5 juillet 2026

« Religion in the Public Sphere » — International Symposium Held in Amberg

The Great Hall of Amberg’s Town Hall hosted a high-level international symposium on « Religion in the Public Sphere » on 5 July. For a full day, distinguished representatives from politics, religion, the judiciary, and academia discussed the significance of religious freedom within a democratic constitutional state.

Speakers included Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt (President of the Conference of European Rabbis; recipient of the Charlemagne Prize), Egils Levits (former President of the Republic of Latvia), Juliane Kokott (Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union), Henning Radtke (Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany), Anja Seibert-Fohr (Judge at the European Court of Human Rights), and Lukas Mandl (Member of the European Parliament). Bavarian State Minister Joachim Herrmann delivered opening remarks, and Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg gave the closing address.

The symposium was structured around three panels: religious freedom as a foundational value of the democratic constitutional state (Panel 1); the right of religious communities to self-determination and its limits, including religious symbols in public space (Panel 2); and negative religious freedom — protecting the rule of law from theocracy (Panel 3). Following brief opening remarks from each speaker, panelists engaged in discussion among themselves and with the audience on pressing contemporary questions.
Organizer Toni Fickentscher offered a positive concluding assessment, thanking the Conference of European Rabbis, the City of Amberg, the federal « Living Democracy » program, the Catholic Adult Education Center Amberg-Sulzbach, Sparkasse Amberg-Sulzbach, and the Bavarian Association for Tolerance, Democracy, and Human Dignity for their invaluable partnership in making the event possible.