Mr. Görgens (left) and Mr. Volande (right) spoke to an audience in an intimate setting at the Southern Center on W. Paces Ferry Road.

The Southern Center for International Studies Young Professionals recently hosted an evening briefing on Germany with featured speakers Lutz Görgens, consul general of Germany in Atlanta and Harry Volande, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Siemens Energy and Automation Inc.

Mr. Volande, who spoke first, noted that almost 20 years after its reunification and destruction of the Berlin Wall, Germany still copes with a variety of residual economic and political problems.

Although he admitted he was making a strained analogy, Mr. Volande compared the reunification to a corporate merger for which neither side had fully prepared.

The part of the country called West Germany at the time was the more prosperous of the two segments, and it contained 60 million people, who shared the cost of what he called an elaborate social security system.

The reunification occurred almost overnight, Mr. Volande said, and 20 million people from the East—a poor, planned, communist economy—were added to the mix.  The sudden influx of people has had dragging effects on the German economy, he said.

“That was an increase of basically 33 percent of beneficiaries overnight into a system that was already under stress and is still under stress,” he said. 

Mr. Volande, who lived for a time in Nuremberg, said that exchange rates between the two locales were also a problem, and economic burdens have persisted even since reunification.

Mr. Görgens and Mr. Volande with young professionals after the lecture.

Although he said that former East Germany has unemployment rates as high as 18 percent today, the area has drawn a lot of technology investment.

“They’ve made quantum leaps,” he said.

While it’s easy to second-guess the German government’s handling of the reunification, Mr. Volande believes that it will “take another generation to fully outgrow what has happened over 40 or 50 years.”  

As Mr. Görgens agreed, a stable, Mr. Volande said prosperous Germany is central to the success of Europe on the world stage.

Mr. Görgens, who followed Mr. Volande’s speech, didn’t share Mr. Volande’s view on the reunification as a business merger.  In his speech on the “Transatlantic Mission” of Germany, he touched on a variety of topics, from global warming to the European Union.

He had recently visited a Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and he noted the success the factory has had in America, producing 700 cars per day.  The plant is an example of the compatibility between the two countries’ economies.

More than 300 German companies have set up shop in the Southeast, with about 120 in the Atlanta area, he said.

“They’ve created and will continue to create jobs in America,” and they have been able to thrive because of similar values, he said.

Mr. Görgens went on to describe the establishment and growth of the E.U. as similar to the German reunification but on a larger scale. Values gaps had to be crossed, he said, and E.U. membership has gone from 12 members in 1995 to 27 today.

Because the E.U. and the U.S. provide “50 percent of global services” and one third of world trade, there should be a transatlantic partnership between the entities that allows them to address pressing issues—like climate change—with a unified front, he said.

The evening briefing was a success on a variety of levels, according to Anitha Vadavatha, the program co-chair for Southern Center’s young professionals program.

She told GlobalAtlanta that the hall was so full that they had to bring in extra chairs.

Members of the program also offered their endorsements of the lectures.

“It was interesting and informative,” said Mallick Huggahalli, a member of the program.  “The interaction between high-ranking diplomat and high-ranking corporate executive was playful at times but complimentary.”

Membership in the young professionals program of the Southern Center costs $50 per year and is open to professionals up to 39 years of age.