The association Kreativpioniere Freiburg/Schildacker eV has the aim of initiating joint action in the arts, cultural and creative industries in Freiburg, primarily and as an example in the district/Quartier Schildacker. The current project “Nemory” is a kind of research trip into the memories of contemporary witnesses. Like in a memory game, memory cards are uncovered and pairs are formed by bringing the different generations together in the interviews. In the first part of the project in November 2021 in cooperation with the Rabenkopfstraße residential home in Freiburg, young people and contemporary witnesses of National Socialism met. The seniors are interviewed by the 14 to 19 year olds – all conversations were filmed by a camera team and later transcribed. It is about questions about life as a child or young person at the time of National Socialism, what kept people alive back then, what survival strategies were there, what were the differences to today or were there even better ones?
The corresponding technical equipment is required to record the conversations, which can now be financed with the donation of 15,000 euros. The amount is provided by the “Rolf Böhme Foundation”, which was founded in 1988 by the Sparkasse as a legally independent foundation under civil law and endowed with endowment capital. In honor of the former OB Böhme, it was named after him. Its purpose is to promote art and culture, science and research as well as education/education and environmental protection.
In the further course, after the interviews with the seniors, a stage performance was developed in regular meetings, which was performed on May 29th, 2022 in the residential home in Freiburg and on June 1st, 2022 in the youth center. Petra Gaus, Britta Büttner, Raimund Schall and Joe Killi accompany and coach the young people with different focal points. The stage performance staged the memories of the contemporary witnesses in different ways. Small game scenes were built in, but texts were also used, and conversations were offered between the young people in the form of a podcast: How did you experience the interviews? What do you remember most vividly? Music also played a role and was incorporated into the videos. The whole project was also accompanied by the camera, so that a film documentation was created at the same time.
After the two performances, the conversations/interviews with contemporary witnesses of the Nazi era will be continued as a format with educational and historical relevance in different contexts and documented on film. The continuation of the project is to be carried out in cooperation with Freiburg schools. There are contacts to the Max Weber School and to the community school at Bürgle in March. The idea is to use the recordings of the individual interviews, with the support of the Rolf Böhme Foundation, in history, politics or religion lessons, for example. This should motivate the students to work in their own environment with the
to talk to older generations and learn something first-hand about the National Socialist era.
The National Socialism Documentation Center headed by Julia Wohlrab is very interested in further interviews with contemporary witnesses and young people and in future cooperation. In cooperation with schools and the documentation center, new formats for pedagogical work in the future documentation center could be developed in the field of history lessons/media lessons.
The idea of presenting this special format to other senior citizens’ facilities arose from the cooperation with the Freiburg Residential Foundation. The mutual appreciation as well as the historical “wanting to understand” is of great importance on the part of the young people. The seniors also often expressed the wish that what happened should not be forgotten, also against the background of current events in Europe this is particularly important and the young people confirm that this is exactly why they are interested in this topic.
(Press information: Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, August 12, 2022)
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