W. Michael Blumenthal receives honorary citizenship of Berlin

"This honorary citizenship is a wonderful appreciation of everything that Michael Blumenthal has done for Berlin and Germany, and will inspire us in our future work," says Peter Schäfer, Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. W. Michael Blumenthal will be Berlin's 118th citizen of honor. The last person to receive the tribute was Federal President Joachim Gauck, in November 2014. Honorary citizenship is the city's highest accolade. In agreement with the Berlin House of Representatives, the Senate awards it to individuals who have rendered outstanding services to the city.

W. Michael Blumenthal's career

W. Michael Blumenthal was born in 1926 in Oranienburg, near Berlin. When he was three years old, the family moved to Berlin. In 1939 they were able to escape to Shanghai, where they survived the war. In 1947, W. Michael Blumenthal emigrated to the United States, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1952. In the 1960s, he moved from business into politics, serving in the State Department from 1961 to 1967 as advisor on trade to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Ten years as president and then chairman of the board with Bendix Corporation followed, before President Jimmy Carter appointed him Secretary of the Treasury in 1977. In 1979, W. Michael Blumenthal left his political office and returned to the world of business.

In the 1990s, he became increasingly interested in the history of German Jews. For his book The Invisible Wall: 300 Years of a German-Jewish Family, published in 1998, he researched the life stories of many of his forebears. His memoirs, Around the World in Eighty Years: My Life, appeared with Propyläen in 2010.

Part of the city's history

It was in 1997, at the peak of disputes over the separate status of the Jewish Museum and how to use the spectacular extension built by Daniel Libeskind, that W. Michael Blumenthal was appointed Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. On January 1, 1999, the museum finally achieved its long-sought independence from the Stiftung Stadtmuseum (City Museum Foundation). In 2001, the fourteenth German Federal Parliament passed a law to establish a "Jewish Museum Berlin Foundation," which has existed since then as a foundation in public law directly accountable to the federal government. The museum's festive opening took place in September 2001.

The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin

When the Academy was opened in November 2012, directly opposite the main entrance, the Jewish Museum Berlin extended its thematic coverage to include migration and diversity. "The museum will continue to change constantly and to send out important social and political signals," says W. Michael Blumenthal. The new premises, with 6,000 m² of space, bring together the Academy's events, the archives, the library, and the education department under one roof. Since 2013, this new area of the museum's work has increasingly been addressing the political, social, and cultural conditions necessary to ensure that ethnic and religious minorities can participate fully in contemporary society.