Volkmar and Margret Sander Prize 2025: Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller

Deutsches Haus at NYU will proudly award the twelfth annual Volkmar and Margret Sander Prize to Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations at Brookings. Steven E. Sokol, the President and CEO of the American Council on Germany, will present the laudatory speech in honor of Constanze Stelzenmüller. Remarks will also be provided by the Friends of Volkmar and Margret Sander.

About the prize recipient:

Constanze Stelzenmüller is an expert on German, European, U.S., and transatlantic foreign and security policy and strategy, as well as international law and human rights. She is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Transatlantic Relations at Brookings. She held the Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress from October 2019 to March 2020, and served as the inaugural Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at Brookings from 2014 to 2019.

Prior to working at Brookings, she was a senior transatlantic fellow (2009-2014) and Berlin office director (2005–2009) with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). At GMF, she directed the influential Transatlantic Trends survey program and co-managed the “New Power, New Responsibility” project. From 1994 to 2005, Stelzenmüller was defense and international security editor in the political section of the German weekly DIE ZEIT; previously, she had covered human rights, war crimes tribunals, and humanitarian crises. From 1988 to 1989, she was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School.

Stelzenmüller’s essays and articles, in both German and English, have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Foreign Affairs, Internationale Politik, and the Washington Post. She writes a monthly column in the Financial Times. Her dissertation, “Direkte Demokratie in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika,” was published in 1994 by Nomos. She is a frequent commentator on American and European radio and television, including PBS Newshour, National Public Radio, and the BBC. Stelzenmüller is an honorary governor of the Ditchley Foundation, a fellow of the Royal Swedish Society for War Sciences, and a board member of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung).

She has worked in Germany and the United States, and speaks English, French, German, and Spanish. Stelzenmüller holds a doctorate in law from the University of Bonn (1992), a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1988), and a law degree from the University of Bonn (1985).

About the laudator:

Steven E. Sokol has been the President and CEO of the American Council on Germany since 2015. Previously, he served as President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and prior to that he was the Vice President and Director of Programs at the American Council on Germany. Earlier in his career, Dr. Sokol served as the Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, was the Head of the Project Management Department at the Bonn International Center for Conversion GmbH (BICC), and a Program Officer in the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Earlier in his career, he also was a Program Manager at the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and was a paralegal at Fulbright & Jaworski. He holds a Doctorate in Law and Policy from Northeastern University as well as an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. He has also studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Dr. Sokol serves on several non-profit boards and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was awarded a Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit) for his work to strengthen German-American relations.

About the prize:

The Volkmar and Margret Sander Prize was established by Professor Margret Sander in memory of her late husband, Professor Volkmar Sander, former head of the German Department of NYU and founder and first director of Deutsches Haus at NYU. The prize—which was awarded for the first time in 2013 to the late Dr. Fritz Stern, to Dr. Gary Smith in 2014, to Dr. Lya Friedrich Pfeifer in 2015, to Dr. Claus Leggewie in 2016, to Karsten Voigt in 2017, to Dr. Henry Jarecki in 2018, to Dr. Susan Nieman in 2019, to Dr. Heinz Ickstadt in 2021, to Dr. Sabine von Mering in 2022, to Dr. Christiane Lemke in 2023, and to Steven E. Sokol in 2024—is awarded annually in the fall and is endowed with a $5,000 grant, kindly donated by Margret Sander. The Prize honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the cultural, political, and academic relationship between the German-speaking world and the United States.

Attendance:

While NYU has ended COVID-19 related restrictions and policies, we continue to remind and recommend to members of the NYU community that they stay up-to-date on their boosters and stay home if they feel sick. Masks are always welcome.

Accessibility:

The first floor of Deutsches Haus at NYU, where our auditorium is located and where a majority of our events take place, can be made wheelchair accessible through the use of our ramp. If you would like for a Deutsches Haus staff member to set up this ramp for you, please call our Front Desk at +1 212-998-8660 upon your arrival. For any other accessibility-related questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected] or call us at +1 212-998-8660.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Deutsches Haus At New York University, 42 Washington Mews, New York, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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