Sternberg, Sir Sigmund

▪ 1999

      On March 4, 1998, Sir Sigmund Sternberg, British businessman and philanthropist, was named winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's largest annual monetary award—$1,230,000—for having "advanced public understanding of God and spirituality." The prize was established by Sir John Templeton in 1972 to complement the Nobel Prizes, which he felt neglected humanity's spiritual dimension.

      Sternberg was born in Budapest on June 2, 1921. The seeds of his interest in improving interfaith relations were sown during his childhood through his early awareness of the absence of dialogue between Roman Catholics and Jews. Owing to quota restrictions for Jews at the University of Budapest and to the rise of Nazism, he left Hungary for Great Britain in 1939. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, he was classified by the British government as a "friendly enemy alien"; Hungary was not at war with Britain but was not an ally. Because of the classification, he could not attend school and so began to work in metal recycling. He established his own business in that industry, became a member of the London Metal Exchange (1945), and was naturalized as a British citizen (1947).

      Sternberg's involvement in business, civic life, and charitable causes paved the way for his interfaith work and resulted in his knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1976. In 1979 he joined the International Council of Christians and Jews, an umbrella organization created to fight anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia, and in 1981 he founded the Sternberg Centre for Judaism, Europe's largest Jewish cultural centre. The recipient of honours bestowed by many nations, he was in 1985 named a Knight Commander of the Pontifical and Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great at the request of Pope John Paul II, only the second Jew so named in the United Kingdom. His many accomplishments included helping to arrange the first-ever papal visit to a synagogue (Rome, 1986); helping to establish diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel (1993); and assisting in the creation of the Three Faiths Forum to promote mutual understanding between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (1997).

      During recent years Sternberg became best known for his facilitation of the Geneva Declaration, an agreement calling for the removal of a Carmelite convent that had been established in the mid-1980s at the site of the World War II Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland. Although the nuns' intent was to pray for the camp's victims, many considered their presence an intrusion in a setting where nearly two million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Prior to Sir Sigmund's intercession in 1989, relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish people had deteriorated. He negotiated with Poland's Jozef Cardinal Glemp, who subsequently agreed to the move, which was eventually completed in 1993.

      Sir Sigmund was the second Jew—and the first Reform Jew—to receive the Templeton Prize. The prize money was to be used by the Sternberg Charitable Foundation to support its interfaith causes.

REBECCA RUNDALL

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