Lectures

Lectures & Essays

European Danube Academy: Network for Science, Education, Culture and Media in the Danube Region Profile and Tasks 2017ff
Authors: Peter Langer, Christof Hußmann, Paul F. Langer

The European Danube Academy (EDA) works on cooperation in science, culture, education, politics and media in the Danube region. With its network and projects, it contributes to international understanding with the countries of south-eastern Europe and thus promotes the European integration process.

Pictures from the banks of the Danube. Speech by György Konrád on the occasion of the 10th International Danube Festival on July 3, 2016 in Ulm City Hall

Dear Ivo Gönner, dear Peter Langer, dear Lord Mayor Czisch and dear residents of the city of Ulm!
Eighteen years ago, I was able to give a speech in this place in the name of the Danube, encouraging the citizens of this basin to pay solemn homage to the great European river, the Danube, which has been flowing here since time immemorial for the physical and spiritual enrichment of us all…

International Danube Festival Ulm/Neu-Ulm 2016: Vision and responsibility for Europe
Author: Peter Langer

This year we are celebrating the 10th edition of the International Danube Festival Ulm/Neu-Ulm. Anyone who was there can still hear the sonorous voice of György Konrád, who opened the first Danube Festival on Münsterplatz on July 3, 1998 with his “Danube Hearing”…

Macro-spaces as orientation for competence development – Governance and education in South Eastern Europe in the context of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region
Author: Ulrich Klemm

At the invitation of the interdisciplinary working group “Adult Education and Space” at the conference “Raus aus dem Container” – Handlungsorientierte Raumansätze in der Erwachsenenbildung” on March 7/8, 2014 at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland / University of Teacher Education Basel.

URBANISM VERSUS STATISM
Author: GYÖRGY KONRÁD

Vienna, December 9, 2013

Among the public service positions, I particularly like the office of mayor. Because it is comprehensive and practical at the same time, symbolic and technical. Two sympathetic terms are linked in it: citizen and master. In Hungarian as well as in some other languages. And we can also reverse the order of the words: Master Citizen. It’s not an easy role to be the first citizen of a city, to make decisions, talk, organize and create an atmosphere. A democratic role; a dictatorship of the mayor is rarely heard of.

Educational area Southeast Europe.
Dimensions of adult education in the horizon of transformation societies
Author: Ulrich Klemm

The educational landscape in south-eastern Europe along the Danube is characterized by as much cultural and social diversity as the ecological landscapes along the almost 3,000 km long course of the river from the Black Forest to the Black Sea itself.

Cooperation between cities and regions creates the new European Danube region
Author: Peter Langer

Europe on the Danube
Author: Peter Langer

City – Country – River – Europe
Author: Peter Langer

A river is powerful. That certainly applies to the Danube. It flows for three thousand kilometers from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, a natural link from the west across Europe to its other end in the southeast: a European miracle. The Danube connects ten European countries, old and new democracies, many peoples and cultures. Over one hundred million people live on its shores. It is always on the move, can sink ships and flood cities. But there is one thing she cannot do: pause.

Cultural identity in the Danube region
Author: Peter Langer

Cultural identity in the Danube region – a big, difficult topic. As a first approach, I would like to let the subject of the study speak for itself:

“Look at me, says the Danube, I am tall, beautiful and wise. There is no one in Europe who could hold a candle to me. I want to stretch out lengthwise over your cities, settle down on both sides of my banks, I want to be your main road”.

György Konrád lets the Danube speak. Along its almost 2900-kilometer course, it forms the axis of Central and South-Eastern Europe and connects the Black Forest with the Black Sea – a European miracle in itself.

Since the global political upheaval of 1989/90, the river has flowed through ten European countries, of which Romania and Bulgaria became the fifth and sixth EU members in 2007. Serbia and Croatia also see their near future in the European community. A total of 14 countries lie in the Danube basin, the catchment area of the great river. The countries bordering the Danube represent one of the most significant socio-economic potentials in Europe. 115 million people live in the countries, regions and cities that lie directly on the Danube alone. It was therefore only logical that the European Council in June 2009 instructed the EU Commission to draw up a “Danube Strategy” and thus – after the Baltic Sea Strategy – to create a further development program for a macro-region within the EU. To put it bluntly: the Rhine is the river of Europe’s past, the Danube the river of Europe’s future.

The Danube region is characterized by a cultural-historical significance and cultural colourfulness that is unique in Europe. The clash of the most diverse influences – from the Habsburg monarchy with its Catholic-Western character to Byzantine Orthodoxy and the Ottoman Empire, to name just the most important – have created a string of pearls of cities, cultural landscapes and monuments along the Danube.

With Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade, there are four European capitals and cultural centers on the Danube alone. Cathedrals, churches, monasteries, palaces, castles and fortresses characterize the course of the river. And it flows through natural landscapes that take your breath away with their beauty and diversity: from the idyllic upper reaches of the Wachau through the vastness of the Hungarian lowlands, the grandiose ruggedness of the Iron Gate to the natural paradise of the Danube Delta, where the Danube loses itself in the endless expanse of the Black Sea.

No one has described this better than Claudio Magris in his still unsurpassed biography of the Danube: “… not for nothing is the Danube the only truly European river, Protestant at its origin, then Catholic and finally Orthodox; it reflects both Roman ruins and Byzantine domes, cathedrals and synagogues, Baroque and Ottoman splendor”.

The culture and especially the festival landscape along the river offer the whole wealth of music styles and dance cultures that the Danube region has to offer. Traditional sounds and dances alongside electronic ethno and gypsy sounds, classical music alongside avant-garde, gypsy music alongside rock, pop and jazz. The encounter between tradition and modernity always results in something aesthetically new and unusual. This applies above all to the current theater scene in the Danube countries. The Spring, Autumn and Sziget Festivals in Budapest, EXIT in Novi Sad, BITEF in Belgrade and festivals in Romania and Bulgaria have long had a Europe-wide reach. With Sibiu, Linz and Pecs, three cities in the Danube countries alone have been European Capitals of Culture in recent years.

In recent years, festivals have emerged that focus on the river itself and offer artists and ensembles from the Danube countries a platform, such as the Donaufest in Ulm/Neu-Ulm, the Donumenta in Regensburg or the International Danube Festival in Tulcea, Romania, the gateway to the Danube Delta. The 250,000 visitors who came to the Donaufest in Ulm and Neu-Ulm last year show that this is meeting with growing interest. Our friendly Danube cities and regions presented themselves there with music and dance ensembles, theater, arts and crafts, exhibitions and tourist information.

Experiencing the diversity of cultures and lifestyles, their sensuality and liveliness and getting to know the unknown natural beauty along the river – this is also the basis for all forms of cultural tourism in the Danube countries. There are no limits to the imagination here, as the example of the Danube cycle path project from Budapest to the Black Sea shows.

The Danube primarily connects cities and regions. If we understand “cultural identity” with George Herbert Mead as belonging to a certain cultural collective with the willingness to act responsibly for this collective, then it is above all the cities and regions in which such a process can take place.

It is in the cities and regions that the shared history, present and future of the Danube are experienced most strongly and directly – the basis of any identity formation. Let’s take Ulm with its rich history and along the Danube. It was from here that thousands of people – the Danube Swabians – moved down the river on “Ulm boxes” 300 years ago to southern Hungary, the Banat, the Batschka, out of sheer necessity, to find a new home there and settle peacefully with other ethnic groups for centuries and create fertile landscapes.

That is history.

However, many people still live in our region today who have a personal connection to the regions and countries along the Danube due to their origins – be it Danube Swabian or other migration contexts – and who are now rediscovering their personal Danube history, their “Danube identity”.

The Europe of the future is a Europe of cities and regions. Nothing embodies this principle of European constitutional policy better than the ever closer cooperation and partnership between our cities and regions along the Danube. Joint projects in culture, science, education, ecology and business have been developed and implemented for many years. There are more and more encounters between young people (and senior citizens, Carmen!). Partnerships and personal friendships are developing and more and more solid structures are forming that connect our cities and regions, such as the Danube Cities and Regions Network. We founded a Council of Danube Cities and Regions in Budapest on June 11, 2009. It will give us a greater voice and weight with the European institutions and make a concrete contribution to the creation of an integrated European Danube region.

A few days after Budapest, the European Council instructed the EU Commission to draw up a “Strategy for the Danube Region”. This decision has taken our ambitious project a good step forward: the creation of a common, politically, economically and culturally interconnected development area along the Danube, a European macro-region from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. If this project is to be effective, it must make a demonstrable contribution to the development of cultural and political identity in the Danube region. A paper on the EUSDR states:

“On the one hand, the Danube region is closely linked culturally and historically, but at the same time, in terms of languages – 20 languages! At the same time, the Danube Region is a heterogeneous area in terms of languages – 20 languages! -, cultures, religions – five religions -, economies and forms of government, and it will be difficult to grow together without a common sense of belonging to this region and a common understanding of regional identity. The EU Strategy for the Danube Region can help to strengthen this bond through cultural, scientific, civil society and municipal cooperation. The Danube region must be made into a European trademark and the strategy must become an element in strengthening the regional identity of the people who live in this region. To this end, projects must be developed that promote cultural similarities as well as cultural diversity along the Danube.”

Let me name a few fields:

“Culture is the soul of Europe” is a principle of EU cultural policy. The Danube region in particular, with its enormous diversity of different cultures and ways of life, is an exemplary field for experimentation and experience.

The cooperation between creative artists, institutions and festivals in the cities and regions along the Danube, the exchange of theater cultures, music traditions and dance forms and their actors leads – according to the principle of “unity in diversity” – to a network of high creative potential. The identity-forming goal is to develop close cooperation in various artistic fields. The establishment of a European network of cultural professionals from the Danube region is a central project of the Council of Danube Cities and Regions as part of the EU Danube Strategy. Our joint platform for cooperation in culture, science and media is the European Danube Academy.

Another key point is the strengthening of civil society and civil rights. The Danube region is characterized by a multi-ethnic coexistence that is unique in Europe, but it also stands for latent tensions and open conflicts between ethnic groups, for exclusion, expulsion and even genocide in the Balkans just a few years ago. Anti-discrimination and equality projects play a central role in the development of civil society structures in the Danube region – just think of the huge and difficult task of integrating the Roma. More than 5 million Roma live in south-eastern Europe, sometimes in miserable conditions.

Let us also think about the meeting of young people from the Danube countries. We have set up “tolerance camps” and meeting projects for young people along the Danube, which we will continue and network with each other. The aim is to establish a European Danube Youth Office.

And the strengthening of free and independent media is another key prerequisite for the development of civil society and democratic conditions in the Danube region. This can be promoted through training and exchange programs for young journalists or through the establishment of a Danube media network, such as the one we recently founded in Novi Sad, Serbia.

My friend and teacher Dr. Erhard Busek once said in Ulm: “If European identity is not developed in the Danube region, where else?”

One principle applies: it was renewed in the final declaration of the last European Conference of Danube Cities and Regions in Budapest: “Democracy, tolerance, humanism, respect for religious freedom and the unconditional will to oppose all forms of nationalism and extremism are the foundations of our common development.”

European identity and cultural identity in the Danube region are only conceivable if they are rooted in these values.

Culture on the banks of the Danube – for me personally, this is like a large coffee house, a social melting pot, ambiguous and profound like the river itself … the coffee house: a European, identity-forming phenomenon, especially in the Danube cities, where it captivated a cosmopolitan audience with wit, magic and melancholy. Much of it is long gone, the actors scattered all over the world in dark times. Today, it is about recapturing the supposedly ancient and yet so modern European spirit of the Enlightenment in order to shape the great and ambitious European project. Today, more than ever, we need cultural curiosity and the willingness to make the foreign neighbor an acquaintance – especially in the Danube region. Let’s get going!

03/11
Peter Langer
Responsible for international contacts and coordinator of the European Danube Academy Ulm
Danube Commissioner for the cities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm
Coordinator of the Council of Danube Cities and Regions

Migration, Integration and Health
Contribution by Harald C. Traue

As I gaze at the young waters of the freshly sprung Danube, I wonder if, following it to the diverse peoples and ethnic groups all the way to the delta, I will enter an arena of bloody battles or join the chorus of a humanity that is nonetheless unified, regardless of the different languages and cultures.
Claudio Magris, Danube: Biography of a River, 1988

“Migration, Integration and Health: The Danube Region” is a collection of 23 international contributions from Serbia, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Croatia with a total of 327 pages. From their historical, philosophical, political and medical perspectives, the book’s 37 renowned authors shed light on the history of migration in the twentieth century along the Danube, the river that became a metaphor for the opening of the EU to the south-east. The book is the result of several conferences and working sessions of the European Danube Academy and the establishment of a network of scientists from various disciplines. This process, which lasted several years, and its current outcome was supported both ideally and financially by the University of Ulm, the cities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm, the Baden-Württemberg Foundation and, last but not least, CPI Ebner & Spiegel. This support made it possible to realize the project.

Thanks to a multiple English-language editing and selection process, the highest international scientific standards have been achieved. It is a joint publication of the European Danube Academy and the University of Ulm (H.C. Traue), the University of Tübingen (R. Johler) and Queen Mary University in London (J. Jancovic Gavrilovic). The book is published by Pabst Science Publishers (Lengerich, Berlin, Bremen, Miami, Riga, Viernheim, Vienna, Zagreb) and costs €35. This publishing house is associated with publications that deal with issues at the interface between social science and medicine.

Why this book?
Politically motivated expulsion, but also economically motivated migration, have had a particular impact on the fate of the Danube countries with their diversity of people and cultures. The long shadow of this history will darken the waters of the Danube for a long time to come, because the migration of people back and forth was associated with considerable suffering and misery for the people concerned. To the extent that these displacements of peoples were based on ethnic affiliations, the means of transferring people have become more brutal and ruthless. The countries of the former Yugoslavia and the surrounding areas are particularly affected, which is why they are the focus of this book.

This book is a document of the history of migration and its consequences up to the present day, so that ignorance does not prove to be a stumbling block in the current full steam ahead political and socio-economic integration of the Danube countries into a common Europe, because “the banks of the Danube are a test for the Europe of tomorrow, not in a test tube, but in the middle of life. We Western Europeans have forgotten to do research in this open-air laboratory and therefore understand nothing of the problems in the former Yugoslavia” (Martin Graff, 1998, p. 9).

From the content

In the first chapter, Karl Schlögel places the resettlement and expulsion experience of the Danube region in the context of the pan-European expulsion events. In his contribution, he outlines the European history of expulsion over the last 100 years, showing that the Europe we know today is the result of waves of migration and expulsion. His most important thesis is that the Danube region can be seen as a Europe “en miniature”, as the result of a segregation without historical precedent. We are witnessing a radical unwinding of what was left of Europe after 1945 or 1948. The question is how this will affect the development of an enlarged EU – a new Europe.

The historian and journalist Hannes Heer took on the ideas of world power and the idea of the “ethnically pure state”, which the National Socialist “Third Reich” used to change the Southeast European region in a brutal way. Henrike Hampe from the Danube Swabian Central Museum in Ulm dealt with the expulsions of Germans from Hungary and the former Yugoslavia. Goran Opacic and colleagues from the University of Belgrade write about the more than 3.7 million refugees from the former Yugoslavia. They make it clear that around one in six citizens from Croatia and around one in two citizens from Bosnia and Kosovo had to flee during the Yugoslavian war. Most of them were internally displaced persons because they remained within their countries of origin.

The second chapter of the book takes a sociological look at the war in Yugoslavia. Natalija Basic examines the emergence of enemy images in interviews with former soldiers, the subjective experiences of the “minor” actors of war and expulsion. The article contains excerpts from an interview with a 29-year-old war veteran from Osijek. It provides examples of the conditions that describe the development of a willingness to use violence from the perspective of this former soldier. In his reflections on morality, NATO violence, human rights and international law, Dieter S. Lutz points out to the reader, sometimes quite uncomfortably, the blindness of the use of military means using the example of Kosovo. Based on the definition of genocide according to the 1948 convention, he rolls up the monstrosities of crimes that go hand in hand with genocide, and which in some cases allow remorse and morality to take the place of politics and law. Josip Babic, the Germanist and Vice President of the Serbian Goethe Society, explores the question of the responsibility, obligation or guilt of intellectuals with regard to the third greatest catastrophe of European civilization in this century. He chose Hermann Broch’s theory of mass madness (who, during his years in exile in America, attempted to analyze German National Socialism as a manifestation of a pathological condition and to formulate proposals for combating it and preventing it in the future) to explain the outbreak of nationalism in the Balkans. The philosopher Ulrich Weiß wonders whether and how interpretations of the history of the Danube region hinder current political action. History – as Weiß argues – is not simply an accumulation of objective facts, but rather the plastic, constantly changing totality of perceptions of history. He addresses the founding myth of Serbia, the Battle of Blackbird Field in 1389, the motif of the scapegoat, the motif of betrayal – of the hero, or of the people, of one’s own religion, of one’s own culture, each of which fatally fueled the political climate for the subsequent war situation. Hans-Georg Wehling is an institution in Baden-Württemberg: using the example of Ivo Andric’s novel “The Bridge over the Drina”, he has explored the significance of the river, a river course that can serve as a model for the Danube, which is still waiting for its great narrative.

The third chapter contains essays on integration. Reinhard Johler from the University of Tübingen writes about the “Sister Cities” movement as a suitable model for the importance of municipalities for the Europeanization of Europe. The desire for “United in Diversity” is realized in a very practical way in this movement. Many popular hopes are pinned on the potential of sport to integrate migrants into German society. Klaus Seiberth and Ansgar Thiel also show cracks in this somewhat naïve idea and allocation of responsibility, because sport is also an illustration of otherwise existing problems with integration. However, they also make a number of practical suggestions for strengthening sports clubs for integration. The article by Karin Amaos and Luzi Santoso on pupils with a migration background contains similar considerations, using the example of one pupil’s school career.

Monika Kleck describes in detail the story of 70 displaced women in Tuzla who were expelled from Srebrenica, Zvornik, Bratunac and Vlasenica. These are so-called “internally displaced persons”, whose fate often remains hidden from the wider view of refugees who leave the country, but who have similarities with German refugees after the Second World War, as poverty also proves to be a risk factor for integration and health. Andreas Breinbauer from the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe in Vienna, one of the partners of the European Danube Academy in Ulm, will discuss the phenomenon of brain drain using the example of mathematicians from Austria and Hungary to Western Europe and the USA. As the vast majority of academics want to stay abroad, the countries of origin have to cope with a considerable loss of qualified academics. It is clear that there is an urgent need to harmonize living conditions and opportunities in Europe.

The concluding seven paragraphs form the fourth chapter of this book. They deal with the extreme burdens associated with forced migration. The expulsion of people for political, ethnic or racist reasons, usually coupled with tangible economic interests, is a key feature of the history of migration in the Danube region. The number of traumatized victims is large. The psychological and physical injuries suffered are man-made disasters and therefore have a particularly deep impact on the identity and social self-image of those affected. The psychotherapeutic, medical and social care of the victims of these events, many of whom suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, has become an important topic in medicine and psychology (see articles by Martin Aigner, Sanela Piralic and Fabian Friedrich from Vienna, Trudy Mooren from Holland and Jörg Oster and Andrea Gruner from Ulm).

The location of the cities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm as the westernmost urban centers on the Danube makes a care facility for those affected from Southeast Europe necessary. The authors of the therapeutic contributions Norbert Gurris, Gertrud Schwarz-Langer, Christine Grunert, Manfred Makowitzki, Matthias Odenwald and Harald C. Traue argue that help for victims and survivors of extreme traumatization cannot succeed without an understanding of the special social, religious, cultural and political conditions, which is why the constant confrontation with these issues is an important prerequisite for therapeutic work. On the other hand, the closeness of the therapeutic relationships also enables a special understanding of life and suffering in these countries. These contributions, with their vivid descriptions of patients’ fates, ensure that the suffering and misery associated with uprooting, displacement and the increasing brutality in times of war are not overlooked in the media hustle and bustle or abstract analyses (see also the contribution by Harald C. Traue, Lucia Jerg-Bretzke and Jutta Lindert on flight from Kosovo).

As this misery is deliberately inflicted on people by other people, the ugly side of human nature is revealed with a clarity that does not match the optimism with which some naive contemporaries believe in the political integration of south-eastern Europe into the European Union. As the scars are slowly healing, it is imperative to devote all our efforts to the positive development of the European Union along the Danube, so that this European region once again invites people to self-determined mobility, to a warm-hearted, lively and creative coexistence.

Prof. Dr. Harald C. Traue
Scientific Director of the European Danube Academy
Head of the Health Psychology Department
at the Medical Faculty of the University of Ulm