But Christmas is so much more. It is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The US civil rights activist Martin Luther King described the message of Christmas in the following two sentences: "There is no greater power than love. It overcomes hatred like light overcomes darkness." And this message has not only carried our urban society through an eventful and difficult 2017, but should also be the foundation for the coming years. I would particularly like to take this opportunity to thank the outstanding commitment of the many, many volunteers in our city who bring the Christmas message to life every day. They were, are and will remain the supporting pillars of our cosmopolitan Salzgitter.
Dear citizens,
Salzgitter celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2017. This was a great occasion for our young city to celebrate in style as part of the Kultursommer at Salder Castle.
However, 75 years of Salzgitter are also a welcome opportunity to look at our urban development and provide an outlook for the coming years.
For more than eleven years, as Lord Mayor, I have been working together with the council and administration to ensure that Salzgitter consistently invests in education and families, provides a modern and attractive school landscape, offers attractive building sites for young families to live in Salzgitter, offers high-quality housing at good prices in a liveable environment and the city, which incidentally is larger than Hanover, can promote itself as the third largest business location in Lower Saxony with interesting jobs.
We have achieved a lot here together. Salzgitter began to become increasingly attractive and has grown significantly again since the beginning of 2014 thanks to the city's forward-looking policies. More and more people decided to choose Salzgitter not only as a place to work, but also as a place to live and work.
Our urban society has also been able to welcome, care for and look after the people who fled to Germany in 2015 and 2016, mainly from Syria, to escape war and violence.
Because: Salzgitter is a city that has experience with immigration. In the 75 years of its existence, it has proven that it is very possible for people from over 120 nations to live together peacefully.
However, due to the enormous and uncontrolled influx of refugees already recognized in Lower Saxony in 2016 and 2017, we have reached the limits of our integration capacity. This was the reason for me, together with our members of the state parliament, to call for the state government to take a breather, because I want these people to be able to arrive in peace, learn the German language and really become part of our society and, above all, I want to be able to keep the local population with their needs and expectations in mind. On October 9, 2017, the state government finally imposed the required and necessary temporary immigration ban for Salzgitter. I had been fighting for such a measure since December 2016. What has been achieved has been reported in the press, on the radio and on television far beyond Lower Saxony - even in the USA.
The integration of the many refugees in our city will continue to occupy us intensively in the coming year, but the challenges and issues waiting to be tackled are far more diverse!
Construction measures such as the further refurbishment of the school buildings and the two assembly halls in Lebenstedt and Salzgitter-Bad are on the agenda, but there are also far-reaching decisions to be made that are not just of urban planning significance.
What will happen in Watenstedt, will the inter-municipal commercial and industrial area with Braunschweig actually be realized, can we socially rebuild other parts of the city and make neighbourhoods more interesting, do we offer the economy and our citizens modern framework conditions, can we react appropriately and quickly to changing demands in all areas of life?
I am determined to tackle and solve all these issues and those that will arise in the future together with you. And I will do so with 100% commitment and great enthusiasm for our city and the people who live here!
The "beat rate" is suddenly high - I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those inside and outside the town hall who have supported me in moving our Salzgitter forward as an important regional center in this region.
Dear people of Salzgitter,
I wish you and your loved ones a peaceful and blessed Christmas, time for reflection between the years and a happy, healthy and successful 2018.
Yours
Frank Klingebiel