On 24 and 25 November 2022 at the Masaryk Institute in Prague, the Joint German-Czech Textbook Commission, which has brought specialist educationalists and historians from the two countries together for over twenty years at joint conferences and to produce publications, held the inaugural meeting of its dialogue forum on ‘history in the public space - current perspectives for history teaching’ (Geschichte im öffentlichen Raum – aktuelle Perspektiven für den Geschichtsunterricht).

The dialogue forum represents a new format in German-Czech cooperation on educational media. It enables the Textbook Commission to expand beyond its close circle of members and to encourage teachers and education scientists, historians and other multipliers from Germany and the Czech Republic to discuss in a public forum the possibilities for creating digital educational and teaching materials, textbook analyses and other projects. The opening of two pertinent museums, in Munich and Ústí nad Labem/Aussig, that address the German-Czech relationship have played an important role in the launching of the forum. Members of the Commission have been in regular communication with museum educators.

The benefits of the impressions, suggestions, contacts, dialogue and reflections from the Prague event are already being felt among members and participants of the Joint German-Czech Textbook Commission. The dialogue forum was a successful prelude that offers opportunities to productively link the previous work and experiences of the Commission with future projects and therefore to tackle the multiple needs and project ideas of participants involved in academia, schools and education policy.

The event was funded by the German Foreign Office and the Deutsch-Tschechischen Zukunftsfonds.

The Joint German-Czech Textbook Commission is coordinated in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Educaitonal Media | Georg Eckert Institute. Further information can be found under: https://www.gei.de/en/knowledge-transfer/internationale-schulbucharbeit/deutsch-tschechische-schulbuchkommission.