page_title: John C. Kornblum
section_title: Later activities
hierarchical_section_title: John C. Kornblum / Later activities
caption_attribution_description: English: John C. Kornblum, former US ambassador to Germany, in the occasion of the Berlin speech of Barack Obama in Berlin Deutsch: Der ehemalige amerikanische Botschafter John C. Kornblum anlässlich der Rede Barack Obamas am 24. Juli 2008 in Berlin
context_page_description: John Christian Kornblum is an American diplomat and businessman. He entered the American Foreign Service in 1964. Over the next thirty five years, he served in Europe and at the State Department in Washington. Since 2001, he has established himself as an investment banker and international business consultant. He lives in Berlin.
  Kornblum is one of the leading experts on transatlantic economic and political affairs and on the evolving role of the Atlantic community in a multipolar world [unsubstantiated statement]. He lectures and writes widely in both German and English and is known especially for his press and television commentaries on the implications of globalization on both sides of the Atlantic.
context_section_description: Since leaving diplomatic service, Kornblum has pursued parallel career tracks in business, consulting and political commentary in Europe and the United States. From 2001 to 2009, Kornblum served as Chairman of the investment bank Lazard Freres Germany, which he helped build into one of the leading investment banks in Central Europe. He has also been a member of the supervisory boards of Bayer AG, Thyssen-Krupp Technologies, and Motorola Europe. He is a member of the advisory councils of Russell Reynolds and Consultum AG, and an advisor to the Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA and to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Kornblum serves on numerous non-profit boards including the American Academy in Berlin, the German Institute for Community Organizing (DICO) and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He currently serves as adviser to a number of transatlantic companies including the international law firm Noerr and Pfizer.  Since July 2010, Kornblum has also been a member of the German Government Council for Immigration and Integration.
  During the past ten years, Kornblum has established a strong public voice defining the implications for Europe and the United States of the new era in global politics which followed the end of the Cold War. He has built on both his diplomatic and business experience to focus particularly on the issues connected with the rapidly changing relationships between government and the private sector in a globally integrated world. He speaks and writes regularly in Europe and the United States on economic, security and political issues. Kornblum does regular commentary for several European and American networks on American politics and foreign policy.  Also, he is on the advisory board of OMFIF where he is regularly involved in meetings regarding the financial and monetary system.
  Looking to the future of the Atlantic world, Kornblum presented his vision for the evolution of Germany and Europe in an article published in the November/December 2009 issue of the conservative political journal The American Interest. Here he argued that the end of Cold War confrontation and spread of free market systems made possible the establishment of a tight web of open sourced networks which overcome traditional geography and create new patterns of culture and trade. Kornblum suggested that increasing global integration would gradually reduce Germany's fear of being caught in the middle of big power confrontation and give it a new sense of confidence. He concluded, "With its deepening sense of being at the center of a newly integrated world will come a growing sense of responsibility that will cause the ghosts of the past to gradually recede. Germany will not answer lingering questions about its normalcy; it will transcend them. By our lights today, Germany will not be normal, but nothing else will be either." A German translation of this article appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on November 6, 2009.
  Kornblum expanded his commentary on the Obama era in the book Mission Amerika (2009), written in German together with well-known television commentator Dieter Kronzucker. Here the authors argued that the basis for the vision of change proclaimed by President Obama was created by wide-ranging social and demographic changes that had taken place in the United States during the preceding thirty years. They suggested that Obama's victory was a result of both a skillful campaign and a dramatic evolution of American society, which delivered a ready audience for Obama's ideas. They warned, however, that Obama's program of transformation was likely to encounter heavy resistance in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–08.
  In addition to his business activities, John Kornblum has served on a number of private and public boards including Bayer AG, Thyssen Krupp Technologies, Motorola Europe and Russell Reynolds Inc. He is a Trustee of several organizations, including the American chamber of Commerce in Germany, the American Academy in Berlin and a member of the Board of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin a
caption: John C. Kornblum (2008)
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