The embassy letter notifying Salmon of the award said, “The competition was very stiff, the jury found your sculpture uniquely impressive in both its conception and execution. You managed to communicate the emotional and physical brutality of the wall without resorting to the easy iconography of the cold war. The jury was also impressed with the fine details you included in this relatively large scale work.”

Salmon, who is from Arlington, won a four-night trip to Berlin for two, which he plans to take during U.Va.’s spring break in March.

“Berlin is one of the art capitals today. I am really fortunate to get to go there,” he said.

In addition to art, Salmon plans to take in the city’s architecture, including visits to the Reichstag, the new German Parliament designed by architect Norman Foster; and the Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind. “The modern architecture is extremely sculptural, incorporating concepts of light and transparency,” Salmon said.

Salmon created his design in studio art professor William Bennett’s Introduction to Sculpture class. Each student proposed a design and the class voted on two, which were then submitted to the University’s Berlin Wall project. The class worked as a team to create Salmon’s sculpture, a 4-foot by 8-foot wall panel plaster casting created from a clay mold that weighs nearly 1,000 pounds. The piece was displayed in the McIntire Amphitheater.

“My intent was to create a feeling of the wall coming down, but still being present,” Salmon said.

Salmon’s sculpture and small works created by other class members will be on display at Hereford College starting in February.

For example: An engineering student may want to write on a German scientist such as Einstein whose legacy informs current research in the field. An architectural student may see the influence of the “Bauhaus” in present-day art and design. A student of economics or political science may want to investigate Germany’s role in the current geo-political configuration. Rather than simple-minded glorification, one might also investigate negative influences such as patterns of anti-Semitism from the past that never seem to die. On the other hand, Germany’s “Green Movement” is forward-looking, and you could explore how it helps us rethink our own approaches to the environment and how to save the planet forour generation and those to come. Your essay may draw on a seminar paper you wrote here at UVa, and should be five to eight pages long (double-spaced). The winners will be announced during the third week of April.

For more information click here.

Join them for a night of fun, games, and German food! This year the German House will also endorse our topic Freedom Without Walls and provide ample opportunity for discussion and communication. FWW shirts, pens and markers will be available.

Contact Astrid Kaemmerling (ack2ac@virginia.edu) or visit the UVa German House website for more information.

The awards are:

Ross Michael Thomas: Honorable Mention for best elaboration on the Graffiti and Street Art theme
Olga Zeveleva: Honorable Mention for best painterly composition and elaboration on the city scape theme
Maria Christina Jividen: Honorable Mention for best elaborating the theme of the wall as intergenerational site of memory
Nicole Ashley Poltash: Honorable Mention for most imaginative exploration of the materiality of the “Mauer” as object
Ellen Frances Falci: Honorable Mention for excellence in graphic design and command of space
Katharine Elizabeth Stabler: Honorable Mention for best elaboration on the motif of internationality and freedom

Andrew Michael Salmon: Best Group Project
Lauren Elaine Chilton: Best Overall Project

The Miller Center’s GAGE program will bring together former policymakers and leading scholars to recount, analyze, and reflect on how U.S. leaders have navigated periods of international uncertainty in the recent past. More importantly, they will also examine how to better anticipate, understand, and manage a dynamic global arena in the years ahead. This conference will be webcast live and archived on the Miller Center web site, and portions of it will be open to the public. More information, including schedules and participants, will be available at www.millercenter.org. To listen to the conference talk, download the following audio file from the Miller Center.

“There was hope that the process of re-unification would be simple,” said Kaiser. “Although East Germany has caught up significantly with West Germany, some meaningful gaps do persist.”

Kaiser took the audience back to 1989, when Germany faced the serious challenge of mending itself. In East Germany, capital stock was largely useless, infrastructure was insufficient, pollution was as a serious problem, and East Germans—though well-educated—suffered from low standards of living.

Under great pressure, Germany kick-started its eastern part on July 1, 1990 by transferring its legal, political and social and tax system, introducing a common currency, the Deutschmark, and making significant financial transfers and investments. Solidarity packages called “Solidarpakt” —which are still in place today—meant that West Germany pays 4 to 5 percent of its GDP to East Germany.

So, has it worked? While Kaiser admits that there have been “policy mistakes and economic headwinds,” East Germany is catching up.

“There has been a massive increase in living standards between ’89 and now,” he said, citing advancements such as the modernization of infrastructure and new innovation clusters in the fields of wind energy, medical technology and microelectronics, among other fields.

Yet, despite its resilience, East Germany remains heavily dependent on monetary transfers from the West, a situation which has stretched both public finances and social solidarity.

“It’s still a problem,” he said. “There are some resentments, but that’s OK in a country.”

Kaiser speculates that East Germany could eventually become a “pensioners’ paradise” due to the lower cost of living, and he hopes that the nation will eventually “get rid of this thinking that we will have 100 percent convergence.”

As for how Germany is faring through the current financial crisis, Kaiser said, “So far, we have come quite reasonably through.”

Kaiser’s visit was sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Center of German Studies and the German Embassy’s Freedom Without Walls Program, whose goal is to reach out to a new generation of leaders at universities across the United States to preserve the memory and inspiration of the fall of the wall.

The contest will be held on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 4.30 pm at the Kaleidoscope Room in Newcomb. It will feature a short introduction to the topic at hand by a distinguished guest speaker. Furthermore UVa A Cappella will provide musical entertainment. The contestants can respond for 5-7 minutes in either English or German to the following prompt:

“Put yourself in the shoes of a United States President (for example John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama) and deliver a speech on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.”