Attacked and beaten: democratic forms of government are not a matter of course. But it’s worth it to fight for you. The exhibition “Weimar: From the essence and value of democracy” in Berlin.
“I know it, I know it, I know it!” Several index finger extend in the height. A group of elementary school students gathered in the “laboratory of democracy” around a showcase. A exhibition object, the have recognized the fifth graders immediately: a Fan Jersey of Mesut Özil. “But I asked no question about it,” laughs Patrick Helber, curator of the laboratories. “Well, then, let’s hear it once anyway.” Excited to be a student explains the conflict around the German national team, with the controversial Turkish leader Erdoğan map. “The Turk, but has participated for Germany. Then he went to Erdoğan, the Germans were good,” says the fifth-grader.
“Issue”: Fan Jersey of Mesut Özil
Patrick Helber nods and explains in a short and understand what citizenship is, some people have two, and that in Germany, there are many nationalities. “Pluralism belongs to the democracy. You know what this is?” “If not all are the same,” says a student. Another added: “Yes, otherwise it would be boring.” Historian Helber experienced it with student guides again and again, as you are convinced of a democracy. “Injustices fall on the students immediately, and talk to you directly. You argue very ethically and morally.”
Democracy fight
“Our exhibition is right now very important,” Patrick Helber. “The political climate in Germany has increased very much. Authoritarian and inhumane settings are penetrated by openly racist parties in the total social context.” That’s why he and his colleagues have decided to “turn the tables”: don’t warn and anti-democratic trends and a platform, but to emphasize, rather, is what actually constitutes the essence of a democracy.
Fundamental rights for Turning: “laboratory of democracy” – an interactive exhibition
The Jersey of Mesut Özil is one of the seven so-called dispute objects in the “laboratory of democracy”, a supplemental interactive surface in the framework of the exhibition “Weimar: From essence and Who is the democracy” in the German Historical Museum in Berlin. To the shop Argue, in addition, a bag of returnable bottles, a DDR-ballot or two ties, worn by a gay Couple for the first same-sex marriage in Germany. Is supplemented each object through Videos, interactive games, or newspaper clippings that have let the visitors in an intuitive and playful core points of a democracy, experience such as fundamental rights, minority protection, right to participation and to freedom of expression.
The Weimar Republic re-discover
These topics can also be found one floor higher, in the 1. Floor of the Pei building, again – this time in the historical context of the Weimar Republic (1919 – 1933). Here too, the Failure is in the foreground, but the dispute, compromise and, ultimately, achievements. Nowhere is the “From Weimar to learn”-a moral club, which you can hear already as a student, often in the teaching of history: A fragmented, chaotic multi-party system, the rise of the national socialist party and Adolf Hitler. “We didn’t want to think of Weimar from the end,” explains curator Simone Erpel. So the focus is now on the many of the progressive reforms in the election law, in dealing with sexuality, or in the social state, which survived largely Nazism and the Second world war and until today, the German company.
Democracy, in a construction site?
First of all, a construction site receives the visitors. Initially, one feared that the exhibition organizers were not finished. It quickly becomes clear that the scaffoldings are attached to the 2500 exhibits and texts, the exhibition’s thesis underline: democracy is a constant struggle, a struggle to find compromises, an eternal construction site. There is no endpoint, that needs to be constantly re-negotiated.
Social Tug-Of-War
One of these advances is the introduction of an unemployment insurance in 1927, a long-contested reform project, to which eventually all parties were able to agree was, for example. Hart, also the design of the national flag of the first parliamentary democracy in Germany was surrounded. The Black-and-White-and-Red of the monarchy should be replaced by a Black-and-Red-and-Gold. About a year entbrach long flag dispute that led to the fight to the street and ultimately by the seizure of power by the national socialists was ended. The exhibition shows a black-and-red-and-gold flag of the Weimar Republic, which had hidden a citizen after the seizure of power in his garden shed.
Election posters, 1919, for the First time women are allowed to choose
In current debates, among other things, exhibits on the topic of freedom of the press, remember. Be shown, for example, sections of the anti-war film “In the West nothing New” (1930) and also the strong Raised against it from the right. How free and liberal the Weimar Republic was, of the Original witnesses-posters and photos on sex education (“don’t Go blindly into marriage! Ask for advice”).
Then, however, “From Weimar to learn”? The constant underlining of the Compromise shows that, Without a social tug-of-war. This is exhausting, sometimes painful – but worthwhile, as, for example, the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1919.