Graduation speeches

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The SR culture department proposes the speakers

The speech to the high school graduates is a series of books that has been published annually since 1999, in which speeches by important writers are published for the respective Saarland high school year . At the central high school graduation ceremony in Saarland, one author gives a speech that is broadcast on SR 2 Kulturradio .

General

The speeches to the high school graduates are a joint project of the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation , the Saarland Ministry of Education and Culture, Ministry of Education and the Union Foundation.

The book series was published by Gollenstein Verlag until 2012 and by Conte Verlag from 2013 (editor since 2018 Tilla Fuchs, previously Ralph Schock ). In 2016 an anthology of all speeches held up to that point, including an audio CD, was published.

Content

The later Büchner Prize winner Wilhelm Genazino started in 1999: "Feel yourself alarmed" was the title of his speech on the subject of right-wing radicalism and moral courage. Genazino warned against the resurgence of fascism and the trivialization of right-wing violence at the time, as we know today, the NSU began with its brutal series of murders. Genazino gave this speech again in 2005 with a current addition. “The public about the violence must become at least as unbearable as the violence itself,” was one of the central sentences of the speech.

In 2000, Birgit Vanderbeke took a critical look at the media and our communication in front of Merziger high school graduates in her then visionary, now highly topical speech “Ariel or the storm on the white linen”. In 2001, the future Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller in Ottweiler thought about the different character of borders and the transformation of things when switching from one language to another. “Home is what is spoken” was the title of her touching speech. A year later Guntram Vesper looked for the districts of the humane in an inhospitable country in his speech ("Who drowns, can die of thirst", 2002). In 2003 Dieter Wellershoff asked, based on the survivor's feeling of happiness in May 1945, about the conditions for developing a personal sense of life in a world that had become unmanageable (“The question of meaning”).

The strongest response to date was received in 2004 by Raoul Schrott's speech “The wolfish hunger - About the age of youth”, in which he accused the high school graduates of their unusually high willingness to adapt: ​​they are spoiled and lazy, immature and geeky, alienated from nature, mocked and presented from the media. At the same time, he recalled his own defeats and catastrophes at that age. The experience of failure, he speculated, could be a necessary prerequisite for developing a personality.

Ulrike Kolb pleaded in 2006 for a dialogue between young and old, and she used the image of the acrobat in the big top who should dare the feat of self-knowledge from this distance (“Become an acrobat - idyll, war and the present”). Feridun Zaimoglu, born in Bolu (Turkey) in 1964, who came to Germany with his parents at the age of one, hinted at trauma in his 2007 speech - like scrap metal. At the same time he warned against the cheap way out of cynicism. And he described how he - via the detour of painting - became an author (“From the art of minor deviation”).

In 2008, Ulrich Peltzer pleaded for the courage to live the present and go your own way, even against social expectations (“On the disappearance of illusions - and things found again”). The warning of what could happen to our earth, and the suspicion, yes, the certainty that it is already too late to change course - which has dramatically proven true today - were the central concerns of Christoph Hein in 2009 (“About the harmfulness of tobacco ”). In her speech a year later, Juli Zeh asked about the effects of the zeitgeist on an individual's attitude to life. Why is the black painting practiced by all sides at the same time opposed to being happy as a worthwhile goal for each individual? What is the relationship between freedom and fear? By reflecting on these questions, Zeh addressed central aspects of social developments in her speech (“The Possible and the Possibilities”).

In 2011, the Swiss author Thomas Hürlimann was moved by the question of what he, whose high school diploma was forty years ago, might have to say to today's school leavers (“Der Mittagsteufel - Throwiness speaks to drafts”): “You have two on your journey into life Companion: One is the demon of the repetition of the banal - it robs you of time. The other is the angel of the repetition of the unique - he gives you time. "

A year later, Sibylle Lewitscharoff told about her youth and her student days and took a look at the beginning of her career as an author (“From the glamorous life or: was it better in the past?”). She spoke passionately about youth madness and belief in progress, pressure to perform and stinginess. And took a clear position in the copyright debate that flared up at the time.

In 2013, the Frankfurt author Martin Mosebach portrayed his old German teacher (“Homage to a Teacher”), a bizarre representative of the teaching staff, whose principle, which Mosebach valued, was to overwhelm his students rather than boring them by being under-challenged. Despite (or because of) his unusual teaching, he, the outsider in the college, had a natural authority in the years of the 1968 revolt.

In 2014, Jenny Erpenbeck explored the possibilities of freedom after graduating from high school ("Get lost very far. Get lost from getting lost"). She encouraged people to cross boundaries and pleaded for the unknown, strange, and even frightening. Because it is precisely wrong paths that convey new life experiences.

A year later, Marcel Beyer thought about the impact pictures can have on our lives, for example on the basis of recordings of the attacks of September 11, 2001 or pictures related to the storming of Bin Laden's hiding place in 2011 (“In the Situation Room - the decisive moment “) And encouraged a critical examination of the supposedly only interpretation.

In 2016, Jan Wagner also recommended “accepting that not everything can or should not be brought to an end with clarity”. For the poet it was and is about preserving doubts, even celebrating them (“Remember the gap - a plea for dream, folly and uselessness”). In 2017, Anne Weber gave her speech “Where something unfathomable can be seen in the distance” to “those who break up”. Weber encouraged us to accept that the consequences of our actions are not always foreseeable. We could not avoid or prevent everything that was painful or had dire consequences. But the bad and painful also allow creativity to arise and make us more conscious people.

In 2018, Ilija Trojanow warned the digital natives of the loss of their autonomy (“Free Ride Ahead”): “The school imparts knowledge, not conscience”, was a key phrase of the speech in which Trojanow described the “neoliberal preparation” of young people, criticized whose data and thinking were increasingly controlled and influenced by large corporations.

In 2019, Clemens Meyer called on high school graduates to dream, to disobey, to drink and to be rebellious. In a very personal speech (“From advice and dream”) he told honestly and touchingly about his own experiences and intense moments of his youth. And he looked back on his very personal literary history: writers, half-sentences and quotes that accompanied and guided him, perhaps saved him, and which ultimately made him the author he is today.

meaning

The poet's speech at the central graduation ceremony in Saarland goes back to an initiative by the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation at the end of the 1990s, which wanted to give greater weight to the dismissal of the state's high school graduates. According to Ralph Schock , literary editor at Saarländischer Rundfunk, the poet's speech to the high school graduate class takes up the "tradition line, for example, to Jean Paul and Herder [...], to authors who earned their living as teachers and gave a big speech every school year".

Literaturkritik.de saw “certain signals” in the concept of the often provocative high school graduation speech series, but also questioned it critically: “Frontal teaching has given way to other pedagogical models - and in the end someone is telling something from the lectern again. How are the high school graduates actually “on it”, to put it casually. Where are you listening to? Where are you listening? "

Ernst Elitz sees the overall project as meaningful within the framework of the self-image of German broadcasters as a cultural mediator.

The Saarbrücker Zeitung rated the speeches to the high school graduates in the recent years consistently positive.

Primary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carina Becker: What am I saying to young people? - Two high school speeches by Wilhelm Genazino and Birgit Vanderbeke: literaturkritik.de. In: literaturkritik.de. September 9, 2002, accessed November 9, 2019 .
  2. ^ Ernst Elitz: Books on radio and television - wwbm Bulk - Berliner Morgenpost. In: morgenpost.de. October 25, 2007, accessed November 9, 2019 .
  3. ^ Kerstin Krämer: Saarbrücker Abitur speech in the modern gallery: Auto Clemes Meyer about dreams. In: saarbruecker-zeitung.de. July 27, 2019, accessed November 9, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Christoph Schreiner: Ilija Trojanow's rousing Saarbrücker Abitur speech: “Avoid the hell of small- mindedness !” In: saarbruecker-zeitung.de. June 21, 2018, accessed November 9, 2019 .