On the trail of European history (Babenhausen Project Meeting)

Students from four partner countries explore their memory cultures

On the site of the former Synagoge. Tenth grade students have 

taken their guests on a tour to memorial places in Babenhausen.

Guests from three partner countries came to the Babenhausen Open School. The meeting marked the end of a two-year Erasmus project funded by the European Commission. Students from Babenhausen, Barcelona, Lisbon and the Lithuanian Lentvaris met for a week in Babenhausen to work together on their project "Carry on the flame - what we want to keep for the future".

The focus of the meeting at the end of the last school year was the culture of remembrance. The young people had explored their homeland, conducted interviews with contemporary witnesses and made presentations and video films. The focus was on the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and the Third Reich. Among other things, tenth-grade pupils had prepared a guided tour to places of remembrance of the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship in Babenhausen. In addition to various commemorative plaques, the war graves at the Babenhausen cemetery, the site of the old synagogue and the Jewish cemetery were also visited. It was a city tour of a special kind. It is no coincidence that the tenth year was involved - the topic of commemoration was in his focus, among other things, by visiting the military cemetery in Niederbronn and the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

The second focus of the meeting was the conservation of endangered animal species. The pupils had conducted interviews in zoos and with biologists, visited reservations and made presentations on

On the first day we were able to see interesting presentations about

cultural and natural heritage in our countries.

species conservation projects. Projects on bisons, Przewalski horses, rare newts or wolves were presented in films and presentations. Species conservation projects fight to conserve endangered species - but what if the heritage is already lost? One example of this was a visit to the rebuilt "new" Old Town of Frankfurt. After the destructive air raids of 1944, only a desert of ruins remained between the cathedral and Römerberg. A guided tour took the international group of schoolchildren to Frankfurt's new "Stube". The fact that parks are also cultural heritage became clear during a visit to the Schönbusch Park, in which the students' host parents also took part.

The content of the final presentations and texts was worked on until the afternoon. The young people were also able to familiarise themselves with new forms of movement in order to loosen up the atmosphere. Less adventurous than the climbing forest trip to "warm up" was a shit-driving dance workshop. In Barcelona the participants had been introduced to the secrets of Flamenco, in Babenhausen Gardetanz was on the program as a local tradition. Pupils of the open school had developed a training program and at the end all three host countries could shine with a short guard dance.

This meeting marks the end of the two-year project. Work results are to be found among other things in the project Blog on https://carryontheflame.blogspot.com/ .