OBITUARY FOR DR. GUIDO WESTERWELLE

The investors, the board of directors and the management of Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City are in mourning for Dr. Guido Westerwelle.

The great visionary and patron for the realization of Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City has deceased at the university hospital Cologne on Saturday 18^th March 2016 from the consequences of his leukemia. The news have shocked and deeply touched us. Our thoughts are with his husband Michael Mronz, his family and his friends.

Until his retirement from office as Federal Foreign Minister in the year 2013 Dr. Guido Westerwelle has been the key political moving spirit of the project “Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City”.

His mission to Hanoi in June 2011 for the preparation of the visit of Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and the talks together with investors, members of the board of directors and the then incumbent ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Vietnam have convinced him of the necessity of the project “Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City” and its economic relevance for the relationships between both countries.

Thanks particularly to his political groundwork, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Dr. Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Nguyen Tan Dung have signed in Hanoi in October 2011 the “Hanoi Declaration” with Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City as central component of the contract on the strategic partnership between both countries.

Also the second intergovernmental agreement and the detailed agreement on Deutsches Haus in Ho Chi Minh City which was signed between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Federal Republic of Germany in Berlin in March 2013 and the subsequent prompt execution for the tender for the project are the great merit of Dr. Guido Westerwelle.                     

We will always bear Dr. Guido Westerwelle in honoring remembrance.

In silent commemoration,

Horst Geicke

Chairman

Source: Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City