2012

Neighbourhoods

The 2012 Weimar Rendez-vous with History was dedicated to something close to all of us: neighbourhoods.
Neighbours should be friends, strangers can become neighbours. In a globalized world, everyone is everyone else’s neighbour, while at the same time, people are reflecting on homely neighbourhoods and friendships, new and old. Migration gradually turns strangers into neighbours (over fifty years of Turkish migration to Germany being a case in point) and also overcomes life-threatening frontiers (refugees in the Mediterranean). Even former enemies can become friends as neighbours – the Elysée Treaty that sealed Franco-German reconciliation was approaching its fiftieth anniversary, and as of 1991 the »Weimar Triangle« between France, Germany, and Poland was also already »coming of age.«
The fourth »Weimar Rendez-vous with History« set out to explore neighbourhoods, foreignness, and friendships from the winding paths of Weimar across Germany and beyond to Europe and out into the wider world.