The European City Charter is handed over from Potsdam to Osnabrück

For 24 hours, the centre of Schiffbauergasse in Potsdam was transformed into a place of vibrant interaction, a “City for a Night”. Embedded in the installation representing a temporary town, scientists, researchers, students, artists, creative minds and people of action from Potsdam and Brandenburg invited all comers to participate in discussions, experiments and extraordinary journeys of discovery.

And it was against this fitting backdrop that, on September 18, 2010, the European City Charter was handed over by the mayor of the capital city Potsdam, Jann Jakobs, to Katharina Opladen, representing the bureau of peace culture of the city of Osnabrück.  Representing the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010, Jürgen Fischer (Programme Coordination) also attended the ceremony.

The European City Charter, which travels through the former German candidate cities to the Capital of Culture, is based on a historic Certificate of Privileges which was drawn up in 1715 as the prelude to the founding of one of the candidate cities, Karlsruhe. Now that original Certificate is being augmented by supplementary entries from cities such as Görlitz, Kassel, Augsburg and Potsdam to create a European City Charter with chapters of contemporary relevance continuing to be added as time goes on. The document from Potsdam provides a clear appraisal of the importance of this city for today’s Europe, having been the scene of developments that, to this day, continue to reverberate across the continent.