It's a great honor for us and the people of Schönau to receive the Nuclear-Free Future Award and a great joy to be here with you. During these two days we felt the strong solidarity among all of us and when we return home it's a good feeling that there are men and women like you all over the world who fight for a nuclear-free future.

Although - according to the world's population - we are only a few fighters against nuclear pollution - I'm sure that all our efforts will not be in vain and that we finally will be the winners. Two or three percent of the population are enough to cause fundamentally social, environmental or political changes - the recent history of Germany is a good example for that.

The name of our first civic action group, which was founded after the Tschernobyl catastrophe is "Parents for a Nuclear-Free Future". This does not mean, that only "parents" are allowed to join this group as is sometimes falsely assumed. "Parents for a nuclear free future " means that we will act as good parents do -- responsible for their children and the future of the coming generations. It is this sense of responsibility which connects a civic action group in the Black Forest with Dorothy Purley, Grace Thorpe and Stewart Udall in the USA, Lydia Popova in Russia and active people all over the world. But we must not believe that this sense of responsibility is estimated by a majority, as we are fighting against strong interests of power and money and we all know that this is a hard fight.

When we started in 1986 with our so-called "energy saving contests" we where laughed at by most people as silly environmentalists. Four years later, in 1990, we where vehemently attacked-not only by the bosses of the regional power supplier but also by the majority of the local politicians. What had happened? As the regional power supplier wanted to prevent both-energy saving and ecological energy production-we had the idea to buy the electric network and to decide about the local energy policy ourselves. We wanted to create a local power supplier firstly dedicated to ecological aims: energy saving and ecological energy production by hydro power, solar energy or co-generators. We wanted to show that it is possible-everywhere in Germany and perhaps everywhere in the world-to produce at least forty percent of the used electricity decentralized by small ecological power stations instead of large and centralized power plants which are wasting a lot of the useful primary energy, thus contribute to the dangerous climate changes and pollute the environment.

Of course we could understand that these plans where contrary to the interests of the regional power supplier who wanted to sell his own electricity, his own nuclear electricity. But we where astonished yet, how vehemently he fighted against our plans. He was supported by local politicians and a part of the population in town. It was a long fight-from 1990 to 1997 and we learned quite a lot during that time. We made quite a lot of new experiences, personally and in our group. Concerning me, I was very timid and shy and it was really difficult for me to speak in public. But as it was absolutely necessary to convince people of our ideas, I started to learn it. I still remember the first time when I spoke to an audience - it was really horrible. I was so excited that I could hardly speak. Now I have lectures nearly every week somewhere in Germany. We had to learn to be persevering over a long long period, without knowing if we ever would be successful ! Many of our own group who started with us at the beginning have now retrieved into their private scene, as they did not want to be active such a long time. But a long breath, as we say in Germany is a condition for success as well as hard work.

All of you activists against nuclear energy know that we have to work really hard in order to reveal lies and cheat of the nuclear industry and their political connections, to convince other people and to realize projects which show, that nuclear energy is superfluous.
In July 1997 we overtook the local energy supply and now we transform it step by step: this year we installed a large solar power plant on the Protestant church in Schönau and it was in this project that many of our former opponents joined us.

Schönau is now-by the way-the town with the largest solar energy production in Germany in relation to its population: it's the solar capital of Germany and we are all very proud of that.

The amount we will get from the Nuclear-Free Future Award will also be invested in solar energy: it will be the first panels of the solar plant on the roof of our school and we will encourage pupils, teachers and parents to finance the rest. We always try to include new groups in our projects so that the basis for a nuclear free future always gets broader and broader.

I now want to thank you all. It was a very good time with you and whenever you should come to Germany - come and visit us! We would be happy to show you Schönau, our energy project and the Black Forest.
I'm sure the nuclear free future will come - so we won't stop working for it for the children of today and all the coming generations.

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