Together with Viadrina founding rector Prof. Dr. h. c. mult Hans N. Weiler, Claus Detjen established the Viadrina Prize, which was awarded for the first time in 1999 to the translator and literary figure Karl Dedecius.

Detjen headed, among other things, the Rhineland-Palatinate pilot project for cable and satellite communication in Ludwigshafen, which gave rise to Germany's dual broadcasting system, and the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers.

In 1991 Claus Detjen came to Frankfurt (Oder), where he edited the Märkische Oderzeitung until 1998.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Viadrina, he secured the future of the Viadrina Prize with a generous donation. Claus Detjen is an honorary senator of the European University Viadrina.

Ilona Antoniszyn is a former Deputy Voivod of Lower Silesia (2010-2012) and Deputy Minister (2012-2015) in the Polish Ministry of Economy. She is currently Head of the Representative Office for Government Relations and European Affairs at Volkswagen AG in Poland.

Ilona Antoniszyn is also a graduate of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder): She studied economics here from 1995 to 2000.

Dr Lars Gutheil has been Executive Member of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce Abroad (AHK) in Warsaw since 2019 and is also Bavaria's official representative in Poland. Previously, he was Deputy Managing Director of the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce (AHK) from 2015 to 2019. From 2006 to 2015, he was head of public relations and membership marketing at the German-Dutch Chamber of Commerce (AHK) in The Hague.

Prof. Dr Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast is Professor of Interdisciplinary Polish Studies and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies (ZIP) at the European University Viadrina. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Förderkreis since 2009, which she chaired from 2016 to 2021.

Prof. Dr Bogumiła Kaniewska was the first woman to be elected Rector of Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in 2020. She was previously Dean of the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology (2012) and Vice-Rector for Student Affairs from 2016.

Basil Kerski has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of the European University Viadrina since 2009. He became known as a political scientist, essayist and journalist as well as editor-in-chief of the German-Polish magazine DIALOG. He is a member of the German-Polish Copernicus Group, which was awarded the Viadrina Prize in 2007.

Since 2011, Kerski has manages the European Solidarność Centre in Gdansk.

Dr Martin Koopmann has been Executive Director at the Genshagen Foundation since 2009 and is responsible in particular for the focus area "European Dialogue - Thinking Europe Politically".

Dr Agnieszka Łada-Konefal has been Deputy Director at the German Poland Institute Darmstadt since 2020. Previously, she managed the Europe Programme at the Warsaw Institute of Public Affairs (Instytut Spraw Publicznych - ISP). Among other things, she is a member of the German-Polish Copernicus Group and active in numerous other academic and civil society bodies.

Dr Marek Prawda was Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Germany from 2006 to 2012.

From 2012 to 2016, he was Permanent Representative of Poland to the European Union and subsequently headed the European Commission Representation in Poland from 2016 to 2021.

Prawda is a long-standing member of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of the European University Viadrina.

He was active in the Solidarność movement in the 1980s and is the author of numerous works on Polish-German relations and European integration.