History

Pauline Schwarzkopf was born on 22 April 1908 in Mannheim to Auguste and Friedrich Weinmann. Her older sister Elsbeth had been born on 24 December 1906. It was the start of a long life that carried on until 25 December 2005.

As a child our founder saw the grand duke of Baden, Friedrich II., at the trotting circuit in Mannheim. At the age of ten she witnessed the collapse of the empire and of the grand duchy. As a girl and young woman she grew up in the Weimar Republic.

After the early death of her father in the 1930s, Pauline and her mother moved to Berlin. She lived through the National Socialist period and saw the end of Second World War in Berlin.

She witnessed the inception of the Federal Republic of Germany, the partition of Berlin and Germany and at the end of her life, from 1990 onwards, she experienced her 5th Germany. In 1957, at the age of 49, she married the business man Heinz Schwarzkopf. Life granted them 13 happy years before Heinz Schwarzkopf was killed in a tragic car accident in 1969.

In memory of her husband Pauline Schwarzkopf founded the independent Heinz-Schwarzkopf-Foundation Young Europe in Hamburg in 1971, whose mission it has been to spread the idea of European unity and peace among young people.

The following decades of her life were dedicated to the ambitious project of working for a united Europe, taking lessons from the aberrant developments of the 20th century that had so directly affected her life.

The Heinz-Schwarzkopf Foundation was originally based at the International Institute for Politics and Finance in Hamburg and moved to the Hamburg headquarters of the NGO Europa-Union in 1991. Since July 2000 the foundation has had a permanent home in the centre of Berlin with its own seminar and lecture facilities.

From 1971 Pauline Schwarzkopf dedicated her energy entirely to the foundation. She took part in nearly all of the Foundation’s political seminars and was on nearly every trip with young people to the European institutions of Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels. The foundation was the first politically-impartial organisation to send young people to political seminars in the former East Germany and Poland in the 1970s.

Pauline Schwarzkopf shaped the foundation through her work, her strong emotional personality and her sense of social justice. Her heart was always with those who were at a disadvantage. Christianity was a strong influence. Read more…