Magda Kirndoerfer has been involved in promoting Kiel – Coventry links over many years. It was a treat to meet her in Dresden this time around. Here she picks out some events that she attended during her visit.
As a 4-day guest from Kiel I am absolutely grateful for having been part of this large Coventry group and their Dresden experience. Nikolai and Monika had set up an impressive and varied itinerary to fasten the ties between the sister cities and give insights into everyday and cultural life of the city. Nikolai, get well soon – we missed you!
On my first afternoon on February 11 I felt quite at home at Dresden Volkshochschule with “Coventry talks and teatime” as I spent my working life in Kiel’s adult education center. I was impressed by the fantastic kitchen and equipment, as well as by the auditorium on the top floor. I met the director Jürgen Küfner who told me about the challenges of the future and the need for constant creativity to meet the demands of the society and to invite divers groups to get to know each other. The kitchen, he said, is always a good place for bringing people together who seldom meet in everyday life.
Next day in Chemnitz I especially liked the three young students who with professionality and freshness explained the history and sights of their city in perfect English! What a good idea of Christan Vogel, a friend of Nikolai’s from student days The monumental and impressive 40 ton head of Karl Marx reminded of the former Name “Karl-Marx-Stadt” and its industrial past. Deeper into the past pointed the petrified tree trunks, excavated from 1740 onwards. Nature’s artwork, wonderfully displayed in the inner courtyard of a former department store built by the Jewish Tietz family. The Nazis ousted the family and began destruction in the “Reichsprogromnacht”. In 1945 a bombing devastated the building. It was re-erected and now holds the Museum of natural history, the city library, the gallery of Saxonia and the Volkshochschule.
The morning of February 13 brought the whole group and their Dresden friends together for breakfast on the first floor of a café and shop. It was a pleasure to meet Rainer Barczaitis, a dedicated translator like myself. I had often heard of his activities concerned with sister city Coventry and CAIF and the fruitful cooperation with Nikolai. Thank you, Dave for addressing the momentary state of things and for keeping the idea of CAIF alive together with Linda.
Unforgettable the human chain around the Frauenkirche in the evening to commemorate the bombing of the city 80 years ago. Snow had set in, it was severely cold, which brought to mind the suffering of the people in Ukraine through the now ongoing destruction of homes and electricity supply by Russia. Later listening to Britten’s War Requiem based on Wilfred Owen’s poetry at the Kulturpalast also brought the reality of war to mind. The intense final conclusion however made peace and harmony seem possible – even if we today must realize that the postwar era has absolutely ended and Europe has to redefine itself.
Faulkner’s famous saying ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ also came to mind on Friday morning at the session with the photographers Günter and Christine Starke. In the rooms of the political party “Die Linke” he displayed photos of a house in Dresden Neustadt, where he had lived as a squatter and got to know its inside and outside as well as the fates and existences of the residents. He manufactured with his photos a truly humane work of art – a memorial not only of this house but a period in Dresden’s Neustadt. He made a leporello to be opened from top to bottom and from left to right, which is now part of the Dresden Archive. And his wife Christine documented the fates of “Plattenbauten” and of monumental industrial architecture of Dresden and what became of them after the reunification. For me this visit was a final highlight of my stay .
Thank you all, especially Monika and Nikolai for letting me be part of your Dresden experience!
Magda Kirndoerfer
Coventry Association for International Friendship 