Award ceremony for Leo Baeck Medal 2022

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin to Present Leo Baeck Medal to Ambassador Amy Gutmann

12 October 2022, New York, NY– The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin (LBI New York) will present the Leo Baeck Medal to Dr. Amy Gutmann, US Ambassador to Germany, on October 25, 2022. LBI President Dr. David G. Marwell will present the award.

The medal is the highest recognition the Leo Baeck Institute bestows upon those who have supported its mission of Amy in the realms of culture, academia, politics, and philanthropy. The award will be presented at the Institute’s Annual Dinner at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.

Named for the German-Jewish Rabbi Leo Baeck, the medal has been awarded since 1978 to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to understanding between Germans and Jews. Previous recipients have included the German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.

About the Leo Baeck Institute

The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin is a research library and archive focused on the history of German-speaking Jews. Its extensive library, archival, and art collections comprise one of the most significant repositories of primary source material and scholarship on the centuries of Jewish life in Central Europe before the Holocaust.

LBI is committed to preserving and expanding access to this rich body of material, and it has digitized millions of pages of documents, books, and artworks from its collections—from rare Renaissance-era books to the personal correspondence of luminaries and ordinary people alike. LBI also promotes the study and understanding of German-Jewish history through its public programs, exhibitions, and support for scholars.

The Leo Baeck Institute was founded in 1955 by leading German-Jewish émigré intellectuals including Martin Buber, Max Grunewald, Hannah Arendt and Robert Weltsch, who were determined to preserve the vibrant cultural heritage of German-speaking Jewry that was nearly destroyed in the Holocaust. They named the Institute for Rabbi Leo Baeck, the last leader of Germany’s Jewish Community under the Nazi regime, and appointed him as the Institute’s first President, overseeing independent centers in New York, London, and Jerusalem. LBI – New York is a founding partner of the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and maintains an office in Berlin and a branch of its archives at the Jewish Museum Berlin.

About Amy Gutmann

Ambassador Gutmann assumed her position as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany in February 2022. She was previously the University of Pennsylvania’s longest-serving President, from 2004–2022. She was appointed in 2009 by President Obama to chair the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, a role she held for seven years.

Dr. Gutmann has championed life-transforming access to education along with innovative research leading to life-saving discoveries. She also has published widely on the practical value and the ethics of constitutional democracy, education, health care, and human rights. Her 17th book, co-authored with Jonathan Moreno, is on bioethics with an Afterword on “Pandemic Ethics” (2020).

Named by Fortune magazine in 2018 as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Dr. Gutmann also has been honored with the Harvard University Centennial Medal (2003), the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award (2009), was named one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World” by Newsweek (2011), and has received numerous other awards.

Prior to her appointment at Penn, Dr. Gutmann served as Provost at Princeton University, where she was also the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics. She was Founding Director of the University Center for Human Values, a multidisciplinary center for teaching, scholarship, and public discussion of ethics and human values. At Princeton, she also served as Dean of the Faculty and was awarded the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Dr. Gutmann graduated magna cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She earned her master’s degree in Political Science from the London School of Economics and her doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University. She is married to Columbia University professor Michael W. Doyle, and they have one daughter, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren.

Previous Recipients of the Leo Baeck Medal

2021 – Frank-Walter Steinmeier
2020 – Ronald B. Sobel
2019 – Martha Minow
2018 – Peter Wittig & Huberta von Voss-Wittig
2017 – Max M. Warburg
2016 – Robert M. Morgenthau
2015 – Eric R. Kandel
2014 – Joachim Gauck
2014 – Josef Joffe
2013 – Stuart Eizenstat
2012 – Margarethe von Trotta
2011 – Anselm Kiefer
2010 – Kurt Masur
2010 – Angela Merkel
2009 – Joschka Fischer
2008 – Wolfgang lschinger
2007 – Mathias Döpfner
2006 – James D. Wolfensohn
2005 – Otto Schily
2004 – Fritz Stern
2003 – Daniel Libeskind
2002 – Ruth Westheimer
2001 – Johannes Rau
2000 – Edgar Bronfman
1999 – W. Michael Blumenthal
1998 – George L. Mosse
1997 – Helmut Sonnenfeldt
1996 – Ernst Cramer
1995 – Fred Grubel
1980 – Fred W. Lessing
1979 – Axel Springer