Under the motto ‘Remembering Together, Shaping the Future’, the Museum Friedland launched a cooperation project in 2021 with the ‘Fondation du Camp des Milles – Mémoire et Education’ in Aix-en-Provence (France), the ‘Fundacja Krzyżowa dla porozumienia europejskiego’ (Poland) and the ‘IB West gGmbH/Freiwilligendienste Göttingen’. The aim: young people in voluntary service or studying in the three participating countries were to spend several project weeks dealing with migration history and history of migration in Europe, learning from and with each other and making their ideas and impressions accessible to the public. The project is part of the expansion of the Friedland Museum, which also includes educational work and the international network. It was funded by the Franco-German Youth Office and the German-Polish Youth Office.
Still under the influence of a renewed wave of coronavirus, the project was initially able to start online in January 2022. However, the participants, aged between 18 and 24, were now familiar enough with this format and were very keen to get to know each other despite the screen barrier. Language animation and cooking together on camera broke the ice and paved the way for deeper conversations: family stories and personal experiences of migration were soon being discussed, and these were placed in the context of migration biographies from the Friedland Museum. It was in this context that an initial brainstorming session on a joint exhibition took place, which was to be developed during the course of the project. At the end of these few days, everyone was surprised at how intense the time had been and the group looked forward to the first face-to-face meeting in April. The time until then was bridged with further online meetings, which highlighted the sad topicality of the issue of migration through the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Nevertheless, all the participants arrived in Aix-en-Provence on 1 May. By the second evening, the group was already interacting as if everyone had known each other forever. This provided a good basis for further project work: the group visited the Camp des Milles memorial site with interest and learned more about persecution and resistance in various workshops. This in turn also enriched the considerations for a central theme for the joint exhibition: here, historical migration events would be updated. After their time in Aix-en-Provence, the group travelled to Marseille on the Mediterranean for the second part of the week, a city that is strongly characterised by migration: The topic was given a great deal of dynamism by intensive days of museum visits (City Museum, Museum of the Vieille Charité, Memorial to the Deportees), workshops and interactive city festivals in memory of the Villa Air Bel, where exiles found refuge in the 1940s. (It was during this week that the project also acquired its current name, ‘Jazda’, Polish for ‘the journey’, but also ‘let’s go’ in the language of young people).
The next stage took place in July, when young people from all three countries met at the European Youth Meeting Centre in Krzyżowa in Lower Silesia. At this old estate of the Moltke family, who founded the ‘Kreisau Circle’, the seminar focused on resistance to right-wing extremism, remembrance of the victims of National Socialism, and European reconciliation and understanding. The participants learned about history by visiting the three exhibitions on the site and by visiting the Groß-Rosen concentration camp memorial and the Riese complex, and reflected on these topics in group discussions. There was also plenty of time to work on the content of the exhibition: the participants decided to share their own process of questioning and reflecting with visitors to the exhibition. The pedagogical aspect was not neglected either: individual group members prepared activities and language animations for all the other participants, which strengthened the already cooperative group dynamics.
Until the last project week in August, work was carried out at full speed in all three countries to finalise the exhibition: texts were completed and laid out, photos selected and printed, films shot and edited. In the middle of the month, the whole group arrived in Göttingen: in the few remaining days, the history and present of Friedland were experienced on site once again, Göttingen was discovered and a final critical look was taken at the way monuments and places of remembrance are treated. These thoughts were also incorporated into the exhibition, which was not only shown in the foyer of the museum, but also ran through the entire permanent exhibition as a trace of intervention. The moment of construction was special for the whole group: ‘We created our own exhibition!’ And then the time had finally come: ‘Jazda!’ was officially opened with a tour of the museum – live streamed to France and Poland. It was clear how proud the participants were – hardly anyone had had much to do with museums or exhibitions before. In addition, they had got to know several countries and cities during the project, learned many new things and – perhaps most importantly – formed friendships with each other. The ‘Jazda’ project, as everyone agreed during the final evaluation the next day, had a significance for many that went far beyond the seminar weeks.
[The exhibition was on display in Friedland from August to December 2022 and then travelled on to France and Poland.]
