Bergedorf Round Table

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The Bergedorf Round Table was founded in 1961 as the Körber Foundation's ongoing series of international conferences. It consists of select groups of senior politicians, analysts, business leaders, and journalists who gather three times a year at varying locations to discuss international policy issues.

Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt, and Vladimir Putin have been some of the Round Table’s past participants. Its topics focus on Europe’s role in international politics and issues surrounding a new global order. The Round Tables take place in venues immediately relevant to the problems at hand. For example, Frontiers and Horizons of the EU – the New Neighbors Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova was held in Lviv, Ukraine, while Isfahan, Iran was the site for a conference on The Middle East and Western Values. The discussions are kept confidential and open-ended, away from both the public eye and day-to-day pressures. The rosters of participants from the regions concerned are balanced according to the principle of speaking with people from a region, not just about the region.

The Körber Foundation’s Berlin Office organizes the conferences. Ever since 1970, when Kurt A. Körber initiated discussions between leading Western politicians and representatives of the Soviet Union in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), one of the Round Table's chief objectives has been to maintain dialogs that transcend cultural and political barriers.