Vice President Norbert Zimmermann retires after 27 years of service at the SPK
Press release from 07/29/2011
Norbert Zimmermann, who has held the office of Vice President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) since 1997, retired today. Hermann Parzinger, the President of the Foundation, honoured him with the words: "An era is coming to an end for the SPK. Norbert Zimmermann has had a decisive influence on the Foundation over the past almost three decades. He was always a clever strategist, an outstanding lawyer and an excellent provider of ideas and initiator in the implementation and realisation of groundbreaking decisions. Internally and externally, he was well balanced and always a mediator. In doing so, he acted confidently and effectively. Throughout his time at the company, he created a climate of trusting cooperation. I would like to thank him most sincerely for this."
Born in 1946, the lawyer joined the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in July 1984 after working at the Federal Office of Administration,
at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and as Head of Administration at the Federal Institute for Sports Sciences in Cologne. Here he became Head of the Budget, Organisation and Internal Services Department. In April 1997, he took up the post of Vice President of the Foundation. After the retirement of President Werner Knopp at the beginning of the following year, Norbert Zimmermann managed the Foundation's business and represented it externally on an interim basis until Klaus-Dieter Lehmann took office in 1999. His work at the SPK focussed primarily on securing a solid
budget and the Foundation's extensive planning and construction activities
(in particular the expansion of the Kulturforum, the renovation and extension of Museum Island and the Staatsbibliothek's Unter den Linden building). The organisation of the integration of the Foundation's institutions after German reunification also bears his signature. During his many years of work, Norbert Zimmermann devoted particular attention to the subject of the loss and expropriation of cultural assets during the Nazi era. Zimmermann played a key role in developing the SPK's basic position on the restitution of these works, even before the Washington Declaration was signed in 1998. Under his leadership, the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation decided in June 1999 to clarify and publicise the whereabouts of works formerly owned by Jews and confiscated as a result of persecution in the Foundation's institutions and to restitute them to their former owners after careful examination of their provenance. As part of the digitisation project of German libraries, museums and archives (German Digital Library), whose office is located at the SPK, Norbert
Zimmermann will continue to be available to the SPK with his profound knowledge.
Zimmermann's successor in the office of Vice President of the SPK will be Dr Günther Schauerte, the current Deputy Director General of the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, as of
1 August 2011.