Gera

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, new possibilities opened for relations with a German city. Jim Sack, a founder of the German Heritage Society and the founder of Fort Wayne Germanfest, recommended to GHS president Judge Kenneth Scheibenberger, that the GHS should seek and sponsor a sister city among the Lands of East Germany.

A German sister for Fort Wayne a natural in that over 50 percent of Fort Wayners were of German decent. Two years later, when the Wall fell, a letter was sent to six German cities. Gera, a town of some 150,000 people in Thuringen, was the first to respond with an invitation for a delegation.

In a meeting in the Gera Rathaus Gera Mayor Michael Galley listened to the GHS proposal, said "we could use some friends in America," and the relationship began. The first representatives from Gera, the Aqualis Girls Choir, accepted an invitation to be Gera's first "ambassadors" to Fort Wayne.

Since 1990, more than a thousand exchanges have occurred, always with an effort to match hosts with guests of similar interests so that deeper and enduring relationships could be formed.

In 1992, the relationship was formalized in a ceremony in Gera when OB Galley and Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke signed the founding document with Aqualis entertaining and members of both sister city committees as witnesses. Over the years Christel Gehlert, Judge Philip Thieme and other members of the German Heritage Society have made the relationship vibrant and useful to both communities.

The GHS, 501(c)(3), continues to manage the relationship providing the ideas, people and funding to make the relationship work. Bob Anweiler, rdanweiler.afm@verizon.net, directs the activities of the relationship. He is a frequent visitor to Gera, a member of the German Heritage Society, a board member of the Fort Wayne Germanfest and a member of the FWSCI.