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Helmut
Schäfer |
Helmut
Schäfer
former German State
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Wednesday
September 20, 7 PM
Shaw Hall, Melvin and Dollie Younts Conference Center
Furman University
The
Riley Institute at Furman welcomed Helmut Schäfer to Furman
University on September 30, 2009. He delivered an address, "Germany
and American Foreign Policy in the Obama Era" on Wednesday,
September 30 at 7 p.m. in Shaw Hall, Melvin and Dollie Younts Conference
Center.
Helmut
Schäfer was
born 1933 in Mainz, Germany and has been living in Berlin since
1995. Schäfer studied the German and English languages and
literature, and American literature and history at the Universities
of Mainz, Innsbruck (Austria), and in Dayton, Ohio. After his final
academic examinations,
he taught English and German at colleges in the German state of
Rhineland-Palatinate.
He has been
a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) since 1964. For many
years, he was a member of the state and national executive boards
of his party and chairman of the FDP national foreign affairs study
group. In 1967, Schäfer was appointed as a civil servant to
the State Ministry of Education. From 1977 until 1998, he was a
member of the German Parliament (Bundestag) and from 1978 until
1987, he was an FDP spokesman in the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
In 1987, he was appointed State Minister of Foreign Affairs for
Germany. From 1990 until 1999, Schäfer was the Vice President
of the International Group of Democratic and Liberal Parties. He
also represented the German government in the Council of the European
Union, the principle decision-making institute of the European Union.
After his retirement, he spent several years lecturing about foreign
politics at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Minister Schäfer
is specially engaged in Central American, Middle Eastern, and Southern
African conflicts. He has traveled all over the world to places
including Europe, the US, the Soviet Union, almost all of Africa,
Latin America and numerous Asian countries. While traveling, he
has had contact with numerous heads of State and leading politicians,
such as Indira Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat,
and Yitzhak Rabin. In addition to the General Secretaries of the
United Nations, Minister Schäfer has also met with many American
politicians, including Joe Biden, Richard Lugar and Lee Hamilton.
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