In the West, Rabindranath Tagore is well known as an accomplished writer, artist, composer of songs and a social innovator. He composed the national anthem of Bangladesh, Amar Sonar Bangla. His poems, stories and paintings are very popular with the people of Bangladesh. Tagore took up drawing and painting at the age of sixty and painted well over two thousand paintings in his life time. To mark the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s birth an exhibition, ‘The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore was shown at the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin. During his lifetime he visited Germany thrice, and during one visit in 1926, he met Albert Einstein, at his Berlin home. To honour him there is a street name after him in Berlin, Rabindranath-Tagore-Strasse. Tagore had a great fascination for flights and his air journeys were very popular with his friends and family. In 1926, the University of Dhaka invited Rabindranath Tagore to attend a conference called ‘The Meaning of Art’. He was awarded D.Litt (Doctor of Letters) by Dhaka University in 1936. In the year 2006, a grammar school in the Berlin was named Tagore School. With emphasis on language and art, the school also has a bust of Rabindranath Tagore.
Dr. Muhammad Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank that pioneered the concepts of microfinance and microcredit’s in Dhaka, Bangladesh. For his work he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. In the following year he also received two awards in Berlin, the ‘Vision Award’ (2007) by the Global Economic Network and the ‘Two Wing’ prize (2008) by the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin). In 2011, he founded the Yunus Social Business, a non-profit venture fund that turns philanthropic donations into investments in sustainable social businesses. The aim is to replicate the social business model across the developing world. Having its roots in Dhaka, the Yunus Social Business is also headquartered in Berlin and has branches in 12 other countries. This makes Dr Yunus is a frequent traveller, who regularly visits these branches spread across the world by flight. Together Muhammed Yunus and FreieUniversitätBerlin are exploring and setting up a creative laboratory for social enterprises in Berlin. These social enterprises are being founded solely for the purpose of solving social and ecological problems, not to maximize profits, and at the same time reduce poverty and contribute in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema is a pan-Asian film cultural organization that brings together critics, filmmakers, festival organizers and curators, distributors and exhibitors, as well as film educators. Since its inception they have introduced filmmakers from Asia to the world, organize seminars and conferences, and institute an award for the Best Asian film at festivals. In the years 2000 and 2004, the cities of Dhaka and Berlin hosted the Dhaka International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival respectively. Filmmakers from all over the world travelled to the host cities by flight to be part of the film festival. Muztaba Zamal is the founder and festival director of the Dhaka International Film Festival held in Dhaka. In 1994, he founded Bangladesh’s chapter of the International Federation of Film Critics and was elected secretary general of International Film Critics Association of Bangladesh. For his contributions and tireless efforts for Asian Cinema he was selected as a jury member of International Federation of Film Critics for the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival, held in February 2018. This was the third time he assumed the role of a jury member at an International film festival.
Born in a spiritual town of Sylhet, near Dhaka in 1904, Syed Mujtaba Ali was a Bengali author, travel enthusiast, academician and scholar. He was very popular for his linguistic skills and though his mother tongue was Bengali he had very good command over 15 languages, which includes the German language. In 1929, after receiving the Wilhelm Humboldt scholarship, he left Dhaka for Berlin and spent three years studying at various universities in Germany. Ali was a well travelled man and toured many cities around the world by ship or flight and wrote extensively about his travel experiences in different parts of the world. Also during his lifetime he lived in several countries like Bangladesh, India, Germany, Afghanistan and Egypt. He published twenty five immensely popular volumes of novels, stories, essays, columns and belles-lettres. The notable one’s being DesheBideshe, Panchatantra and Hitler – perhaps one of the best books ever written on the German dictator. In 1972, after the liberation of East Pakistan, Ali returned to Dhaka, and later died there on 11th February 1974. Posthumous, he was awarded EkusheyPadak (second highest civilian award) in 2005 by the Government of Bangladesh in Dhaka.
The Dhaka Water Supply & Sewerage Authority, a utility company of Dhaka got the ‘Performer of the Year Award’ at the Global Water Summit 2011 in Berlin. To be part of the competition, presenters from seven utility companies took a flight from their respective countries to Berlin. Finally, the award was handed over by the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan acknowledging the Dhaka Water Supply & Sewerage Authority achievements within several categories. The company addressed these challenges by taking a number of measures. As a result in 2011 it achieved a continuous water supply 24 hours per day 7 days a week, an increase in revenues, so that operating costs are more than covered, and a reduction of water losses from 53% in 2003 to 29% in 2010. There is book ‘Smooth and Striated, City and Water, Dhaka/Berlin’ that talks about the water aspects of the two cities. The book showcases experiences on the street level of both Dhaka and Berlin captured in words and impressive photographs. Further contributions come from a seminar ‘City and Water, Dhaka/Berlin’, in which several experts from architecture, urban research and hydrology from Bangladesh and Germany exchanged views on several topics such as access to water surfaces by various social groups, the connection between water surfaces and overall water management.