The  Aleksandër Moisiu University in Durrës held a solemn ceremony awarding the title Doctor Honoris Causa to the philanthropists and thinkers of Albanian descent, brothers Nicolas Berggruen and Olivier Berggruen, grandsons of the great European theatre actor Aleksandër Moisiu, whose name the university proudly bears. The ceremony, held in Durrës, was attended by representatives of the academic community, local authorities, and students.

Prime Minister Edi Rama was also present at the event. In his remarks, he praised the figure of Aleksandër Moisiu as an icon of European theatre who managed to transcend the limits of his origins without abandoning them, remaining connected to the country from which he came.

The title Doctor Honoris Causa was awarded to Nicolas Berggruen in recognition of his outstanding contributions to philosophical, political, and social thought, as well as for his role in promoting global dialogue through the Berggruen Institute. Meanwhile, Olivier Berggruen was honored for his significant contributions to the history and curation of modern art, through studies and exhibitions dedicated to major figures in the world of art.

The ceremony marks an important moment that brings together cultural heritage and contemporary thought, highlighting the role of universities in shaping future generations.

 

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: First of all, I owe everyone here an apology for not just being late, but keeping you waiting for me, and I’m sure not everyone was happy to wait for me. It’s normal. This city has a very vibrant democratic community.

I’m very honoured to be here, not just because I have to say it, but because he is quite a special person we are here to celebrate and special in many ways.

So distinguished rector,

Dear Mayor, members of the academic community, students, dear Nicolas, Olivier, dear Peter, friends and family of our very distinguished guests.

Allow me to begin with a small, paradox of childhood, maybe, or coincidence of childhood. Olivier once recalled that as children, he and his brother Nicolas were not allowed to visit their father’s gallery because their father believed that it was not a playground for children.

And guess what? My childhood was in a way very similar because my father believed that his atelier was not a playground for children. So I was allowed to wander into my father’s atelier on very few occasions when my mother was invited to have a look at a finished sculpture.

And it was exactly there, in one of these very few occasions, when I was a very little kid, that I encountered for the very first time the face of the great-grandfather of the two gentlemen here, Aleksander Moisiu. Nor me and either anyone else of our generation ever saw Aleksander Moisiu live. What I saw, to begin with, was a statue in clay, my father shaped with devotion to capture the presence of a larger-than-life personality who was born in Albania but blossomed in Vienna.

I was very little to remember many things, but I can tell you that in a black and white picture of that moment you can see a little kid who is kind of shocked, frightened, impressed by this amazing statue of this man with his face that my father liked so much and used to deal with so many times, that as a matter of fact, he did it as a portrait in plaster, in bronze, in wood, in marble. It was his most preferred face. And I can understand why. Because it’s a very sculptural, expressive face. And so that face, shaped by my father, became my template of what a real actor should look like.

That’s why I usually didn’t like the actors of socialist realism, because they didn’t have this tragic weight on the face of Aleksander Moisiu. And when someone went close to it, then liked it. And then came his voice in a very old-fashioned record—an incredible voice.

And so that is what Aleksander Moisiu was for us. A statue, a face, a voice. But more than that, he was the most striking and impressive example of a man who transcended his origin without abandoning it. Of a man who became a European icon of theatre, while remaining connected to the place from which he came.

And today we gather at the university that proudly bears his name to welcome two individuals here who are his descendants and who each in their own way continue that same path of being somewhere and still in a way or another belonging somewhere else.

Nicolas, who, by the way, I have to tell you this, I heard for the first time through a myth, which was not a myth founded on fake news, but a myth founded on reality, because he was introduced to me as a name, as the homeless billionaire, right?

So he was a billionaire, but he never had a home. He was sleeping from hotel to hotel to hotel. Something I also did until I got married, when I got married for good, because my original idea was that I am my home, and I can go wherever I want with myself. If I have a home, then I am a prisoner of place.

I don’t know if you are still homeless, my dear Nicolas, but he then got to know many things about the man that you rightly want to recognise here as one of yours, not just because of his second name, but because of who he is.

And one of the things I wanted to recall here is when he said, What makes you uniquely you? Your experiences, your transformation, your origins, never forget them. It is a sentence that could easily have been spoken by their grandfather himself.

Because remembering one’s origin is not an act of nostalgia, and I believe it’s not just an act of formally stating your identity, but is more a torment of the soul combined with a very deep intellectual curiosity about who you are, where you come from, and what it means. And as Nicolas himself beautifully puts it, “it is shaped by culture. Ideas, knowledge, art and forming communities made human civilisation. Our cultures are our second DNA strand.

So, standing here today with the privilege to say a few words for him and be in front of him and his brother at the university that bears the name of their grandfather, I might say that his words resonate with almost a poetic meaning. Culture travels through generations.

Sometimes through books, sometimes through institutions, sometimes through memory, and sometimes through the persons that carry the silent inheritance of curiosity and imagination.

The title of Dr Honoris Causa is awarded to Nicolas Berggruen in recognition of his outstanding international contributions to philosophical, political, and social thought.

as well as for his continued engagement in promoting global dialogue, ethical leadership, and sustainable development.

Through the Berggruen Institute, which he founded and chairs, Nicolas has created a living forum of ideas with centres from Los Angeles to Beijing and Venice. He came only to Venice, not yet crossing, where those who were on the other side crossed here to find inspiration.

But maybe it will come. I hope it will come. And for sure, in our new campus here, we will have a beautiful place for your institute. Because this institute is amazing, he gathers some of the most influential minds of our time to reflect on the profound transformations shaping the human condition, such as all the challenges we deal with, from climate change to technological revolutions and to the crisis of democratic governance.

Also, the title Dr Honoris Causa is awarded to Olivier Berggruen in recognition of his remarkable contribution to the field of art, the history of art, and his role in connecting the legacy of classical art with the spirit of the contemporary world. An art historian educated in Paris and London,

Olivier has dedicated his life to studying and curating the artistic revolutions that shaped modernity, from Pablo Picasso to Francis Bacon. Through exhibitions, writings, curatorial work across major institutions, from Frankfurt to Rome, Paris, Washington, you name it, he has explored how artists at the beginning of the 20th century managed something absolutely remarkable: created a new language of art seemingly rejecting the traditions that preceded them, but in fact absorbing the DNA of the tradition, as Nicolas may put it. It feels so meaningful that today’s ceremony connects, as a matter of fact, generations in an invisible but very powerful line.

A grandfather who became one of Europe’s greatest actors, two grandsons who in different fields continue exploring the deepest questions of human creativity and responsibility and the university that carries the name of that grandfather while shaping the minds for future generations and embracing the two grandsons.

Congratulations on this honor and truly thank you for reminding us that the most powerful inheritance we can receive and the most valuable one we can pass on is not wealth, is not power, but is the enduring capacity to interact with the other, to build bridges between people and cultures, to let ideas flow by creating ways for them to flow, and the most important to celebrate the humanity for the very temporary stay we are gifted to have in this earth.

Thank you very much.