The post of top US diplomat in Germany has been vacant for more than a year and a half. Now Amy Gutmann is supposed to come to the Spree. A portrait of a special woman.
It’s been a while since an ambassador resided in the massive American mission not far from the Brandenburg Gate. The last incumbent, Richard Grenell, acted more like Donald Trumps governor in a colony. When the exFox-News-Moderator left Berlin in June 2020, the pain of parting was limited on both sides. Since then, the top post in one of the most important diplomatic missions USA orphaned.
That should change soon. After months of deadlock, the Senate has completed the appeal process for Joe Biden’s nominee Amy Gutmann. This clears the way for the confirmation of the 72-year-old.
US President Biden and university professor Gutmann are close friends
With Gutmann, a confidant of the American President is coming to Germany who differs greatly from her predecessor Grenell in terms of origin, habitus and world view. The current president of the elite University of Pennsylvania has German-Jewish roots, has received numerous awards as a political scientist and published a book ten years ago with the telling title: “The spirit of compromise – why it is necessary for governing and why election campaigns need it”. undermine” written.
This is conspicuously in line with the President’s convictions, which have taken office to unite a divided America and to revitalize damaged relations with allies. Biden, who lives a few miles across the Pennsylvania border in Wilmington, Delaware, and Gutmann have known each other for a long time. The university professor stood by him during the difficult time after the death of his son Beau in 2015 and “saved my sanity,” Biden once said. After the end of his term as Vice President of the United States, Gutmann appointed the politician to an honorary professorship, with which he earned a total of $ 900,000.
Personal relationship to Germany
The academic CV of the diplomat is flawless: After studying at the London School of Economics, she received her doctorate in 1976 from the top university Harvard. In 2004 she was appointed President of the University of Philadelphia, which is also one of the top US universities. Gutmann has written numerous books and was recognized by the magazine in 2018 Fortune named as one of the 50 Greatest Leaders in the World.
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Gutmann has a very personal connection to her new location: her father Kurt, who was an orthodox Jew, had to flee from Feuchtwangen in Central Franconia in 1934. Because the USA refused him asylum, he first went to India and set up a metal factory there. On a trip to New York after the war, he met his future wife Beatrice. He moved to Brooklyn, where Amy Gutmann was born a year later.
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