German mayor of Pakistan origin wishes to settle in Karachi forever

KARACHI – Despite spending years in foreign cultures and countries, a German politician of Pakistani origin feels her love for her hometown of Karachi is as fresh as a daisy even today and she has a yearning to be here forever.

Sorya Leonie Lippert, who is currently serving as mayor of the Bavarian city of Schweinfurt, was born in 1954 to a Pakistani father and German mother in London. She was three years old when she first came to the port city of the South Asian country along with her parents.

Lippert spent her childhood days in different parts of Karachi, before she was sent abroad for education. She married a local man and got settled in Germany.

Talking to an international media outlet, she said her love for Pakistan grew after she moved to Germany.

“I may be a German according to my passport,” she told Arab News, “but when I see the vibrancy of this town [Karachi] and the friendliness of people who may have big issues in life, I know that my heart is in Pakistan.”

Lippert was a classmate of Pakistan’s first woman prime minister late Benazir Bhutto and they spent two years together at a boarding school in Murree as close friends.

It is her love for Karachi that she visited the city every two years despite her busy schedule as a mother and a politician.

Still searching for her ancestral home in the port city, the German mayor used to visit the beach whenever she is in Karachi.  

“We have a little hut at the Sandspit Beach,” she said. “My friends always tell me, ‘You can’t go there. It’s dangerous.' But I need to go there.”

Lippert said she did not intend to run for mayor’s office again and expressed that she would like to embrace Karachi as her permanent home.