How do Germans use the Internet? And what role do blogs play for the media? These are questions that particularly interest Atsunori Yamashita, Nobuyuki Kume, Yukie Hayashi and Rioko Sato, journalists and Internet experts from Japan. During their visit to Frankfurt, they receive first-hand answers – in meetings with German colleagues from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Societäts-Verlag. The four Japanese visitors spend a week travelling around Germany, have a busy programme with meetings especially arranged for them in Frankfurt, Berlin, Leipzig, Bonn and Cologne. And at the end of their journey they have established their own picture of the media landscape in Germany.
This link between first-hand experience and objective information is one of the central goals of the Federal Government’s Visitors Programme for foreign opinion leaders. This “flagship of German public diplomacy”, as Michael Gerdts, Germany’s Ambassador in Warsaw, described the programme at an international colloquium in Berlin, has now existed for 50 years. Every year, more than one thousand leading personalities from the fields of journalism, culture, politics, business, science and society as well as young up-and-coming talents who influence Germany’s image in their respective positions are invited to the country by the Federal Government – well over 50,000 people in all since the programme began.
Germany’s foreign missions choose the participants – often in coordination with German intermediary organizations in the respective countries – for individual or group journeys. In the case of so-called thematic visits, participants from different countries come together for a subject-based programme of joint interest. Depending on their emphasis, the Federal Foreign Office commissions appropriately specialized institutions – among others, the Goethe-Institut, the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), the European Academy Berlin and the German Energy Agency (dena) – to design corresponding programmes. Experienced multilingual staff accompany the foreign guests during their stay in Germany.
At the colloquium held to celebrate the programme’s 50th anniversary, Reinhard Silberberg, State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office, raised the fundamental question of whether the Visitors Programme was still appropriate at all “at a time when everyone can obtain every kind of information about Germany from the Internet”. The participants were unanimous: the programme aims to convey an objective and realistic picture of Germany, to make Germany “come to life” for its guests – through the authenticity of experience, a credible presentation of German themes and through the lasting nature of the impressions gained. According to Silberberg, the goal must be to break through the one-way flow of information and instead enter into an intensive dialogue with the guests.
Dialogue and more contact with the population are also what the visitors would like – according to an evaluation of the programme carried out in 2007. This study also confirmed that the invitations to Germany very significantly – among almost 100% of those surveyed – contributed to an improvement in participants’ picture of Germany. “This visit enabled me to get to know the real Germany,” remarked a journalist from Armenia, “a Germany with very many faces. The German people and German culture have become dear to my heart.” An Austrian colleague also made a number of discoveries about his neighbouring country: “I’ve learnt a great deal about Germany: there is a willingness to engage in discussion, openness, self-criticism, perhaps, too, an element of uncertainty about its future political role in the world. But, all in all, the country is heading in the right direction.”
As often occurs when people talk about Germany’s image, the subject of “stereotypes” was also discussed at the colloquium. How can the traditional stereotypes that continue to be applied to Germans – discipline, industriousness, punctuality, lack of humour – be overcome today? Or should they be overcome at all? The insights Michael Gerdts gained in Poland and Italy demonstrated: “In my view, these stereotypes can only be overcome by bringing people into direct contact.” Michael Zenner, Commissioner for Communication at the Federal Foreign Office, went further. He believes you simply have to live with stereotypes, because it is practically impossible to eliminate them. In his opinion, it is instead possible to use certain prejudices “that at least have positive connotations” as vehicles for communicating German positions.
Every year the Federal Foreign Office sets priorities for the Visitors Programme. In 2009, these will include supporting its initiatives on International Research and Academic Relations and Schools – Partners of the Future as well as its Partnership with Africa programme. Of course, the invitations will also focus attention on the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany’s foundation and the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall as well as challenges such as environmental, climate and energy policy and the key subject of innovation – Germany as a centre for business and research. In 2009 several thematic visits will be devoted to the creative economy in Germany.
The Visitors Programme does not aim to acheive short-term reporting of German themes in foreign media. Rainer Schlageter, today’s German Ambassador in Kazakhstan and former Press Officer at the German Embassy in Moscow, reports on his own experience. In the early 1980s the Embassy in Moscow invited high-ranking journalists to Germany. “It was clear to us,” says Schlageter, “that we would not change the prevailing and prescribed picture of Germany, at least not in any broader sense.” In many discussions after the guests’ return, however, it became evident that new insights had encouraged new ideas. “People who travel talk about it, and that was also what the Soviet visitors did.” The collapse of the Soviet Union was certainly not accelerated by that, “but in that process it was good that our former guests, as opinion leaders with personal experience and an element of emotional attachment, could realistically imagine Germany, the former class enemy, as a future partner of the new Russia – looking back, there was a late, but important return on investment.”
