Community Corner

German City Staffer Gets to Know Hopkins

The Hopkins City Council on Tuesday welcomed Mandy Schwarz all the way from Wietzendorf, Germany.

The city Mandy Schwarz works for is a little bit different than Hopkins. It’s smaller. It’s older. The city council is bigger.

And oh yeah, it’s in Germany.

Schwarz is a professional administrative worker for the town of Wietzendorf—a northern German town of about 4,000 people that’s about 50 miles south of Hamburg. Hopkins residents Axel and Gigi Kornfuehrer know her parents, and Schwarz came here two weeks ago to visit.

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In Wietzendorf, Schwarz takes care of bill and other financial responsibilities, ensures dangerous issues are resolved and registers births, deaths and moves.

Since she works in city government, the Kornfuehrers arranged for a visit to Hopkins City Hall. Assistant City Manager Jim Genellie, City Clerk Kris Luedke and other staff gave her tour to show her how city government works here. Then the City Council welcomed her at Tuesday’s meeting.

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Schwarz noted some of the differences between the cities. Hopkins’ streets are quite a bit bigger. It also has a real Mainstreet, whereas Wietzendorf’s stores are spread out. And the German city is 500 years old.

“We’re only here for 125 years, so you beat us by a few years,” Mayor Gene Maxwell said before giving Schwarz and her mayor some small Hopkins-themed gifts, including a history of the city.

The two governments are also structured differently. While Hopkins has four council members and a mayor, Wietzendorf has 14 people on the council plus a mayor. 

“Bless his heart,” Maxwell joked when he heard that.

Hopkins already has a sister city relationship with another community—the much larger and even older Ukrainian city of Boryspil. Yet Schwarz’s visit to City Hall is an example of the relationships that bind Hopkins to the rest of the world.



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