Seminar on “History policy in the Weimar triangle – past and present”

Seminar on “History policy in the Weimar triangle – past and present”

The Georg Eckert Institute will be hosting a workshop from the 23 to 24 May 2014, exploring the topic of “History policy in the Weimar triangle” in partnership with the Fridtjof Nansen Academy, the German-Polish Institute and the Olsztyn University in Ingelheim.

The seminar will address the extent to which “national views of history” predominate in Germany, Poland and France. Is there conflict between such views and were, or are, they subject to the prevailing national policy on history? The results of this analysis should go some way towards illuminating the question of whether, and if so how, national views of history can be transcended in Europe and effectively re-evaluated.
Within this context, the seminar programme will address the question of the trans-national expansion of projects such as the history book written collaboratively by German and Polish authors. What challenges and opportunities are presented by a bi-national history textbook? How can such bi-national history books be used in the classroom setting? What is the relationship between textbook narratives, scholarship, education and upbringing, and policy? This a small sample of the questions that will be introduced and discussed at the seminar. The workshop is aimed at teachers and other disseminators working in the field of historical and political education.

The seminar will be run as part of the German-Polish textbook project “Textbook history”. This textbook for German and Polish pupils, which has been written collaboratively by scholars from both countries, will be published in 2015. It presents a European perspective on history, one removed from the traditional focus on national history.

The bi-lateral textbook project, the German part of which has been financed by the Foreign Office and the KMK (The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany) is being discharged by the Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission and the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig.

Further details regarding the seminar programme and information on how to register can be found in the flyer under the following link www.fna-ingelheim.de/programm