Panel discussion at the end of the Biennale in the Wasserburg town hall hall – the SPD general secretary was there
The Film Biennale Bavaria 2023, which was taking place in south-east Bavaria these days (we reported), had set itself the goal of dealing intensively with the topic of homeland, not only in the various films, but also in the events accompanying this Biennale . At the end of the Biennale, a panel discussion took place in the Wasserburg town hall hall with the topic: “Homeland together: The young are faster, the old know the shortcut – perspectives for young and old”. On the podium there were personalities who are also known nationally. Among them the Secretary General of the SPD, Kevin Kühnert (34).
The actress was there too Pia Amofa-Cattle, known for the animal documentary series “Pia and the wild animals”, which she has presented on the children’s channel “KiKa” since 2020. She is known to the broader television audience through roles in “Tatort”, “SOKO Stuttgart” and “Der Alte”. In addition, trained nurse Pia Amofa-Antwi is a passionate soccer player and played for a year in the Wacker Burghausen first team.
Next to her sat the native Wasserburg actor and Director Sebastian Schindlerwho intensively accompanied the Biennale 2023 and has made a name for himself through several film productions that deal with the topic of home.
Sigi Franz is a master glassblower from Burghausen. He has been described as a “radical free spirit” who at a young age quarreled with the Catholic Church, which is known to have a strong presence in the area around Altötting, and eventually left. After a great stroke of fate more than ten years ago, the 58-year-old has found his way back to faith and church.
sat next to him Prof. Dr. Alfred Quenzlersince 2009 Professor of International Human Resources and Organizational Management, with a focus on employer branding, talent management, corporate culture, HR controlling and leadership development at the Technical University in Ingolstadt.
They all discussed the interesting yet difficult topic of home in the present. This panel discussion was moderated by Ozlem Sarikaya, a journalist and presenter at Bayerisches Fernsehen, who is one of the co-founders of the “Neue Deutsche Medienmacher” initiative, a nationwide association of journalists with and without a migration background who are committed to more intercultural competence and sensitivity in journalistic work and reporting. With her work on television, the presenter also sees herself as a “mediator between cultures”.
The round of talks, which also contained a broad cultural and national diversity, now discussed “home together”. It was a promising topic, but unfortunately again only touched the surface in many areas without really deepening it. What initially irritated the audience was probably the fact that the presenter could hardly be understood in the audience. Was it the technology? In any case, Pia Amofi-Antwi and Kevin Kühnert were understood much better.
The chairman of the association “International Festival of New Homeland Film” and former Mayor of Mühldorf, Günther Knoblauch, explained in his introduction that with his initiatives he also wanted to help people get involved in their home country.
At the same time, the concept of homeland is currently being used and overused in many places, and the question arises, what is homeland actually?
In 2004, the word “Heimat” was voted one of the most beautiful German words in a competition by the German Language Council and the Goethe Institute. This term evokes memories that are filled and charged with longing, dreams, images, feelings, smells and sounds, but also with pain, suffering, loss and destruction. Can home be described at all? How do people experience home? Can you feel them or represent them? The definition of this term seems to vary so much from person to person that specifying it is a challenge. Perhaps that is why quite a few people harbor animosity towards this term. Ultimately, these questions also fundamentally concern human identity. They address memory and vision, past and future, security, security, understanding and comprehension, the familiar and rootedness.
Sigi Franz advertised at the beginning with a saying by Joachim Fuchsberger that in love there are the four “vs”: trust, understanding, renunciation, forgiveness. And he added that what applies to love for a person also applies to one’s homeland. Then he spoke out vehemently against media and ideological restrictions on viewing the present. It is the skills that a person has that ground them, that enable them to face challenges. In the future, according to Franz, the world of work will change fundamentally “and skills will be required, skills that allow you to master these great challenges”.
“Fair of Missed Opportunities”
For Kevin Kuehnert Home is a feeling where you have this feeling, where you feel accepted unconditionally and without restrictions. “FOMO” (fear of missing out) is the fear of missing out on something in the fast-paced world of today, i.e. missing out on information, events, experiences or decisions that could improve your life in some way. As a result, life is increasingly becoming a “fair of missed opportunities,” said Kühnert afterwards.
If Alfred Quenzler then spoke about the fact that most people start searching for meaning in life at the age of 40 and then asked whether the baby boomers had things in common, and then it became clear that on this evening the podium participants would also meet again and again dropped in because they had different starting points and expectations when dealing with the topic of the panel discussion.
For this reason, the rather romanticized family image conveyed by the Heimat films of the 1950s was criticized just as much as the distorted image that young people today no longer wanted to have anything to do with older generations. Kevin Kühnert liked it, pointing out commonalities across several generations. With people in the Bundestag, he said, with whom he could exchange ideas, he connects more than with people his age who seem to be committed to other values. After all, a generation is not a community of destiny.
Then it was interjected that one also had to communicate with people who did not share one’s own opinion. Collective memories of a generation are, for example, music, films and the like. Especially the reference to hits that were in the “charts” in one’s own youth sometimes arouse nostalgic thoughts and feelings.
“You have to be young to do big things,” Johann Wolfgang Goethe once said, and he probably meant that if you do big things, you stay young at heart. When Özlem Sarikaya then spoke of the fact that there was more togetherness between the generations in southern cultures, this romanticizing family image was used again. And when Kevin Kühnert mentioned that there were more opportunities for subculture in big cities like Berlin than in the provinces, it became clear that home in the provinces had to be lived better due to the lack of alternative options.
But that also has something to do with modern media, with digitization and “social media”, it was objected. Sigi Franz said that he always liked to travel by train and that before the invention of “smartphones” it was more common to talk to each other on the train, whereas today everyone has their own mobile phone with which they can connect to the world, so that there is no “FOMO” with him.
“Let’s reach out to others”
Then the listeners were also asked and a young student only said that it would be better if the students could get more involved in school life. Incidentally, this is better anchored in Bavaria than in Baden-Württemberg, for example, she added.
The audience in the town hall learned that Kevin Kühnert had also unsubscribed from Twitter and that his grandfather, at the age of 75, was able to create a new gateway to the world via Facebook. “Let’s approach others,” Sigi Franz then warned, adding that it was important not to want to impose your own ideology on others.
When the participants in the panel discussion were finally asked about their plans with regard to the topic, statements were made again, which some may have heard very often, that one should exchange ideas, listen to others, the generations should exchange ideas and one may the principle of “cash for rare” also bring into relationships by bringing something rare into society and sharing it with others.
To what extent “Gemeinsam Heimat” can be designed with it, it will probably take a number of panel discussions.
The audience applauded and Günthzer Knoblauch handed out flowers and pendants, repeating his favorite sentence, “Mia san Mia” always applies in Bavaria, but where are the others?
And so, after a good 90 minutes of panel discussion, we went home thoughtful, albeit not at a loss.
PETER RINK
2023-05-03 16:47:14
#Homeland #difficult #topic
