Category: MOV

Ladies and gentlemen, dear MOV members, this letter is addressed to you who have already registered or intend to register for this year's General Meeting 2020 (GM 20) on 7 November 2020. A text with the same wording will also appear on the MOV homepage. The current coronavirus situation is threatening to spiral out of control. The daily increase in the number of acutely infected people is increasingly worrying us on the Board as a whole. Even though individual participants are ultimately responsible for themselves, the Board's duty of care and sense of responsibility requires us to protect you as a precautionary measure. We are still cautiously optimistic that we will be able to hold the MV 20, but possibly without a social event as per the programme in the German Navy Museum (DMM) on the evening before. Firstly, according to our current assessment of the situation, there is no danger that the city of Wilhelmshaven will be declared a risk area. Secondly, the Gorch-Fock-Haus conference centre with its Rudolf Kinau Hall offers seating for up to one hundred people, even under the current coronavirus conditions. However, only around 65 people have registered, including MOV officials such as members of the Board of Directors, office staff, etc. According to our assessment, the risk of infection for individual participants on site is considered to be low or calculable. We have attached the protection and hygiene concept of the Gorch-Fock-Haus so that you can see for yourself. Ultimately, you will have to decide for yourself whether you wish to continue your participation in view of the ban on accommodation in Lower Saxony...

My letter dated 15.10.20 (attachment to e-mail dated 15.10.20) Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear MOV members, As announced, I will be contacting you again at the end of this week to keep you up to date with our "Assessment of the Corona situation". We are still of the opinion that the health risk for holding the 2020 Annual General Meeting (AGM 20) remains calculable. We have not failed to realise that the daily number of new infections is increasing at an alarming rate and that the risk areas are spreading throughout Germany. After consultation with the local health authority (incidence of coronavirus 5.9 in W'haven), we should give ourselves a few more days to further analyse the development of the situation before making a final decision to hold or cancel the MV 20. In principle, this also applies to the social event in the German Naval Museum on the evening before, even though the current hygiene regulations only allow 50 participants anyway with a registration number of 75. I will inform you of the final decision in this way on Wednesday, 28 October 2020. It will certainly be of general interest to you, perhaps to form car pools, which MOV members have registered so far. We have attached the relevant list for this purpose. Finally, on the recommendation of the public health department, we would like to advise you to have a PCR test carried out by your family doctor if you live in a so-called risk area and wish to travel out of it. If the test result is negative, you and therefore all...

Ladies and gentlemen, dear MOV members, as you know, November has so far been characterised in our association by the member survey regarding the approval or rejection of holding a general meeting (GM) in a circulation procedure. In the first week of November, we sent out 2,150 emails and 850 letters. A valid vote in this procedure would have required a total of 50% responses to the votes. Despite an overwhelming majority of "yes" votes, we unfortunately fell short of the required participation rate of 48.9%. We will have to hold the AGM 19 and AGM 20 scheduled in accordance with the Articles of Association in a combined members' presence event in 2021. When this will take place will of course depend on the coronavirus situation, but certainly not before the end of the second quarter of 2021. You will be regularly informed about the situation and thoughts of the entire Executive Board on our website and in the Yellow Pages. I would like to thank all members for their active participation in this "new" process despite everything and remain with warm and comradely greetings, stay healthy and keep your loved ones safe. Your Wolfgang...

Why the Navy? by: AG JuMOV The MOV has a new event format: on Thursday 24 September, the so-called "Virtual Officer Fair", or VOM for short, took place for the first time. 17 officer cadets and officers, from sea cadets to flotilla admirals, gathered at completely different locations in front of their home devices such as PCs, tablets or smartphones and discussed the question "Why the navy?" together. Although the topic is a perennial favourite in German-speaking security policy discourse, Flotilla Admiral Wilhelm Tobias Abry, in his role as commander of the Mürwik Naval Academy and guest speaker at the first VOM, comprehensively highlighted why it is currently more important than ever to reflect on one's own identity and the associated professional ethos. The geopolitical changes of recent years, which have not yet come to an end, provide a reason for this. Abry derived his thesis from strategic considerations and critically reflected on defence policy decisions of the past decades. The concentrated faces of the participants, who were connected via camera, showed that his explanations were not just dry theory. At the end of Abry's introduction, the question then arose as to what contribution each and every individual could make to equip their own branch of the armed forces for the future. The temporary distance to the fleet during studies, training courses and interim assignments was identified as a major challenge. This is also nothing new, but in view of the permanent digital availability of maritime content, it is all the more painful to be on the periphery instead of in the places of...