9th IEF GALA 2015
Prize winners 2015 - Personalities leave their mark on society
The laureates of the IEF GALA 2015
Laureate business award 2015
Prof. Regina Ziegler
She is the woman behind the scenes who pulls the strings. And she has put all men who initially belittled her in their place. In the German movie business, Germany’s most successful movie producer Regina Ziegler, who cannot be overlooked due to her flame-red hair or ignored due to her wicked Berlin tongue, is known everywhere. She got into the movie business because her mother, who was a reporter who regularly wrote movie reviews, took her along to the cinema.
Later, her sentimental films with a regional background, starring Christine Neubauer, or the series “Die Landärztin” became ratings phenomena. She succeeds with “Weißes Rössl” as well as with History. Long documentaries about Axel Springer and Willy Brandt followed, as did the ARD series “Weißensee”; she has also worked with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. When she walks through the desert, she wants to leave tracks, she affirms. She brilliantly succeeds at this. The Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a retrospective to her in 2006. A lot remains to be expected from the driver of a red Cadillac. She currently leads her movie business with her daughter Tanja – a harmonious family business.
Laureate award for lifetime achievement 2015
Prof. Dr. Claus Hipp
Everyone in Germany who has children knows his name: Hipp guarantees quality. The guru of baby-food vegetable jars, who lives on a 14th-century farm that produces organic food, is the world’s largest processor of organically produced raw materials. At the upper vocational school of Scheyern, the early riser (every morning at 4.30 a.m.) and painter gives art lessons once a week, and as volunteer sexton he unlocks the gate of the Herrenrast chapel near Pfaffenhofen every morning. Even as an adult he does not consider himself too good to serve at the altar every now and then. This serving nature distinguishes him. A code of ethics guarantees a good wage for his employees and enough time for their families.
Claus Hipp stands for manners, respect and quality. He also expects these from his business partners: because of this, he even accepted the situation when Schlecker took his products off their shelves because they wanted to push prices down. Hipp is an entrepreneur with social principles and the ability to deal with sensitive issues. His motto: “Ten quick decisions of which a few are wrong are better than waiting too long.”
Laureates innovation award 2015
Ursula and Michael Sladek
Nothing is any good unless it results in action. The ‘electricity rebels’ Ursula and Michael Sladek in the village Schönau in the Black Forest where Jogi Löw, coach of the German national football team, also comes from, acted under this motto.
After the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl, the doctor and his wife founded a citizens’ cooperative that supplies 100,000 inhabitants with green electricity. “Fear is not a good adviser, we must find clever responses to fear,” this was their conviction. Today, it can be said that they
have taught the big electricity groups the meaning of fear. Their big goal: create little Schönaus in many places. Energy transition is not only a catchword for them – they live it every day. They are convinced of one thing: “It gives our citizens’ democracy a new quality.” People from all over
Germany attend their electricity seminars in Schönau. That proves one thing: the boonies definitely exist only in people’s minds!
