City Partnerships
FRM - globally connected
Many city partnerships place FRM in the European Champions League
Without doubt FrankfurtRhineMain is a gateway to the world. The airport links the region with the entire globe. 130 airlines fly to 317 destinations in 105 countries from here. Impressive figures. And as regards international networking another fact is no less impressive. The cities and municipalities in the FrankfurtRhineMain region have partnerships with 760 municipalities – 649 of them abroad. Arguably no other region in Germany cultivates such twinning agreements as intensively and at such a high level. Heading the international FRM twinning rankings is France with 287 (!) partnerships, followed by Italy with 63 and Great Britain with 47. Hardly surprising, after all, when World War II ended, such twinning agreements largely served as a vehicle for reconciliation with former wartime enemies. Indeed, it was the Germans and French who specifically promoted such municipal friendships. And indeed, FrankfurtRhineMain was among the pioneers of city partnerships. Amittedly, the honor of the first partnership involving Germany and signed and sealed back in 1925 goes to North Germany, more precisely to Kiel. But number two comes from Wiesbaden. As early as 1930 the spa town sealed its friendship with Klagenfurt in Austria. Today, even the smaller FRM municipalities have a very cosmopolitan outlook. The Olfen district of Beerfeld (in the Odenwald), for example, boasts the “smallest partnership in Europe”, with Trévignin in France. But other interesting facts emerge on perusing the region’s extensive partnership list. Hardly anyone is surprised that Frankfurt has close ties with Toronto and Birmingham, or that Bad Homburg and Dubrovnik are partnered. But Offenbach’s connections with the city of Rivas in Nicaragua, or those of Mainz with Kigali in Ruanda or Ginsheim-Gustavsburg with Ballou, Senegal sound much more exotic. Some FRM cities have even earned prizes for their international networking efforts: In 1964 Darmstadt received the symbolic European Flag and in 1975 the European Prize from the European Council in Strasbourg. Since 1975 it has borne the title City of Europe.
But it is always the citizens who form the heart of every city partnership. Oberursel’s citizens engage in exemplary efforts for their twinning cities. This year on October 10 there will be a big party to celebrate three anniversaries. 45 years jumelage with Epinay, France, 20 years partnership with Rushmoor, Britain and five years with Lomonossov, Russia. Incidentally, in September the partnership between Oberursel and Lomonossov produced the first matrimonial connection. Natalya went to Oberursel in 2005 as a trainee. Now she is happily wed to Oliver, an engineer from the town near Frankfurt. Their honeymoon is just one good example of cultivating partnership.
by Rainer Stumpf
