(11/16/2023) Big stage for young people, discussion and
sport, history and singing – and everything under the sign of democracy: For three days, the Giessen district and its adult education center brought generations into conversation under the motto #Be.Free. Encounters and impulses created – with the aim of conveying the value of democracy. A good 630 interested people took part in the event series on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the March Revolution and the Paulskirche Constitution of 1848 – and almost 1,000 also experienced the start of the LICH Basketball theme game day against TG Hanau on the Saturday evening of the event weekend. Before the start, both teams carried the large banner with the slogan #Be.Frei.Bebei.
“For you, as people born in the old Federal Republic of Germany, democracy is everyday life,” recalled patron and guest speaker Rainer Eppelmann at the start: “I, on the other hand, spent most of my life in the dictatorship.” The former GDR civil rights activist and chairman of the Foundation for Coming to terms with the The SED dictatorship spent a morning discussing democracy with young people at the Clemens Brentano European School (CBES) in Lollar. And during his lecture in the evening at the adult education center in Lich, he also encouraged people to get involved – in their surroundings, in their everyday lives. Because: “There is no better offer for me than democracy!”
Full program democracy
People who get involved – in short, heroes of democracy – have recorded young people from schools in the district in 23
video clips – and much more about what constitutes democracy for them. At the awards ceremony, the Traumstern cinema in Lich was so full that there was hardly enough space. On behalf of the jury, district administrator Anita Schneider and poetry slammer Lars Ruppel congratulated the team Kristin Sturtz, Sofie Holstein, Walid Nasso and Arda Yildiz from CBES Lollar on their first place.
A full program of democracy – right in the middle of people’s everyday lives: people from the district who love singing surprised everyone with a flash mob in the Neustädter Tor gallery in Gießen on the occasion of the series of events. LICH Basketball showed that
sport knows no boundaries and excludes no one with an inclusive range of sports for people of all ages to take part in. And a day later, the coexistence of the generations continued: Volunteers from local
politics in the city of Lich got into a conversation with young people over the edge of the cooking pot while preparing lunch together at the district adult education center, before discussion rounds in the afternoon where people discussed positions, different views and ideas in a fair manner brought about an exchange.
For District Administrator Anita Schneider, Torsten Denker, head of the district adult education center, and Anja Horstmann, responsible for cultural funding, it is a consistently positive assessment: “It is great that we have reached so many young people in particular,” says District Administrator Schneider. “And our request is not finished: We want to use the motto and intention again and again and help convey the value of democracy and its liveliness in everyday life.”
Two more events in the series, open to anyone interested, will follow later this month:
- The German Revolution 1848/49 – the causes and consequences of its failure
With Prof. Dr. Hans Werner Hahn
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023, 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Netanya Hall in the Old Castle (Brandplatz 1, 35390 Gießen),
- Can you still be a pacifist in these times?
With Sabine Müller-Langsdorf (Peace Pastor of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau)
Friday, November 24th, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Ev. Marienstiftsgemeinde (Am Wall 24, Lich), free of charge
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