder what that means. It’s quite simple: because the world is not naturally divided into compartments, and subjects overlap and flow into each other, project based learning deals with issues that cross the borders of many disciplines. This school is one of the world’s pioneers of the constructivist model of learning. It is one of the things that make the ISH a very special school.
At its founding, the International School of Hamburg was the first of its kind in Germany. To this day, it remains the only educational facility in Hamburg to be accredited by the Council of International Schools. For more than fifty years it has been meeting not only the needs of international families, but also families from Hamburg with an international bias; families that want their children to attend a first-rate all-day school that will take them from grade one through to grade twelve.

This school, with more than 750 pupils from over 50 different countries, is a mosaic of the nations. With about one hundred highly qualified teachers and staff from all parts of the world, it is possible to create dynamic, vibrant learning situations. The staff help their pupils along the way to gaining the International Baccalaureate that can open the doors to top national and international universities. The teachers’ educational methods are based on imparting values to their charges, thus enabling pupils to realize their full potential and develop an understanding of other people. They impart freedom of thought and the joy of learning. And in so doing, they help their pupils to become open-minded citizens of the world who are prepared to accept responsibility.

As I said, the ISH was the first international school in Germany. That is not really a surprise, because a fresh wind always blows in Hamburg. This bustling port metropolis attracts companies and workers from all over the world business flourishes here, where multiculturalism is alive and well.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
As a growing, dynamic business location, Hamburg needs skilled workers: and in our globalized world, these are more and more likely to come from other countries. Almost a third of Hamburg’s population has an immigrant background, considerably more than the national average of 18 per cent.

Cosmopolitan and colourful: that’s Hamburg. Over 35,000 foreign groups and companies have offices here. International firms such as Airbus and Unilever employ experts and skilled workers from all over the world. Facebook opened its German branch here in 2010 and Google is also represented in the city. Hamburg is Germany’s capital of digital gaming and home to some 4,000 digital media companies.

Many companies like to send their skilled workers and executive staff to Hamburg for a few years. And they are happy to come, even if they have children because there is an excellent international school in the city. Experience has shown that if parents who have enrolled their children in an international school have to move elsewhere, they will want to live in another city with such a school. The ISH is therefore also an institution that influences parents’ career moves.

For this reason the ISH and its future development is so important to Hamburg’s business community. The Senate of Hamburg recognizes this and has contributed 2.4 million euros to this building.

I should like to address the following remarks to the pupils:

This celebration is really being held for you. This is your school so make a difference, make it special. Breathe life into the ideas and principles that people are talking about today.
Some of you will be very keen students, but there may be others who are unenthusiastic, or have not yet settled down here. That can happen. But I believe that everyone who has attended a school like this will come to feel that it is a rather special place to be. You are being offered a great opportunity that is also a privilege. However, the benefits of this school also impose an obligation on you. We hope you will become aware that the responsible attitudes taught here are not only about responsibility towards yourself; we want you to take responsibility for others, the local community and wider society in whichever country you live.

The people who teach, learn and live in a school generate the atmosphere that it radiates. My impression is that this extension is a golden opportunity to make this school even more vibrant. A school that every ex-pupil will remember with affection long after they have grown up perhaps by then living in a completely different part of the world.

After all, the International School of Hamburg has an internationally recognized curriculum that enables students to smoothly transfer to one of more than a thousand schools across the world, where they can continue and finish their education.

The new and the tried and trusted we have wonderful reasons to celebrate today.

Thank you very much.

Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.