Wilfried Gillmeister from Vaterstetten has been involved in various areas of public life for more than 40 years. Now he has been honored with the Federal Cross of Merit with Ribbon.
Wilfried Gillmeister’s biography reflects German history: he was born in 1944 near Magdeburg, where the Berlin family had come during the evacuation. She later returned to the divided city – “Fortunately our apartment was in West Berlin,” says Gilmeister. After graduating from high school and an apprenticeship at Siemens, the young man ended up working in Munich, where, after a few stopovers, he settled in Vaterstetten and started a family.
In the laudatory speech, Gillmeister’s special commitment to the reconstruction of the Dresden Frauenkirche was praised. Shaped by his memories of a childhood and youth among the ruins in Berlin, the man from Baldham organized six big charity bike tours. “I wanted to build bridges of reconciliation and peace,” says Gillmeister, closing old wounds. The bike tours went right through Europe, starting in Munich, Venice, Newcastle, Paris, Budapest and Kraków. In 2005, this “Star for Dresden” was completed. Gilmeister was able to generate a total of 120,000 euros in donations for the reconstruction.
At TSV Vaterstetten he founded the handball department in 1978 and started with two teams, which quickly grew to ten teams. To this day he coordinates the public relations of all teams in the handball department. Gillmeister was also involved in sports on a national level: as a board member from 1992 to 1996 in the Ebersberg district association of the Bavarian state sports association and from 1996 to 2001 in the Upper Bavaria district association of the Bavarian handball association.
His decade-long and exemplary voluntary commitment in the areas of culture and sport is also reflected in other activities, including for the town twinning between Vaterstetten and the French Allauch, in various choirs and as a founding member of the Weissenfeld children’s stage.