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After our event break, we have a whole series of great events for you again until the end of the year. There has also been great progress on the building site. We will be happy to present this to you as part of the last two tours of the building site. We also took part in the Open Monument Day and published a new book.
Even though there were no events at the Fritz Bauer Forum between July and September, a lot happened on the site in the meantime. Not only was the roof of the Fritz Bauer Forum completed, but the first green areas were also laid out. In the coming weeks, the windows and then the interior work will follow. It is becoming increasingly clear what the Forum will look like and what opportunities it will offer us, as well as visitors, potential tenants and people interested in co-working after our opening. One artist who is already realising these opportunities is the Bochum-based sculptor Dorothee Schäfer. She has been working on the premises of the Fritz Bauer Forum for several months, runs her studio there and is involved with us in a workshop programme for young people and trainees on the subject of human rights.
In addition, we have developed a whole series of exciting projects and plans that will not only make the Fritz Bauer Forum better known and more accessible, but will also have an impact on our academic work and our events.
To this end, we have submitted various applications to different sponsors and foundations. As an independent non-profit organisation that does not receive any municipal and/or state funding, we are dependent on this. We are now looking forward to seeing which ideas we will be able to present and implement in the coming months, as one of our applications has already been approved.
The Open Monument Day is the largest cultural event in Germany. Since 1993, it has been coordinated nationwide by the German Foundation for Monument Protection, which is under the patronage of the Federal President. Under this year’s motto „Wahr-Zeichen. Contemporary Witnesses of History“, we also took part again this year. In addition to a book flea market where our books and duplicates from the Fritz Bauer Library could be purchased, there were two guided tours where interested parties could find out about the history of the site, the work of the Fritz Bauer Forum and the progress of the construction work. We, on the other hand, were able to have many exciting conversations with new and familiar visitors in the best weather. More than 100 people visited the Fritz Bauer Library on this day, which was a complete success for us.
If you didn’t have time for a visit on this day, we would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to what will probably be the last guided tours of the building site on 2 and 23 October between 17:00 and 18:30. You can find more information about the site tours here .
The first date of the workshop series of the same name with Dorothee Schäfer took place on 18 September. Young people and trainees with refugee experience will first learn about the history of fundamental rights and Fritz Bauer’s biography, and will then look at survivor stories from the Interactive Fritz Bauer Library. In subsequent artistic workshops, they can then incorporate their findings into their own works. The aim of the series of events sponsored by the RWE Foundation is to strengthen democratic as well as artistic values and to promote independent action.
The results of the young people and trainees will be presented as part of the opening of the Fritz Bauer Forum 2025.
On 25 September, Emma Sepúlveda Pulvirenti’s novel Erinnerungen von Ilse an Colonia Dignidad was published as the eighth volume in our Fritz Bauer Bibliothek book series. Only a few people managed to escape from the settlement of German „colonos“ in Chile and even fewer managed to report on the horrors they experienced. The history of the girls and women who became victims and perpetrators in Colonia Dignidad has only recently been intensively researched, but has not been legally condemned in Germany.
One of the survivors of Colonia Dignidad is the protagonist Ilse, whose experiences the author recounts sensitively and based on her years of research close to reality. Founded in the early 1960s by Paul Schäfer , who was wanted for child abuse, the settlement became known as a criminal organisation as early as the mid-1960s after the escape of a settler. Time and again, news of the systematic sexualised violence, oppression and slave labour as well as many other forms of human rights violations came to light.
On 15 October, the author and the book’s translator, Dr Mathias Sasse, will present her book at the Fritz Bauer Library.
Born in Argentina, Chile is Emma Sepúlveda Pulvirenti ’s adopted country, and she is an American through the trials and tribulations of life. She studied history at the Universidad de Chile and graduated in the USA, where she lived for more than four decades. She earned her doctorate at the University of California in Davis. She has received numerous awards for her literary work and her commitment to the rights of Latinos in the USA. In 1994, she was the first Latina to run for the Nevada Senate. For seventeen years, her commentary on political, economic and social issues was a regular Sunday supplement in the Nevada Press. She has published more than thirty-five books on creative writing and literary criticism, as well as books on Spanish language teaching and research. Three of her most recent books (Gringosincracias , Setenta días de noche and Historia de un invisible ) have been honoured with the Latino Book Award.
You can find more information about the event here .
You can buy Ilse’s book Memories of Colonia Dignidad here in our online shop or at our events.
We have been cooperating with various institutes and faculties at Ruhr University Bochum for several months now. Together with the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict , for example, we organised the event with US House of Representatives member Jamie B. Raskin (The Unthinkable ) and worked with the Professional School of International Education on the question of „Europe in schools?“.
We have now been able to take this cooperation to a new level with the Faculty of History. Our first course at RUB will start on 9 October 2024 as part of a practical exercise, which is part of the general history course. Students will learn a practical approach to history that looks beyond university and academic reality. We are very pleased to be able to further anchor the Fritz Bauer Forum at the RUB and are excited to see what further collaborations can result from this in the coming months and years.