Sometimes your family’s past holds hidden treasures that offer surprising insights into the past. This is what Ruben Gallé, a young German student, experienced. His great-grandfather was a German soldier who lived during the First World War. In his diary, he describes his day to day experiences during his stationing in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) in 1918.
On 16 December, the Bulgarian Values Foundation presented the awards to the winners of the 2017 National History Competition in the National Gallery in Sofia. Under this year’s topic "Family stories from the time of the communist regime" 36 young people participated and handed in 30 contributions. It is the tenth time that the competition was organised since its creation in 1998 by Antonina Stoyanova’s organisation. Over 1,600 young people have participated in the competitions throughout the years.
NOVA DOBA, the All-Ukrainian Association of Teachers of History, Civic Education and Social Studies, launched the project »(No) War Heroes. Reinforcement of the history of Ukrainian Forced Labourers and Prisoners of the World War II in the historical narrative of Ukraine«. It aimed at providing occasions as well as teaching material for a multiperspective reflection of the topic including notions of Holocaust, flight, collaboration, resistance as well as nationalisms and ethnic conflicts, starting from individual biographies.
During 2017 and 2018, history competitions in four countries – Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – will be supported within the framework of a cooperation project supervised by Körber-Stiftung/EUSTORY and DVV International and funded by the German Foreign Office.
On 22 November, German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted the award ceremony of the German history competition 2016/17 in Berlin. The topic was "God and the world. Religion makes history". The competition’s results were assessed by the German expert Frank-Michael Kuhlemann who holds the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History and Didactics of History at the Technical University of Dresden. In an interview he stresses the importance of religion for history lessons.
The award ceremony for the Israeli 2017 competition took place on 28 November 2017 at the Tel Aviv University. The festive event was composed of two parts. The first part included a panel of four senior scholars who delivered lectures on the optic of "connected histories". The second part of the event was the award ceremony itself.
On 22 November, German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier honoured this year’s first prize winners of the German history competition in the Bellevue Palace Berlin. The topic of the competition was “God and the world. Religion makes history” which encouraged over 5,000 young people to participate and to send in a total of 1,639 contributions.
How do digitalisation and the internet affect our contemporary awareness of the past and the way students approach history? This is the challenge the Fondazione per la Scuola has accepted in 2012 when relaunching the concept of their students’ history competition project. The Fondazione is a member of the EUSTORY Network.
Dr. Zdeněk Hazdra works as Director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague. As student, he was among the prize winners of the first Czech EUSTORY History Competition in the year 2000/2001. Katja Fausser, Managing Director of EUSTORY, talked to him about the relevance of this early experience and how the EUSTORY approach can contribute to the dialogue on 20th century history in Europe.
