"The German Marshall Fund of the United States: A Brief History", researched and authored by Nicholas Siegel offers a look back at GMF's origins and details our rich history of work promoting closer transatlantic ties.
GMF’s fourth president came from outside the traditional foreign policy community and was a bold choice for its Board of Directors. Craig Kennedy began his career in 1980 as a program officer at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago. From there he rose up to the level of vice president of programs, before assuming the role of president of the Joyce Foundation from 1986 to 1992. Later he worked for Richard J. Dennis, a Chicago investor and philanthropist, and started a consulting firm working with non-profit and public sector clients.
As president, Craig Kennedy brought a new energy to the German Marshall Fund. From his earliest days at GMF, he engaged in a fundamental reassessment of the organization, its mission, activities, and direction.
As part of a greater emphasis on institutions and projects that would emphasize U.S.-EU relations, Kennedy announced the creation of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship program. For the past 18 years, GMF had brought over 800 young European journalists, politicians, civic and business leaders to the United States for an extended introduction to American politics and culture. This parallel program would provide young American leaders with an equivalent opportunity in Europe.
As part of an expanded commitment in Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of European Union enlargement in the region, GMF opened a new office in Bratislava, Slovakia. The focus of GMF’s Bratislava grantmaking would be in areas of political, economic, and environmental reforms.
Yet perhaps the most important shift in this period was the creation at GMF of a new resident fellows program. The Transatlantic Fellows Program was the first step in GMF’s transformation into a grantmaking and public policy institute.
New Century, New Momentum
By 2001, GMF had built an endowment of $215 million and operated with an annual budget of $12.7 million. Yet while the endowment had grown substantially over the years, GMF’s overall size and operating scope had remained on a path of slow growth. That would quickly change. Guido Goldman’s tireless work set the stage for another crucial renewal of German support in 2001. The new gift, which was unanimously approved in November 2000 by the German Bundestag, would see 15 million Deutschmarks paid out over 10 years to the German Marshall Fund. It would serve as the spark to an unprecedented growth period
Another addition in this period was the opening of GMF’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels in the fall of 2001. This was first U.S. policy institute in Brussels devoted to the study and research of issues related to the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. In 2001, GMF also formally established an office in Paris, in a move that built on what for many years had been a part-time representation in France, thus bringing the total number of offices to four — Washington, Berlin, Brussels, and Paris.
GMF at 30
2002 marked 30 years of the German Marshall Fund. At GMF’s 30th anniversary celebrations in Berlin on June 5, 2002, more than 300 diplomats, policymakers, journalists, and experts in international affairs attended a reception hosted by Deutsche Bank. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder delivered the keynote address, congratulating GMF on 30 years of strengthening transatlantic relations and stressing the value of GMF programming that provides Europeans and Americans the chance to meet and discuss key transatlantic issues.
On September 4, 2002, GMF, in cooperation with the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, released Worldviews 2002, a comprehensive survey of U.S. and European public opinion on foreign policy issues. The following year, GMF partnered with the Compagnia di San Paolo, Turin, Italy, to carry out the renamed Transatlantic Trends survey. This has since become the pre-eminent source of U.S. and European public opinion on a host of transatlantic issues.
On April 1, 2002, the organization announced its purchase of the Butler mansion at 1744 R Street NW in Washington, DC. The mansion, modeled on the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, a 16th century Renaissance palace in Rome, had, in fact, been the first post-World War II German diplomatic representation in Washington. That the German Marshall Fund would move into a building with such a role in post-war U.S.-German relations was a remarkable happenstance. On January 13, 2006, GMF welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the official dedication of its new headquarters.
Growing GMF’s Public Policy Presence
In January 2003, GMF, together with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, established an exciting new $30-million grantmaking initiative for Southeast Europe called the Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD). This public-private partnership to support local and regional democracy-building efforts over an initial ten-year period was officially launched at GMF’s Washington, DC, headquarters on April 7. The Balkan Trust for Democracy, based in Belgrade, became operational in June 2003 and in September inaugurated its Belgrade office. In 2005 GMF opened its Ankara office, where the organization would again be the first U.S. foundation to set up a permanent presence.
On February 21, 2005, GMF’s Brussels office, under its new executive director Ron Asmus, hosted U.S. President George W. Bush for the keynote address of the first foreign trip of his second term. Ron Asmus, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state in the 1990s, made his mark on GMF when he became executive director of GMF’s Brussels office. He pressed the organization to expand its research program, to develop new programming in the Middle East, Asia, Turkey, and the Caucasus, and to launch Brussels Forum, GMF’s signature event.
Brussels Forum would become an annual forum for intense, frank dialogue, and debate on the transatlantic relationship over the course of three days, and every year draws several hundred policymakers, journalists, scholars, and business executives from all over the world. In 2006, its first year, Brussels Forum attracted U.S. Senator John McCain, European Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, among others.
Onward and Upward
In the years that followed, GMF continued to grow at an unprecedented rate. GMF experts began to appear in major news outlets around the world commenting on U.S. and European affairs as well as on how the transatlantic community could cooperate on larger global issues. GMF grantmaking continued to expand, as the successful model of the Balkan Trust for Democracy was implemented in Bucharest in the form of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation.
At the same time, GMF continues to have a strong presence in Germany, provides significant support to key institutions in the German-American relationship, and organizes structured dialogue between German and U.S. policymakers. The German government showed its appreciation of the continued value of GMF with its decision to renew support for GMF’s activities in 2010.
The number of conferences and seminars GMF convened continued to grow each year, and the organization’s profile continued to rise in the Washington and European policy communities. World leaders who spoke at GMF events included U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Finally, GMF continued to create dynamic new partnerships, such as in the establishment of the Transatlantic Academy. Originally a GMF-ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius initiative, the Transatlantic Academy would build on strong relationships developed over years of GMF grants given to academics and academic programs, and significantly increase GMF’s research output.
Going Forward
On May 27, 2011, GMF opened an office in Warsaw, Poland, in a move that in many ways represented the culmination of an increasingly active engagement in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War. The office is GMF’s seventh in Europe, and makes it the first U.S. public policy institution to establish a permanent center in that dynamic and influential European country.
At the same time GMF continued to expand the scope of its work and its impact over an ever-wider range of issues. As a convener, GMF’s signature events, including Brussels Forum, Stockholm China Forum, India Forum, the Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration, and the Mediterranean Strategy Group, bring together ever-larger groups of stakeholders to examine the most critical challenges facing the transatlantic and broader international community. In terms of research, the Transatlantic Academy, Transatlantic Trends, the Transatlantic Take op-ed series, various policy brief series, and other publications continue to position GMF as a hub for policy research and analysis on transatlantic issues.
As a focal point for networking, GMF’s flagship Marshall Memorial Fellowship program celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2012, and newer initiatives including the Transatlantic Cities Network and Congress-Bundestag tours provide new avenues for building transatlantic networks among the political, media, business, and non-profit communities. Finally, GMF continues its grantmaking tradition through several major programs, including the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, the Fund for Belarus Democracy and the MENA Partnership for Democracy and Development. Through these initiatives, GMF supports local and national NGOs, regional government organizations, and community groups working on democracy, local governance, and cultural exchange in the Balkans, Black Sea region, Belarus, and Central Europe.
Looking back on 40 years, GMF has closely followed the arc of the history of Europe and the broader transatlantic community. With offices in Washington, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, Bucharest, and Warsaw; strong and nimble leadership; an effective and dedicated Board of Trustees; and ever-expanding ranks of over 150 scholars and staff, GMF looks forward to continuing its work to strengthen the transatlantic relationship in an ever changing world.
