British Information Center The bridge

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British Information Centers have been set up since March 1946 in most cities in the British Zone of Occupation in Germany with more than 50,000 inhabitants. Most of these facilities were nicknamed The Bridge .

The first British Information Center opened in March 1946 in the British sector of Berlin . By September 1947, the number of centers rose to 64. At that time they were in all the countries of the British occupation zone, that is in North Rhine-Westphalia , Lower Saxony , Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein . In 1949 the British founded a British Information Center in Bremen and in 1950 in Frankfurt am Main ; both cities are in the former American occupation zone . The centers were funded by the British Treasury.

Purpose or "idea" of the institution

On the occasion of the opening of the first British Information Center, the Brigadier Hinde explained the name Die Brücke as follows:

For the whole of this organization the British authorities have chosen the name "The Bridge". A title which in itself explains the object of the organization. At this end of the bridge stands the German population. At the other stands the great world, which Germany has been cut off for so long.

In October 1946, a German journalist summarized the offer of British cultural policy in Hamburg under the following categories: “German and English brochures on questions of economics and politics, on intellectual and moral problems in Germany and the world today. English writings about Germany. Other countries in the mirror of English opinion. The Jewish question, writings of German emigrants. English and German magazines and newspapers. ”The purpose of the British Information Centers was to support the policy of“ reeducation ”(also known as“ reconstruction ”in the British zone). In well-heated rooms, the British made newspapers and magazines of different political directions at home and abroad available "in order to convey news from all over the world to the German people in an objective manner and to illustrate the problems Germany is facing."

However, the more the integration of Germans into the West in the three western zones and in the Federal Republic of Germany progressed, the more the BICs became institutions of cultural exchange, information and intercultural learning.

2007 sold building of the no longer existing urban cultural center "Die Brücke" in Braunschweig

In retrospect, the chairman of the Braunschweig SPD council group in 2007 summed up the “idea of ​​the bridge ” as it had developed up to the first decade of the 21st century, with the words: “The bridge” was a “place of cultural communication” , "In which both the dialogue between the generations and the culture of the different nations, regions and ethnic groups have been cultivated".

Equipment of the "BICs"

“Category A” centers should have a reading room, a library, a room for “World News” and a room for “News from Germany”, a room to demonstrate the “Way of Life” in Great Britain and the Dominions , a room or contain several rooms for exhibitions as well as a film studio. In “Category B” centers, there was no library, exhibition space or film studio. “Category C” centers only had one reading room. Due to the difficult spatial conditions in destroyed Germany, until autumn 1946 it was only possible to build “Category A” centers in Berlin and Hamburg.

The “Public Relations / Information Services Control Groups (PR / ISC)”, which supplied the centers from Bünde, were responsible for supplying the BICs .

History of the “BICs” in Germany

In the time before the currency reform in western Germany, the British Information Centers proved to be a successful model. The Hamburg BIC alone was visited by 273,000 people by February 1948. The number of visitors in Essen and Bonn was at times more than 1,000 per day.

After the currency reform, the number of British Information Centers declined because their funding was perceived as a heavy burden on the British budget, especially since the West German economy recovered faster than the British in the 1950s. In 1950 there were 50 BICs, in 1953 only 20, of which 16 were co-financed by German bodies. The loss of importance of many BICs can also be explained by the fact that the centers in cities heavily destroyed by the bombing war initially had a monopoly with regard to the possibility of holding public readings and performances, which they lost in the course of the rebuilding of a corresponding infrastructure organized by German authorities went. This happened e.g. B. towards Dortmund . The library system in bombed-out cities was also promoted by the British: In 1945, for example, the Gelsenkirchen City Library lost most of its holdings of 40,000 books due to bomb damage. At the beginning of the post-war period, 2,500 of these books were still available for loan. After the BIC holdings were integrated in 1951, the number of books in the Gelsenkirchen City Library was over 30,000.

The basic idea of educating young Germans in particular in the spirit of international understanding and tolerance towards members of other ethnic groups and religions and imparting foreign language and local knowledge to them was taken up in many places by successor organizations of the "Brücke":

Villa of the British city commander, the BIC and the "Bridge of Nations" (until 1991) in Oldenburg

In Oldenburg (Oldenburg) , the BIC first developed into the “Anglo-German Center Die Brücke” (1953). In 1956, the British largely withdrew from funding the institution that became the Bridge of Nations urban cultural center . The main frequency generator of this facility was the city library, with which Die Brücke was organizationally merged. The Oldenburg City Library is still known today as the Bridge of Nations . In other places too, the local former BIC lives on in the form of book stocks that were acquired at the expense of the former British occupying power. In Osnabrück and Braunschweig z. For example, foreign-language books that had been purchased by the British were concentrated at a location where the foreign-language department of the respective city library was housed (while retaining the name Brücke ).

Not only city libraries, but also local adult education centers were funded by the BICs, e.g. B. in Oberhausen . This process is described by Hilmar Hoffmann , the later initiator of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival , who became director of the Oberhausen Bridge at the age of 24 . However, there were also adult education centers in the three western occupation zones, which from 1945 tried to establish themselves as institutions independent of the occupying power in charge, so that the question of to what extent the “bridge” legacy was (well) “canceled” in the respective local adult education center. must be answered differently from place to place.

Another development path was the promotion of social initiatives, which can be seen in the history of the bridge in Recklinghausen . There, Die Brücke today bears the attribute: “Institute for International Contacts and Integration”. The municipal facility in Recklinghausen is responsible for maintaining town twinning and for integrating migrants .

In the university city of Münster , foreign students have been looked after by the local bridge since 1956 .

"Die Brücke" - House of the Cologne Art Association

In Düsseldorf , the bridge together with the “International English Library Düsseldorf” and “International Education Center” was housed in the Carsch House . On March 18, 1949, on the initiative of Lilo Milchsack and her colleagues Theo Albeck, Anne Franken , Prof. Haas, Prof. Emil Lehnartz , Georg Muche and Dietrich Stein, the Society for Cultural Exchange with England e. V. was founded, from which the German-English Society , today's German-British Society , emerged in 1951 .

The bridge in Cologne is the name of a building erected in 1950 by the British as a cultural center on Hahnenstrasse . Today the Kölnische Kunstverein resides in the rooms of the bridge .

Newspaper "Die Brücke" / "Englische Rundschau"

A newspaper called Die Brücke was on display at the British Information Centers , in which articles from English-language print media were published in German translation, as well as articles written especially for the newspaper. The name of the newspaper was changed to Englische Rundschau in 1951 .

literature

  • Four times the culture of occupation . In: The time of May 18, 1950 ( online ).
  • Gabriele Clemens: British cultural policy in Germany 1945–1949. Literature, film, music and theater . Steiner, Stuttgart 1997.
  • Ingeborg Koza: German-British encounters in teaching, science and art 1949–1955 . Böhlau Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-412-03988-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine Zeuner: Adult Education in Hamburg 1945–1972: Institutions and Profiles. Hamburg. LIT 2000, p. 59
  2. ^ Margrit Wilke: Writings on current events . In: The time . October 10, 1946 ( online )
  3. ↑ Klaus Mlynek / Waldemar R. Röhrbein (ed.): History of the city of Hanover . Volume 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Schlütersche. Hanover 1994, p. 637
  4. ↑ Klaus Winter: The idea of ​​the "bridge" cannot be transferred to the Schloss-Arkaden ( memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Klaus Winter, SPD town hall faction, on February 21, 2007
  5. ^ Volkshochschule Dortmund: The history of the Löwenhof ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Gelsenkirchen City Library: History of the City Library
  7. ↑ Braunschweig City Library: History of the Public Library
  8. ↑ "Let a hundred flowers bloom". The birth of the short film days from the spirit of the adult education center. A conversation with Hilmar Hoffmann . Hatje Cantz Publishing House
  9. ^ City of Recklinghausen: Die Brücke - Institute for international contacts and integration
  10. ↑ Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster: 50 years of the International Center of the WWU - "The Bridge" ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ koelnarchitektur ev: The bridge
  12. ^ Hattingen City Archives: Newspapers in the Hattingen City Archives