From 3rd to 5th of December 2018, the international workshop with the topic „The 1989 Democratic Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Fall of the Berlin Wall“ took place in Potsdam, Germany, which involved about twenty participants from Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Serbia, Spain and about fifty youngsters from Germany.
The participants exchanged about the different perspectives of their countries in the late 1980s and experienced various activities linked to the topic.
On the first day, participants got to know each other, learned more about the BBAG e.V. and dealt concretely with the historical topic by creating poster for an exhibition with some material prepared and printed out in advance.
The second day was dedicated to specific historical events in Germany and the countries of the participants. Therefore, youngsters from a vocational training school in Potsdam presented pictures from the lates 1980s and their meaning they had been done the research for.
With the help of a so-called Actionbound (an application for smartphones for interactive scavenger hunt), participants were split up in smaller, international mixed groups to discover together places connected to the 1989 events in Potsdam (for instance the Glienicker Bridge or an old piece of the Berlin Wall at the former border to Berlin). The impressions were shared with the others and discussed.
The project „EdUcade“ as a whole as well as the results of the exhibition from the first evening were presented and explained to all participants. Afterwards, some free time allowed the participants to discover Potsdam by themselves.
The third day was dedicated to the evaluation of the meeting and to discuss further steps. Afterwards, the group visited the „Palace of tears“ in Berlin. This building is a colloquialism for the former border crossing at Berlin Friedrichstraße station, where East Germans said goodbye to visitors going back to West Germany. From 1962 to 1989 it was the border crossing for travellers by S-Bahn, U-Bahn and train between East and West Germany.
After the guided tour through the exhbition in the „Palace of tears“, the participants experienced typical German food ;-).
The meeting was held with the support of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
