30. Juni 2025 18:30
Baroness Smith of Newnham, Anne Ruth Herkes, John Kampfner & Mari Mittelhaus
The Königswinter Conference is organized by the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and the UK Koenigswinter Committee since its inception in 1950. For more information on past conferences, you can refer to our website www.debrige.de.
The 2025 Königswinter Conference took place in the Landesvertretung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Berlin on May 20th and 21st. The title of the conference was “Germany, the UK and the Western Alliance: Resetting Relations in a world out of joint”. Around 80 participants from both the UK and Germany discussed topics including defence and security and the Trinity House Agreement, innovation, growth and competitiveness as well as trust, polarization and democratic resilience. The conference was opened by Armin Laschet, MdB, Chair of the Bundestag Foreign Relations Committee.
The event will be held in English and chaired by Dr Rupert Graf Strachwitz, Vice Chairman, Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft.
Please register your participation by June 29 via headoffice@debrige.de, stating if you would like to participate online or in person.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (Julie), Anne Ruth Herkes, John Kampfner and Mari Mittelhaus, who all attended the conference, will share with us their impressions and observations from the conference and each of the three working groups in accordance with the “Chatham House Rule”.
Professor Julie Smith (Baroness Smith of Newnham) is Professor of European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at Cambridge University. A Fellow and Director of Studies in Politics at Robinson College, from 2013 to 2019 she was the Director of the European Centre at POLIS. Since 2016 she has been Co-Director of the MSt in International Relations, the two-year part-time Masters programme co-organised by POLIS and the University’s Institute for Continuing Education. An expert in European politics, Julie was Head of the European Programme at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) from 1999 until 2003. She has been a member of the House of Lords since 2014 and was a member of the Lords’ International Relations Committee from its creation in 2016 until 2021. Julie read PPE at Brasenose College, Oxford, and took both her MPhil and DPhil in Politics at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She was a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and prior to coming to the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge in 1997, Julie taught in the International Relations and European Studies Department of the Central European University in Budapest. Julie’s main academic interests are in the history and politics of the EU. Her research focuses in particular on the UK’s relations with the EU; parliaments and budgetary politics; and democracy in Europe, including referendums, elections to the European Parliament, and the role of the European and national parliaments in the EU.
She has been involved in many collaborative projects on democracy and EU institutions – mostly recently in Reconnect, a Horizon 2020 project focusing on democracy and the rule of law.
Anne Ruth Herkes joined the DBG board in 2024. Following a long career in the public service, most recently as Ambassador and then State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Herkes has been a Non Executive Director on supervisory boards in in Europe and North America since 2014. She also held advisory roles in the tech startup industry and geopolitical consultancies, most recently with the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington D.C.. Her board roles span across private banking in Europe, and the private equity industry in North America. She previously was a non executive director on the Supervisory Board of KFW IPEX Bank in Frankfurt.
She is Officier of the Légion d’Honneur, a member of Atlantik-Brücke and serves on the Advisory Board of Asia House London, as well as the transatlantic non-profit organisation 1014 Inc. – Space for Ideas, founded by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote transatlantic dialogue in the arts, society and cultural industry. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alfred Herrhausen Society, the former International Forum of Deutsche Bank.
From 2002 to 2006, Herkes was head of the Economic Department at the German Embassy in London. Prior to that she held roles at the diplomatic missions in Washington and Tokyo, and at the German OSCE mission in Vienna. From 2006 to 2009 she was a member of the management board of bp p.l.c. biofuels business in London, as Vice President Policy & Communication and Senior Strategy Advisor, jointly responsible for the development of the biofuels division. From 2002 onwards for nearly a decade she called London her home. She graduated from Freie Universität Berlin, and holds an ‚Erstes Staatsexamen‘ in Romanistik and Political Science, preceded by an undergraduate education at the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris with a scholarship from Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. She completed postgraduate studies at the BSL Lausanne Business School and INSEAD/Fontainebleau.
John Kampfner has had a long career in public life spanning global affairs, politics and culture. He is the author of seven books and is working on his eighth. He began his journalistic career with the Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and German unification, then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC covering UK politics. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs. He writes regular columns for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Politico and Der Spiegel. He is a regular contributor on broadcast media. He has a weekly Substack column, in which he analyses the state of Germany and the world.
His most recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’, was published in 2023. He has made many programmes for BBC TV and radio, including a two-parter called ‘The Ugly War’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2002, for which he was awarded Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year.
He is a Board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. In 2021, he set up the UK in the World programme at Chatham House, becoming its first director. He ran the free expression organisation, Index on Censorship, between 2008 and 2011; he subsequently advised Google on these issues. He was on the Council of King’s College London between 2012 and 2015 and Chair of the Clore Social Leadership programme from 2015 to 2018. For eight years, from 2008 to 2016, he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, establishing one of the UK’s most successful art galleries. He was the founder of the Creative Industries Federation. He is now Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London.
Mari Mittelhaus is the Executive Director and a board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V. (DBG), where she has worked since 2018. Mari is responsible for organising the DBG’s four Königswinter Conferences, as well as a public lecture programme, administering the membership base and the network of German-British Associations in Germany. As a graduate of Humboldt University’s Master in British Studies, fostering German-British relations has been important for her for a long time. Having lived in the UK and the US, building bridges between societies through exchange and culture is both a professional and a personal passion of hers. Mari has an interdisciplinary background in business, event management and English politics, law, literature and culture. She has organised the Young Königswinter Conference for 8 years and also sits on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Organisation.
Melden Sie sich an
Hinweis: Mit der Anmeldung und Teilnahme an diesem Event stimmen Sie der Aufzeichnung Ihres Äußeren und/oder Ihrer Stimme zu, die Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft in Fotos, Videos und begleitenden Tonaufnahmen über beliebige Medien und zu beliebigen Zwecken veröffentlichen kann.
30. Juni 2025 18:30
Baroness Smith of Newnham, Anne Ruth Herkes, John Kampfner & Mari Mittelhaus
Veranstaltungsort
Centre Monbijou & online via Microsoft Teams
Oranienburger Straße 13/14
10178 Berlin
The Königswinter Conference is organized by the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and the UK Koenigswinter Committee since its inception in 1950. For more information on past conferences, you can refer to our website www.debrige.de.
The 2025 Königswinter Conference took place in the Landesvertretung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Berlin on May 20th and 21st. The title of the conference was “Germany, the UK and the Western Alliance: Resetting Relations in a world out of joint”. Around 80 participants from both the UK and Germany discussed topics including defence and security and the Trinity House Agreement, innovation, growth and competitiveness as well as trust, polarization and democratic resilience. The conference was opened by Armin Laschet, MdB, Chair of the Bundestag Foreign Relations Committee.
The event will be held in English and chaired by Dr Rupert Graf Strachwitz, Vice Chairman, Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft.
Please register your participation by June 29 via headoffice@debrige.de, stating if you would like to participate online or in person.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (Julie), Anne Ruth Herkes, John Kampfner and Mari Mittelhaus, who all attended the conference, will share with us their impressions and observations from the conference and each of the three working groups in accordance with the “Chatham House Rule”.
Professor Julie Smith (Baroness Smith of Newnham) is Professor of European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at Cambridge University. A Fellow and Director of Studies in Politics at Robinson College, from 2013 to 2019 she was the Director of the European Centre at POLIS. Since 2016 she has been Co-Director of the MSt in International Relations, the two-year part-time Masters programme co-organised by POLIS and the University’s Institute for Continuing Education. An expert in European politics, Julie was Head of the European Programme at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) from 1999 until 2003. She has been a member of the House of Lords since 2014 and was a member of the Lords’ International Relations Committee from its creation in 2016 until 2021. Julie read PPE at Brasenose College, Oxford, and took both her MPhil and DPhil in Politics at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She was a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and prior to coming to the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge in 1997, Julie taught in the International Relations and European Studies Department of the Central European University in Budapest. Julie’s main academic interests are in the history and politics of the EU. Her research focuses in particular on the UK’s relations with the EU; parliaments and budgetary politics; and democracy in Europe, including referendums, elections to the European Parliament, and the role of the European and national parliaments in the EU.
She has been involved in many collaborative projects on democracy and EU institutions – mostly recently in Reconnect, a Horizon 2020 project focusing on democracy and the rule of law.
Anne Ruth Herkes joined the DBG board in 2024. Following a long career in the public service, most recently as Ambassador and then State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Herkes has been a Non Executive Director on supervisory boards in in Europe and North America since 2014. She also held advisory roles in the tech startup industry and geopolitical consultancies, most recently with the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington D.C.. Her board roles span across private banking in Europe, and the private equity industry in North America. She previously was a non executive director on the Supervisory Board of KFW IPEX Bank in Frankfurt.
She is Officier of the Légion d’Honneur, a member of Atlantik-Brücke and serves on the Advisory Board of Asia House London, as well as the transatlantic non-profit organisation 1014 Inc. – Space for Ideas, founded by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote transatlantic dialogue in the arts, society and cultural industry. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alfred Herrhausen Society, the former International Forum of Deutsche Bank.
From 2002 to 2006, Herkes was head of the Economic Department at the German Embassy in London. Prior to that she held roles at the diplomatic missions in Washington and Tokyo, and at the German OSCE mission in Vienna. From 2006 to 2009 she was a member of the management board of bp p.l.c. biofuels business in London, as Vice President Policy & Communication and Senior Strategy Advisor, jointly responsible for the development of the biofuels division. From 2002 onwards for nearly a decade she called London her home. She graduated from Freie Universität Berlin, and holds an ‚Erstes Staatsexamen‘ in Romanistik and Political Science, preceded by an undergraduate education at the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris with a scholarship from Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. She completed postgraduate studies at the BSL Lausanne Business School and INSEAD/Fontainebleau.
John Kampfner has had a long career in public life spanning global affairs, politics and culture. He is the author of seven books and is working on his eighth. He began his journalistic career with the Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and German unification, then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC covering UK politics. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs. He writes regular columns for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Politico and Der Spiegel. He is a regular contributor on broadcast media. He has a weekly Substack column, in which he analyses the state of Germany and the world.
His most recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’, was published in 2023. He has made many programmes for BBC TV and radio, including a two-parter called ‘The Ugly War’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2002, for which he was awarded Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year.
He is a Board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. In 2021, he set up the UK in the World programme at Chatham House, becoming its first director. He ran the free expression organisation, Index on Censorship, between 2008 and 2011; he subsequently advised Google on these issues. He was on the Council of King’s College London between 2012 and 2015 and Chair of the Clore Social Leadership programme from 2015 to 2018. For eight years, from 2008 to 2016, he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, establishing one of the UK’s most successful art galleries. He was the founder of the Creative Industries Federation. He is now Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London.
Mari Mittelhaus is the Executive Director and a board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V. (DBG), where she has worked since 2018. Mari is responsible for organising the DBG’s four Königswinter Conferences, as well as a public lecture programme, administering the membership base and the network of German-British Associations in Germany. As a graduate of Humboldt University’s Master in British Studies, fostering German-British relations has been important for her for a long time. Having lived in the UK and the US, building bridges between societies through exchange and culture is both a professional and a personal passion of hers. Mari has an interdisciplinary background in business, event management and English politics, law, literature and culture. She has organised the Young Königswinter Conference for 8 years and also sits on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Organisation.
Melden Sie sich an
Hinweis: Mit der Anmeldung und Teilnahme an diesem Event stimmen Sie der Aufzeichnung Ihres Äußeren und/oder Ihrer Stimme zu, die Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft in Fotos, Videos und begleitenden Tonaufnahmen über beliebige Medien und zu beliebigen Zwecken veröffentlichen kann.