Retrospect: Second DialoguePerspectives Alumni*ae Meeting

From September 9 to 11, our second DialoguePerspectives Alumni*ae meeting 2022 took place. Please find here a report by Semra Kızılkaya and Jochen Schlenk:

From all over Europe, more than twenty alumni participants from different cohorts traveled to Berlin for an exciting weekend full of interfaith-worldview dialogue, exchange and encounters. The thematic focus of the meeting was on European remembrance culture. Thus, the meeting started on Friday evening with a visit to the kick-off event of the International Conference of the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) at the Allianz Forum of the Allianz Cultural Foundation, where, among other things, the Manifesto of Pluralistic Culture of Remembrance was presented. At the following dinner we had the opportunity to further discuss and exchange ideas with the members of the CPPD.

On Saturday morning, the urban planner Rasha Kanjarawi from querstadtein e.V. guided us through Friedrichsstraße in Berlin-Mitte with stops at the Tränenpalast, the Gendarmenmarkt, Bethlemkirchplatz and Mehringplatz. She connected the “Stories of Migration” related to these places with her very personal migration story from Damascus to Berlin.

In the afternoon we visited the exhibition “Berlin Global” in the Humboldt Forum, which was completed a few years ago. In view of the golden cross on the dome, colonial looted art and the demolition of the East German Palace of the Republic, there was no lack of criticism of the museum’s concept, and in the discussion about it we were able to revisit numerous aspects from the previous evening’s event on questions of plural culture of remembrance. In addition to the content-related program topics, there were opportunities for religious, spiritual and worldview impulses on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

As with every single programme year of DialoguePerspectives, this meeting was again indescribably beautiful, not least of course because of the many great friendships that connect us all. Thank you DialoguePerspectives!