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"Congratulations to the Association on its 50th Birthday. I wish the new Website great success and I hope especially that it will stimulate interest in the Association's work, and thereby increase contacts between individuals of our two countries."
HRH The Duke of Kent, Royal Patron
The Association Beginnings
Our Beginnings
"The year was 1945, the end of nearly six years of war, the second of two great wars which devastated the European and, indeed, the world scene in the first half of the twentieth century. The first war had ended with English cries of 'hang the Kaiser', the second with the Nuremberg Trials and a widespread feeling that Germany had 'done it again'. This, despite many years in the previous century of Anglo-German friendship and even alliance in time of war against a common enemy. Mercifully, it was friendship and mutual understanding which was to conquer in the post-war decades,
The origins of the Anglo-German Association can be dated almost precisely and attributed to no less a person than one of the greatest of Germans... Goethe, poet and statesman, the bicentenary of whose birth was commemorated in 1949. Professor (late Sir) George Catlin had been invited to give a commemorative address in Heidelberg and on his return to England was present at a PEN Club dinner. The guests of honour were Dr Thomas Mann, the distinguished German author, and Dr Adolf Grimme, Minister of Education for Lower Saxony. The latter was staying with Professor Catlin and to quote the Professor:" After the dinner I felt it would be a pity if there were no follow -up and that, were this so, a major opportunity in restoring good Anglo-German relations would be lost. I wrote to Sir Gilbert Murray OM and to Dr P Gooch OM (Historian and President of the Goethe Society) and found them both of the same view.
From this beginning a number of meetings were held throughout 1949 and 1950, first at Professor Catlin's home and in the house of commons, discussing the possibility of founding the Anglo-German Association. To begin with although there was a great deal of 'notable' support for the idea, the Foreign Office view was that it was a little premature. However the seed had been sown. The Association actually came into being in the House of Commons on 15th November 1951. On the following day a paragraph appeared in The Times but it was not until 15th December, when the news of the birth was really made public with a letter 'to the Editor' and signed by a very distinguished list of signatories."
From: 'The Anglo-German Association: The First Forty Years 1951-1991', By Muriel Hammond