The Wallenberg Medal of the University of Michigan is awarded to outstanding humanitarians whose actions on behalf of the defenseless and oppressed reflect the heroic commitment and sacrifice of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during the closing months of World War II.
Encouraged by his grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, a diplomat and member of a prominent Swedish family of bankers, industrialists and politicians, Raoul Wallenberg came to Ann Arbor in 1931 to study architecture at the University of Michigan. Here, his grandfather believed, he could escape the isolation of the elite position of his family and would have the chance to experience the broader world.
Wallenberg wore sneakers and rode a bicycle around campus, living in a boarding house rather than the more exclusive society of the fraternities. His many friends admired his modesty, sense of humor, and insightful intelligence. As an architecture student, he was recognized for his aptitude for finding practical solutions to complex problems. In 1933 he worked in Chicago at the Swedish pavilion in Century of Progress. He spent summers hitchhiking across the US and Canada, and in 1934 drove with a friend to Mexico City in a battered Ford.
He earned his degree with honors in architecture in 1935, winning the American Institute of Architects silver medal for student with highest academic standing.
The Wallenberg Executive Committee, which includes faculty, students and members of the Ann Arbor community, raises funds for the endowment and select the annual medalist.
The University's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning also awards Wallenberg Scholarships to exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, many of which are given to enable students to broaden their study of architecture to include work in distant locations.
The University of Michigan is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Michigan is one of the earliest American research universities and is a founding member of the Association of American Universities. In the fall of 2023, the university enrolled over 52,000 students.
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings which he declared as Swedish territory.
Albert Kahn was an American industrial architect who designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect-designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty-five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five-year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal.
Wallenberg is a Swedish surname which may refer to:
Per Johan Valentin Anger was a Swedish diplomat. Anger was Raoul Wallenberg's co-worker at the Swedish legation in Budapest during World War II when many Jews were saved because they were supplied with Swedish passports. After the war, he spent a lot of time trying to clarify Wallenberg's fate.
Marvin William Makinen has been a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago since 1974 and is a founding member of the Human Rights Board at the university.
The A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, also known as Taubman College, is the school of architecture and urban planning and one of the nineteen schools of the University of Michigan located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The American Swedish Historical Museum is the oldest Swedish-American museum in the United States. It is located in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia, on part of a historic 17th-century land grant originally provided by Queen Christina of Sweden to settlers of New Sweden.
Baruch Tenembaum is an Argentinian interfaith activist, most recently with the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School is a high school in San Francisco, California, US. It was founded in 1981 in honor of the Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg. In recognition of its namesake, the school's motto is "The individual can make a difference" and all students are required to complete at least 100 hours of community service before graduating.
Joseph William Dellapenna was a Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law. He was born in Detroit.
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology is a museum of archaeology located on the University of Michigan central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. The museum is a unit of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. It has a collection of more than 100,000 ancient and medieval artifacts from the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. In addition to displaying its permanent and special exhibitions, the museum sponsors research and fieldwork and conducts educational programs for the public and for schoolchildren. The museum also houses the University of Michigan Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology.
Elis Ingemar Eliasson is a Swedish Liberal People's Party politician with a long and diverse career, having served as government minister, county governor, member of the Parliament and royal court official.
Susan Mesinai is a poet, author and researcher/activist into the fates of foreign prisoners who disappeared into the Soviet Gulag during World War II and the Cold War. Co-founder of the Ark Project (1992–2005), she was founding president of the Independent Investigation into Raoul Wallenberg’s Fate, an educational human rights organization that furthers groundbreaking research carried out in the former Soviet Union, independently and under the aegis of an official Swedish-Russian working group.
Safa al-Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker. She has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC focusing on uprisings in the Middle East. On November 19, 2019, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal at the University of Michigan. She was the joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism and was a finalist for the 2014 Sony Impact Award.
Siavosh Derakhti is a Swedish social activist, founder of Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia. In 2016, Derakhti was named by Forbes magazine to its list of 30 influential leaders under the age of 30. In recognition of his activism to reduce prejudice and xenophobia, the government of Sweden presented him in 2013 with the Raoul Wallenberg Award, an honor named after the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps during WWII. The selection committee said Derakhti set a "positive example" in his hometown of Malmö and throughout Sweden. "He is a role model for others," the Wallenberg Award committee wrote, "showing through his actions and determination that one person can make a difference." On Nov. 8, 2012, the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism gave Derakhti its first Elsa Award, established by Committee member Henrik Frenkel in memory of his parents to encourage young people to incorporate social media into the battle against Swedish antisemitism.
Nina Viveka Maria Lagergren was a Swedish businesswoman and the half-sister of Raoul Wallenberg, and the leading force to find out what happened to him after his disappearance. She was the founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Academy. She also presented Sommar i P1 in 2014 on Swedish Radio. She was the mother-in-law of Kofi Annan.
Paul A. Levine was an American–Swedish Holocaust and genocide historian, co-author of a widely used Swedish textbook on the subject.