ST HELENS Rotary Club President Celia Parr has revealed an interesting link between St Helens and Stuttgart.

She tells us: “When, on the 27th April 1948, the Mayor of St Helens, Walter Marshall, arrived at Stuttgart following an official invitation by Dr. Arnulf Klett, Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, a new era of friendly relations between former belligerents, Great Britain and Germany, had just begun.

“Walter Marshall (President of St Helens Rotary Club in 1941) was “honoured” to have had the privilege of being the first British Mayor to receive an invitation to visit Germany in an official capacity.

“People may ask why exactly these two towns, which nowadays seem to be an “odd couple”, had established friendly relations shortly after the war. The population of Stuttgart is approximately three and a half times that of St Helens today. But 66 years ago the towns were of similar size and were both industrial centres with similar commercial interests, structures and comparable urban problems with which to cope.

“Dr Klett, a keen advocate of the idea of building international understanding from the bottom up, had been successful in establishing links with Zurich in Switzerland and the United States. However, his efforts to initiate a partnership between Stuttgart and a British town had so far been met with scepticism by the British Government.

“In 1948, Klett’s personal friendship with the family of Paul Schmidtgen, a high standing entrepreneur from Stuttgart, helped him establish friendly relations with a British town, as Schmidtgen’s son Hans-Joachim, then a law student, was planning to visit his aunt and uncle in St Helens, who had emigrated to Great Britain in 1933. Klett knew of the visit and asked Schmidtgen to use his family ties to set off a contact between the two towns.

“Hans-Joachim’s uncle, Dr Fred Hirst, a health professional, was strongly involved with the St Helens Rotary Club (he was President in 1957) and invited his nephew to give a talk about post-war Germany. Mayor Walter Marshall attended this event and after a further meeting with Hans-Joachim, Marshall was convinced by Klett’s idea about the usefulness of inter-municipal relations.

“Hans-Joachim wrote to his father to say that he had extended an invitation for Mayor Marshall to visit Stuttgart but that the Mayor would need an official invitation from the City of Stuttgart in order to receive a travel permit from the Foreign Office."

In the official invitation by the City of Stuttgart, Klett wrote: “You will come to a city which stretches both hands out in a hearty welcome to foreign guests and which has no greater desire than to collaborate in the bridging of all European countries. “

With Mayor Marshall’s acceptance of this invitation for him, his town clerk and his secretary, plans could be made for the first, but also contentious, British civic visit to a German town after the war.

“During the visit from August 27 - September 4, 1948 Mayor Marshall laid the foundation for students’ exchange, spoke to business men from Stuttgart, and made arrangements about ‘consignments of sheet glass and wine bottles (to Stuttgart and surrounding districts) if the manufacturers in St Helens find they are able to divert some of their output to this area, where in fact such goods are greatly needed’.

“In the first ever address to a German city council by a British mayor, Marshall offered the friendship of St Helens to the City of Stuttgart. October 1949 marked the start of the students’ exchange, with six girls and four boys from St Helens visiting Stuttgart for two weeks, staying with local families. The following year ten students from Stuttgart visited St Helens. Official visits between the two towns have diminished over the years but visits below the official level continues to take place.”

Celia learned of this partnership during a conversation with the present Mayor Councillor Andy Bowden, at St Helens Rotary Club’s 91st Charter Dinner.

She said: “It is a story that fits very well with the ethos of Rotary International ‘Service above Self’ and this year’s Rotary International Theme ‘Engage Rotary, Change Lives’.

Many years ago, an unknown reel of 16mm film was found in the Theatre Royal, and given to me as I had a 16mm projector for screening Laurel and Hardy films. It was a black and white silent film later identified as the Mayor’s visit to Stuttgart in 1948. I copied it to DVD for my own records. Hopefully I will go to Stuttgart in 2018 to make a ‘then and now’ film.