„The past is never dead. It’s not even past.“ | Presse | bpb.de

This quote from the drama "Requiem for a Nun" by William Faulkner immediately comes to my mind when dealing with our past. Because, I am firmly convinced that we can and must learn from history. Not directly, perhaps, not "one-to-one" – but without awareness of history, of the things that were and that are, our present cannot be understood.

With this in mind, I would like to talk to you today about civic-historical youth education based on four theses and, in particular, how the past helps us in our civic educational work.

Let me begin with my first thesis:

Democracy can be learned, secured and defended by dealing democratically with the past and discovering that there are always many "pasts".
A democratic, civic-historical education is always multi-perspective. Every generation retells the past. Our view of history is shaped by politics and society, by science and the media. The way we remember is constantly changing, but memorial days and monuments also show that some memories endure – and criticism of them is usually accompanied by intensive social discussion. Other important dimensions of diversity of experience are gender, religion, social class and generation. Or the particular situation of the country or part of the world in which we grew up. How we engage with history always has a lot to do with our present. We always find new points in the past that we look at from different angles. We bring into focus social groups that have gone unheard for a long time. This also raises the question: How can we remember in the future and, above all, how can we use the insights from the past for our future?

Civic education is not just about teaching politics. It aims not only to promote understanding of political issues, but also to support people in forming their opinions and to motivate them to be an active part of civil society. Civic-historical education can take very different shapes. In the following, I would like to describe the approach we follow in our work at the Federal Agency for Civic Education. In doing so, I draw a line between “learning from history” and “coming to terms with the past”, two concepts that in the German discourse are seen as two related, but separate dimensions of what Aleida Assmann has referred to as “memory”, in the sense of the “functional memory” of a society. I believe this approach is universally practised elsewhere, too. I should also emphasise that by differentiating between the two, the intention is certainly not to de-value the concept of “coming to terms with the past”. Both strategies are equally valuable in terms of their capacity to help us understand history; yet they each have their own specific objectives.

In “coming to terms with the past” the primary objective is to flag up injustice and give a voice to the victims. It demonstrates the relevance of historical events for modern-day debates and, for better or for worse, has historical-political motives. By its very nature, “coming to terms with the past” is a generational project and as such can be considered complete at some point. “Learning from History” seeks to assist individuals in gaining an awareness of history and a thorough understanding of historical political events so they can develop a personal opinion of current issues. By its nature, historical political education is an ongoing process.

Especially in the light of current times, we must always be aware:

Peace, freedom and democracy are not a natural state, but must be continuously fought for and defended. Talking about peace, freedom and democracy without overcoming the processes of the past is only possible if we implement both processes in parallel. It is precisely this point that leads me to my next – the second - thesis:

For peace, freedom and democracy, opportunities for participation must be created and made accessible, especially for young adults.

An often cited reason why young people are not involved more frequently is the presumption of young people being overwhelmed or unwilling to participate. Numerous successful participation projects have impressively demonstrated that this prejudice is not true and that participation tends to fail due to the lack of competence of the organizers rather than the commitment of the youth. The simplest and most important step in empowering young people to be changemakers for the future is to listen to them and take their needs seriously – two simple things that many young people have found missing. Especially during the Corona crisis, it became clear how important established networks and their flexibility are for civic education. Expanding and strengthening these points was a key challenge in the pandemic situation, as personal contact was not possible. Young people need positive role models, especially from their own age groups. It is also crucial to know what expectations young people actually have of democracy-building projects – in other words: what expectations do young people like you have of us? All of you here have come together in the setting of this youth forum to exchange ideas and learn about new perspectives. We also believe that an exchange across national borders is one of the core concerns of civic-historical youth education work. And that brings me to my third thesis:

Transnational exchange against lack of perspective - Young people develop their values and like to learn through experience, especially in international exchange with people of their age

At this point, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to emphasize the conclusion of the 16th Children and Youth Report of the German Federal Government: civic education is too often thought of only in terms of nation-state categories. Much more opportunities should be created for transnational educational experiences. This is especially true with regard to Europe. In this context, the strengths and advantages of European unification must be appreciated just as much as the current challenges must be discussed critically.

This takes me to a consideration of the current challenges to German society and especially to us as political educators.

We as a German society have to take a closer look, in schools and in all extracurricular learning institutions, at Ukraine, at the war, at Central, Southeastern- and Eastern Europe and we have to do it systematically and constantly – even if it is not (anymore) in the news every day! In the October 2022 issue of bpb:magazine, Eastern Europe expert and journalist Dirk Auer draws a rather sobering conclusion: "Until 1989, policymakers were indeed still able to draw on well-founded expertise on Eastern Europe at West German universities and research institutes. Research on Eastern Europe was conducted in order to understand the communist system rival. It was promoted accordingly. With the disintegration of the Eastern bloc, this had seemingly come to an end." As an example, he cites the history of the Federal Institute for International and East European Studies (BIOst) in Cologne, with whose liquidation in 2000 Germany lost one of the most important institutes specializing in Eastern Europe. "Anyone in Germany who was professionally involved with Eastern Europe had an increasingly difficult time since the mid-1990s," Auer notes. Now that the knowledge is needed again, there is hardly any expertise left.

One way to regain this expertise is to promote the concept of exchange more strongly again. We need to "move away from the national" and look more to neighboring regions, revive encounters and exchanges, expand networks. Only in September, more than 200 young people from 69 nations met in Berlin for histoCON 2022: Shared Past? Divided Memories? organized by the Federal Agency for Civic Education and funded by the German Foreign Office. The claim of the youth history festival is "look back, think ahead" and together the teenagers and young adults exchanged ideas about history, but also its relation to the present and the future. This can be done very creatively, for example, by cooking a supposed "national dish" together and exchanging ideas about what such everyday things as food have to do with history, memory and identity. It is necessary not only to "save" the badly affected civic and cultural education with reference to Central Eastern Europe in Germany, but also to substantially promote it. At universities, in textbooks and in civic education, we need more expertise on Central and Eastern European countries and languages.

This leads me to my fourth and final thesis:

The diverse voices of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe must be listened to, especially in the field of civic education!

It is very important to note that different perspectives exist with regard to the states of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Especially in relation to the Russian war of aggression and also in terms of peace, security and integration needs of individual states, regions or alliances. Multiperspectivity means avoiding simplifications and undercomplex representations, and addressing different approaches and interests, especially when these hold a rather marginal position in key areas of debate. It is important to listen to and consider all voices and at the same time it is limiting to assume a homogeneous group of states, civil society organizations and people and "the one and only" position. In order to integrate this into civic education work, the bpb founded a project group for Central and Eastern Europe in May of this year.

The project group is currently still being established. It is to become a central point of contact for specialist expertise on Central and Eastern Europe. In doing so, it is to offer both special expertise on national and regional contexts, but also to take in consideration histories of entanglement. Together with other colleagues from the entire Federal Agency for Civic Education, it is to develop conceptually and strategically civic-educational, areas of civic-historical and cultural education as well as to implement participatory, digital and classical formats. In this way, it is to ensure the consistent and reliable communication of knowledge and information about Central and Eastern Europe for the general public and political institutions in Germany. The idea is also to link civil societies in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe and to foster an exchange. We want to get back into the exchange on democracy, culture of remembrance, disinformation and freedom of opinion and press in the digitalized world.

For example, together with the network of the houses of literature, the project group launched a three-year series of events entitled "Souvenir" in October. The series connects Central and Eastern European literatures and cultural memory imprints to the war-torn present in Europe. Among others, the North Macedonian author Rumena Bužarovska and the Bosnian author Faruk Šehić will speak to each other on November 30 in Zurich.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, the work is far from over, but we are working on it! In our work, but also in particular in the newly founded project group, we are trying to renew and deepen expertise and, above all, to create a framework for exchange.

With these theses in mind, I wish you, dear participants of the Youth Forum, many opportunities in the coming days to enter into dialogue, to discuss questions and to find initial answers. May the forum provide time for personal encounters and productive discussions and provide you, ladies and gentlemen, with inspiration and impetus for your important work!