With the event series "Werkstatt des Wandels" ("transformation workshop"), Federal President Frank‑Walter Steinmeier aimed to help make sites of successful transformation visible and encouraged people to seize the opportunities presented by change.

The series began in August 2023 and ended in November 2024 focused on the far-reaching structural changes in our society and their implications for our life as a community: How will we do business and produce goods in the future? How will we generate our energy? How can we make our homes and lives sustainable?

The Federal President visited businesses, research institutes and projects that show how this transformation can be successfully managed with imaginative ideas and dedicated work. These visits created a multi-faceted panorama of successful transformations in business and society.

Alongside the Federal President’s visits, "workshop discussions" were held at each stop, where experts from the worlds of academia, business and politics as well as civil society discussed how obstacles posed by the changes that we face can be overcome and the transformation can unfold in a way that ensures quality of life. Participants in the talks discussed the results with the Federal President and then take their conclusions back to their own regions in order to drive change there.

The "Werkstatt des Wandels" was hosted by the Federal President in cooperation with the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt and the Carl Zeiss Stiftung. It was designed and implemented in cooperation with the Center for Responsible Research and Innovation at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO.