2016 Klaus-Dieter Lehmann

Born in Breslau in 1940, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann is an outstanding cultural manager, librarian and book lover. He studied mathematics and physics at the Universities of Cologne and Mainz and passed his diploma in 1967. In addition to his subsequent work at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, he graduated in library science, which he completed with the second state examination in 1970. After completing his studies, he became a librarian in Darmstadt. From 1973 he was then director of the city and university library in Frankfurt/Main and in 1978 its executive director. In 1988, he became Director General of the German Library in Frankfurt.
In 2016, Lehmann received the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the International Gutenberg Society. He was honored for the successful consolidation of the Deutsche Bücherei, the German Library in Frankfurt and the German music archive in Berlin in the 1990s to today's German National Library. In addition, as President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin from 1999 to 2007, he spoke for the preservation of cultural assets, such as the Pergamon Museum or the reconstruction of the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. As the current president of the Goethe-Institut, Lehmann is one of the pioneering mediators of German language and culture abroad, but also a sponsor of language courses, also for migrants in Germany.