Founder Christian Steinberg speaks at an education conference

Christian Steinberg, founder and Chairman of the Board of the Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik, played a key role in establishing the International Centre for Talent Research (ICBF Foundation), which organises the Münster Education Congress every three years in collaboration with the North Rhine-Westphalia State Competence Centre for Individual Support. This year’s congress took place from 22 to 25 September 2021 in a digital format under the motto ‘Recognising potential – Developing talent – Shaping education for the long term’.

Looking back on the period since the end of the Second World War, Christian Steinberg noted in his lecture that education and training had not only been a prerequisite for the Federal Republic’s economic rise, but had also served as an essential foundation for “the establishment and consolidation of a fundamental trust in the principles, institutions and values of the rule of law and democracy, and thus in the democratic order and the Basic Law”. “I consider this democratic aspect to be even more significant than the economic one.”

To shape a democratic society in which life is worthwhile from a qualitative perspective, it is “important and necessary to identify potential, nurture talent and ensure education is sustainable even more intensively than before”, said Christian Steinberg.

At the congress, the ICBF, together with the Joachim Herz Foundation and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, presented the Münster Recommendations on the support of gifted children and young people with the potential for exceptional achievement. The Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik is among the co-signatories of the position paper, alongside other foundations and academic stakeholders.